Sherry Chandler

This photo is three or four weeks old but I think it’s pretty neat and I’ve been wanting to share it with you.

We planted this white pine as a live Christmas tree the year we moved to the farm, 1982. Our twin sons were rising 4 years old, and white pine was about as far as our budget would stretch. It was just about my height, 5 feet 6 inches.

We had several drought years after we moved onto the farm and the tree just sort of sat there for a while. When the rains came back, it began to grow and now tops 25 feet, about a foot a year, but it has always had that drought-stunted ugly spot in the low branches. Still, we’ve never considered cutting it. We’re sentimental about trees.

I’m telling you this now, not only because I took this neat photo but also because my son, who has been living with us for the last several years while he went to graduate school, moved out today to live in West Palm Beach. He’s on the road as I write this.

So the nest is empty a second time. And it is sad. But this time we know we can survive.

_____
In other news, my friend Georgia Green Stamper will be talking to Nick Lawrence tonight on Curtains @ Eight, WUKY, 91.3 on your FM dial, or streaming at http://www.wuky.org/index.html.

Georgia also has a segment of WUKY’s tonic in the can. tonic, the arts and music magazine with a twist, is only available online. Georgia’s segment is a conversation with Mike Graves, Leatha Kendrick, and me. More information when I have it.

The subject of both shows is, of course, Georgia’s new book You Can Go Anywhere from the Crossroads of the World (Wind, 2008).

Georgia will also be reading from the book at Joseph-Beth Booksellers on Sunday, June 22 at 2:00 p.m.

If you ask a, shall we say pleasantly rounded, woman aged in the low-sixties to eat a heavy meal, then climb about a furlong or so of hill at a 45° angle with the temperature and the humidity both in the low nineties, well, it’s not a pretty picture.

Lincoln Memorial University is a picture pretty campus nestled in the valley just east of Cumberland Gap in Harrogate, Tennessee, and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival 2008, as I experienced it, was 36 hours of intensive intellectual stimulation and unprecedented exercise. Factor in the campus-wide air conditioning problems, and you will understand why I’m just wanting to sit quiet this morning and practice my calming breath.

More on this later, but for right now, let me say that Maurice Manning is not only an world-class poet but he is also a great teacher, a rare and valuable combination. If you have a chance to experience a workshop led by Maurice, grab it.

I’m off to attend the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University:

We believe that LMU is at the epicenter of the Appalachian literary movement. Situated at the historic Cumberland Gap, we have our feet firmly planted in the fertile soil of the past and the other in the promise of the future (sic). Our festival not only celebrates the rich history of Appalachian literature, but also offers a guiding light for a new generation of writers who have been inspired by the writers who come from LMU and other writers of the Appalachian South. The Mountain Heritage Literary Festival celebrates our living history while also providing master classes, workshops, lectures and readings to entertain and inform writers of today’s generation.

Besides the literary tradition that is still thriving at LMU, we also offer an amazingly beautiful space for writers to find inspiration. This is a festival that is completely down-home, accessible and fun– traits that Appalachians have rightly been known for. Instead of fancy meals, at the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival you’ll be fed the food your grandmother might have prepared for you. You’ll breathe in the crisp air of the Cumberland Mountains and be treated to traditional music strummed on an autoharp. There will be plenty of music to be heard, plays to be seen and good fellowship to be had.

Back Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, let’s celebrate this and this.

Today is Robert Penn Warren’s birthday, commemorated as Kentucky Writers Day. I have had a fine day hobnobbing with Kentucky writers. A pleasure to hear the Capitol rotunda echoing with words from William Butler Yeats and Sylvia Plath, James Baker Hall, Joe Survant, and Jane Gentry.

Emmanuel Nfor, a junior from Western Hills High School (in Frankfort I think) and runner-up in Kentucky’s Poetry Out Loud competition recited Billy Collins’s “Forgetfulness” and Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” Those of us who have reached the age of forgetfulness looked with some tenderness upon a young man of seventeen taking on the Collins poem. The question about that rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem seemed portentous indeed in the halls of government. This is Emmanuel’s second year to place in the competition and he has one more year to compete. We will look for him back next year.

The first place winner, Amy Cordero of Pikeville High School chose Tony Hoagland’s “Beauty” and Sylvia Plath’s “Fever 103 Degrees,” both poems that explore complex notions about mortality, sexuality, and notions of beauty. I was doubly pleased, first that Amy took on these difficult poems and second that a woman so young and beautiful could interpret them so well.

The three laureates were, of course, excellent, and Jane, in what you might call her state of the laureateship address, took time to recognize the network of teachers, librarians, and small press publishers who are promoting the literary arts in Kentucky. Charlie Hughes of Wind Publications, resplendent in Loony Toons tie, was forced to endure resounding and extended applause for his work in publishing, promoting, and writing poetry. “His book,” said Jane, “is called Shifting for Myself but he has been shifting for all of us.”

(Note: Wind Publications swept the fiction category at the recent Kentucky Literary Awards presented at the Southern Kentucky Bookfest.)

Jane’s remarks prompted this response from Jim Hall that I will pass on to you: “It’s a big tent, poetry, and some of us are making the call, “Come on in!” Added: Jim also noted the irony that a state with a well-deserved reputation for illiteracy should have so many internationally-recognized writers.

Here, from his long poem Audubon: A Vision, is a taste of the man to whom we all paid homage today, Red Warren:

VI
Love and Knowledge

Their footless dance
Is of the beautiful liability of their nature.
Their eyes are round, boldly convex, bright as a jewel,
And merciless. They do knot know
Compassion, and if they did,
We should not be worthy of it. They fly
In air that glitters like fluent crystal
And is hard as perfectly transparent iron, they cleave it
With no effort. They cry
In a tongue multitudinous, often like music.

He slew them, at surprising distances, with his gun.
Over a body held in his hand, his head was bowed low,
But not in grief.

He put them where they are, and there we see them:
In our imaginaton.

What is love?

Text from New and Selected Poems 1923 - 1985 (Random House, 1985).

One name for it is knowledge.

Tomorrow is Kentucky Writers Day, an official state “holiday,” and to mark the occasion, the Kentucky Arts Council is sponsoring a reading and reception in the rotunda of the Capitol Building in Frankfort.

The reading will feature our current poet laureate, Jane Gentry, and two former laureates, James Baker Hall and Joe Survant. As an additional treat, the finalist and runner-up in Kentucky’s Poetry Out Loud competition will perform their winning recitations.

Readings are at 10:00 a.m. EDT with a reception to follow at 11:00.

This event is free and open to the public. I plan to be there.

Bill Goodman talks to Jane Gentry on KET’s One to One. You can watch the video or listen to the audio. Thanks to JimT for the tip.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of the celebration of Kentucky’s writers, I give you a poem that Maurice Manning attributes to Gilbert Imlay, a man who might be called the first Kentucky writer. There is some irony in that, as there is about so much of Kentucky’s history. I’ve talked about Imlay here , here, and here and his novel The Emigrants here. The text of this poem, that appeared in the English magazine The Philanthropist on September 7, is from Manning’s excellent poetic biography of Daniel Boone, A Companion for Owls (Harcourt, 2004):

AN ODE TO KENTUCKY,
BY AN EMIGRANT

Hail modern Eden! — hail thy blooming sweets!
Thy promis’d favours, and thy fragrance, greets
My ardent wishes to salute thy plains,
And plant thy meadows with European grains.
Hail happy spot! that yields thy sweets profuse,
To waste in air, or rot in morning dews
Uncultivated—unenjoy’d by Man,
Reserv’d for latter ages in th’ Almighty’s plan.
No longer let thy fertile region waste
Its fruit (spontaneous fitted for the taste),
But let me now thy profited sweets caress,
Thy rich profusion taste, thy meads possess.
May heav’n inspire a train of honest swains,
emigrate, and cultivate thy plains,
And prove in earnest, what was said before,
That Eden now, is what in days of yore
It was to Adam, ‘ere the Garden fence
Had felt a breach from Satan’s impudence.
many sons of Freedom catch the fire,
And from those guilty madd’ing scenes retire,
(Which now envelope Europe more and more,
And threaten judgments on Great Britain’s shore)
To those sweet Arbours in Kentucky’s grant,
Whose rich production will supply each want;
Whose ample resources, with little toil,
Will crown their labours, and their cares beguile.
No taxes there oppress the lab’ring kind,
No tyrant Kings in chains their slaves to bind;
There are no game laws to prevent a man
From shooting hares, or pheasants if he can,
The Rivers there are free as we can wish,
And every man may catch a dish of fish.
No laws of primogeniture, to wrong
The most uncar’d for infant of the throng;
There are no lazy Parsons, who demand
The tenth or all the produce or the land;
Nor Pope, nor Bishop, to enslave the mind,
But all may liberty of conscience find.
No Burke’s, no Pitt’s, no Windham’s, nor Dundas’s,
To stigmatize you all as swine or asses;
There is no tax for “apeing your superiors,”
For all are equal there, and none inferiors.
There are no Nabobs, who from Indian plunder
Return, and GII their neighbours all with wonder;
No pamper’d hosts of pensioners you’ll find,
live upon th’ industry of mankind.
No hireling spies, nor foul informers there,
To herd amongst you, merely to ensnare
No harden’d crimps in government employ,
To steal your children, or your youths decoy
No prostitution stains that happy clime,
Because no Prince to patronize the crime;
But every man may there in peace combine,
He leaves his progeny a competes
Then hasten to Kentucky’s fruitful soil.
Nor longer in European fetters toil;
Possess this land of liberty and plenty,
Arid say “the despots of the earth have sent ye”

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
— Portia’s speech from Act IV, Scene I of The Merchant of Venice, text from Project Gutenberg.

It is Poem in your Pocket Day and I thank Margo Berdeshevsky for reminding me of this passage in her Poet’s Pick last week.

Garrison Keillor threw a sonnet contest. Results, winner and 32 finalists, here. Or you can listen to a streaming broadcast of the show Sonnet in your Bonnet? in which members of the cast read the poems.

And also, in my list of local events this week, I, rather stupidly, forgot to mention that Lynnell Edwards will be reading from her new book The Highwayman’s Wife tonight at 6:30 at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. The reading is free. The workshop afterwards is $25. Tonight’s event is, I think, the last of the CCLL’s New Books by Great Writers Series for this season.

Which reminds me, in turn, of Alfred Noyes’s poem “The Highwayman”. I submit this link to you as your bonus poem.

This Thursday, April 17, is the birthday of my sister-in-law of, can it be?, about 50 years. Happy birthday, Pete!

But it is also the Academy of American Poets’ Poem in your Pocket Day!

Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

The site has suggestions for celebrating the day and also a selection of pocket-sized poems you can print out and share.

Or, if you’re more technology minded, you can carry Mobile Poets on your pocket communicator of choice.

April 17 is also the date for Hazard Community and Technical College’s Evening with Poets, hosted by Jim Webb. This year’s featured poet is Diane Gilliam Fisher. Readings begin at 6:30 in the Stephens Library. Admission is free!

The 12th annual HCTC Spring Writers Conference is set for April 18, 10:00 to 4:30. This FREE writers conference will feature workshops by Crystal Wilkinson, Gurney Normal, and Diane Gilliam Fisher.

At the other end of the state, Kentucky Writers Conference 2008 returns to Bowling Green for it’s fifth year on April 17 and 18. Presenters include George Ella Lyon, Richard Taylor, Lynnell Edwards, and John Guzlowski (about whom more later).

The 10th annual Southern Kentucky Bookfest will be held on Saturday April 19 at the Sloan Convention in Bowling Green. My friend Georgia Green Stamper, author of You Can Go Anywhere, will be there along with other local notables, including Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane Gentry, former Kentucy Poet Laureate Richard Taylor, along with Leatha Kendrick, Fred Smock, George Ella Lyon, Lynnell Edwards, and some folks who write stuff beside poetry. Full list of authors here.

You can find links to web pages for these and many other Kentucky writers on my Ky’s Writers page.

In case you didn’t get signed up, here are the archives for Knopf’s Poem-a-Day 2008

And don’t forget Dead Mule’s Poets on the Odds.

Also, while you’re planning your weekend, remember the reading and reception to celebrate the release of Leatha Kendrick’s newest poetry collection, Second Opinion (David Robert Books). The reception is from 6:30-8:00 pm at the Carnegie Center, 251 W. Second St., Lexington.

Well, your Senate just made the Bush unitary presidency stronger by passing a FISA bill that gives the executive branch the right to decide who they should spy on, without judicial review, and gives the telecommunications industry retroactive immunity from legal action for giving up your information.

You might call your Congress person and suggest that s/he support the RESTORE act. Otherwise, unfettered spying for six years.

Meanwhile Antonin Scalia continues his charm offensive, saying torture is just all right with him and you can’t call it “cruel and unusual” unless it’s punishment for a crime. Waterboarding equals a smack in the face? Guess we have a hint how the Supremes might decide on the question of admitting evidence obtained by torture.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, when everything is pink and rosey. Except in the coal-bearing Appalachians. Still time to consider joining the I Love Mountains Day Rally. Wendell Berry will be there. And it looks like the weather is gonna cooperate. Forecast calls for 45 and sunny.

Friday, February 15, is the postmark deadline for entries to The Heartland Review’s Joy Bale Boone poetry prize. Kathleen Driskell judges.

AND February 29^th, Leap Day, is deadline for the Green River Writers suite of contests. (Link is to PDF file.)

Make your plans now for the Writer’s Collective 2008 Workshop ,Friday & Saturday, April 11 & 12, 2008, at the Old Town Professional Center, 204 N Broadway, Berea, KY 40403.

Presenters will include Normandi Ellis, Gin Petty, Jim Tomlinson, and Leatha Kendrick to name just those whose work I know. Excellent craftsfolk all. Gin Petty’s workshop alone — on Handbinding Chapbooks and Journals — would be worth the price of admission (which is a measly $65 for the whole weekend). If you haven’t seen this woman’s work, you are missing a treat.

They’ve got a dandy website up. Go take a look around.