Billy Collins is coming, Billy Collins is coming. . .

I first met Billy Collins in Charleston in the '90s when I was invited to have dinner ahead with some Poetry Society friends who had planned the reading: Denny Stiles, Susan Meyers, and Linda Ferguson. My good buddy from Savannah, Carolyn Watson, rode over to Charleston with me. That whole evening was such a memorable occasion, for one hysterical incident occurred. Billy was going to read the next day in Montgomery, AL. My son, Stephen, had a best friend, Trip, who was teaching high school history in Montgomery, so I thought it would be wonderful if Trip had a heads up about his visit, and hoped that perhaps Stephen might drive down from Tuscaloosa as well.

Well, I carefully wrote Trip's name down on the back of my card and Billy tucked it into his inside coat pocket. Trouble was, I thought Trip taught at Montgomery Academy where Billy was speaking when indeed he was teaching at St. James. This was pointed out to me (did I hear I note of "Oh , no, mother, you've done it again) in no uncertain terms by Stephen when I called him on the way home to suggest that he might need to drive down to hear Billy as well.

Now, at the time Amazon had a deal going online with a millenium poem. Reminiscent of the pen pal poems where each poet contributes an alternate line, or going even farther back in time, of the Japanese renga which was composed of any number poets alternately. Well-known and well-published poets were being asked to be a part of this group of poets. Billy had just been asked, so when I got home, I immediately went to Amazon to see what this millenium poem looked like.

I'm sorry I can't drag up from my files a hard copy of that poem. Recently I assembled a group of poems which might be occasional verse rather than poetry. The working title is CHALK TALK AND HEN SCRATCH, since it is all about poets and teachers I've encountered. For this project I did dredge up the poem (using the term loosely) I wrote and sent to Billy Collins, regarding the blunder I had made about his seeing Trip in Montgomery.

Close, But No Cigar: What I Would Write If I Were A Billy Collins

I would not write of calendars
or snow or foul winds that blow
away hats and people, not sonnets or haikus
or villaparadelles but this disease I have,
congenital, foot-in-mouth, faux pas’s, very plural—
those I would write over, make funny if I could.

I would have eaten my first short story, its green
pastoral setting as bland as the shepherd’s promises,
instead of sending it out to the New Yorker.
I probably could laugh about that blind date;
I would not say to Jane Smith that he kissed
like a cow at the drive-in. I would check
for a recorder under the seat, all around,
everywhere; I would strain harder to think
of something more glib to say to William Styron
than his quote about the wings of madness.

I could laugh about jotting down a name
for Collins, so sure of myself,
about where Trip taught school, so smug
that I, myself might have been mistaken as the visiting
poet that day rubbing elbows at Zebo’s, secure
that mine was the tangiest balsamic vinaigrette,
one my lesser could only hope to taste.

I might double over
at what Collins must have thought
when he fingered inside the left pocket of his jacket,
you know the one, for my card, proclaiming who I am,
to hear him read from its back, in my eloquent hand,
Trip Franklin at Montgomery Academy,
whom the headmaster had never heard of
but one whom the librarian guessed might teach
at their near-unspeakable rival, Trinity Presbyterian.
(I try to placate myself. Trip was in the same town.)

Given the chance,
I’d rather run, hellbent like some hyena,
relentless bloodhound, streaking
through a pasture of cow piles,
fresh ones, then scrape my soles
onto my pristine carpet, grinding the smell
into its weft and woof—
that to admit—
like stepping on hot coals,
that I have once again tripped,
red-faced, about this Trip
and his whereabouts.

Will it matter at all, though, I muse—
by the time the new millennium poem is finished?
I wish a word were dead when it is said
and what it might purport, for such an epic
as life hardly merits a footnote about fools,
and I wish I were going west in a box
with Joe Priskulnick who probably killed himself
(before Eavan Boland could in the poem)
deeming stupidity of such magnitude,
like mine, truly terminal.

My next encounter with this poetry phenomenon was in Louisville, KY, in the early years of the new millenium. Billy was reading at Bellarmine College and many of us studying for the MFA in Writing at Spalding University went to hear him. I brought a couple of my books for him to sign that I hadn't had earlier. By now he had become Poet Laureate, (2001-03)and all things were different. Instead of the smallish intimate group of listeners in Charleston, I was one among hundreds standing in line to get his signature, and as much as I wanted to remind him of that fun evening in Charleston, his eyes were truly glazed over a bit at the emormity of the crowds facing him, each, like me, hoping for a little personal word, a little spark of the magic, a bonding to a kindred soul. I surmised that by the end of that evening, he would have no recollection of any face he saw there unless he truly is the genius we all think he is.

Billy will be here on February 19. As late as last Thursday, December 3, I used a power point presentation for a group at LAMP high school during a poetry workshop which included his poem "Introduction to Poetry." It turned out that the teacher, Leah Stoudenmier, loved this particular poem. I find that students, too, love the metaphor of tying a poem to chair and beating the meaning out of it. Next to that one I posted "Turtle" by Kay Ryan, our current Poet Laureate of the U.S. She was well known in the low country area before our recent fame, and Billy Collins chose this poem of hers as one of his daily poems for schools.

Who would be a turtle who could help it? asks the poet, Kay Ryan.

I say, who would be a poet who could help it?

Billy will be reading at Hoover Public Library on February 19. I'll be on the front row--or very close. That way I can watch his feet as he reads--for he does have that unique little dance as he performs!

By the way one of my brand new friends, River Jordan, with whom I sat on a panel at the Dahlonega Writers' Festival will be participating on Saturday, February 20, at the same author conference!! River lives just up the road in Nashville.

WIK, Christmas, and Muscadines

Yesterday at WIK (writing & illustrating for kids/regional SCBWI) I was reminded that one of my deepest desires is to have a beautifully illustrated picture book with my words in it and my name on the cover in the hands of one of my grandchildren. Why is that so hard? Writers who haven't tried it assume writing for children only requires shorter words, fewer words, and simpler words. Wrong! So wrong.

But that tale has been told many times over. To sum it up, an excellent picture book is possibly the water color of all the genres.

Happiness is having my words of any kind accepted for publication. Christmas is a Season! 2009 will be coming out soon from Excalibur Press and editor, Linda Parker, with a group of seasonal short stories and essays. That project last year produced readings all over the state, and culminated with a reading at Spalding University at the spring reunion. My story, "Finding the Lord" will be included this year. A lot humorous, a little serious--and it actually has a plot!

Kathy Rhodes, editor at Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, has just accepted "Woman's Wait" for the first 2010 issue online. (Thanks to my friend, Joan Donaldson, for suggesting that submission!) Don't you love the title? If you don't know the word muscadine, you may not know scuppernong either. Grapes. One beautifully deep purple; the other, green. For jelly. And muscadine pies.

Did you know that if you make muscadine jelly or pear preserves every fall of your life, they will never turn out the same color? My sisters, Annie Bell, Ann, and Marie, Ree, taught me that and a lot of other nuances about the preservation process.

Scuppernong Jelly

It’s that time:
September
my old nemesis

when a muggy hush
falls each day
with temperatures

a crow’s caw
from the pine
is intensified

when my fall harvest
has dwindled to
greenish-gold grapes

smashed, cooked,
bubbling up hard
in clear juice,

to be strained
through cheesecloth.
Scalded jars

wait to the side.
Filling, cooling,
skimming, sealing.

It’s that time,
phlegmatic, slow,
sticky sweet.

Transitions

Summer to Autumn. Green to gold. Hot to cool. Blue blog to orange/brown! You like? I like. For now anyhow.



Last week I changed the furniture in my dining room to accommodate a large antique sideboard with an oval mirror that wouldn't fit into my daughter's condo when she moved the rest of her furniture from the basement. I thought about how we've about reached the end of a decade in this house. Usually that heralds a huge change: a move. That won't happen by choice; we're in the city where our children are, so why would we move?




The last decade was spent in Savannah (as was the decade of the '70's) and during our mountain trip last week, we stopped in Dahlonega, GA, for a brief visit with Regina Odom, an "olde" buddy from Savannah, owner of Regina's Books & Cards. She is now working with Monteluce, a winery and Italian villa development. We took her to dinner at Le Vigne Monteluce, and here's evidence of more change. One friend on Facebook said we now look like twins.



My hair was has been au naturel since the 80's but gray was a change since I'd seen Regina. We renewed aulde acquaintance after dinner by listening to the music of her friends, a young husband and wife team whose names I missed, at The Crimson Moon Cafe. They sang folk/popular songs we knew the words to. Tommy and I actually took a whirl on the bit of floor between small tables.



When Regina opened her book store on Victory at Skidaway, one of her first guests was Lois Battle. At the time I was even more an ingenue at writing than I am now. Mostly I had written poetry, but I did have a novel finished. Or I thought it was a novel. I was trying to market it as a young adult novel, but, truly, that was silly. It's still around, still unpublished, but now I know it's a coming-of-age novel with little sex and violence. (Perhaps someday a revision will change that.) Lois that day actually handed me a card with the name of her agent/agency in NY. I've not had such an act of grace shown me by an established writer before or since. Although I corresponded with one of the agents for some time, I never found a fit with what she was looking for. Still Lois performed a memorable act of kindness. If you aren't in the profession, you wouldn't know that an agented writer, for some reason, guards the name of that agent as if naming might condemn her eternally from the upper "I have an agent" rung of the writing ladder back down to the "I'm looking for an agent" group.

So what does such a ladder have to do with change? All professions have their up's and down's especially writing. Write that on your forehead, writers!

Cataloochee Ranch: Ride? Write?

In the south where these two words sound a lot alike, we pack summer away on Labor Day; Tommy and I often want to gratify our disparate passions as Autumn sets in. He wanted to vacation with some horses, and I needed to continue drafting a collection of stories. The perfect place for both? Cataloochee Ranch, Maggie Valley, NC. We'd been there before, and it's one place on this planet that hasn't changed that much in its 75 years!

Some Floridians were there, too--Larry and Rosanne; Dennis and Nan--all riders, not writers!
The leaves have started to turn a bit at the top of the mountain, but mostly the green lushness would hurt your eyes.

As I approached the dock on the pond, hundreds of little froggies plunged from the tall grass into the water. Lily pads as large as dinner plates covered the pond in green patches. The distant trees were reflected in the pond. On the mountainside in a vivid green pasture horses grazed and a row of wild turkeys foraged for grasshoppers alongside them. After a hundred little blip blips of the frogs hitting the water, an extreme quiet set in. The summer zizz of locusts and tree frogs (I'm guessing) sounded very much like the summer sounds of my back deck in Birmingham.

On the path from Sourwood, our cabin, to the ranchhouse where we had communal meals with one of the Alexander family (owners) always at table as host, two large boxwoods and two large coniferous "bushes" framed the path. The boxwoods, Judy Alexander explained, were sent as sprigs by Sears Roebuck when her father placed an order with them. She told me the name of the "bushes" but I failed to write the name down. Each looked like a Frazier Fir which had spread into a bush before it got tall. It had tiny cones on it. Those, she said, were a part of a swap of plants that her father made with a nursery in New Jersey.

Other trees of interest were the Norway Spruce, heavy with long slender cones, and the chestnut trees planted as an experiment. They are helping to develop a chestnut tree resistant to the blight which was introduced to the U.S. by the Chinese Chestnut which wiped out all the native chestnut trees.

So I soaked in the flora and fauna more than I wrote. Now I can "recollect in tranquility."

Sensational CYRANO'S BOOKSHOP!!

Ah, the winding road to the mountains, the smokey-blue overlooks, the trout at The Wine Garden, grouper with a sauce of lemon butter and capers at On the Verandah overlooking the Sequoyah, the temperatures of 60's/70's, the ice cream sundaes at Kilwin's, and, the best of all, Cyrano's, Cyrano's--the busiest, fastest two-hour signing I've had so far! Thanks to Clair, Arthur, and Stu for a fun-filled afternoon.

Readers were nose to nose, elbow to elbow, finding their favorite books. Some were picking up their new Pat Conroy. (180 were ordered and all pre-sold. Wow!) I was directing traffic at the front from my little signing nook. At one point I guided a woman to the coffee table books on birds by pointing to the man in the green shirt way in the back, Stu. Customers left carrying armloads of hard cover books, and many even found the space for my poetry books. Many thanks to those who did.

Conversation was the best: Mike from England for whom I sang C.M. Bellman verses; April,local resident from MA whose name called up Shakespeare ("Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime");the Pollards and mother Rita all celebrating Rita's 90th birthday; Rod Rogers, the Civil War writer who followed me in signing (who knew my Charleston friends, Dennis Stiles, Susan Meyers, and Linda Ferguson); mom and daughter,an English teacher; a young man whose girlfriend was "edgy"; a woman who uses the Bible as a resource book as do I--so so many. I wish all the names had stayed with me as the faces have!

Too bad I forgot to take pics during the signing. Tommy and I returned just before five on Saturday and did snap a few, but you won't see the crowds I've described. They were all getting ready for dinner. I wanted to take a street shot to show the clever use of the front window to display books.

Easy to see that I've made one stop too many at Kilwin's. Ah, but who could resist?

Young internationals were working in the shops and restaurants. A Russian woman shared conversation about my Russian friend here, Polina. An Irish fellow served us one evening. He said the chef was German. I learned from April at Cyrano's that a large house in Highlands serves as a local residence for young folks who want to come there and work.

Because our old Savannah buds, Delores and Steve Wright, were not at their place in Cashiers for the weekend, we stayed at Highlands Inn, a homey place a stone's throw from Cyrano's. There we met Betty who was staying at the Inn through Labor Day before returning to Rock Hill, SC. We had great fun talking about our memories of Savannah where Tommy and I lived for two separate decades.

You are invited. . .

to a booksigning of my full length poetry book, THE SHORTEST DISTANCE. Saturday, August 15, 1-3, Cyrano's Book Store in Highlands, NC.

Blurbs for THE SHORTEST DISTANCE:

“…[her] poems are quietly earth-shaking—an oxymoron written like the moron I become when having read something that moves me, and Kathleen Thompson’s have reduced me to a quivering mass of admiration & greed for more.”
-Nelle Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird.

“Kathleen Thompson writes about the joys and sorrows, as well as the ordinary daily experiences in between, that make up our lives. She explores the wild in the domestic and the domestic in the wild. Like conch shells held to the ear, these poems let us hear the oceans they contain. The Shortest Distance is a true and moving book of poems made to last a long time.”
-Greg Pape, author of American Flamingo, Montana Poet Laureate

“Kathleen Thompson's The Shortest Distance presents a compelling, reflective, and compassionately crafted world-welding that brings near the ways in which the human heart is shaped by relationships and by the particularities of place.”
-Sue Walker, Alabama Poet Laureate, Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, University of South Alabama

What's in a Name?

Victoria, Cousin Nicholas, and Will

Announcing a new grandson: William Meron Thompson, born Thursday, July 30, 2009, at 3:03 p.m. 8 lbs. 4 oz. 21 1/2 " long!! Parents: Stephen and Tracy; big sis, Victoria, 6.

His first name is to honor the Williams family name of my daughter-in-law, Tracy. The second was after my father-in-law, Meron James Thompson, June 18, 1918-December 4, 2004. He was named after his maternal grandfather of Wayne County, MS, James Marion Thompson, Feb. 2, 1854-?

Well, I've found out just how many William's are in our family since this baby was named--my oldest brother, William Eura Smith, August 24, 1926-July 17, 1972, and at least four nephews! This son of Stephen and Tracy and little brother of Victoria is the newest.

The oldest ones I know about are:

a maternal Taylor grandpa, William J. (Billy) Taylor, born 1836 in Tuscaloosa County, died August 1904 in the Civil War, and buried in Richmond Virginia;
and a paternal uncle, son of Robert Smith, 1818-1840 (my great-grandpa), William C. Smith, 1846-1923. (Robert Smith also fought in the Civil War--Co. A 41st Infantry Reg.)

Here's a poem about naming that I wrote a long time ago. Note that I took poetic license here because the truth is sometimes harder to believe than fiction. Grandpa Newton Howard Taylor actually had two wives, Jennie, and then Ella. By those two wives he had 27 children. I think seventeen were Ella's.

Names
In Memoriam: Tempie Savannah Taylor Smith
November 18, 1902 - September 28, 1966

Her name was Ella.
Ella Hasslentine Ella
Sanford Taylor.
I never saw her chop cotton
or cabbage for kraut.
I never heard her hum
the lyrics yellowing now
in her trunk for one
of their seventeen.

I never saw the bundling
board, or the dog trot,
but fireplace rocks still
stand there, outwitting time
like a marble monument
marking hours spent,
stirring syrup and stews
and nurturing new names.

She named you Savannah.
Had she felt the spiky
side of a sand dollar?
Had she ever chased
a bevy of sand pipers?
Did the breeze that bends
sea oats cause her to shiver
as she stoked the fire?

You never saw that place
she conjured up for you.
You named me Mary Kathleen,
youngest of twelve. My pew
in Savannah is marked with brass:
I sit next to your shiny name
and wonder what you dreamed
for me--what horizons, what sea?