Everything you need to know can be learned at a poetry reading.
I was early to Word Fest’s opening event. I was also on the wrong floor of the Asheville Center for Tourism, which is where Lenoir-Rhyne, Asheville Campus is located. (In case you didn’t know. I didn’t.) I sat in a beautiful cove of chairs and photographs, and thought I’d read my book. I always have a book at hand, don’t you? Then I noticed Laura Hope-Gill’s poetic responses to photographs on the wall. I thought about Ekphrasis, the response of poetry to art.
When I lived in St. Paul, I spent many winter mornings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, staring and writing. Ekphrasis (below) is the poem I wrote at the Lenoir-Rhyne gallery.
Ekphrasis:
A conversation between word and image
This poet, benched in a gallery,
ponders the rising pine photograph,
a sunny haze behind it.
Dialogue begins.
Why must word respond to image?
I want to say, “leave it be.
The image is enough,”
but I’m wrong.
My pen hums to capture in text
the potential gray-blue threat
behind the sun’s haze.
I notice the tree is missing limbs.
It rises from a steep hill,
unattended, shelterless; helpless
in the coming storm
and I must do something!
Remember, all this happened BEFORE the reading began. Word Fest needed signs and more publicity. Lenoir-Rhyne needs street front signage. I thought the event began at 4. It began at 5 – but actually began at 5:30.
From the wisdom of Word Fest poets:
- Poetry articulates what we feel.
- Poetry can be language or conversation.
- Water finds its way.
- We receive gifts from the dead.
- Appalachia is sacred ground.
- Tell a story to the dead: You Won’t Believe What Happened After You Left.
- Ask for the words you need.
- What I do is not dangerous.
- Water has memory.
- Sound will bring you to your senses.
- There is a fusion of poetry and music.
The night ended with the audience clapping and jiving as Keith Flynn, poet and blues singer, and Kelvin Bell, guitarist, sent us off on a high, burning between words and music.
In response to this evening, and a request from a young woman with wonderous hair sitting in front of me, I’d like to begin a Rapid River Poet’s Voice event monthly. I would facilitate, and we’d write, write, write. We’d read our “seeds” of poems to one another, take them home, polish them, and bring the “product” to the next meeting. It would be fun to bring in favorite poems to share.
Let me know if you are interested in getting together. Contact me at thepoetsvoicerr@yahoo.com. As Samuel Beckett said, “All we have is words.”
WORD FEST
a room full of poets listening
(blonde, hat-less, hair-less, dreads,
white hair; dyed)
waits for the reading to begin, stilled
by expectation of the rapture
to come the hour is upon us.
A young reader in cowboy shirt, jeans;
glasses, glares his guilt in poem’s flight.
A woman waits through night for home.
Her moon’s “golden light cajoles” us all.
~ Carol Pearce Bjorlie