JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE, POET OF THE MONTH FOR APRIL 2009

Janice Townley Moore is one of the most accomplished of the southern poets, yet certainly undervalued. She is a nationally known poet. Her poetry will be celebrated and featured here at Living Above the Frost Line. During this her birth month and this being National Poetry Month, we recognize Janice Townley Moore as Poet of the Month for April 2009.



A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Janice Townley Moore has spent most of her life in the small mountain town of Hayesville in western North Carolina and in the small Georgia mountain town of Young Harris where she is a member of the English Department at Young Harris College. 

She began writing poetry when she was a student at LaGrange College. Since those days, she continued to write, often inspired by her surroundings in the North Georgia/North Carolina mountains. 

Her chapbook, Teaching the Robins, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005.  Individual poems have appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The Chattahoochee Review, JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association), and Appalachian Journal.  She has poems forthcoming in The Apalachee Review and Main Street Rag. 


ONE OF MY FAVORITE JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE POEMS is

EVENING OUT

Atlanta, 1952

On days too hot for breath to be easy
my father left his desk in the cellar
to drive our Easter ducks, full grown,
to Piedmont Park for a swim.
Crated up in the trunk of our pea-green Plymouth,
they quacked and quacked the long three miles.
Our whole family went along for the show.
Without coat and tie my father sprawled
in the cool by the lake. I remember
how his wallet bulged in his back pocket
as he bent to unlatch the crate.
No pounding joggers then, only walkers slow as July
and a few children ringing the bells on their bikes.
A quite crowd inched forward to see the ducks
gliding over the dark reflections of magnolias,
sometimes flapping their wings
with the sound of sheets in the wind.
After paddling among the fallen petals,
they shored up for recrating,
lured by lettuce, as I watched
the late sun glinting off my father’s black shoes
sinking into the red clay bank.

first published in The Georgia Review
Included in TEACHING THE ROBINS,
FINISHING LINE PRESS (2OO5)