Jeanette Cabanis-Brewin is POET OF THE MONTH OF JANUARY 2011

from Patriate – two wintery January poems
by Jeanette Cabanis-Brewin

Snowday Quartet
i.

A river

of air flows

above the river. As sky

lives on the surface of water

another life, so the life of water

reflects in frozen air, streaming.

When the river ducks her head

beneath the bridge, her airy sister

leaps lightly over, invisible except

that she bears the snow, strewing

whitewater blackice

across my path.

ii.

wild carrots tatting

a winter crop of lace for their Queen

each brittle brown chalice fills with it

and with a peace

undisturbed by the commerce of bees.

iii.

on each blackiced twig

snow piles to a certain depth

only

then wisely falls,

letting go of what can-

not in safety be borne,

feeling the relief of

weightlessness.

iv.

see us    fading back to no-color,

to sepiatone, to black

and white images,

a wonderful life.

we do less

and what we do—chop wood, light

fire, heat water—is briefly

enough.

To the Bear Killed Last Night on Flat Gap

I never saw you.

You appeared, loping

            through the neighbor’s raspberries,

            standing up beside the spring to observe her passing car.

You were seen at dawn, swimming

            the Tuckaseigee River, but not by me.

You left your signature everywhere

            on my world:

           

            dead pines clawed naked

            poke bushes flattened, stripped of berries

            plum branches broken down to the ground

            wasp nests scooped from the earth.

I learned to read

            the way your life was writ            next to mine.

Forgive me, neighbor. I lay awake

            and listened as you were hounded

            to your death.

The hills around the house echoed with it,

            and with what was silent there:

                        your lonely sacrifice.

Like the Levite, I crossed over the road

            into sleep with my hands clean.

Bio:

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, a business writer and editor by day, writes for a variety of print and online publications on business topics, and has been co-editor or co-author of several business books, including two winners of the Project Management Institute’s literature award. But in her real life, her poetry has been published in The Nomad, the Atlanta Review, and Appalachian Heritage, in the anthologies Tree Magic (SunShine Press, 2004), The Gift of Experience (Atlanta Review, 2005), Immigration, Emigration, Diversity (Chapel Hill Press, 2005), and The Moveable Nest (Helicon Press, 2007). She was a finalist in the Atlanta Review’s poetry competition in 2000 and 2005, and in the 2000 Greensboro Awards. Her chapbook, Patriate, won the Longleaf Press Open Chapbook Competition and was published by Longleaf in 2007. She lives and works in the forks of Blackbird Branch on the eastern slope of Cullowhee Mountain in the company of a dozen or so Cuckoo Marans chickens, a few hundred thousand Italian honeybees, two dogs and one husband.


Want a copy of Patriate? Buy it at City Lights Bookstore. Click here.

http://www.citylightsnc.com/search/apachesolr_search/Patriate%20by%20Jeanette%20Cabanis%20Brewin


Published at Long Leaf Press

A NEW POEM AND AN OLD POEM by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

Waiting for Rebirth

Never turns branches loose
this scraggly old tree in the side yard.

Hovering like a Brillo pad
unabashed over the driveway
she has all the arms of her birth
and all the twigs sprung from these.

She has bird nests of seasons past
hidden well in the scrub.

She’s naked now, but promises new growth
and more twigs to her full figure,
blushing green leaves to flush out her beauty.


by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

Written in class at John C. Campbell Folk School
April 2009, accepted and forthcoming in Poetry Guild Anthology







Her House of Clay by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

They found the creamy white clay sparkling
a commodity of the earth free for taking
thrifty for useful projects
for mixing with spring water
a thick smooth soup
to cling to stones, tree trunks, and old boards
such as Mommie's house
a board and batten, one hundred years old
never painted.

An idea was born.

Kept secret
the far back corner
Mommie would't notice
a bucket for mixing
old paint brushes from the smoke house
a bit of stealth
an idea from Tom Sawyer
they'd read it at school
most of the summer morning
plying, slathering, reaching the low roof line
quite so no one would hear

The mixture dried
beautiful smooth almost white
pride tugged at their seams
Mommie appeared her toothless smile
the whole house she said
the small low built house
a long day's work and the next
they labored to set a jewel glistening upon the hill.

from HOLY GROUND Where Love Goes
by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs


Order this book from
Holy Ground
3601 Wilderness Road
Knoxville, TN 37917
$15.00 plus $3.00 package and posting
total $18.00


"Ruth Grubbs writes poetry and prose that is powerful,earthy, and true. Her writing is, in turn, humorous, enlightening, joyful, and haunting. She charms her readers with an authentic Appalachian voice that hails directly from the heart."

--Cathy Kodra

BETTIE M. SELLERS, POET OF THE MONTH FOR MARCH

Bettie M. Sellers is Georgia’s most honored living poet. Governor Zell Miller appointed her as Georgia Poet Laureate in 1997, and she served in that office until 2000. She received the Governor’s Award for the Humanities in 1987 and in 1992 she was named Poet of the Year by American Pen Women. She received the Stanley W. Lindberg Award which recognizes outstanding contributions to Georgia culture. The Georgia Writers Association honored Bettie M. Sellers with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.


In this her birth month, we celebrate the life and the achievements of Georgia Poet, Bettie M. Sellers.





COMPLAINT TO BETELGEUSE by Bettie M. Sellers

I used to know that stars were stars
and stayed wherever in that distant place
their ordered orbit was. The sky
was snug with Cassiopeia's Chair,
and night had big and little bears to hunt.

Then, winking moving lights began to stitch
an arch from Sunset Ridge to Raven Cliffs--
planes to Birmingham and points beyond
with travelers drowsing past sleeping hills
folded like dark velvet, with ribbons wound
for lake and stream, silver in reflected light.

Now, satellites invade the ridge--
the star I thought was Venus rising
keeps on rising out of sight
to bring the morning's news--and wars
are instantaneously played on beams
that tear Orion's belt, divide Andromeda.

From MORNING OF THE RED TAILED HAWK
Green River Press, 1981


Bettie M. Sellers was born on March 30,1926 in Tampa, Florida. Almost immediately, her parents retuned to their Georgia home. The first seventeen years of her life were spent on a farm west of Griffin, Georgia. Life changed for her when she was eight years old, when a traveling theater troupe came to Griffin. At that time she fell in love with Shakespeare, and she fell in love with words.

She married Ezra Sellers in 1945, became the mother of a son and two daughters. She began working on her education, earning a B.A. from La Grange College in 1958 and an M.A. from the University of Georgia in 1966. She moved with her husband to Young Harris, Georgia where he became head of the Art Department at Young Harris College and she began teaching English. Her teaching career at Y.H.C. spanned thirty-one years.

In the spring of 1972, she began writing poetry, and she saw her poems published in top literary magazines throughout America. She celebrated the publication of one poetry collection after another. She traveled to many states answering invitations to read her poems.

In 1986-87, Sellers began working on a project about the life and poetry of Byron Herbert Reece, a nationally known poet who had taught at Young Harris in the fifties, before his death in 1958. In 1989, the film, “Bitter Berry” won many awards, including a Georgia Emmy for Bettie M. Sellers and gained her an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from La Grange College.

She served on many boards and she is responsible for helping to start the Georgia State Poetry Society and for advancing the Institute of Continued Learning at Young Harris College. In the fall of 2008, at the Annual Meeting of The Institute of Continued Learning, Young Harris College, Bettie M. Sellers was honored with a lengthy testimonial.

Although she was raised in the Piedmont region of Georgia, Sellers’s work is touched by all things Appalachian. When one considers that 45 years of her life was lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, it will not come as a surprise that her poems are filled with images of the mountains and that she is honored and claimed as an Appalachian poet by literary scholars. In 2008, Southern Appalachian Poetry, An Anthology of Works by 37 Poets( McFarland Press) was published. Five of Bettie M. Sellers’s poems were included.

Bettie M. Sellers continues to live at the foot of a mountain in Young Harris Georgia where she has lived for the past 45 years. She still writes, does her pool exercises, attends book club meetings, and speaks on her favorite topic, literature.


PUBLICATIONS OF BETTIE M. SELLERS.

Western From Bald Mountain (1974) Out of Print

Appalachian Carols ( 1976)

Spring Onions and Cornbread ( Pelican Publishing 1878)
available www.alibris.com

Morning of the Red Tailed Hawk (Green River Press 1981
available www.alibris.com

Satan's Playhouse (1986)

Liza’s Monday (Appalachian Consortium Press, Boone, 1986)

The Bitter Berry: The Life of Byron Herbert Reece
(1992 University of Georgia Press)

Wild Ginger (Images 1988, Reprinted by Kennesaw State University Press 2004)

Wild Ginger also available at www.alibris.com.
Note from Alibris:About this title: Best known for her poems
about life in southern Appalachia, Bettie Sellers is a poet
of profound humility and humanity, writing from the heart.
This collection of poetry from the former poet laureate of Georgia
was chosen by Georgia Center for the Book for its
Georgia 2005 Top 25 List.

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN POETRY, a new textbook, edited by Marita Garin

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN POETRY has been published by McFarland Press as No. 20 in its Southern Appalachian Studies Series.  Below is a review by Scott Nicholson, The Mountain Times, Boone, NC.

APPALACHIAN POETRY BOOK HITS SHELVES  By Scott Nicholson

A new collection reveals the poetic influences of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and their culture.

Southern Appalachian Poetry is edited by Marita Garin of Black Mountain and is No. 20 in McFarland Books' series, Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies.

Garin's book collects works by 37 poets, mainly from the last century.  The 225 poems touch on not only the scenic beauty of the mountains, but the people that give the region its special place in the literary canon.

While many of the included poets are native to the mountains, a solid precentage have either visited the region or were born in the Southern Appalachians and later moved away.  However, their experiences give a fresh insight into the folklore because their impressions are colored by time and distance, as well as the comparative quality of flatland, city life.

The region's narrative, embodied by dialect, syntax and storytelling rhythms, suggest the changing traditions of the mountains, from backwoods folk wisdom to tourist influence, development and technological advances.

Several of the poets have distinct Watauga County roots.  John Foster West, whose Carolina bloodline goes back to the American Revolution, studied literature at several universities and as a professor helped found Appalachian State University's creative writing program.  He retired after 21 years from ASU in 1990.  He's published the books Time Was, Appalachian Dawn, The Summer People and The Ballad of Tom Dula, as well as the poetry collections:  This Proud Land and Wry Wine.  West contributes seven poems to the anthology, including "Winter Folk", where he writes:

 "On summer nights they carry winter in worn pockets 

And snow beneath battered hats.

 Let low-country intruder approach a cove

And eyes as gray as icicle fangs measure stranger

For size, honesty, and intent."  from Winterfolk.

Isabel Zuber was born and raised in Boone and confesses in her introduction that she doesn't know what it means to be an Appalachian writer.  " I may not be thinking of the mountains when I write, but perhaps they are there anyway, with the wild strain coming through it.  I hope so."

Ron Rash, whose mother's family hails from Watauga County, has achieved acclaim for novels like One Foot in Eden,  which was Appalachian Book of the Year  in 2002. Rash is also known for his poems and short stories.  The collection also features Robert Morgan, author of five novels, including 2000 best seller Deep Gap and a recent biography of Daniel Boone.  Former N.C. Poet Laureate Fred Chappell has several epic poems included. 

Other authors represented are Bob Henry Baber, Joseph Barrett, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Mark DeFoe, Charles Dickson, Hilda Downer, Gregory Dykes, Richard Hague, Marc Harsman, Don Johnson, Stephen Knauth, Mary Kratt, P.J. Laska, George Ella Lyon, Jeff Daniel Marion, Michael McFee, Liewellyn McKernan, Irene McKinney, Louise McNeill, Jim Wayne Miller, Valerie Nieman, Lee Pennington,  Bettie Sellers, Vivian Shipley, Nancy Simpson, R.T. Smith, Bob Snyder, Katherine Soniat, James Still and Charles Wright.  

For More information visit mcfarlandpub.com.