J.S. Absher
POET - Editor/Publisher - IndepenDEnt Scholar
Fingers
Welcome to my website. Feel free to look around and contact me ([email protected]) if you’d like to know more or obtain one of my books.
“Fingers” is the concluding section of “His Own Hand,” winner of the Dialogue Bodies of Christ contest. The poem (text and audio) can be found on the Dialogue website (https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/first-place-his-own-hand/) and in my latest book, Skating Rough Ground (Kelsay Press, 2022, https://www.amazon.com/Skating-Rough-Ground-J-Absher/dp/1639801170).
“Fingers” should be read fast. Try it yourself—it’s a bit difficult, but fun. I’ve been featuring it in my readings.
Just look at them, clumsy claws
that are fat and short, raw
sausages, not digits—spillers,
knockers over, arthritic grippers,
nailhead missers and thread strippers,
packaging grapplers, tyers of shoes
that won’t stay tied, slappers
of skeeters, swatters of flies,
typo makers, smearers, droppers
of eggs and messy breakables,
pimple-, bubble-, button poppers,
filchers of river-rounded pebbles
for garden paths, china breakers
and rim chippers, crystal-crackers
(they’ve cost me dearly), rock skippers,
just once (I swear) bird flippers,
zipper-downers and zipper-uppers,
and takers of the Lord’s Supper:
often, too often, have they failed me--
look at the piles of scribbled verse--
but did not punch or thieve or worse,
or do much shameful or barbarous,
unlike the fingers Rodin sculpted
bristly, lurking in the dark,
that (wrote Rilke) seemed to bark
like the five throats of Cerberus.
**********
Exploring the Website
updated 5 April 2025
The Blog
As I look back on my website and blog, launched in August 2021, I cannot improve on my statement in the first blogpost, “Strange Arts and Visual Delights / Kunst- und Wunderkammer":
“I hope [the blogposts] will be various and curious, touching on any topics that interest me at a given moment, including poetry, regional and family history, politics, culture. I hope to be an observer of the passing (and many passed) scenes, good natured by preference but acidic when called for. You may disagree with me, but friends are those we love and respect, not those we agree with.”
In addition to blogposts, I link to a small number of reviews published elsewhere.
My Translations and Poems
My “translations” from languages other than French are verse renderings based on one or more English prose versions, or previous translations into English or French, with an assist from Google Translate. In one case, the sonnet by Eminescu, I had the help of a native Rumanian speaker.
Translations from the French
• Rilke: “‘Mensonge II' (Lie II)” (1 May 2023), “Rilke’s Beetles” (26 Apr 2023), “Rilke’s Cornucopia” (16 Feb 2023), “Rilke’s ‘Beau Papillon’” (3 Mar 2022), “Rilke's ‘le noyer’ (walnut tree)” (14 Dec 2021), “Four Versions of Rilke’s Rose (XXI)" (25 Sep 2021), “Rilke ‘Les Trois Porteuses’: ‘La Porteuse de Fleurs’" (15 Jan 2025), “Rilke's ‘The Fruit Carrier’” (23 Jan 2025), “Night Weather, Fall, Week 6: On the Path with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Henry Newman” (29 Oct 2024).
• Henry-Jacques’ poems from First World War: “Nocturne” (15 May 2023), “Landscapes” (6 May 2023), "Henry-Jacques, ‘Assassin Poet’” (4 May 2023), “Complaint” (23 Sep 2021)
• Other poets: de la Heredia: "Hercules and the Nemean Lion: A Poem by José de al Heredia" (11 Aug 2022)
LaFontaine: “The Ant and the Grasshopper” (2 July 2024)
Fernand Moutet: “The Kiss of Sappho: Couplets by Fernand Moutet” (31 Mar 2025)
Translations from other modern languages
• Romanian: “Mihai Eminescu—Sonnet 1" (9 June 2022)
• Bulgarian: “Nikolai Kantchev, 20th Century Bulgarian Poet” (5 Feb 2022)
• German: “Wittgenstein and 'Count Eberhard's Hawthorn’” (1 May 2022). A poem that Wittgenstein loved, about a medieval count’s sprig of hawthorn, was written by Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862).
Greek Anthology and Other Classical Poetry
• “Greek Anthology—Five Poems” (15 Feb 2023)—Poems are by Paulus Silentiarius (AD 575-580), Macedonius the Consul (AD 500-560), Pancrates (ca AD 140), Leontichus (3rd century BC), Diodorus of Sardis (dates unknown).
• “The Old Fisherman” (28 Oct 2023) by Julianus the Egyptian
• “Cicada” (20 Sep 2021) by unknown author
• “Endymion Ashamed” (9 July 2024)
• “Poetry and History” (29 Dec 2023): The use of the Greek anthology and the poetry of World War 1 in writing history.
• Three posts on Horace’s ode on Cleopatra (37th ode of the first book): “Horace’s Ode on Cleopatra” (14 Oct 2023); “Horace's Ode on Cleopatra--Commentary and David Ferry's Translation" (17 Oct 2023); “Horace's Ode on Cleopatra--Ellen Bryant Voigt's Translation” (20 Oct 2023).
• “Horace on Anger and Reconciliation: Odes and Carmen Saeculare, Book 1, Ode 16” (25 Oct 2024)
My poems
• Pregnant, 1951 (3 Aug 2024)
• “We Lay Our Burdens on Time” (11 Nov 2021)
• “New Year's Day: ‘Tell Me Where All Past Years Are’” (1 Jan 2025)
• “The Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Antietam” (24 Dec 2024)
• "Why Don't We Do Right?" (6 July 2024)
• “Oulipo Teaches Me How to Write a Thank You Note" (25 Nov 2021); How to Write a Thank You Note: Thanksgiving 2023/2025 (22 Nov 2023)
• “‘A Song’--Poem and Explication” (13 Dec 2023)
• “The Forgotten: A Memorial Service” (15 Feb 2024)
• “Winter, Cross Quarter Day--Beeches, Cracked Grass, and Crows (2 Feb 2025)
• “The Little Mouse's Book of Riddles, Teacher's Edition” (25 July 2024): illustrated riddles with the answers.
• “Theories of Origin” (4 Nov 2023): Riffs on Cole Porter’s many explanations of the origins of “Night and Day” become a poem.
Many other poems may be accessed on the Poetry tab of my website.
Autobiography and Family
• “The Repo Man, Dave Loggins, the Resignation of Richard Nixon, and Me” (20 July 2024)
• “Dumps and Dumpsters” (11 July 2024). The Boxcar Children and dumpster divers I have known.
• “Solomon Grundy” (16 May 2024)
• “Sonnet 73 on My 73rd Birthday” (31 Oct 2024)
• “Happy New Year! With a Glimpse of My 2023 Reading” (1 Jan 2024)
• “Cynthia Reeves – Painter” (17 Aug 2021). I did not know about my great aunt (my paternal grandfather’s half-sister) until well after her death.
• “Imitation: A Case” (6 Dec 2021)—an example by Cynthia Reeves
Poems and Memories of World War I
• “Remembering the Great War” (7 Nov 2022)—with poems by Akhmatova ("In Memoriam, July 19, 1914") and George Trakl (“On the Eastern Front”) and excerpts from the diaries of two children, Piete Kuhr and Yves Congar, and summaries from the diary and notebook of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• "Remembering the Great War—1915" (7 Nov 2022)—with poems by the scholar H .W. Garrod (“Epitaph: Neuve Chapelle,” modeled on the Greek Anthology); a marching song by a platoon poet, Bill Bright; Patrick Shaw-Stewart, a British officer in the Gallipoli campaign (“I saw a man this morning”); Rudyard Kipling (“The Children”); and Thomas Hardy (his well-known Christmas poem, “The Oxen”). The post also includes excerpts from the diaries of Vasily Mishnin (a Russian soldier), Piete Kuhr (a Prussian schoolgirl), Helena Seifertóv Jabłońska (an Austrian widow trapped in a fortress city besieged by the Russians), Mehmed Fasih (a Turkish officer fighting opposite Shaw-Stewart at Gallipoli), and an unknown Austrian officer fighting in the Alps.
• "Remembering the Great War—1916" (9 Nov 2022)—includes epitaphs on gravestones in the many cemeteries on the Gallipoli peninsula; poems by Edward Thomas ("February Afternoon"), Rose Macaulay ("Spreading Manure"), Isaac Rosenberg ("Returning, We Hear the Larks" and "August 1914"); and a diary entry by a Russian POW in a German camp dying of hunger and exposure.
• "Remembering the Great War—1917" (9 Nov 2022)—includes poems by Edward Thomas, who was killed in April ("A Private"); E.A. Mackintosh, a British officer on the Western Front ("In Memoriam"); a jingle by Italian soldiers mocking their leaders; and a poem by me (“Days of 1917”). The post also includes an excerpt from the diary of Douglas Lyall Grant, a British POW in a German prison camp.
• "Remembering the Great War—Days of 1918" (11 Nov 2022)—includes an extraordinary excerpt from the diary of Piete Kuhr, describing a playacted funeral for a dead pilot; and poems by Wilfred Owen, who was killed shortly before the Armistice ("Strange Meeting") and Siegfried Sassoon ("Everyone Sang," on the joy of being liberated from the war).
• “Poetry and History” (29 Dec 2023): The use of the Greek anthology and the poetry of World War 1 in writing history.
Contemporary Writing / Aesthetics
• “Descartes' Dream (10 November 1619) and the Lyric Poem (9 Nov 2024)
• “The Pleasures of Memorizing Poems” (7 July 2024)
• “Night Weather, Fall, Week 6: On the Path with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Henry Newman” (29 Oct 2024)
• “The Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Antietam” (24 Dec 2024)
• “Political Poetry and Party Poetry” (5 Jan 2022)
• “Reading Notes” (15 June 2024): William Desmond and Pierre Duhem on the defeat of philosophy and literary criticism by tragedy and complexity.
• “Professional Deformation” (11 Aug 2021)—ideological and professional deformations of the human
• “Paul Thorn, Amy Queen Chappin, and Merlefest” (13 Oct 2021)
• “Amy Queen Chappin's Painting of Paul Thorn in Performance” (10 Nov 2021)
Three posts on Joanie McLean’s Every Single Thing:
• “Part 1” (17 Jan 2022)
• “Part 2: Personification” (20 Jan 2022)
• “Part 3: Absence and Loss” (24 Jan 2022)
Memoir (edited and published by me):
• "How I Lived Through & Survived Brutality" by Leland Travis (3 Dec 2021)
Reviews and appreciations
• “New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry--An Appreciation” (24 March 2025)
• “Brillig—a new, handmade poetry journal from Deborah Doolittle” (5 Sep 2023)
• “Nikolai Kantchev, 20th Century Bulgarian Poet” (5 Feb 2022)
• “Ethan Unklesbay, ‘Dust’” (3 Nov 2023)—a 2023 chapbook
External publications
• "Found Magic: review of Joan Barasovska. Orange Tulips, Redhawk Publications, 2022; and Janis Harrington. How to Cut a Woman in Half, Able Muse Press, 2022. North Carolina Literary Review Online Winter 2024
• "Earthen Lavers: Review of Tyler Chadwick, Litany with Wings; Scott Hales, Hemingway in Paradise and Other Poems; and Elizabeth Pinborough, The Brain's Lectionary: Psalms and Observations," Dialogue (56:1, Spring 2023)
• "Moving Bodies, Healing Places: Review of Joseph Bathanti, Light at the Seam, and Joseph Mills, Bodies in Motion," North Carolina Literary Review Online, Fall 2023
Winston-Salem, NC, history (1): An abused woman, Ida Beard, writes to vindicate her life and support her children.
• “My Own Life” (3 Feb 2022)
My editions of Ida Beard’s works (external links):
• My Own Life, or A Deserted Wife, edited and annotated edition
• Love Letters of a Mississippi Lawyer (Annotated): An Annotated Edition of The Mississippi Lawyer or Was It All a Dream by Ida Crumpler Beard
Winston-Salem, NC, history (2): A group biography of the African American community in the late 19th century as it develops and tries to resist white supremacy.The starting point is the effort of many African Americans in August 1895 to prevent the lynching of Arthur Tuttle. The names of almost fifty defenders are known; these fifty provide the beginning place for my studies; understanding more about them is the goal—who they were, where they came from, their friends and family (that is, their social network), what happened to them.
Blogposts grouped by topic:
(a) “The Tuttle family and the Riot” (17 Aug 2022)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 1--Arthur Tuttle Kills Officer Vickers” (22 Nov 2024)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 2--The Trial of Arthur Tuttle” (23 Nov 2024)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 3--Preventing a Lynching” (23 Nov 2024)
(b) Three posts on group biography, or prosopography:
• “Prosopography: Towards a Collective Biography” (26 Jul 2022)
• “The Method and Value of Prosopography” (28 Jul 2022)
• “Prosopography in 1895 Winston-Salem: Some Limitations” (15 Sep 2022)
(c) Five posts on Arthur Tuttle’s protectors and their connections with themselves and others:
• “Overview of Tuttle’s Protectors” (7 Sep 2022)
• "‘Pluck Enough’ to Prevent a Lynching, August 1895” (16 Nov 2024)
• “Connections (1)—Walter Tuttle,Yancey Simpson, Green Scales, and Ellis Matthews” (18 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2a)—Samuel Toliver and Friends” (26 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2b)—Samuel Toliver, Peter Owens, John Mack Johnson, and W. H. Neal” (1 Sep 2022)
• “Connections (3)—Micajah (Cager) Watt and the Depot Street School Neighborhood” (19 Sep 2022)
(d) Posts on two anonymous letters on the evolution of politics after 1865 and political situation in late summer 1898:
• "'Pluck Enough': An Introduction to the Background" Suicide Wrapped in Illusion" (13 Sep 2023)
• “‘Pluck Enough’: A Note on Methodology” (15 Sep 2023)
• “The Ruffin Letter #1 — A Survey of Political History in NC, 1865-1898” (6 Nov 2023)
• “The Ruffin Letter #2: ‘The Democratic Plan of Campaign,’ Part 1” (12 Jan 2024)
• “The Ruffin Letter #2: ‘The Democratic Plan of Campaign,’ Part 2” (5 Dec 2024)
Miscellaneous Blogposts: Natural History, Family History, and More
Quotations
• “The Clothes of My Name” (24 Apr 2022)
• “Quick Notes” (17 May 2022)
In the Garden
• "Journal - Saturday, 4 November, 2023." A gift of flowers. Pine needles in the pond.
• “Wire Grass” (5 May 2023)
• “Beauty--Milkweed, Clematis, Penstemon” (8 May 2024)
• “Balloon Flowers” (31 May 2024)
• “Native Wildflowers in Bloom” (9 June 2024)
• “Garden Journal—18 June 2024” (18 June 2024)
• “Adventures in the Garden” (8 July 2024)
Seasons in Prose, Haiku, and Pictures
• “Night Weather: Fall Rains, Week 3” (10 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather: Fall Rains, Week 4” (13 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather--Fall, Week 5: Wind and Water” (21 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather--Cross-Quarter Day (All Saints Day, November 1)”
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 7: Cold Saplings” (4 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 8: Hope” (6 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 9: Abandoned Nests” (18 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Weeks 10 and 11: Moon and Train” (24 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 12: Molasses, Hurricane Helene, and Hogs” (7 Dec 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 13: Hope in the Season of Destruction” (15 Dec 2024),
• “Night Weather, Week 1 of Winter: Solstice and Ice” (22 Dec 2024)
• “Night Weather, Winter--Week 2: Trees and Ducks: (29 Dec 2024)
• “Winter, Week 3: Dreams in the Sleeping House” (5 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 4: Frozen Pebbles” (12 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 5: Forecasts and Unpredictable Song” (18 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 6: Winter Sun and Nightingales” (27 Jan 2025)
Other
• “Finding Private Hawkins” (22 Nov 2021)
As I look back on my website and blog, launched in August 2021, I cannot improve on my statement in the first blogpost, “Strange Arts and Visual Delights / Kunst- und Wunderkammer":
“I hope [the blogposts] will be various and curious, touching on any topics that interest me at a given moment, including poetry, regional and family history, politics, culture. I hope to be an observer of the passing (and many passed) scenes, good natured by preference but acidic when called for. You may disagree with me, but friends are those we love and respect, not those we agree with.”
In addition to blogposts, I link to a small number of reviews published elsewhere.
My Translations and Poems
My “translations” from languages other than French are verse renderings based on one or more English prose versions, or previous translations into English or French, with an assist from Google Translate. In one case, the sonnet by Eminescu, I had the help of a native Rumanian speaker.
Translations from the French
• Rilke: “‘Mensonge II' (Lie II)” (1 May 2023), “Rilke’s Beetles” (26 Apr 2023), “Rilke’s Cornucopia” (16 Feb 2023), “Rilke’s ‘Beau Papillon’” (3 Mar 2022), “Rilke's ‘le noyer’ (walnut tree)” (14 Dec 2021), “Four Versions of Rilke’s Rose (XXI)" (25 Sep 2021), “Rilke ‘Les Trois Porteuses’: ‘La Porteuse de Fleurs’" (15 Jan 2025), “Rilke's ‘The Fruit Carrier’” (23 Jan 2025), “Night Weather, Fall, Week 6: On the Path with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Henry Newman” (29 Oct 2024).
• Henry-Jacques’ poems from First World War: “Nocturne” (15 May 2023), “Landscapes” (6 May 2023), "Henry-Jacques, ‘Assassin Poet’” (4 May 2023), “Complaint” (23 Sep 2021)
• Other poets: de la Heredia: "Hercules and the Nemean Lion: A Poem by José de al Heredia" (11 Aug 2022)
LaFontaine: “The Ant and the Grasshopper” (2 July 2024)
Fernand Moutet: “The Kiss of Sappho: Couplets by Fernand Moutet” (31 Mar 2025)
Translations from other modern languages
• Romanian: “Mihai Eminescu—Sonnet 1" (9 June 2022)
• Bulgarian: “Nikolai Kantchev, 20th Century Bulgarian Poet” (5 Feb 2022)
• German: “Wittgenstein and 'Count Eberhard's Hawthorn’” (1 May 2022). A poem that Wittgenstein loved, about a medieval count’s sprig of hawthorn, was written by Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862).
Greek Anthology and Other Classical Poetry
• “Greek Anthology—Five Poems” (15 Feb 2023)—Poems are by Paulus Silentiarius (AD 575-580), Macedonius the Consul (AD 500-560), Pancrates (ca AD 140), Leontichus (3rd century BC), Diodorus of Sardis (dates unknown).
• “The Old Fisherman” (28 Oct 2023) by Julianus the Egyptian
• “Cicada” (20 Sep 2021) by unknown author
• “Endymion Ashamed” (9 July 2024)
• “Poetry and History” (29 Dec 2023): The use of the Greek anthology and the poetry of World War 1 in writing history.
• Three posts on Horace’s ode on Cleopatra (37th ode of the first book): “Horace’s Ode on Cleopatra” (14 Oct 2023); “Horace's Ode on Cleopatra--Commentary and David Ferry's Translation" (17 Oct 2023); “Horace's Ode on Cleopatra--Ellen Bryant Voigt's Translation” (20 Oct 2023).
• “Horace on Anger and Reconciliation: Odes and Carmen Saeculare, Book 1, Ode 16” (25 Oct 2024)
My poems
• Pregnant, 1951 (3 Aug 2024)
• “We Lay Our Burdens on Time” (11 Nov 2021)
• “New Year's Day: ‘Tell Me Where All Past Years Are’” (1 Jan 2025)
• “The Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Antietam” (24 Dec 2024)
• "Why Don't We Do Right?" (6 July 2024)
• “Oulipo Teaches Me How to Write a Thank You Note" (25 Nov 2021); How to Write a Thank You Note: Thanksgiving 2023/2025 (22 Nov 2023)
• “‘A Song’--Poem and Explication” (13 Dec 2023)
• “The Forgotten: A Memorial Service” (15 Feb 2024)
• “Winter, Cross Quarter Day--Beeches, Cracked Grass, and Crows (2 Feb 2025)
• “The Little Mouse's Book of Riddles, Teacher's Edition” (25 July 2024): illustrated riddles with the answers.
• “Theories of Origin” (4 Nov 2023): Riffs on Cole Porter’s many explanations of the origins of “Night and Day” become a poem.
Many other poems may be accessed on the Poetry tab of my website.
Autobiography and Family
• “The Repo Man, Dave Loggins, the Resignation of Richard Nixon, and Me” (20 July 2024)
• “Dumps and Dumpsters” (11 July 2024). The Boxcar Children and dumpster divers I have known.
• “Solomon Grundy” (16 May 2024)
• “Sonnet 73 on My 73rd Birthday” (31 Oct 2024)
• “Happy New Year! With a Glimpse of My 2023 Reading” (1 Jan 2024)
• “Cynthia Reeves – Painter” (17 Aug 2021). I did not know about my great aunt (my paternal grandfather’s half-sister) until well after her death.
• “Imitation: A Case” (6 Dec 2021)—an example by Cynthia Reeves
Poems and Memories of World War I
• “Remembering the Great War” (7 Nov 2022)—with poems by Akhmatova ("In Memoriam, July 19, 1914") and George Trakl (“On the Eastern Front”) and excerpts from the diaries of two children, Piete Kuhr and Yves Congar, and summaries from the diary and notebook of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• "Remembering the Great War—1915" (7 Nov 2022)—with poems by the scholar H .W. Garrod (“Epitaph: Neuve Chapelle,” modeled on the Greek Anthology); a marching song by a platoon poet, Bill Bright; Patrick Shaw-Stewart, a British officer in the Gallipoli campaign (“I saw a man this morning”); Rudyard Kipling (“The Children”); and Thomas Hardy (his well-known Christmas poem, “The Oxen”). The post also includes excerpts from the diaries of Vasily Mishnin (a Russian soldier), Piete Kuhr (a Prussian schoolgirl), Helena Seifertóv Jabłońska (an Austrian widow trapped in a fortress city besieged by the Russians), Mehmed Fasih (a Turkish officer fighting opposite Shaw-Stewart at Gallipoli), and an unknown Austrian officer fighting in the Alps.
• "Remembering the Great War—1916" (9 Nov 2022)—includes epitaphs on gravestones in the many cemeteries on the Gallipoli peninsula; poems by Edward Thomas ("February Afternoon"), Rose Macaulay ("Spreading Manure"), Isaac Rosenberg ("Returning, We Hear the Larks" and "August 1914"); and a diary entry by a Russian POW in a German camp dying of hunger and exposure.
• "Remembering the Great War—1917" (9 Nov 2022)—includes poems by Edward Thomas, who was killed in April ("A Private"); E.A. Mackintosh, a British officer on the Western Front ("In Memoriam"); a jingle by Italian soldiers mocking their leaders; and a poem by me (“Days of 1917”). The post also includes an excerpt from the diary of Douglas Lyall Grant, a British POW in a German prison camp.
• "Remembering the Great War—Days of 1918" (11 Nov 2022)—includes an extraordinary excerpt from the diary of Piete Kuhr, describing a playacted funeral for a dead pilot; and poems by Wilfred Owen, who was killed shortly before the Armistice ("Strange Meeting") and Siegfried Sassoon ("Everyone Sang," on the joy of being liberated from the war).
• “Poetry and History” (29 Dec 2023): The use of the Greek anthology and the poetry of World War 1 in writing history.
Contemporary Writing / Aesthetics
• “Descartes' Dream (10 November 1619) and the Lyric Poem (9 Nov 2024)
• “The Pleasures of Memorizing Poems” (7 July 2024)
• “Night Weather, Fall, Week 6: On the Path with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Henry Newman” (29 Oct 2024)
• “The Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Antietam” (24 Dec 2024)
• “Political Poetry and Party Poetry” (5 Jan 2022)
• “Reading Notes” (15 June 2024): William Desmond and Pierre Duhem on the defeat of philosophy and literary criticism by tragedy and complexity.
• “Professional Deformation” (11 Aug 2021)—ideological and professional deformations of the human
• “Paul Thorn, Amy Queen Chappin, and Merlefest” (13 Oct 2021)
• “Amy Queen Chappin's Painting of Paul Thorn in Performance” (10 Nov 2021)
Three posts on Joanie McLean’s Every Single Thing:
• “Part 1” (17 Jan 2022)
• “Part 2: Personification” (20 Jan 2022)
• “Part 3: Absence and Loss” (24 Jan 2022)
Memoir (edited and published by me):
• "How I Lived Through & Survived Brutality" by Leland Travis (3 Dec 2021)
Reviews and appreciations
• “New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry--An Appreciation” (24 March 2025)
• “Brillig—a new, handmade poetry journal from Deborah Doolittle” (5 Sep 2023)
• “Nikolai Kantchev, 20th Century Bulgarian Poet” (5 Feb 2022)
• “Ethan Unklesbay, ‘Dust’” (3 Nov 2023)—a 2023 chapbook
External publications
• "Found Magic: review of Joan Barasovska. Orange Tulips, Redhawk Publications, 2022; and Janis Harrington. How to Cut a Woman in Half, Able Muse Press, 2022. North Carolina Literary Review Online Winter 2024
• "Earthen Lavers: Review of Tyler Chadwick, Litany with Wings; Scott Hales, Hemingway in Paradise and Other Poems; and Elizabeth Pinborough, The Brain's Lectionary: Psalms and Observations," Dialogue (56:1, Spring 2023)
• "Moving Bodies, Healing Places: Review of Joseph Bathanti, Light at the Seam, and Joseph Mills, Bodies in Motion," North Carolina Literary Review Online, Fall 2023
Winston-Salem, NC, history (1): An abused woman, Ida Beard, writes to vindicate her life and support her children.
• “My Own Life” (3 Feb 2022)
My editions of Ida Beard’s works (external links):
• My Own Life, or A Deserted Wife, edited and annotated edition
• Love Letters of a Mississippi Lawyer (Annotated): An Annotated Edition of The Mississippi Lawyer or Was It All a Dream by Ida Crumpler Beard
Winston-Salem, NC, history (2): A group biography of the African American community in the late 19th century as it develops and tries to resist white supremacy.The starting point is the effort of many African Americans in August 1895 to prevent the lynching of Arthur Tuttle. The names of almost fifty defenders are known; these fifty provide the beginning place for my studies; understanding more about them is the goal—who they were, where they came from, their friends and family (that is, their social network), what happened to them.
Blogposts grouped by topic:
(a) “The Tuttle family and the Riot” (17 Aug 2022)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 1--Arthur Tuttle Kills Officer Vickers” (22 Nov 2024)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 2--The Trial of Arthur Tuttle” (23 Nov 2024)
• “The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 3--Preventing a Lynching” (23 Nov 2024)
(b) Three posts on group biography, or prosopography:
• “Prosopography: Towards a Collective Biography” (26 Jul 2022)
• “The Method and Value of Prosopography” (28 Jul 2022)
• “Prosopography in 1895 Winston-Salem: Some Limitations” (15 Sep 2022)
(c) Five posts on Arthur Tuttle’s protectors and their connections with themselves and others:
• “Overview of Tuttle’s Protectors” (7 Sep 2022)
• "‘Pluck Enough’ to Prevent a Lynching, August 1895” (16 Nov 2024)
• “Connections (1)—Walter Tuttle,Yancey Simpson, Green Scales, and Ellis Matthews” (18 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2a)—Samuel Toliver and Friends” (26 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2b)—Samuel Toliver, Peter Owens, John Mack Johnson, and W. H. Neal” (1 Sep 2022)
• “Connections (3)—Micajah (Cager) Watt and the Depot Street School Neighborhood” (19 Sep 2022)
(d) Posts on two anonymous letters on the evolution of politics after 1865 and political situation in late summer 1898:
• "'Pluck Enough': An Introduction to the Background" Suicide Wrapped in Illusion" (13 Sep 2023)
• “‘Pluck Enough’: A Note on Methodology” (15 Sep 2023)
• “The Ruffin Letter #1 — A Survey of Political History in NC, 1865-1898” (6 Nov 2023)
• “The Ruffin Letter #2: ‘The Democratic Plan of Campaign,’ Part 1” (12 Jan 2024)
• “The Ruffin Letter #2: ‘The Democratic Plan of Campaign,’ Part 2” (5 Dec 2024)
Miscellaneous Blogposts: Natural History, Family History, and More
Quotations
• “The Clothes of My Name” (24 Apr 2022)
• “Quick Notes” (17 May 2022)
In the Garden
• "Journal - Saturday, 4 November, 2023." A gift of flowers. Pine needles in the pond.
• “Wire Grass” (5 May 2023)
• “Beauty--Milkweed, Clematis, Penstemon” (8 May 2024)
• “Balloon Flowers” (31 May 2024)
• “Native Wildflowers in Bloom” (9 June 2024)
• “Garden Journal—18 June 2024” (18 June 2024)
• “Adventures in the Garden” (8 July 2024)
Seasons in Prose, Haiku, and Pictures
• “Night Weather: Fall Rains, Week 3” (10 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather: Fall Rains, Week 4” (13 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather--Fall, Week 5: Wind and Water” (21 Oct 2024)
• “Night Weather--Cross-Quarter Day (All Saints Day, November 1)”
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 7: Cold Saplings” (4 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 8: Hope” (6 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 9: Abandoned Nests” (18 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Weeks 10 and 11: Moon and Train” (24 Nov 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 12: Molasses, Hurricane Helene, and Hogs” (7 Dec 2024)
• “Night Weather—Fall, Week 13: Hope in the Season of Destruction” (15 Dec 2024),
• “Night Weather, Week 1 of Winter: Solstice and Ice” (22 Dec 2024)
• “Night Weather, Winter--Week 2: Trees and Ducks: (29 Dec 2024)
• “Winter, Week 3: Dreams in the Sleeping House” (5 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 4: Frozen Pebbles” (12 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 5: Forecasts and Unpredictable Song” (18 Jan 2025)
• “Winter, Week 6: Winter Sun and Nightingales” (27 Jan 2025)
Other
• “Finding Private Hawkins” (22 Nov 2021)
A Theory of OriginsPeople sometimes ask where an artist’s ideas come from. It’s a hard question to answer; “it depends” is probably the most accurate answer, though hardly illuminating to the questioner.
On a few blessed occasions, the answer is, “from everywhere.” I like this comment from a letter by Elizabeth Bishop to her friend, Robert Lowell: Your poems “have that sure feeling, as if you’d been in a stretch … when everything and anything suddenly seemed material for poetry—or not material, seemed to be poetry, and all the past was illuminated in long shafts here and there, like a long-waited-for sunrise. If only one could see everything that way all the time! It seems to me it’s the whole purpose of art, to the artist (not to the audience)—that rare feeling of control, illumination—life is all right, for the time being.” (Elizabeth Spires, "One life, one art: Elizabeth Bishop in her letters,” https://newcriterion.com/issues/1994/5/one-life-one-art-elizabeth-bishop-in-her-letters) An amusing side note comes from Cole Porter’s many stories explaining the origins of “Night and Day” (see William McBrien, Cole Porter, 1998). I’ve captured his various accounts, with poetic license, in my poem, “Theories of Origin,” recently published in Skating Rough Ground: Theories of Origin Zanzibar, ’35-- a little hotel, a patio, ivory dealers in burnouses, the barkeep simpatico, a round on the house, night and day the phonograph playing Night & Day while Porter’s in the corner saying I wrote that in a taxi in the roar of the traffic-- no, at lunch with the Astor’s in Newport, when it was raining drip drip drip—but no, it wasn’t so prosaic-- I took the wife (no, lover) to the starry mosaic vault of a mausoleum-- no no no, it was the plaintive cry of the muezzin from a mosque in Morocco-- and no it doesn’t matter darling where it was on the Black Sea or a bus’s backseat—doesn’t matter if in a bar in Zanzibar or on far out Antares or in patent dancing shoes under a nightclub moon. That’s the best answer perhaps—it doesn’t matter. |
Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil in 1964. Public domain (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop#/media/File:Elizabeth_Bishop,_1964.jpg)
|
A Song |
|
A poem for the sycamore,
a sycamore for the snake that swims in the shallows sheltered by its roots, roots for the land, to hold it in place, land for the sycamore, on whose long thick limb we’ve lain cantilevered over the river in shade, shade as blue as a jay’s feathers and free to all comers. * * * A poem for board feet standing in a mane of leaves fluttered by air of their own making, air for poet and spouse, poet and spouse for each other and land and snake and river and sycamore, sycamore for the leaves, leaves for the air, air for the song of marriage we are singing. * * * Those who venture off trail-- booted against snakes, whistling Colonel Bogey’s March, surveyor’s maps rolled underarm-- see dimity patterns the roots make on ground checkered with shadow and light, and with every step are wary: clutters of leaves may strike, the stepped-on stick bite back. * * * Those tongues flicker to find us out, warm-blooded calculators who fell and bark, slab and mill through knot and burl till the tree of knowledge is pollarded and bare, a lacquered coat rack where perch the birds of abstraction. * * * This sycamore rising dog-legged-- or is it a god’s leg, or that of a god’s horse straining the wooden musculature to rear against the bit?-- is hard to fix in words that do not hobble the power, but when saw and dozer cut their buck and wing, easy to reckon the board feet. * * * By this border of blooming surveyor’s flags in weeks we’ll step arm in arm then do-si-do over hardwood; on a bed as wide as a pond glimpse in our dreams afternoons that stretched a heron’s wing over the river in woods whose high crowns for us have been lopped and pulped * * * and made into this paper on whose void the words elusive as a swarm of gnats reeling and spinning bless our reading chair, our table where a boy not long from Africa types the home row letters: lads fall; all sad lads; half sad half glad: all fall; * * * bless the safe place we have made, the wooden bowl on the table, the fruit that fills it, the gnats eating the ripe fruit, the fruit of prayer and meditation; and bless the headboard in whose shadow we dream the tree whose fruit we are—logger, surveyor, poet and spouse, lads: same tree, same fruit. Published in Mouth Work (St. Andrews University Press, 2016) |
Hope, by Cynthia Reeves (1979)
|
|
|
|
|
ANYCE SHEPHERDThe murder of her deputy sheriff husband in 1938 begins my grandmother's fifty-year widowhood.
|
NIGHT WEATHERThe quietness of haiku in a book designed and profusely illustrated in color by Katie LaRosa.
|
MOUTH WORKPrize-winning poems on the power of language and love.
|
MISSISSIPPI LAWYERLove letters from a crafty lawyer, William Maybin.
|
Trying to Break Through, Cynthia Reeves, 1984.
|
Trying to Break ThroughEvery writer dreams of breaking through - to a deeper, richer language; to a greater understanding of the world; to an appreciative, buying audience. This painting by Cynthia Reeves expresses that longing, as well as the commitment to continue even if the breakthrough remains elusive.
|