National Poetry Month continues and today’s poets are two women I met through my writing retreat ‘home,’ Table Rock Writers Workshop. Georgann is the creator and Director of this annual workshop and is a well-established non-fiction writer. Rural Astronomy is her first book of poetry. Roberta is a member of the workshop’s musicians contingent, Sol-La-Ti-Do, but also a writer. Deep Ends is her sixth book of poetry.
I stayed on my deck until 2:00 Wednesday morning watching the falling stars from the Lyred Meteor Shower. As I did, I thought of Georgann’s Rural Astronomy, and how the title fit with what I was experiencing gazing at the heavens. Astronomy is the study of objects outside the earth’s atmosphere–stars, constellations, meteors, planets. Georgann brings those bodies, their brilliance, and their allure into the cosmos of rural Appalachia.
A recurring constellation in Rural Astronomy are Georgann’s grandparents, Bomer and Stella. We become as familiar, and as watchful for them as we are with Orion and the Big Dipper. We meet them at their beginning, ‘…when they built the house/Bomer dug the pond while Stella sewed yellow curtains. Bomer appears as a mentor when the poet is six years-old, in how to dig up sweet potatoes, ‘…gently lifting every hobbled tuber/like the unwashed feet/of a whole Bible’s worth/of lame children seeking cure …’ Georgann gains a keen eye to the invisible work of women, yet their inherent worth as Stella and other women work over a woodstove preparing for the fish caught by the men in Women’s Work. Even after death, Bomer and Stella are in their colorful garden that Georgann ‘keeps’, flower by flower, fruit tree by fruit tree, ‘…I am the keeper of my people and their plantings/the land sold for mansions, the landscape memorized/I am the last among the flourishing.
Georgann knows the land intimately so observations and sensory details are abundant. ‘Okra ‘…their parasols unfurl/purple hearts in pools/of cream – silken shade …’ Mud daubers ‘…hollowing flutes from Georgia – red/one clay spine welded to the next/until a whole pipe organ/hung across the carport wall.’ Scuppernongs ‘…full-bellied and freckled/near bursting to deliver/new meat, seed, and juice. In The River Drew New Lines, Eubanks takes us through the rising and receding waters, ‘As the waters first began to rise, we learned that hogs’ hooves/like ladies’ heels, are too prim and slick to stand on tin/Cows heavy with milk can’t swim/But chickens will bob to the top of their pens/feathers pressed by wire in octagonal patterns …When we plowed again, we turned up bottles and clothes/and recalled all that we had owned and loved.
Georgann’s poems are a star chart into the heart of Appalachia and leaves the reader wanting to return again and again to gaze upon them.
As a musician and leader of drum circles, rhythm and playfulness are natural instincts for Roberta. They infuse her poetry, whether free verse or one of the many traditional poetic forms she sprinkles throughout her collection. Deep Ends is divided into three sections, Wade in the Water, The Water is Wide, and Waters of Babylon. Water is a recurrent theme, either literally or by one of its properties: healing, refreshing, soothing or forceful and unpredictable.
Poems in Wade in the Water section allow the reader to wade into Roberta’s family, describing them in The Recipe as ‘We are some sad-ass bad cooks in my family….’ We meet her grandfather who was a delivery man of one of the first barrels of beer after Prohibition was lifted in Northern Kentucky. We discover how Roberta’s mom set her on the path of drumming ‘Once in my grasp, the drum/opens doors to the heartbeats/to honor beats, to powwows/to potlatch to hoop dance/to grass dance and ever/widening circles.’
The section The Water is Wide takes us wider into college, politics, and culture. What I Mean When I Say I’m Not Invisible cuts to the heart of society’s blindness, ‘I mean that when you come face-to-face/with me, one homeless man in two coats/as I rattle a shopping cart/against each curb, you step/ through the automized/mist of my bones.’ And the loss of Ancestor Stories ‘…disappearing into black holes/no longer acknowledged/as real. …’
In the final Waters of Babylon, as the name implies, Roberta brings a sacredness and connection to the earth to her poetry. In Understory, ‘I walk into the canopy of darkness/so lush this year with record rain …And here, I thought, is how/we capture epochs, one/incremental focus at a time.’
We enter into Deep Ends one poem at a time, one incremental step into humanity, and in them we’re refreshed, find humor, and are challenged.
On Friday I’ll continue with my Table Rock family.
Georgann’s Rural Astronomy is available at EastOver Press
Roberta’s Deep Ends is available at Finishing Line Press (I’ll add the link when a glitch with Finishing Line is fixed)
A Writer's Window 