Light and Shadow: Reflections on Appalachia- Poetry by Tim Pompey After Photography by Jerry Whaley2/3/2024 Jack Prepares to Preach What word do you bear, Reverend Jack? Reticent as you are under your hood like we the congregants are not ready. But you cannot hide from us. You bear Moses’ staff and Elijah’s mantel. You stand prepared amidst all this greenery. For this moment we have waited. Behold us, desperate for faith. Thirsty for the verdant Word. Stand tall. Your father anoints you. From the pulpit, speak. Let Shekhinah shine forth. We are attuned to you in this sacred forest, O, most holy prophet. One word we ask. Truth. In Search Of Tendrils raised looking for . . . what? Sunlight? Air? I think they search for something instinctive. Water. Life. God. Arms raised. Fibers roused. Orange flashing. Something in plant and animal is in need of finding and being found. A place in their universe. A place in mine. The answer to the question: Who am I? We are joined together. Brothers in arms. Sisters seeking. One cell to another. DNA meshed. Primordial purpose. Trees Ablaze Who set this fire? My eyes captured, the leaves shimmer as if angels dance. The spirit of the flame ignites in liturgy. The cantors madly swing their thuribles. I would gladly throw myself in the flame and let my ashes smoke toward heaven if I knew these trees were possessed. Who brings this fire? Within the river birch, Virginia pine, dogwood, sweetgum, and scarlet oak, each needle and leaf offers kindling. It’s been this way a thousand years, sun and moon combusting in a radiant inferno. With me, they share a spark. Against this radiant reverence, my hands are incendiary. Tim Pompey These poems and photographs are from Tim Pompey's and Jerry Whaley's collection, Light and Shadow: Reflections on Appalachia. Tim Pompey is a writer, musician, and poet living along California's Central Coast. His previous art, photo, and poetry collaborations include Imaginaria and Photosynthesis. Jerry Whaley is an East Tennessee writer and photographer with over forty years of experience photographing the Southern Appalachian Highlands region, which includes the Great Smoky Mountains.
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Catching a Train in Chicago (for Matthew Wolfe) “Something about my PD hates crossing thresholds.” Michael J. Fox Time, in Magritte’s painting, remains transfixed, stalled at 12:43 on the mantle clock, frozen, like a man between doorways whose feet itch for locomotion but no longer obey him. Stalled like time on the mantle clock, perplexed, I think of your need to pay constant attention, like when speech no longer obeys, has you vexed; not being able to gauge speed, or execute intentions. It must be a life of constant agitation, a quickening of pace, a shortening of stride; not gauging your day, your destination, must feel like an unpredictable ride. With a quickening pace, a shortening stride, your precise track is surreal misdirection, the unpredictable ride fueling your desire to redirect errant locomotion. Each day’s path ends in surreal misdirection for a man stuck between doorways––stitched. For you, I long to ignite locomotion, but like time for Magritte, it remains transfixed. Hayley Mitchell Haugen The painting in the photo is Time Transfixed by René Magritte (Belgian) 1938. Hayley Mitchell Haugen is a Professor of English at Ohio University Southern. Light & Shadow, Shadow & Light from Main Street Rag (2018) is her first full-length poetry collection, and her chapbook, What the Grimm Girl Looks Forward To is from Finishing Line Press (2016). Her latest chapbook, The Blue Wife Poems, is from Kelsay Books (2022). She edits Sheila-Na-Gig online and Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Madness Moments of near serenity cross the face from Time to time, fleeting, ghostly, insubstantial. Otherwise a simple empty blank, an erasure Of emotion, awareness, the stillness of absence The way some poets take the words of others, strike out certain ones leaving a few to claim as their own. Deep in a molten part of the white marble, beneath Immobile stone, emotions roil and turn on their host. Suppressed rage and fear, hide behind the stone folds Of a veil carved of multiple psychotropic medications. Scaffolding of sanity over a skeleton of self-destruction, Desire to which one must never admit, but always feel, Trundling beneath closed eyelids, the last layer of veil Separating self from world, earth, the hearts of others. M.J. Arcangelini M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & six collections, the most recent of which is Pawning My Sins from Luchador Press, 2022. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. Cycladic Harp Player (2700- 2300 BC): Three Views 1. To be so moved by a thing so still 2. Strolling through galleries, I refuse my friend's offer to take a photo for me with her phone of artwork I stand long in front of, looking, maybe writing, maybe sketching, as if I don't have a phone of my own, which I might as well not, I so rarely, in a gallery, take it out. It's not that I don't want a way to take it home with me, the art. I want it to become a part of me the way the arc of the harp frame seems to grow out of the player's arm just below the elbow the way the marble is hardly grooved to separate the sound box of the harp from the figure's thigh the way we say of virtuosi that their instruments are extensions of themselves. Still, I scan the gallery gift shops for postcards of the art that I've stood long in front of. I found one of this marble figure in the shop at the Getty Villa, that imagined replica I thought J. Paul had loved so much he'd had it disassembled and sent home from Herculaneum to Malibu. In fact, he loved what he hadn't seen so much he had architects design a new one for him, a mirror-image of the original whose 2000-year-old remains are still buried beneath what remains of the Vesuvian eruption. If I want an image later I will want it bigger than the little screen. I will want to hold it or lean it against a stack of files on my desk. A postcard gives me what I want, a language for my looking that I don't need to translate. Would I have accepted if I'd been invited to take the harp player home? Maybe, if I could imagine a place in my house where it could stand as if in a gallery, the air around it blank as its grey background on the card, nothing else in my field of vision. 3. No translation needed to recognize a feeling in the upward gaze of a pock-marked marble face with no features except the straight nose sloping smoothly from the forehead Wistful--longingly pensive, closely attentive—the word I find for the tilt of small head on long strong neck looking off with eyeless gaze to somewhere where the music of its stringless harp still echoes. Or maybe it's nostalgia, from the ancient Greek for a song of the ache to be home Even without ears—unless they're hidden by the harp's arch —the figure listens, a poet waiting for the song to come home to the poem Rebekah Wolman Rebekah Wolman is an erstwhile middle school principal based in San Francisco, California, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. A 2021 winner of Cultural Daily's Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2022 winner of the Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor, she is even happier on a mountain trail than she is at her desk. Pale Fire Stare I would dance, in the night’s silver toned light, break my mighty stance to bend in the breeze with the long, thronged tails, but by chance I serve a greater purpose. A monument to the bent neck glares, the mutterings at my body laid bare-- It’s cold in here. Wait, you, the one enraptured. I’m curious to know what you mean by lingering on my pale fire stare? I would tell you, in an impulse if my stony mouth could chew the words, my voice would scream-- who, who, who are you? Like the thundering beat of battle my heart would rage to crack the hardened, forged body, my fingers would hope beneath your hands I might soften, tremble and blush at the inhales-- Astonishing, aren’t I? I’ve waited to be brought to life, through Ancient dreams and ecstatic tales, the milky white moons of Neptune, retellings of my illustrious creation. Death can’t touch me here, I’ve been cast in marble to their liking, a fevered dream of near sighted devotion-- Am I built to suffer your parting? I’ll stay here, burdened by the stare of the incubus glare of my disciple and a spider’s lying web casting across my marbled cheek, unaged by the sun touched room, the wearing of passing shoes and the silence of shadows at closing. I’d have more for the child at my hip, toss them to the nymphs before I’d let the world take them as they’ve taken me, what’s mine, their fickle, desperate, empty hunger and what follows, a devouring. Allyson Abernathy Allyson Abernathy holds a BA in Creative Writing from Anderson University. She’s had fiction, non-fiction, and poetry previously published in the Ivy Leagues Literary Journal, Necrology Shorts, LitBreak Magazine, and featured in the collection Love: An Anthology of Love Poems. She is currently at work on a novel and resides in South Carolina with her husband, daughter, and two wild dogs. Annunciation The Workshop of Campin painted it best – my absorption in a shrouded book implicit requirement that the angel’s message be worthy of my time. A little spoiler alert hovering just above the left wing. In a different era I would have been the girl with a microscope in her room ready to scrutinize a frost of cells in order to comprehend the enormity of what was being asked. I would have filled notebooks with my wrangling, tried to capture the rushing sound, not quite wind, not quite wings, voice recorder in hand, a ghosthunter, so I could later play it back and play it back to hear the words beneath the static. Divinity gives us no waivers to sign. It’s all or nothing, no meeting halfway. So I would have insisted, and did, on full disclosure. How, exactly. When. What I should have asked was why. Isabel Cristina Legarda Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, America, Ruminate, The New York Quarterly, and others. She can be found on Instagram: @poetintheOR. At the Louvre with Angel Like you, she’s the first to make eye contact. The one pointing the coy, an- gelic finger--so sly--at the virgin’s lap. Like you, her position in the composition is one she’d never put up with for long. Like you, she’d roll her head to get rid of the crick in her neck, cut her eyes away from the painter’s gaze, so set on capturing the stillness in the symmetry of upper to lower lip; the ellipse of nose; the triangular lightness of brow; the multiple angles in the drape of her dress--pooling precisely over the curve of her shoulders into her lap. She’d have ruined the whole tableau, if it weren’t for the master’s skill. You might even say that, after today, I know the shape of her better--her geometry--better than I know yours. Lisa Righter Sloan Lisa Righter Sloan has been writing poetry for about three or four years, so her list of accomplishments is humble and brief enough to submit in its entirety: she has received three honourable mentions from the South Carolina Poetry Society for their 2022-2023 fall/spring contests, and her chapbook, Bodies, was recently published by Bottlecap Press. She writes and lives a pretty idyllic life in Charleston, South Carolina. So, I Saw This Concert… I’ve seen many concerts, but this last one was a first. We walked into a once-swanky, old-timey theatre with red, plush, crushed velvet seats that were now more crushed than plush. People were dressed up and down, in pajamas, jeans and gowns. As showtime approached, the theatre lights flickered. Then a vintage applause sign sputtered with a flashy little twinkle. We looked to the stage, to a weathered red curtain, fringed with faded, tousled, tangled, tassels that had opened to reveal, through the years, a galaxy of stars. When the curtains opened, the first thing I noted was the lack of instruments on the stage. In fact, the lack of anything denoting a musical concert. Two people backed slowly onto the stage, pulling a giant image, on wheels, to the center. Then one stepped forward, toward us, introduced herself as the conductor, and announced: Blue and Green Music, by Georgia O’Keeffe. They all bowed gently toward the painting, with quick but sincere applause, and left the stage. Some of us whispered, When does the music start? Others, more in the know, whispered, It already has. I’d seen this painting before but had never made the time to slow down and feel the music. But here, now, in this concert venue, there was nothing to do but feel for the vibrance, tones, and harmony of the colours, the lyrical qualities of the lines, and every insightful sound choice of the artist. I listened so deeply I could almost hear the unseen, inspiring touches, sights, sounds, and cycles, and the dreams dreamed in between, as she composed this musically visionary scene. Just when I started to fidget and feel that I’d heard all that I could from this painting, the people returned to the stage and turned the image on its side. That was, I realized, the first movement. This next movement was filled with echoes and variations from the first, while revealing added dimensions and imaginative possibilities. Other musically inspired, rhythmically infused paintings followed, interspersed with brief videos of musical painters warming up their instruments, drawing deep breaths, doodling colour scales, and checking the tones and timbres of their brushes. The program included famous works by Kandinsky and pieces by local painters at play with musical styles from pops to hip-hop. Various pieces were loud, soft, light dark, brassy, bold, cool, warm, and hot. Some were layered, free-style, electric, geometric, smooth, or coarse, and some were filled with squiggly lines or playful, staccato dots. Some works were splashed with symbols that rang so true they chimed like cymbals. As the concert drew to a close, the conductor stepped out to announce that the final piece had to be removed from the program because Chagall’s horse had eaten the violin. She said Chagall’s mother and the poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, had seen this coming. So, for the finale, we were treated to a playful composition, created by Louis Wain, of cool cats playing music in the snow. Some of us began this evening thinking it was a joke, one that would play out quickly and turn to boredom. Then we became lost in seeing, feeling, and tuning in to the music and the interpretive dances of meaning in this colourful, musical evening. On the way out, we all compared notes, quite literally, about what we felt and what music each of us heard, and we hungered to see more music, to hear more in the rhythms of quietude, to have our every-day senses and expectations flipped, opened, challenged, expanded. We walked away humming and began to realize we were remembering music no one had ever actually heard, music sparked by seeing the sounds, as we imagined them—and we hoped to find the time—and the colours, words, notes, silences and sounds—to write it down. Linda Eve Diamond Linda Eve Diamond’s poetry has been performed at The Dancing Poetry Festival, screened at the REELpoetry Festival, displayed at the Dublin Art Walk, and published in numerous journals and anthologies. She has been honored to receive multiple poetry awards, including Artists Embassy International’s Grand Prize “for exceptional poetry that inspires dance and for furthering intercultural understanding and peace through the universal language of the arts.” Find her poetry, flash fiction, photographs, and latest publications at http://LindaEveDiamond.com. Join us tomorrow for an intimate brunch gathering on Zoom, with Joan Leotta, a beloved food storyteller. We'll take a trip down memory lane and learn a bit about food in art history through the years. Joan will guide us in ways to use food themes and food related artworks to make delicious poems and stories. Bring coffee, tea, and croissants or scrambled eggs and enjoy a time of creativity and friendship. Join us next Wednesday as well for a workshop introducing ekphrasis. An Ekphrastic Brunch with Joan Leotta
CA$35.00
Bring your tea, coffee, and breakfast and join longtime friend of The Ekphrastic Review and well-known culinary storyteller Joan Leotta. In this special workshop, Lorette will show a brief food tour through art history. Joan will share ways to look at food in art and direct a couple of writing exercises. Dig in! A Beginner's Guide to Ekphrastic Writing
CA$35.00
Join us on January 31 from 4 to 6 pm eastern time for an introduction to ekphrastic literature and the world of The Ekphrastic Review. We will look over some of the long history of ekphrasis, and share ideas about how writing about art improves your writing, imagination, and your life in general! This session will take us back to basics for those who are just starting to dabble in ekphrastic writing, but it will be fun as a refresher too. We will do some playful exercises to generate ideas but the focus will be on ekphrastic history, definitions, benefits, and approaches. Being Next in Divinity to the Saint Stanley placed them on the roof, cluttered against the red tiles though they were almost too many to fit the view of life he longed for: two women, a father, saint, the boy he once was, hens and geese, all crowded in to be fed, to be painted, all that he recalled, the waft from the open dressing gown, Patricia positioned high on the parapet, Hilda overpainted with a saint, each picture hot in the midday sun and never the question either/or as he fleshed them out, but how best to say all that life is. Gill Horitz Gill Horitz lives in Dorset, UK and has worked in the Arts for many years with different groups and communities, and with a particular interest in developing new tellings of stories, using archives, theatre and sense of place. She co-founded Wimborne Community Theatre in 1991, which collaborates with professional artists and theatre-makers to develop local stories in the landscape and non-theatre spaces. |
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