Dear Friends,
I started writing this weeks ago on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but I'm just getting back to it now, having missed Valentine's Day, too, and a chance to ask you to be my valentine. I've been getting a new business started while still teaching full time and keeping up with poetry activities.
I also want to let you know that I have resigned as the president of the Poetry Society although I will serve until the May forum/elections. Thank you for the honor of serving in this position, to which I have given everything I had since 2022 toward helping the Society stay relevant for the next hundred years. I'm proud of the Every Corner, Every County initiative, and it's my hope that the next president/board might continue the initiative in some way.
Now, let me pick up where I left off with the original letter:
I will speak of this first though it makes a heart heavy, because silence will not do. Before we let the glad things rise, the poets of a devastating time must be remembered, and today I've been reading Yiddish Holocaust Poetry.
Aba Shtoltzenberg's poem called "Boys on the Square" looked up at me from its place "between bones and broken glass," and reminded me at once of a song called "A Corner Boy's Lament," by David Keenan. I invite you to consider both of them.
Schtoltzenberg's boys learn early how to handle knives. They lie awake at night, aware of how little water remains in the river and how few fish can be caught. They "catch bugs in yellow grass" and "flop down on hard beds," and eventually they journey through "deep woods and poison grass," together.
Keenan presents a similar concept of feeling safer "among the hawkers and the gawkers/telling stories scribbled down on decks of cards." His song begins,
"There's something I've been meaning to tell you.
When I die, I intend to walk alone
through the streets where the corner boys commend me
for making peace with the inner child from a mobile home."
We all have to make peace with where we came from in one way or another, don't we? And in the end, how will we be remembered, and by whom?
Society member Randy Spencer's new book Andersonville: The Poem is another courageous, painful look at the past, at the prisoners and the dead of a Civil War prison camp, but also at the perspective of observers and survivors, people who bore witness in diaries, letters, and songs. We will soon host an abridged, dramatic reading of this book, so stay tuned.
Finally, and importantly, it's Black History Month. To continue this letter's tribute to those with a legacy that should not be forgotten, I offer you these lines from Yusef Komunyakaa's poem "The African Burial Ground."
They came as Congo, Guinea, & Angola,
feet tuned to rhythms of a thumb piano.
They came to work fields of barley & flax,
livestock, stone & slab, brick & mortar,
to make wooden barrels, some going
from slave to servant & half-freeman.
They built tongue & groove — wedged
into their place in New Amsterdam.
Decades of seasons changed the city
from Dutch to York, & dream-footed
hard work rattled their bones.
One way we bear witness is through poetry, whether we are the writer, reader, or sharer. Let's keep shining a light on the living poets as a way to honor the dead. The Society will be hosting our next two readings in Greenville with April Bandy-Taylor. More details on April's reading will be provided below in the Every Corner, Every County section of this newsletter.
Let's take a look back at January and early February.
As always, I've had a few coffees and poetry brainstorms with Al Black. We're cooking up an event with Randy Spencer and a Poetry Month reading with the Cherokee County Library. More on this as soon as we have more details, and you can always catch Al at Mind Gravy (Cool Beans Coffee, Columbia) on Wednesday nights.
On February 1, we had a fantastic workshop and reading with Jennifer Bartell Boykin at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts:
Glenis opened the night's events with a powerful poem for Black History Month. Then our opening reader, Candace Wiley, knocked us over with her own striking poems. I don't know how I managed not to get a photograph of Amy Randall, who outdid herself with good food and wine! Thank you, everybody.
On January 15, I attended the second meeting of the committee trying to save the Porgy House on Folly Beach, where Gershwin and Heyward wrote the opera. It was an honor to read a poem by Heyward called "Dusk" to finish the meeting. Thank you, Layle Chambers, for heading up this critical project.
And that wraps up the first part of 2025. Let's see what we can get into now. How about a drive to Greenville?
Every Corner, Every County
Everyone, we will not be hosting this event on Zoom for March. I'm sorry to disappoint our regular Zoom followers. If you can attend in person, I believe it will be a restorative and timely workshop.
The Poetry Prompt Contest is a monthly contest where we encourage you to submit a piece inspired by the new prompt found below. The winning poem or flash fiction is published in the following month's newsletter. We also offer the winner the opportunity to record a video of him or herself reading the poem to be posted to the Poetry Society's YouTube channel. There is no obligation to record the video, it is only there as an offer if the winner feels comfortable doing so.
The winner for January is Johnny Tanner from Florence County, whose poem "Leaving" was chosen by Chris Blackmon.
Leaving
You hung up there
all spring and summer
second or third floor high
maybe twenty, thirty feet
Your hickory neighbors
are staying awhile longer
green for months
now mostly brown
bits of yellow and red
Suddenly you are set free
pulled or did you jump
swoop and flutter
quiver and dive
A split second upward
in the soft breeze
Queen’s wave right, left
the twisting turning fall
maybe twenty, thirty seconds
and gently settle
in the brown grass
It is done
a glorious finish
Oh to end that way
with a brilliant dance
and feel the damp earth
begin the composting
into the Mother’s heaven
to begin again
Congratulations, Johnny! The prompt for February is bones. An alternative is to write about poets of a devastating time, who left their mark... or about the month of February itself.
Please send your poem to everycornereverycounty@gmail.com, and let me know which county you are in. Thank you!
I'm short on Members in the News this month, so send in everything you've got for the next few months to the email above, and I'll try to squeeze it in to my last newsletter, in April. Please do take a look at the previous newsletter, where I posted a flyer about the Coast Lines Anthology, because there are more readings coming up!
Oh, and to round up this letter about preserving history, there's this from Layle Chambers:
Dear Friends of The Porgy House,
We will be having our 3rd and final informational meeting on:
Saturday, March 8th
2:00pm - 4:00 pm
712 West Ashley, Folly Beach
I am hoping this will be a good time for many of you that have expressed an interest in attending, but were unable to make the evening sessions. Vince & I will be sending out a formal invitation in the next week or so, but wanted to get on your busy calendars! There are many exciting developments to share and I hope to see you there!
All the best,
Layle Chambers
The Porgy House Project
Above all, may our future histories be improved with love.
I leave you with lines from a poem by a Ukrainian poet, Serhiy Zhadan, called "What Will You Remember About These Times"?
remember our miracles and our retreats,
our faith and our fears and our courage in wins,
Tamara