Poetry

 
Entering, through the medium
of memoria, achieves the parable

of Proust: the aroma
of Italianata, opera of olfactory,

blood–gnosis spinning me back
over these scored plank floors

grouted with appassionata
to Sundays after Mass fifty years ago,

when Larimer Avenue was Paradiso
and my parents held the hands

of my sister and me as we processed
along Labriola’s aisles

of melanzano, romas, Fiorella
pears, pews of garlic, basilico.

If paint can bring energy to an old wall, can an art group bring new energy to a corporate building?

A new space uptown aims to do both. The story begins a year ago with a bit of a mystery.

There is a moment Sunday,
an inexplicable instant of clarity
and purpose the dying often summon,
when my mother extends a hand through the mist,
lifts off her bed and makes for the kitchen.

On a marble slab, she mixes egg and flour,
salt and water, rolls flat the shroud of dough,
snips it into tagliatelle,
and covers it with a sheet.

Even the rain halts and the sun appears
to allow her passage into the garden
for Romas, parsley,
garlic and basilico.

So many times I've witnessed this
that familiarity is not the word

to conjure my mother's taking up of the breast-
shaped purple blackness, her paring

knife commencing from the areola,
strokes of peel stripping away into the sink

until the corpuscular fruit is nude
and ready to be sliced. In the colander

she tiers the rounds, salting each layer
to draw out the bitter water, and weights

them down with a piece of heart-
shaped iron with which her tailor father pressed.

They sit on the counter all day:
the eggplant with the heart pressing on them,

the water in the pan beneath
turning red.

The Sensoria Festival at Central Piedmont Community College began as the CPCC Literary Festival some 20 years ago, hosting literary giants and up and comers from around the world. This year, two of the major  speakers for the festival include poets- one is North Carolina’s Poet Laureate who spends a lot of time working with veterans, and the other was the poet for President Obama’s 2013 Inauguration. We’ll meet them and hear how each use poetry to help bring attention to issues about which they feel strongly.

The poetry on stage at UNC-Charlotte last weekend wasn’t like what you may have read aloud in high school English class. The Chapel-Hill based Sacrificial Poets delivered a show, only the content non-fiction. It came from deep inside themselves.

Click here for Tasnim Shamma's story on the Sacrificial Poets.

Spoken word poetry is about dramatic storytelling. A Raleigh performance poetry group called Sacrificial Poets is performing at UNC Charlotte this weekend. They're in town for a three-day residency that involves teaching college students and visiting some local schools to teach them about the art of busting a rhyme.

Sacrificial Poets artist director Kane "Novakane" Smego, starts off the class with a piece about growing up in Durham with a single mother.  

Gail Peck is currently writing a manuscript of poetry on the lives of artists Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. These recent poems were inspired by the cookbook Monet’s Table.

Monet’s World                                                                                       

Boxing requires physical strength to be sure, but a boxer’s words can also pack a punch.Perhaps the best known wordsmith is Muhammad Ali, who is known for his clever rhymes, like in 1974 when he said “I have wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, I done handcuffed lighting, thrown thunder in jail,". One local boxer also embraces poetry,  Spidey “The Boxing Poet” Williams. 

After playing professional football, founding Essence Magazine and owning the first African-American Brokerage Firm with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, Russell Goings became friends with artist Romare Bearden. That is what led Goings to his most recent line of work: writing poetry. His book of poetry, The Children of Children Keep Coming features Bearden's art work and chronicles the African-American journey. Russell Goings talks about that journey, art and poetry.