Celebrating 25 Years of the North Carolina Literary Review
N C L R ONLINE
27
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
FINALIST, 2015 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY NANCY WOMACK
Poet as Stripper It begins with a bump or a grind in the mind, sometimes lingering for days before taking shape with words, blocks of black on white, or words that dance around the page.
Obsession: Series One (3 of 3) (digital media epson archival inkjet print, 24x36) by Dana Ezzell Gay
First drafts are often overdressed. Too many accessories: shawls or scarves of fuchsia-colored adjectives, purple ones, or chartreuse; adverbial bracelets; necklaces of prepositional phrases.
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Then the striptease begins. Take it off! Strip it down! Discard the scarves; throw the glittering baubles away. Get rid of extraneous adjectives, especially big fancy ones, such as “extraneous,” or the pretty ones like “glittering.” Temptingly toss off the adverbs, at least most of them. Keep the nouns – the self – descriptive ones – like “corsets” and “tassels.” And the verbs that need no modifiers – the strong ones like “bump” and “grind.”
Obsession: Series One (1 of 3) (digital media epson archival inkjet print, 24x36) by Dana Ezzell Gay
NANCY WOMACK is from Rutherfordton, NC, and is a retired educator who served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Isothermal Community College. Her poems have been published in various journals and anthologies, including The Widows’ Handbook (Kent State University Press, 2014).
Read more about NCLR Art Director DANA EZZELL GAY inside the front cover of this issue. These pieces were exhibited in the East Carolina University School of Art and Design 2015 Alumni Exhibition in the Gray Gallery on the ECU campus.