58
2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
HONORABLE MENTION, 2015 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY RICHARD BETZ
Wide Awake COURTESY OF ASHEVILLE ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION, BEQUEST OF THE ARTIST
After all this time I expected to know more Than these few lean precepts, Prized from ordinary days; I expected to say more Than merely grace: Grace for the burning trees, The shining rain. This day in October Reminded me what Broad Daylight means: Pinching up every crumb of day With the tines of a rusty fork, Greedy for the endless solace Of earthly sustenance, The taste of the purely physical On the tip of my tongue. The empirical sun Blazed away anything that Came between us, any impediment To complete wakefulness.
Night Breath, 1988 (oil painting, 48x34) by Rick Horton
RICHARD BETZ grew up in New England but has lived in North Carolina for almost fifty years, first in Asheville and for the past thirty years in Highlands. An outdoorsman and an avid runner, he has run twenty marathons, including the 2011 Boston Marathon. He is married and has one daughter. His poetry has been published in college literary magazines, including those of Rollins College (where he graduated cum laude with a degree in English literature) and Vanderbilt University, as well as regional publications in Asheville and Macon County. He has been a finalist in the Applewhite competition twice before, and his poems were published in NCLR Online 2013 and 2015. Read another of his poems, also a finalist in the 2015 competition, in the NCLR 2016 print issue.
And even the lopsided moon Was still awake overhead, Rising higher and higher and higher In glorious insomnia.
New York native RICK HORTON (1954–1990), an attorney, lived for a time in Charlotte, NC. In 1976, he won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1978–79, he was a participant in the North Carolina Art Society Fellowship in Paris, France. Since his death, there have been at least two exhibitions in his honor: at the Cary, NC, Hospice Center in 1991 and at the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, in 1992. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the US and is included in the collections of the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Puccini Museum in Italy, the Contel Corporation in Atlanta, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. See more of his work on the Asheville Art Museum website.