Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
51
World’s Shoulder, Turning (acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 24x30) by Tony Breuer
World’s Shoulder, Turning by James Applewhite
City Art Gallery in Greenville, NC, and NCLR have collaborated since 2010 on invitational exhibits of original ar twork inspired by the poetr y of James Applewhite. These three poems from the poet’s Selected Poems (Duke University Press, 2005) were sent out in the fall of 2011 to the artists represented by the gallery. NCLR is grateful to Torrey Stroud, the City Art Gallery owner, for sponsoring this invitational exhibit, an event to be repeated in February 2013. New Applewhite poems were sent to artists in fall 2012, and they will appear with art they inspired in the 2013 print issue, forthcoming in the summer.
Greenville resident Tony Breuer was born in Venezuela. As the son of a US Foreign Service officer, he moved often to different countries. His research and study in the field of molecular neurobiology and neurology began at Princeton and continued at Oxford and Harvard Medical School, where he received his MD. At the University of Southern Indiana, he received a BFA. Upon moving to Greenville, NC, to teach at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine, he pursued his interest in art at ECU’s School of Art and Design, where he earned an MFA. His work has been featured in Nashville Arts Magazine and NCLR Online 2012 (also with poems by James Applewhite) and exhibited in group and solo shows. He is represented by City Art Gallery in Greenville and The Arts Company in Nashville. TN. See more about the artist and his work on his website.
A rock with the bulk of a house leaned out From bank across the creek – as if earth were still In the making. Through the weed screen, I noticed How light had lessened, mountain laurel beyond Submerged in slope-shadow. Going back, I felt white Quartz and the bone of a bracket mushroom Shine their beams at me. The bouquet of huckleberry Leaves I picked seemed tiny tropical fish. They floated on their stems as I ran, and I Added bleached grasses like sea oats, a few Fronds of fern. I ran lightened in the gloom By the scarlet and tan like a torch in my hand. Yesterday I’d seen the sun, a scoured Copper pan, shine through pines, from a bend Of the high shouldering trail where the horizon Falls away. I remembered the light’s raying, Like magnetized metallic dust. I felt all These bright things – huckleberry stems and sea oats, Quartz rocks and mushroom – held in the field Of sun now down below shoulder of the world’s turning. reprinted from James Applewhite, Selected Poems (Duke University press, © 2005)