32
2012
NORTH CAROLINA L ITE R A R Y RE V IE W O N L INE
number 21
Pamlico River BY James Applewhite
I breathed that odor of land-draining water, Leachings from ditches and saw-bladed marshes, From springs, field-trickles, now channeled by creeks Into a five-mile flood turned bronze in the sun: Cypresses ever in the distances, living And dead, fish hawks nesting their skeletons. I breathed that odor of ending and beginning, Land’s drift marrying with salt and the tides. I lay on a spit of sand in the sun, Savoring the taste of my body and water. My cousin Ethel cooked steaks on a fire, Ethel’s beau and I sipped beer. That spirit From childhood, whose cloud-imagination Trailed the rain in necklaces, felt winelike Arteries and veins, intoxicating stems, Like grandfather’s scuppernong: grapes in leaves Grown yellow with October too sweet to resist. reprinted from James Applewhite, Selected Poems, © 2005, with the permission of Duke University press
Grown Yellow with October (acrylic on canvas, 40x30) by Bob Rankin
City Art Gallery in Greenville, NC, and NCLR collaborated on an exhibit of original artwork inspired by the poetry of James Applewhite, who read at the exhibit opening on 13 Jan. 2011. These three poems had been sent out in the fall to artists represented by the gallery. They are reprinted here from Applewhite’s Selected Poems (2005), with the permission of Duke University Press. NCLR is grateful to the City Art Gallery owners, Peg Hardee and Torrey Stroud, for sponsoring the premiere invitational exhibit, as well as a second one in January 2012. A new Applewhite poem was included among the poems sent to artists in fall 2011, and that poem will appear in the 2012 print issue, forthcoming in the summer. The Applewhite 2011 and 2012 invitational exhibits can be viewed on the City Art Gallery’s website.
Bob Rankin lives and works in Raleigh. He received his BS in Art Education from ECU and studied art and art history with the American Institute of Foreign Study. Retired after thirty years teaching art in Wake County Public Schools, he now paints full time. His work has been featured in International Artist Magazine, and he is a co-founder of North Carolina’s outdoor art festival Artsplosure. His work has earned Best in Show seven times at the NCSU Fine Arts Competition, and he is a five-time winner of Spectator Magazine’s Best in the Triangle. In 1993, he received the Raleigh Medal of Arts Award. His work is in corporate and private collections around the world and exhibited at such galleries as Art Source in Raleigh, and New Elements Gallery in Wilmington. See more of his work on his website and in the print issue of NCLR 2012.