{"id":2195,"date":"2020-04-02T16:03:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T20:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2020-04-02T16:03:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T20:03:09","slug":"in-the-words-of-two-charlotte-poets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2020\/04\/02\/in-the-words-of-two-charlotte-poets\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Words of Two Charlotte Poets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Charlotte\u2019s community of readers and writers is reeling as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.  We have seen the recent cancelations or postponements of Sensoria, the Center City Literary Festival, many library events, and a number of book signings and readings by local writers.  However, the coronavirus cannot stop the National Poetry Month, which takes place each April (https:\/\/poets.org\/national-poetry-month<\/a>).  It is fitting, therefore, that Christopher Davis and Grace Ocasio, two of Charlotte\u2019s most prominent poets, are launching new poetry collections this month.  Davis\u2019s Oath <\/em>is being published by Main Street Rag (https:\/\/mainstreetragbookstore.com\/product\/oath-christopher-davis\/<\/a>), and Ocasio\u2019s Family Reunion<\/em> is being published by Broadstone Books (http:\/\/broadstonebooks.com\/Grace_C_Ocasio.html<\/a>).  I contacted Davis and Ocasio and asked each of them to send me a brief statement about their connections to Charlotte.  I also asked each of them if they would provide a sample from their new collections, and they both agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here is what Christopher Davis sent me<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I moved to Charlotte in August of 1989, newly hired by the\nEnglish Department at UNC Charlotte to teach creative writing workshops.  My first collection of poetry, The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the\nFuture, <\/em>had won the 1988 Agnes Lynch Starrett award from Associated Writing\nPrograms, an organization bringing together creative writing programs, and\nwriters, within academia.  The book was\nabout to be published by Texas Tech University Press.  I had grown up in Los Angeles, received a BA\nin English Literature from Syracuse University, and a Master of Fine Arts\ndegree from the Iowa Writer\u2019s Workshop. \nI had taught creative writing for two years at Murray State University\nin western Kentucky.  I was 29 years old,\nand my life up to that point had seemed already full of adventure, trauma and\ninsecurity: eleven years earlier, my younger brother had been murdered; my parents,\nboth academics themselves, had subsequently gone through a difficult separation\nand divorce; as a young(ish) gay man, I felt the presence of the AIDS crisis,\nas did everyone who was experiencing it personally at that time, in complex,\nhard-to-compartmentalize ways.  I\nself-identified as a poet, and as an \u201carts\u201d person in general, very\nstrongly.  My first impressions of\nCharlotte, when I came to UNC Charlotte for an on-campus interview in February\nof 1989, were that it seemed like a lush, sunny, sensual, almost tropical kind\nof place.  It reminded me of the Wallace\nStevens poems I loved, such as \u201cIn the Carolinas\u201d and \u201cBantams in\nPine-woods.\u201d  Western Kentucky had been\nexciting too, to my suburban southern Californian eyes, but it was a landscape\nof wildernesses, whereas Charlotte contained cultivated gardens filled with day\nlilies and hosta, and crepe myrtle trees planted by the city along the Plaza,\nwhere I rented a small house throughout the 1990\u2019s.  Hurricane Hugo hit, and my first days of\nteaching at UNC Charlotte were marked by, well, what I was used to:  adventure, trauma and insecurity.  Later in 1989, when the gorgeous flora in my\nfront yard lost its flowers and receded into the ground for winter, I was so\nupset, assuming I had done something wrong, maybe not watered the plants\nenough, not fertilized anything.  My\nfirst spring here, in March of 1990, was a fabulous revelation.  I watched the day lilies burst out, the pear\ntrees pop alive; I listened to Aaron Copeland\u2019s \u201cAppalachian Spring\u201d in my Walkman;\nI excitedly worked on poems that would eventually appear in journals, then in\nmy second book, The Patriot, <\/em>published\nby University of Georgia Press in 1998. \n\u201cOne swollen evening \/ warm rain flooded the gutters. \/ Dogwood blossoms\nhad come out \/ over a wash of green leaves. \/ The world seemed quietly\nwilling.\u201d  I was home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Much time has passed since then, but, because I have remained in one place for half of my life, always responding to seasonal and historical events, always bringing my sensory experience, my body, my place, into my poems, it somehow seems as if no time has passed, like a \u201cgrace dissolved in place,\u201d as T.S. Eliot names that feeling in his poem \u201cMarina.\u201d  Of course Charlotte has gifted me, and my poetry, with much imagery, language and experience.  But I think this poem, which will appear in my forthcoming collection, Oath, <\/em>published by Main Street Rag Press, is most representative of my creative life, as lived in this part of our country, for so long.  In 2007 I received a grant from UNC Charlotte to support scholarship; I spent one week, in late January, at a hotel at the far end of Wrightsville Beach, in the Wilmington area; I wrote pages and pages of notes, and over several years shaped this poem.  If \u201cthat\u2019s all she wrote,\u201d I\u2019m happy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SHELL ISLAND <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s weathered subject matter, this boutique hotel, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a revamped Holiday Inn at the end of a sand bar       <\/p>\n\n\n\n

pulled this way and that, eroded by wind, rain, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

currents, tides flooding the inland waterway.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To restore expensive real estate, bulldozers <\/p>\n\n\n\n

added three thousand more feet of beach<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a little to the north, destroying habitats<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for plovers, black flyers, sanderlings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White water fowl wings <\/p>\n\n\n\n

skim breaking waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Adirondack chair the burgundy of dried blood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hunches against the rusty railing of the balcony.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My muscles are already beginning to atrophy.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really do resent having to sit here, solitary,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

slaving over rough drafts, shifting, shrinking, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

when the sound of the surf pounds outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My heart, you know, feelings, needs to be<\/p>\n\n\n\n

touched, doesn\u2019t yours? \nMy neck hurts,  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

my sharp nose and tight-lipped mouth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

floating between my shoulder blades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This human mike, this hollow, fragile body,   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a community perceptual center, embraces<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it, this inside voice, radio free me, carries<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it through books, buffet lines, museums;                                                        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

in a pornography outlet beside Autumn Inn, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a care facility for seniors, it makes it moan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sun-bleached driftwood looks bone gray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I guess I am<\/em>\nhere on an arts grant,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i.e., to mix work, dying, and play.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pray, let\u2019s wave at, never away,  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that obese sex tourist, trudging, in flip-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

flops, along the boardwalk, two gay<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thai guys, twins, performing an act<\/p>\n\n\n\n

behind his back, bowing, grinning,   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

their four middle fingers lifted, tips, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

bending in, slightly, wiggling, like <\/p>\n\n\n\n

hooks catching trapped laughs, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

flipping, \u201cquote, unquote,\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the bird, supernatural, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

rhetorical, rhapsodic. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is what Grace Ocasio sent me<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As far as I was concerned, Charlotte was a foreign land, and\nI was a hardcore New Yorker when I moved to Charlotte in 1993, newly wed from\nthe burbs of Westchester County.  The\nonly thing I knew about Charlotte was that my mother had passed through it one\ntime, years before she migrated to New York with my father and that my uncle,\nDr. Arthur Grant, had received a B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith\nUniversity.  I truly became, upon\nlearning from my then fianc\u00e9, Edwin Ocasio, that his company, Hearst\nCorporation, would be relocating to Charlotte the summer of 1992, like Eva\nGabor\u2019s Lisa of Green Acres <\/em>fame. \n\u201cThe stores\u201d I implored as I conversed with Eddie long distance ten\nmonths before our wedding.  For sure, the\nasphalt jungle had rooted itself deep in my DNA, and no amount of persuasion on\nEddie\u2019s part was going to sell me on Charlotte. \nHence, I went kicking and screaming down south.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Little by little, Charlotte grew on me.  Teeming with nature galore, the birds and\ntrees of various kinds won me over.   All\nthe writers I met wrote about flowers.  What\nis this? <\/em>I wondered.  True, the\namazing contemporary poet Thomas Lux taught me in a Sarah Lawrence College\ngraduate seminar that one could use flowers symbolically, creating great\npotency of language.  One need not imbue\none\u2019s language with the literal meaning of flowers, I learned.  Still, I imbibed what the writers around me\nwrote, admired and appreciated their verse. \nI, however, referenced nature in order to reflect\/mirror my\nemotions.  The death of my mother in 2008\nprompted me to write about her passing aided by the image of a dogwood.  Other poems emerged, some relating to nature\nin one way or another. A few of these poems made their way into my new\ncollection, Family Reunion<\/em>. \nNowadays, I sit or stand in my bones, content to wait for small moments\nto burgeon into poems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FALL FESTIVAL<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We, my Edward and I, take Zoe to a pumpkin patch<\/p>\n\n\n\n

where she dives into a horde of pumpkins<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as though they will draw her close<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as cousins she\u2019s never met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She commands the hayride\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

first child to scramble up <\/p>\n\n\n\n

into the tractor-drawn wagon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

first child to throw a bucket of hay over her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walk through a meadow, snatch wildflowers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

cram our pockets with them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

lean against white oaks and watch the sun<\/p>\n\n\n\n

slide down the sky like a child racing down a water coaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We flash our headlights from Mooresville to Charlotte,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

letting people know harvest is the time to gloat<\/p>\n\n\n\n

over chill in the air, the snap of grass under feet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the scent of pumpkin buttercream,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the yellow, red, and orange leaves of tupelos<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that entice us to sleep even when we\u2019ve been up all night,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

tossing stray sandman thoughts out the window<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or in the trash can in our backyard.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thank Christopher Davis and Grace Ocasio for sharing their\nthoughts and poetry and for their many contributions to Storied Charlotte.        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte\u2019s community of readers and writers is reeling as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.  We have seen the recent cancelations or postponements of Sensoria, the Center City Literary Festival, many library events, and a number of book signings and readings by local writers.  However, the coronavirus cannot stop the National Poetry Month, which takes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[14,34,35,36],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-charlotte","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-poets"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2206,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}