[New-Poetry] Fwd: Sad News of Poet Aleda Shirley

[David Graham]

Begin forwarded message:

>
> Kentucky lost one of its literary masters this week. Aleda Shirley  
> died
> Monday, after a long battle with cancer.
> She was the author of three collections of poetry, Dark Familiar  
> (Sarabande
> Books, 2006), Long Distance (Miami University Press, 1996), and  
> Chinese
> Architecture (University of Georgia Press, 1986), which won the Poetry
> Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Prize. She received,  
> among many
> other awards, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,  
> the
> Kentucky Arts Council and the Mississippi Arts Council.
> In his preface to her chapbook, Rilke's Children (Frankfort Arts
> Foundation), Guy Davenport called her work "a new kind of  
> poetry . . . one
> with a sense of balance, of great style and flexibility." Her poems  
> were
> deeply admired by readers and fellow poets, including Lucie Brock- 
> Broido,
> who wrote of Dark Familiar, "These narratives are harrowing, hallowed,
> striking, dark, familiar, strange and beautiful, and wise."
>
> Shirley was a poet of place, specifically her beloved Kentucky,  
> where her
> family has lived since the 1780s, and Mississippi, where she moved  
> 15 years
> ago. "There's something about the subtropical climate of the deep  
> South
> where the edges between the subconscious and waking world are  
> blurred, and
> one's interior life can feel most real," she said in an interview.
> She was an omnivorous reader who might in a single day turn from  
> Proust to
> People magazine, Shakespeare to true crime, Joan Didion to James  
> Ellroy. She
> could discuss with intelligence, wit and steely conviction the  
> paintings of
> Mark Rothko, Manolo Blahnik shoes, the Kennedy family, late-night talk
> radio, Stan Getz, the O.J. Simpson trial and most other subjects.  
> Though she
> was the most interesting guest at any party, she was happiest at  
> home with
> her husband, Mike, and her much adored cats.
>
> Shirley was also an extraordinary teacher who inspired students at the
> University of Mississippi, Millsaps College, and Indiana University
> Southeast with her wicked sense of humor and sharp perception. She  
> was among
> the first to teach in Jefferson County Public Schools as a
> poet-in-the-schools, a program that later served as a national  
> model. Her
> KET video series, "Write Ideas," is still used to provide Kentucky  
> language
> arts teachers strategies for encouraging student creativity. More  
> recently,
> she helped establish and direct "All Write!," a Mississippi Arts  
> Commission
> program that places writers in community literacy programs and  
> correctional
> facilities.
>
> Aleda Shirley was born in Sumter, S.C., May 2, 1955, to Guy and  
> Betty J.
> Shirley. Her father served in the Air Force, and she moved  
> frequently as a
> child. She earned her B.A. from the University of Louisville in  
> 1975 and
> remained a passionate Cardinal basketball fan the rest of her life.
>
> She is survived by her father, and her husband, Michael McBride, of  
> Jackson
> Miss., as well as aunts, uncles, cousins and a large, devoted group of
> friends, readers and students.
> A memorial gathering will be held in Louisville on Saturday, July  
> 26, at 5
> p.m. at the home of Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner. Please e-mail
> nickole at sarabandebooks.org or call (502) 458-4028 for details.
>
>
> We can't tell you how much we'll miss her.  Aleda's been a steady  
> presence
> at Sarabande since we published her anthology, The Beach Book, in  
> 1999, and
> things won't be the same without her. In her memory, we'd like to  
> share a
> poem from her last collection, Dark Familiar:
>
>
> White Center
>
> A year is a reservoir, a basin, an indigo pool
> where, fecklessly, I leave the lights on at night.
> Otherwise water disappears into darkness
> & I wake to the surface, pink & augural with dawn.
> Rain lit by store windows, the wake of a speedboat,
> the silvered charcoal of your remains-
> a year is a reservoir holding these things.
> The regulator's susurrus alerts me to the diver,
> but he can't find you either.  I'm standing in the shallows,
> the kingdom of my grief twenty degrees hotter
> than the water.  A year is a room with aubergine walls;
> it is a cupboard, a fruitwood cabinet, a drawer.
> When a storm knocked out the power I lit candles
> in front of the mirror, hoping to double the light,
> but the breeze tossed them back & forth
> until they disappeared into a single flame.  On the ceiling
> a bird, the shadow of a bird, or smoke.
> In the cabinet I keep the glove of champagne kid
> you pulled with your hand from mine,
> a broken strand of coral beads, the Polaroid
> of the UFO we spotted from the roof garden;
> I keep the last fortnight we spent together
> & all its weather, the fist of black tulle,
> a citron strip of dawn.  A year is a sack, a pocket,
> a suitcase we carried through Britain one summer,
> covered with stickers from India & Rome,
> its silk lining gone iridescent where it frayed,
> & it contains the view from our room of a meadow,
> dazzling & lacustral.  If I clipped
> the seams & stretched the canvas of the bag
> I might find the landscape you left unfinished,
> a dogwood rinsing its final leaves in the lawn's
> violet water.  A year is a vessel, a glass,
> a relucent vase of orchids & quatrains.
> A packet of heirloom seeds, a large bowl holding
> copper fish, the aura before migraine,
> the secret glances mirrors exchange with mirrors
> in an empty room, the acoustics of a bridge
> & unseasonal snow.  One the bridge a long cortege
> over which a white heron rises.  A year is a basket,
> making ferric the skin of the ice it molds
> or through which steam drifts & water sluices,
> silver until it darkens dusk.  Nothing can enclose you now.
>
>
> -- 
>
> __________________________________
> Nickole Brown
> Director of Marketing & Development
> Sarabande Books, Inc.
> 2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200
> Louisville, KY  40205
>
>
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