Bill Blackley sat right across the aisle from Cathy Smith Bowers last week during what was called an installation ceremony.
Smith Bowers was installed as North Carolina's sixth poet laureate during a Feb. 10 ceremony in Raleigh.
"This is a great thing for North Carolina," said Blackley, a physician with a practice in Statesville and lifelong poet.
"She'll be a real people's poet," Blackley said. "She has one foot in academia, as most well-known poets do. But she also has one foot in everyday living."
Blackley said Smith Bower's poems reflect a down home touch.
"Her poems tell stories," Blackley said.
Such as these lines, from a Smith Bowers poem called "Groceries":
"I had a boyfriend once, after my mother/and brothers and sisters and I/ fled my father's house, who worked/at the Piggly Wiggly where he stocked/shelves on Fridays until midnight/then drove to my house to sneak me out,/take me down to the tracks by the cotton mill/where he lifted me and the quilt I'd brought/into an empty boxcar.
"All night/the wild thunder of looms. The roar of trains/passing on adjacent tracks hauling/their difficult cargo, cotton bales/or rolls of muslin on their way/to the bleachery to be whitened, patterned/into stripes and checks, into still-life gardens/of wisteria and rose."
Look up a definition of poetry and you may find terms like rhyme and rhythm and meter. There is likely to be something about verse and arrangement and scheme.
Whitman and Eliot and Pound and later 20th century poets did away with most of the things that used to confine or restrict or even define poetry.
And poetry is now largely what people say it is.
Under one of its headings, the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines poetry simply as "the productions of a poet."
About.com offers that, "The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define."
And that kind of almost indescribably unique creativity is among the messages Smith Bowers wants to impart in the execution of her new duties.
"I see part of my job as keeping poetry out there," she said. "And keeping it alive and kicking in the state."
Smith Bowers said she was humbled to be chosen as poet laureate.
"I am the poster child of the people who could never even imagine to have such a title," she said. "I continue to be stunned that I'm the one and that I'm representing all the incredible poets in the state. It's really unbelievable."
But Haley Jones, who is now a sophomore at North Iredell High School, said they got the right person.
"I think she definitely deserves it," said Haley, who was a 2008 winner of the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.
As part of her selection, Hailey was given special audience with Smith Bowers, including tutoring sessions.
"I learned a lot from her," Haley said. "Her critiques were done in a way that made you feel like you could improve, but she never made you feel bad."
Hailey said at their initial meeting she was intimidated by Smith Bowers, but that the poet quickly put her at ease.
"She was just so friendly and nice," Haley said. "And she really knew what she was talking about."
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