Poet of the Month: Meri Culp
I chose Meri Culp as the April-May-June Poet of the Month. Here in Florida, these months are our spring warming into the summer months. Meri Culp is playful in her life and in her work, using metaphor to gently help us grasp the depth of our lives. In this poem, "Cayenne Pepper, "slim fire" is a pepper, and life can be "a red hot sting." Her poetry makes our eyes water with the power of the pepper. Still, there's a gentleness to the poem, a whispered warning of what life ultimately brings. Here at the end of poetry month, April, begins our own hot season, brought here by Meri Culp, ever so gently. -- Mary Jane Ryals.
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Meri Culp
Meri Culp is inspired by food (in all its forms), 50's pop culture, art & photography, colors, rhythms, and nature's patterns, and combinations of the above.
She's currently working on a collection of stalk vegetable poems--rhubarb, asparagus, sugar cane, swamp cabbage, hearts of palm, celery, etc.
Her lush writing is also fed by getting in the car and driving to out of the way places, small towns, back roads--with no agenda, no motel reservations, just seeing what she can find.
Culp has been published in Cider Press Review, Southeast Review, Apalachee Review, BOMB, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rose & Thorn, Nomads, Snug, The Northeast Chronicle, and Sweet: A Literary Confection. Her poems have also appeared online in True/Slant , Poets for Living Waters, and USA Today and in the anthologies North of Wakulla and Think: Poems for Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Day Hat. She is currently working on a collection of stalk vegetable poems--from asparagus to rhubarb.
She's taught at TCC for 20 years in Creative Writing, African-American Lit, Freshman Comp. She coordinates student/faculty poetry readings there, and wants students to see the connections between the ordinary and the magical, to see how showing details create expression, to see where words and visuals meet. Meri Culp likes using art in conjunction with writing, having students "jump in" to framed pieces and create a story, a poem. She also use paint swatches, fingernail polish colors/names, and crayon names as springboards for student writing. "Poems are all around us," she says.
She's currently working on a collection of stalk vegetable poems--rhubarb, asparagus, sugar cane, swamp cabbage, hearts of palm, celery, etc.
Her lush writing is also fed by getting in the car and driving to out of the way places, small towns, back roads--with no agenda, no motel reservations, just seeing what she can find.
Culp has been published in Cider Press Review, Southeast Review, Apalachee Review, BOMB, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rose & Thorn, Nomads, Snug, The Northeast Chronicle, and Sweet: A Literary Confection. Her poems have also appeared online in True/Slant , Poets for Living Waters, and USA Today and in the anthologies North of Wakulla and Think: Poems for Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Day Hat. She is currently working on a collection of stalk vegetable poems--from asparagus to rhubarb.
She's taught at TCC for 20 years in Creative Writing, African-American Lit, Freshman Comp. She coordinates student/faculty poetry readings there, and wants students to see the connections between the ordinary and the magical, to see how showing details create expression, to see where words and visuals meet. Meri Culp likes using art in conjunction with writing, having students "jump in" to framed pieces and create a story, a poem. She also use paint swatches, fingernail polish colors/names, and crayon names as springboards for student writing. "Poems are all around us," she says.
Cayenne Warning
Even the pepper's skin will burn to the touch, Mom, my son says
as he fingers the slim fire, the just-picked red ripeness.
Be careful, he reminds, all kindness, newfound protection,
as I watch him harvest the peppers, red-handed, soon-to-be a man.
I want to tell him of life's red hot sting,
of his grandmother's dying request
for me to paint her fingernails chili pepper red,
to unearth from her drawer a favorite lipstick,
Revlon's Marooned, the color of black/red gardens,
the deep bite of goodbye, an open wound.
I want to say, I know of burning, my son,
how one night, I fell hard into a sunset,
slammed into a slow-blaze burn
of every shade of red,
learned how crimson turns scarlet,
then fades, like nightfall, old chiffon , dusty and pink.
But instead, I heed his advice,
let him sound the warning alarm,
as if I had lived my life in a gentle garden,
in a place I notice is now: my son, me, our red cayennes.
by:Meri Culp
as he fingers the slim fire, the just-picked red ripeness.
Be careful, he reminds, all kindness, newfound protection,
as I watch him harvest the peppers, red-handed, soon-to-be a man.
I want to tell him of life's red hot sting,
of his grandmother's dying request
for me to paint her fingernails chili pepper red,
to unearth from her drawer a favorite lipstick,
Revlon's Marooned, the color of black/red gardens,
the deep bite of goodbye, an open wound.
I want to say, I know of burning, my son,
how one night, I fell hard into a sunset,
slammed into a slow-blaze burn
of every shade of red,
learned how crimson turns scarlet,
then fades, like nightfall, old chiffon , dusty and pink.
But instead, I heed his advice,
let him sound the warning alarm,
as if I had lived my life in a gentle garden,
in a place I notice is now: my son, me, our red cayennes.
by:Meri Culp
