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Byer’s poems, companion cello music to be showcased
By Lynn Hotaling
 A collection of poems written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 13 original cello pieces will be showcased next week in Cullowhee.
The 12 poems make up a new chapbook, Wake, published recently by Spring Street Editions. Cullowhee poet Kay Byer will read her latest work during a 7 p.m. performance Thursday, Aug. 26, in Western Carolina University’s Coulter Building recital hall.
Also on the program will be 13 original cello pieces – 12 preludes and an epilogue – composed by Harold Schiffman of Robbinsville as companion pieces to Byer’s poems.
Both Byer’s poetry and Schiffman’s music have been combined on Wake’s accompanying compact disc, also released by Spring Street.
Byer said she didn’t feel compelled to write about the attacks immediately after they occurred. She began Wake’s first poem, “Safe,” about two weeks later while she was driving to an eye doctor’s appointment in Asheville.
“I wanted each line to be end-stopped,” she said. “Usually I use a lot of run-on lines, but I wanted each line of this poem to be self-contained; that’s the way I heard it in my head.”
The other poems in the collection came later, and a few are “older poems that suddenly seemed to fit in this context,” Byer said.
The selections in Wake will eventually be incorporated into a longer book that’s still in manuscript form, Byer said. So far she does not have other poems directly from 9/11 but the book will include some pieces inspired by the Iraq war, she said.
“I have several that have come out of the Iraq war and the civilian casualties that are given such short shrift in our mainstream media,” Byer said.
One of those poems will soon be published in the Atlantic Monthly, she said.
Byer said she’s trying to incorporate some of her political/environmental/anti-war passions into the upcoming poems without “sacrificing craft and lyricism.”
Publishing the dozen poems in Wake as a chapbook made sense because that format allows a writer to “focus intensely on a particular theme, motif or image,” Byer said. “Also, the brevity of it allows you to print, bind and distribute it yourself, if you wish to do that.”
Byer found a willing collaborator in City Lights Bookstore owner Joyce Moore. The two have been friends since their graduate student days at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the late 1960s, and they have talked for years about the idea of publishing books, Byer said.
The first offering from Spring Street was Gatherings, a 2001 compilation of locally written poems.
“After working together on the Gatherings anthology, the time seemed right for this chapbook,” Byer said of Wake.
“I had just learned that Louisiana State University Press had pushed back the publication of my next book, Coming to Rest, by another year, so the thought of having a new book a lot sooner appealed to me.”
Once they decided to proceed with the small book, Byer and Moore turned their attention to its production.
“We wanted a fine-looking book, a handmade book, one that was a pleasure to look at as well as to read,” Byer said.
To accomplish their goal, the two incorporated handmade paper and cut and stitched the books themselves. They also made the CD covers and sewed on buttons and thread to serve as fasteners.
“Joyce is the one who visualized the book as it looks now,” Byer said. “She had pretty clear ideas about how the book might look, and I liked what she envisioned.”
The pleasure of making the book led Byer and Moore to think in terms of other ways the poems might be presented. That’s when they hit on the idea of a CD that would combine the poetry with music.
Composer Schiffman was approached because he had already written music based on some of Byer’s poems.
“He liked Wake, even commenting on the musical qualities he sensed in the progression of the poems,” Byer said.
Schiffman’s earlier experience with Byer’s work was a cantata he composed, titled Alma, around poems from Byer’s Wildwood Flower.
“Alma is a lovely, haunting composition,” Byer said. “Harold has been able to hear the music in my work and translate it into its musical counterpart. I feel he understands my work in a way that deepens it and expands its resonance.
“Working with him has been an honor and huge pleasure,” Byer said. “His cello interludes for Wake are breathtaking.”
Moore said the cello adds “another voice” to Wake and compared Schiffman’s compositions to “musical poems.”
“The music and the poems complement each other,” she said.
Using the cello for the Wake compositions was Schiffman’s idea, Moore said.
Schiffman, a Greensboro native, has composed in virtually all media and his compositions have been commissioned by diverse groups including the Tallahassee Symphony and the International Trombone Association. His music has been presented across the United States as well as in Europe, Latin America and the Far East.
Cellist David Moore of West Nyack, N.Y., principal cellist in the North Jersey Philharmonic and Westchester Chamber Symphony (and Joyce Moore’s brother-in-law), plays Schiffman’s compositions on the Wake CD. He will be in Cullowhee next week to perform the musical selections during Wake’s Aug. 26 premiere.
Both the Wake chapbook and CD will be for sale at next week’s performance, and Byer, Schiffman and Moore will be available to autograph copies.
The handmade chapbook is produced in a limited edition of 500; and Spring Street will only offer 100 copies of the CD featuring the handmade cover, though the disc itself will continue to be available.
For more information on the book, CD or performance, call the bookstore at 586-9499.
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