The Hillsborough Local Author Book Fair is almost here! Read all about it! Today we continue our author spotlights with Pam Baggett!
Tell us about your latest work.
My chapbook, Wild Horses, has been described by Terri Kirby Erickson as “a barebacked, buck-naked ride on the slick haunches of fate (to the tune of Riders on the Storm) all the way from the mystical land of sex, drugs, and rock & roll to the bedside of a dying friend,” to which I can only say, thank you!Wild Horses chronicles my high school friendship in the 1970’s with my best friend Cindy, then fast-forwards to our reunion after thirty years apart, less than two years before her death at fifty. Cindy and I loved bands and music, especially the Rolling Stones, who appear often in the poems, along with The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Friends tell me that though the later poems in the book are sad, the overall spirit is one of love and celebration, which is exactly what I’d hoped for. It was immensely important to me to pay tribute to her, to what we loved, and to the bond of friendship that survived even though we didn’t see each other for three decades.
Which authors take up the most space on your bookshelf?
Many, many local poets are housed on my shelves, friends like Janis Harrington, whose book, Waiting for the Hurricane, is a deeply compassionate and tragic story of the abuse she endured as a child; Priscilla Webster-Williams, whose chapbook, The Narrative Possibilities of Coral, also speaks of abuse but includes many beautiful poems about her relationship with her mother; and Joan Barasovska’s aptly titled Birthing Age. Of nationally known poets with multiple books to their names, it’s neck-and-neck between Al Maginnes (who coincidentally lives in Raleigh) and the late Tony Hoagland. Both Maginnes and Hoagland write from the perspective of growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, though of course their work ranges much more widely. How can you not love a line like Hoagland’s “There was a kiss that changed the history of my mouth…” (from “Second Nature” in Sweet Ruin) or Maginnes’s stanza from “Old Records:” Impossible to say everything/songs promise, so I will not,/but understand—we carried them/with us, imagining them/when we could not hear them/in those days before Ipods/or the now-vanished Walkman or phones/that dialed in songs from the air./And like all things imagined,/they grew perfect.
If we were to tweet one sentence from one of your books, which sentence would you choose?
Though I write poetry in part because of its ability to condense life to its essence, I haven’t managed to develop a taste for tweeting. If I were to send a couple of longer shout-outs from the book, though, it would be these:
From “Real Boys,” which takes place in a magazine shop at Crabtree Valley Mall:
We sneered at our former faves, Teen, Tiger Beat,
snubbed David Cassidy and the other starboys
whose names adorned most girls’ notebooks.
Inked tongues tattooed our tennis shoes, fingernails,
forearms. We craved Jagger’s extravagant lips.
And from “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” named after a Jimi Hendrix song:
that old synchronicity, before cancer played you,
a note rolling off into infinity. Rock stars and teens
may be immortal, but I suspect the rest of us
are dust. If I’m wrong, keep the porch light burning—
soon as I’m gone from this world
I’ll meet you in the next one. Don’t be late.
