My sister, Beth Copeland, is a poet and a resident of Ashe County, North Carolina. She lives at the foot of The Peak, the highest mountain in the county. Having recently published a new collection of poetry, I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart, she has agreed to talk with me about her inspirations.

I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart book cover

Becky: It’s such a pleasure to sit with you and talk about your latest collection of poems, I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart. We’ve spent a lot of time together, sister, but I think this may be the first time we’ve discussed your poems this way!

Beth: I think you’re right. We’ve talked about our work before, but not in this kind of format.

Becky: Well, one of the reasons I wanted to do this interview is because of all your collections of poems, I think this is my favorite. It is difficult to have a favorite, of course. All of your works are exquisite. I remember when Traveling Through Glass (2000) came out and the poet Karen Swenson described the poems in the collection as being “as crisply separate from each other as grains of basmati rice.”

I just loved that expression.

First of all, I didn’t know what “basmati rice” was, and I had to look it up!

But I thought she captured the delicateness of your vision. Not just “delicateness” but precision. You excel at creating a turn of phrase that absolutely captures an emotion, a moment, and freezes it in time.

Beth: Wow, thanks, Becky!

Becky: No, it’s true. So often your poems make me gasp.

“That’s it, that’s exactly it!”

Sometimes in the earlier volumes the vision was almost too clear, the precision too razor sharp.

This volume feels softer, less urgent.

You allow more time to linger in the moment, to sit with memories, to treat the past like an old friend—even with the raggedness and the pain—to allow a familiarity and an acceptance. There is a comfortableness here, truly a sense of healing.

You take us on a journey into the mountains, where we leave behind the wounds and learn to love.

In many ways, the title says it all: I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart.

I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job of providing context for this collection or for our interview, but I just wanted you to know how much I admire your work, and how I feel this book to be my favorite so far of all your works.

Beth: I appreciate you saying so.

Becky: Okay, let me start by asking you about the steps you took to write this book. I guess it really starts with your move to Creston, North Carolina, where you are surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge.

 

What brought you to Creston?

 

Beth: I was newly separated and newly sober, living in the Sandhills region of North Carolina—where there are no hills—in a small one-bedroom apartment with boards and concrete blocks for bookshelves, artwork propped against the walls instead of hung, and most of my belongings in storage.

I slept for months on a blow-up mattress. I knew my time there was temporary; it wasn’t my home. I could go anywhere, as long as housing was affordable.

I started looking at property in the high country because I had family there. Our brother Luke was well established in Boone—he’d lived there ever since his college years—and you had bought a home in Ashe County.

The first mountain property I fell in love with was a little brick church. My plan was to renovate it and also write a memoir about the process of converting it into a home, using the renovation of the church as a means of accessing my memories as the child of missionaries.

When I went back to my apartment in the Sandhills, I started drawing up floorplans and daydreamed about living in that brick building with a steeple. It was a way for me to connect with the spirituality that I had lost during an unhappy marriage and years of drinking.

But just as I had ignored the red flags in my marriage, I ignored red flags about buying the church. I had no idea how much a renovation would cost, and my funds were limited.

I ignored the “You Can Take My Guns From My Cold Dead Hands” sign in the trailer across the road. I ignored the fact that the beautiful stained-glass windows were sealed shut. How would I ventilate the sanctuary? Some of the panes were riddled with BB gun holes!

Even so, I was devastated when the property sold before I could make up my mind about buying it. I cried as if a dear friend had died. You consoled me and encouraged me to keep looking.

Becky: I remember that church. The building really did offer amazing possibilities. It’s also funny the way we invest so much—emotionally, I mean—in buying a house. I remember years ago when I lost the bid on the first house I tried to purchase. It felt like a personal failure!

Beth: Well, fortunately, it didn’t last long for me. I came back to the mountains and found a house only 15 minutes from yours. It wasn’t a church, but it had a beautiful view of The Peak, the tallest mountain in Ashe County, as well as an unexpected bonus—a tiny cabin next to the house.

On the day I went to see the property, a large buck ran across the road as I was driving up the hill. I took it as a good omen and made an offer. Within a few months, I moved in!

The mountain became the focus of my spirituality. The first poem in the book, “True North” refers to the mountain as “a point of reference” and “of reverence” and—even more explicitly—as a “steeple.”

 

True North

A mountain, like Polaris, is a point of reference
to keep us from becoming lost. A point of reverence.

Around here, your GPS will send you on corkscrew curves
up dead-end dirt roads and you can’t depend on maps

that don’t show how steep the incline is or how deep
the ditch or that the road is ruined from rain

and rivers that flood or that a fallen oak blocks both lanes
or that wheels will spin on ice and you’ll have no recourse

but to back down the hill hoping you don’t swerve
off the shoulder. –Okay, I’ll take a detour here to recall

my father winking at my mother and saying Soft Shoulders
when he drove by a highway sign. That memory is mapped

in my mind as the mountain is there even when its not
there, hidden behind seven veils of fog and forgetfulness,

a steeple pointing to the sun, moon, and stars
to remind us: We’re not lost. We’re exactly where we are.

Becky: Oh, I hadn’t thought of The Peak as a “steeple,” but now that you mention it, I can see it!

 

Like “True North,” so many of the poems in your collection feature mountains—mountains as landmarks, mountains as partners, mountains as metaphors—why mountains?

 

Beth: The mountain was the one constant in my life at that time.

View of The Peak in summer

Unlike what happens in relationships, a mountain isn’t going anywhere. It’s rooted in rock. I personified it as “flint-faced, unflinching, faithful.”

Also, as I’ve said to you before, the mountains are in our DNA.

Our father’s family is from the mountains of Nicholas County, West Virginia, and Daddy was happiest when he was in the mountains. He bought land in Mountain City, Tennessee, in the early 1970s, where he built a log cabin from fallen pines, and went there as often as he could, chopping wood, clearing paths, and puttering around. I live only a few miles from the family land.

In Ashe County, I’m an outsider to the local people because I wasn’t born and raised here, but I feel a strong connection to the mountains and to Appalachian culture.

Becky: Truly, we have mountains in our DNA!

There are other natural phenomena in the book: deer, rivers, trees . . . your poems have always featured an engagement with the beauty or the drama of nature. Blue Honey, for example, circulates around the central image of honey, of a rare honey specific to a particular place. Until this collection, though, I have never thought of you as a “back-to-nature” kind of woman! Growing up, you weren’t often out IN nature.

 

Did your relationship with nature change when you moved to the mountains? How do you now understand that relationship?

 

Beth: My relationship to nature changed dramatically when I moved to the mountains.
You’re right. I was not an earthy, back-to-nature girl for most of my life. I was an indoor girl—playing with dolls, sewing clothes for Barbies and later for myself, reading, writing. As a young woman, I didn’t enjoy going to the Mountain City land with the family. We had to use an outhouse! I couldn’t take a shower and always felt grubby. We had to carry water up the hill to wash dishes! It was boring to sit around in the cabin with no plumbing, electricity, TV, or phone.

Now I wish I had been more outdoorsy and had paid more attention when Daddy identified trees and bird songs. Now I want to ask him, “What kind of tree is that?” “What bird is that?” but he’s not here.

Much later in life when I moved to my own mountain house—which has indoor plumbing, electricity, and all the comforts of home—I started hiking with you and later with my boyfriend Paul. I discovered that I enjoy being outdoors! Now I feel a sense of oneness with the mountains, the rivers, and trees.

Becky: Yes, sometimes we have to test ourselves a little, and when we do, we discover strengths and affinities we didn’t even know we had!

 

In follow-up to the question about nature, you also entered into a very sweet relationship with a rescue dog named Phoenix, who you write about in a number of the poems. How did Phoenix fit into your journey?

 

Beth: Phoenix challenged me in ways I’d never been challenged before. He was a senior Treeing Walker Coonhound who paced constantly and was not—despite what I’d been told—housebroken.

He had clearly been traumatized before I adopted him and wasn’t able to engage with me as I had expected. He wouldn’t stop pacing and sit with me. He peed all over the house!

In an effort to keep him from having accidents in the house, I took him outside every three or four hours during the day. We walked and walked and walked. I referred to him as “my fitness coach” because I was probably in the best shape of my life from all the walking up and down hills we did.

Beth and Phoenix

He was emotionally wounded and so was I.

Phoenix had been given his name at the rescue place where he stayed before I adopted him. He had been wandering the hills of Georgia before he was rescued, was half-starved, had a terrible case of mange, and a mouthful of rotting teeth that had to be removed.

But he recovered and—like a Phoenix—rose from the ashes of his life as a stray to a new life with me. From Phoenix I learned patience and loyalty. He wasn’t the cuddly dog I had wanted, but I loved him.

Becky: I liked old Phoenix! He was a bit odd, but you were so loyal to him, too! You never gave up on him. I admired that.

The Weight of Ashes

From a blue velvet bag, I remove the rosewood box
hand-carved with plum blossoms and branches,

a brass plague laser-etched with his name—Phoenix—
glued to the smooth surface of wood.

The weight of his ashes is heavier than expected,
Like snow that softly falls, blanketing the mountain’s

Corkscrew roads, heavy enough to break an old
barn’s rotting beams and the limbs of brittle oaks.

 

Part One of our interview ends here, but please stay tuned for Part Two where Beth will discuss the arrangement of I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart.

Join us on Sunday, August 17, at 2:00 for our online book launch of I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart. Message me here for the zoom link.

If interested, you may purchase I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart from Redhawk Publications.

The post With Mountains in our DNA: An Interview with poet, Beth Copeland, Part I appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.