Smoking Ceremony by Hemat Malak; Things by Lisel Mueller; Elegy for my 1958 Volkswagen by Ruth Bavetta; Safety Pin by Valerie Worth; Nuthatch by Kirsten Dierking; The Lost Garden by Dana Gioia; Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A by Alex Z. Salinas; Practice by Ellen Bryant Voigt
Nutshell of discussion: Many of the poems seemed to address the theme of loneliness, letting go, and how we relate to things.
Smoking Ceremony: Without the note, you might not have noticed that this poem is a villanelle with a slight variant, and indeed, it provides an example of how form can embellish meaning. The initial prompt was to write a villanelle that mentions your favorite season. Fall is the ideal season for thinking of things passing away, of transitions and here, the idea of a "Ceremony" honors years which like autumn leaves, are burnt, almost like a ritual purification, to allow for Spring. The repeated "smoke" and "sighs" moves through a progression to describe a sigh: it is thick; it chokes; it bursts into a thousand bubbles, and finally becomes flames to bless. Woven in the alternate end of stanza rhyme of goodbye, (singular) fireflies (plural) this is accentuated by the singular "A" end rhymes: firefly, sky, dry, (singular in the first 3 tercets) and butterflies, eyes, prophesize (plural in the last 3 tercets) providing concrete terms in the first 5, as if to provide "ink" to shadow or echo for the description of the smoke.
Further repeats: mad to madness (twice), which rhymes with bless and the slant rhyme of arsonist/artist. Curious that "mad firefly" on the first line, becomes made two fireflies on the last line of the 4th tercet, with a "slant eye-rhyme" between mad and made. The "u's" curl, hue, burst, bubble contrast with the hard /k/ in smoke, curl, crackle, cleanse, canvas, mistake, ink, sink, (twice: once as noun, once as verb) pink, drink, with the inner "B" end rhyme shifting in the final stanza to spring. Alliterations abound: the f in firefly, comfort, fall, flames b of bubbles/burst the ch of choked, children, the th in those (years) together, thick; the st of artist/arsonist, (2) mistake, starburst, toast, the l in smelted, love, left, bloom, bless.
Such work with sound imitates a sense of unspoken grief of what is not carried on, or as Judith brought up with Jane Austen, those letters one tries to burn but cannot. Many of the 24 participants nodded in agreement, facing the problem of sorting and tossing out a lifetime of photos, souvenirs, letters.
As for the title, Smoking is rife with context could be an adjective, as in smoking hot, although unlikely, and perhaps evokes an image of smoking a peace pipe, but seems to imply a sanctifying smudge ceremony. The poem elicits any number of situations involving grief: perhaps a divorce, a death leading the reader to observe and participate in a cleansing ceremony which indeed honors "the smoke of years".
Things: (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53133/things-56d2322956d0a In her inimitably frank manner, Lisel spells out how humans tend to anthropomorphize and foist our human attributes and self-importance on concrete objects like clocks, chairs, tables, shoes, bells, pitchers, bottles, only to move on to larger universals like country, an implied sense of religion in "what is beyond us" and abstraction of safety. There is so much "mythology" and superstition attached to things, children learn, like "step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back". In the poem there is also an added hint of things as being part of a whole, and implication of the Ding-an-sich, the object as it is, independent of our way of observing and representing it. Delightful poem, rather tongue in check, but comforting. The mouth of the cave made some think of the beginning of time. The final stanza also evoked the sense of "passing on" leaving behind an imperfect world. We discussed at length how humans try to control by ascribing meanings, and how metaphors can be useful as persuasive devices especially dealing with the negative effects of politics. I couldn't resist writing a poem back to Lisel, which I shared. (see below)
About Things
a small conversation with Lisel Mueller's poem, Things
The clock started weeping, tears
trickling towards the numbers
circling its face
and the chair broke
unable to support Gramma's back
and even the table's legs
seemed unable to support
the weight of the tons of books and magazines
on its sagging surface.
As for the wagging of those tongues
inside the church bells, the ringing
is likewise in our ears from too much
noise, although statistics show
those who indulge loudly in generous
amounts of it served in local bars
from generously-lipped
pitchers, seem unaware
of the din.
They go on
no matter the length
of the bottle's neck.
We thought we could pass
into safety, pass on
useful lessons,
understand how to see
eyes of hurricanes,
believed in hearts
of countries, especially.
The thing is, things, no matter
how beautifully personified,
have their own slippery way
to pretend to offer just
the right substitute
for the missing word,
the thing, in itself,
only for itself, not us.
-- Kitty Jospé
Elegy for my 1958 VW: So many wonderful memories and stories came up from this delightful poem which provides an echo to Lisel Mueller's "things". How do we make sense of life? The poet concludes there is only what is, and what has been. Her descriptions certainly provided the colors, sounds, inconvenient and loveable characteristics of "the people's car" with a great sense of humor -- especially those "bowling shoes" which found a place with the 7 bags of groceries, 5 kids, the neighbor (mind you, friendly), 2 dogs.
Safety pin: a relatively recent invention, like a coat hanger, this poem provides us a novel way to think of this useful object. There were a few stories of how "safety" pins, are not always "safe"! This one sentence poem in one skinny column ends with an apt implied metaphor of how we look at ourselves.
Nuthatch: Starting a poem with "what if" immediately invites our imaginations to set to work. We wondered how the poet came up with the idea of this poem and why a Nuthatch. What drove her to write it? Does she want to be alone? Does she long for another living being, but just not people? Interesting fact: the Nuthatch is a songbird who goes down a tree trunk headfirst.
The Lost Garden: Instead of "what if", this poem starts with a rather melancholic, "If we ever see those gardens again"... Immediately, we are transported to the past, perhaps walking in Versailles and imagining the glory of the court of Louis XIV, the "gracious acreage of a grander age". Gioia adds a mocking bird, the delicious detail of "so many trees to kiss" quickly followed by "to kiss or argue under" to embroider the possibility. The contradictory, "what pleasure to be sad in such surroundings" is given the space of a stanza break to absorb the meaning, only to drop down to a qualifying fragment: At least in retrospect.
The poem is evocative as well of the book The Secret Garden and Judith brought up the scene in Cocteau's Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) where Beauty, in her long dress, mounts castle steps strewn with dead leaves. The only end-rhyme in the poem, 2nd stanza, "describing someone else who shares our name", with "game" hints at romance gone awry. It brought us back to the first poem, Smoking Ceremony ending with "the trick is making memory a blessing."
Oh, y'know: Rather like regular conversation, not an interview, it is an interesting portrayal of a self-absorbed person asking him/herself questions, with a shadow self sketching his/her portrait in reply.
It provided a contemporary context, with hints at equality, sexuality, shopping malls, tourism, and where in all that is beauty, any truth or honor.
Practise: It seemed to me to provide a sequel to the interview above but directly applied to grief. What do we practice, in terms of habits, faith, attitudes? How does this change when someone or something dies? The "you said" gave us a sense of the person writing trying to honor someone who passed away, honor their words, but unable to do so. In the face of loss, what do we still believe in?
