Poems for April 17-18

 Spring Tide by Philip Conkling; Projection by Jonathan Everitt; Eid Mubarak[1] by Fady Joudah

Metonymy As An Approach To A Real World  by William Bronk; Abandoned Bicycle by George Bilgere

Having a Coke with You  by Frank O'Hara 1926 – 1966

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/11/books/frank-ohara-having-a-coke-poem.html?unlocked_article_code=1.j00.uU8y.pGYPPMGQ7pwp&smid=em-share

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_Mubarak

Nutshell:

Spring Tide: Beautiful rhythm established by rolling anapests and eerie sounds of an abandoned wreck with a "slatting wind, she grinds up off her grave" and completed with "will-of-the-wisp: -- the fantom ghost lights that whisper of wishes and hopes.

The spring tide, highest, is also Easter tide and a time of ressurection.  Wonderful pairing of photographs with poems.

Beautifully crafted, but not overdone.

Projection: There was a typo 2nd line -- Earl Grey tea.  The "futility" of determinism, is a commentary on fortune telling.  If the future can be foretold, then any choice is an illusion. We loved the description of a universe where "palms have mirrors instead of lines."... Clever and reminded some of Sci Fi Fantasy.

Eid Mubarak:  Fady Joudah is a well-respected Palestinian poet and we admired the careful crafting and unusual expression such as the first enjambments, and especially the stanza break after "As though"... /only our present contains the things/that dilate into ordinary miracles".   It was special to have Elaine, whose family is from Palestine,  bring  up the importance in that culture to be able to forgive and be grateful, with a strong belief in unity of being human and kindness to strangers.  

The title means "Happy Feasting" a greeting said during Ramadan when the fasting is broken at night.   Each stanza developed a different aspect of  the Muslim faith and invited  a careful examination of what each person thinks is important, how we are connected and whether we might be as willing to embrace strangers, to forgive.  There is a sense of the past, and yet it is a contemporary poem and in the second stanza reference to "synaptic uptake, electronic pleats/between history and stars".  A perfect metaphoric blend of modern with age-old universals, followed by a stunning stanza about the air: What else is inside/ the air we are inside/and pull inside us?  The air that carries.

Often the sign of a good poem is a long discussion that does not want to end such as the one we had.

Metonymy:  when one takes an attribute to signify something, as in calling people "suits" for business executives.  A close sibling to synecdoche where a part signifies a whole.  e.g. "wheels" meaning a car.  This poem is a philosophic plunge which cleverly examines age-old questions.  What is real?   Curious that we make "concessions", as if to find common ground.  I love the 3rd line before the end:  I saw "the light lie"... as in the physical light spread in the chasm of a street, but also the noun, lie, an untruth,  light as a feather,  with the paradoxical "as though it had drifted in from...  a purity of space."  Packed lines that require careful attention which some do not care for.

Abandoned Bicycle: This poem was an immediate emotional hit with everyone.  There is something universal about a bike, as well as an implication of a rite of passage.   The sensitivity of the poet is clear, as is his meticulous noticing.  A sense of personnification, especially in these lines: the bike is waiting.  Its metals gleam urgently.  Touches of humor, like pedals pilfered  and "unable to live/without each other, will vanish/into a fresh new marriage.  The seat disappears into a seat-shaped abyss.  The adjective "abandoned" in the title reappears at the end, now a comparison to a person.  After reading the note, many conjectures were made about the poet needing to leave his bike behind but for some it seemed at odds with the poem.

Having  a coke with you:  Everyone adored this poem~  the blizzard of exotic place names, the repetitions, the feel of being so smitten by love it explodes through out the poem.  Breezy, intriguing, forthright, yet elusive.  It is fun to look up the artists and Marino Marini whose Riders are  definitely not in charge of the horse on which they're attached.  The poem doesn't end with a period, but dissolves in air... or continues to waft in the air as if it will never end.  The NYT link  (see above) of "a date with a poem" makes it a very enjoyable experience.  They not only fill in references, but also add Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and Whitman for comparisons!

poems for April 10-12

Still Life by Ellen Bass; Miracles by Walt Whitman; Abecedarian for Alabama Libraries by Pamela Manasco; Poem in which Barbie Qualifies for Medicare  by Denise Duhamel; Drifters by Bruce Dawe; Becoming a Redwood by Dana Gioia

Meeting two days after the eclipse, perhaps we all responded to the poems with a sense of being "immersed in mystery and the miraculous.  I had shared last week report about one in 1927 by Virginia Woolf. From Maria Popova's blog, Marginalian:  April 4, 2024 https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/05/09/virginia-woolf-eclipse/?mc_cid=ae4c2417c1&mc_eid=2e713bf367

With a theme of "finding miracles in daily life" the associations, stories, connections were quite abundant, ranging from the Japanese movie, "Perfect Days" to the Dipsea Trail to Muir woods (population 3 stellar jays and a ground hog?) https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/dipsea-trail--2 and at the end

I post Samuel Barber's "Summer of 1915 in Knoxville." 

Nutshell:

 Still Life:  Brilliant gem of a poem which appeared in a nature review (3/24/24) examining "Plant-Human Connection".   The title  puns on the artistic term, "Momento Mori" where a still life contains a reminder that nothing living lasts for ever, and yet, life still goes on.  We laughed at the opening line..."It won't last" with a perfect line break, which invites the reader to imagine all that doesn't last, including the sunshine we had the day before the eclipse, and the clouds that obscured the event.   The verbs, spinning away, ride the air, billow, plume, life, tremble... set a view of tulips into motion... their open mouths as if ready to sing.   We loved the pick of  louche, the French word for an awkward weirdness to describe "cups of emptiness" followed by  an abundant sensuousness of satin, sails, slack bells, and "parrot-colored curtains" billowing.  You won't look at tulips, painted or real, the same way after reading that.  A skillful inclusion of "the planet's stream" carries us with them, to leave like the "shallow pond of light".  -- except... 

 that tip of one petal, "still catching the sun" as if to confirm that life indeed goes on.  

Miracles.  Whitman's unique and courageous voice feels timeless.  Some picked up on the fact he was gay, with the details of "naked" feet, "sleep in the bed at night with any one I love".  The singular with "the rest" repeated twice, "with the whole referring".  The long anaphor "or", with "or" inserted twice in the longer lines to demonstrate the vastness beyond Manhattan streets.  The last sentence, after repeating "every" to calculate measure, filled with miracle, starts with the sea, includes fishes, ships, men, but some found it odd to continue on as if that were the miracle.  What is different about that to be strange when describing miracle?  Or is he inviting us to join him in listing yet more miracles?

Abcedarian: For some, an introduction to a new form.  Many "ABC" poems and variations are available, and for a poem about a library, an appropriate form to adopt.  We had a great discussion about libraries, the importance of books, the negative takes like "never fix the broken-down bridge", the sarcastic spins in questions like "why must we feed starving children?"  We are not sure what is ranked as "50th" but it is clear that "zero" starting the last line of the poem is the mark of the end of the alphabet. 

For a variation on an "acrostic" style ABC, this one by Robert Pinsky follows the alphabet word by word. 

Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,

Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.

Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:

X=your zenith.

Poem in which Barbie...  We appreciated the humor criticizing all Barbie represents about our American society, the totally relatable examples of getting older, commentary on attitudes of the young of today. Why not write a poem about Ken qualifying for Medicare as well?  Or how about such iconic myths as Frankenstein, or other stereotypes?

Drifters: A thank you to Graeme for sharing this gem by Australian poet, Bruce Dawe who came to speak at his school when he was in the Upper 6th form.  Lovely directness, and great empathy for others. We see the "oldest girl" is mature beyond her age, too early, able to keep back her tears.  Ute, pronounced like a shortened "Utility vehicle" is like a pick up truck.  The shivers come, as it drives past the blackberries and their shriveled fruit... how the wife once had held out the dream and hope when first arriving there,  her hands bright with berries, saying, make a wish Tom, make a wish.  No need to say more even if you could, feeling her resignation, unspoken despair.  

Becoming a Redwood:  A thank you to Marna who shared  the Women in Music program, where she heard a composition based on the Dana Gioia poem.  https://www.whec.com/top-news/nazareth-university-hosts-annual-women-in-music-festival/  featuring Lori Laitman, composer in residence: http://artsongs.com/

We read the poem, then listened to it as set to music here: https://songofamerica.net/song/becoming-a-redwood/

The poem has rhythm and sound through out... beautiful line break, second line: invisible/

(up to the reader to imagine what else besides crickets... all manner of life some might think "too small to name") but landing on toad, not the usual suspect to announce "change is possible".  The personification of a stone, the "pain" imagined of grass breaking through earth's crust, the rich alliterations, the images that call on the senses with "snort" and "smell... the layering of time as "living wood... thickened with a hundred thousand days of light..."

The music for some acted like a clock, and I liked how there was a brief interlude from the voice after the 4th tercet, and two key changes after that.  

What is it like to be a tree?  Is it easier to bear everything?  Gioia makes us feel we are surrounded in company of fellow redwoods, if not actual trees.  A beautifully crafted poem, testifying to the intricate and miraculous interconnections of life.  

On Wednesday, Elmer, an arborist shared details and could have elaborated on story after story about seeds of Redwoods. for a start:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1rpqib/california_redwood_trees_in_rochester/

 

https://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/894086.html

Links about Redwood trees:

https://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods/dawn-redwoods/

about "Dawn Redwoods" : To the Chinese people, the dawn redwood is second only to the panda as a conservation icon. Thought to have been extinct for millions of years, a Save the Redwoods League group discovered that this unusual member of the redwood family still exists in China, shedding its leaves in the fall

I am waiting for Jan to tell me which poem (perhaps several) made her think of 

 Samuel Barber: Summer in Knoxville 1915

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHFsq3u9les

Lyrics

It has become that time of evening
When people sit on their porches
Rocking gently and talking gently
And watching the street
And the standing up into their sphere
Of possession of the trees,
Of birds' hung havens, hangars.
People go by; things go by.
A horse, drawing a buggy,
Breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt:
A loud auto: a quiet auto:
People in pairs, not in a hurry,
Scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body,
Talking casually,
The taste hovering over them of vanilla,
Strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk,
The image upon them of lovers and horsement,
Squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising into iron moan;
Stopping;
Belling and starting; stertorous;
Rousing and raising again
Its iron increasing moan
And swimming its gold windows and straw seats
On past and past and past
The bleak spark crackling and cursing above it
Like a small malignant spirit
Set to dog its tracks;
The iron whine rises on rising speed;
Still risen, faints; halts;
The faint stinging bell;
Rises again, still fainter;
Fainting, lifting lifts,
Faints foregone;
Forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew;
My father has drained,
He has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns,
A frailing of fire who breathes.
Parents on porches:
Rock and rock.
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air
At once enchants my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass
Of the backyard
My father and mother have spread quilts
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, m
Y aunt,
And I too am lying there.
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet,
Of nothing in particular,
Of nothing at all.
The stars are wide and alive,
They all seem like a smile
Of great sweetness,
And they seem very near.
All my people are larger bodies than mine,
With voices gentle and meaningless
Like the voices of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are,
All on this earth;
And who shall ever tell the sorrow
Of being on this earth, lying, on quilts,
On the grass,
In a summer evening,
Among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people,
My uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
Oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
And in the hour of their taking away.
After a little
I am taken in
And put to bed.
Sleep, soft smiling,
Draws me unto her;
And those receive me,
Who quietly treat me,
As one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
But will not, oh, will not,
Not now, not ever;
But will not ever tell me who I am.

 

Poetry Month special!!!

 So pleased to share this article that appeared in the April issue of Penny Saver

https://www.gvpennysaver.com/stories/personal/kitty-jospe-shares-her-poetic-words-of-wisdom/article_350b4e92-f80a-11ee-8ea8-c79eecf7fcbe.html

Keep scrolling after the workshop for Alla's  Eclipse thoughts! 

Below as well a few highlights after attending a delightful poetry workshop led by Kathleen Wakefield at the N. Winton branch of the library on Wednesday with an inspiring group of thoughtful writers.

We started with these  quotes:  

"Through poetry's concentration great sweeps of thought, emotion and perception are compressed to forms the mind is able to hold— into images, sentences, and stories that serve as

entrance tokens to large and often slippery realms of being"-- Jane Hirschfield

"Our most sublime thoughts have their feet planted in clay; our best songs are body songs."  Stanley Kunitz (The Wisdom of the Body from Next to Last Things)

"The purpose of poetry is to remind us

How difficult it is to remain just one person

For our house is open and there are no doors

And the invisible guests come in and out at will."

-- Czeslaw Milosz, "Ars Poetica" from The Collected Poems.

Writing exercises included responding to an "appetizer" of words taken from a Marvin Bell poem...(Who & Where);

the powerful example of the repetitive, rhythmic Armenian poem, "The Woman Cleaning Lentils";

using titles to go in a different direction, for instance Ellen Bass' poem, "The Thing Is" and Crystal Spring Gibbons' poem "Because the Night you asked".

We were spoiled with a treasure trove of  samples of poems.  The charge for any poet?  Use the age-old technique of looking at what the poem does that makes it work for you, and prompt you to want to respond.  

Here's where I went reading an excerpt from  “The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee by N. Scott Momaday”

Note to cheer up my friend in the ICU with a trach tube and a swollen neck...

The sunshine btw is there — just requires a lot of imagination to remember it… Close your eyes and compose yourself a nice “Delight Song” — imagine yourself as a feather in the bright sky, a blue horse running, or a slippery fish rolling in a perfect tumble of a stream where all the rocks are polished and smooth, and everything feels like pleasure, and you are singing a song “luster, luster, luster” the sunlight catching bright colors of desert flowers in full bloom (our daughter just sent us pictures from Sedona, where she’s spending spring break, biking with girl friends and having a blast) — and your favorite colors are painting your dreams.

When a spill of words

offers        

                swallow

do you chose the bird, or feel a 

gulp in your throat?

Weeds is the same challenge--

do you pull them or 

observe?

Live can worm in as adjective

or a command to make the most

of a heart still beating, 

a memory still functioning

a brain coordinating all our senses.

Sometimes appears twice, and everyone noted it, seemed to use it as jumping off point.

How do we connect the dots of all the years?

We all belong to each other, whether evenly trimmed grass, some metaphorical star shining in the dark... 

How do we step into the core of things, deal with the stranglehold of sorrow.

Sometimes a life forgotten... is that better than bewildering?

Who are you? Who am I?  Those three letters spelling such complexity. How does the world

acknowledge each "me"?  How does each "I" look at this response?

**

Alla Levi: My thoughts about the total solar eclipse, 4/8/2024

Even though we did not see the sun during the eclipse, due to cloud cover, we saw the effect of the eclipse on the sky. As it gradually got darker and darker, the cloud cover made it possible to see beautiful colors in the sky, similar to the northern lights. I saw shimmering greens and blues and then it got very dark. And then….as if a big light switch had been magically turned on, the sky started gaining light, but not the gradual kind that we are used to seeing at dusk or dawn. It was instantaneous…from dark to light within a few seconds. The sun was once again showing its powerful strength and giving us light and life!!! This was indeed a once in a lifetime experience and so fun to share with family and friends!!! 

Poems for April 3-4

Happy Spring, Easter and other Religious Feasts, and April Fools.  It's also poetry month!  I shared the poster from the American Academy of Poets: https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/get-official-poster

see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IakNtGqVIA Richard Blanco reads "Betting on America"  The poem below  from  How to Love a Country, 2019.  See:Mother Country:  https://poets.org/poem/mother-country

Poems:  blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton 1936 –2010; Hope by Lisel Mueller;   Last stanza of Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop, Miami yet Maine by Richard Blanco, Complaint of El Río Grande by Richard Blanco, Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day  by Delmore Schwartz, The Country by Billy Collins

Summary:

Blessing of the Boats:  this is on the National Poetry Month poster! https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/get-official-poster Paul heard an echo of the Irish prayer, "May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be at your back, ending with and may "God hold you in the palm of His Hand". Indeed, but adds much more!  Coupled with the young girl in her bright red dress ready to enter that water-- ah... in her innocence!  may she... may we all, may you "sail through this... to that".  Clifton starts with the tide entering, but then the wish is for action-- to kiss the wind -- then turn from it certain it will love your back.

A lovely choice for an uplifting poem for National Poetry Month. 

Hope: I feel strongly we are in need of hope these days.  It is the one thing we all can share-- and in sharing, feel stronger.   The poem itself is brilliant -- the strong verbs: explode, sprouts, inflates; the delightful description of hope as motion that runs/from the eyes to the tail of the dog...  the choice of adjectives.  I had put the poem in columns which made a few words "dangle" -- which was not in the original.  However, we did note that there is no indentation in the final stanza.  Here, Mueller "tells it straight" where hope is gift, refutes death, invents the future, is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; Emily spoke of people who have given up on the planet, on efforts to make a more just world and feel there is "no hope".  We agreed.  They need to read this poem!  As Mike put it, " Life is hope itself, gives us the courage to handle things as best we can... to create, to connect...  Hope is close to trust as the  only things that keeps us going."  Neil was reminded of Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine. (If you want a quick brush up, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1627774-dandelion-wine)

excerpt from Questions of Travel: This is not the whole poem which perhaps might have helped the reference to "crudest wooden footwear".  See: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/questions-of-travel/ I wanted to set up the Richard Blanco poems, since he referred to it in a reading from his latest book,   Homeland of My Body.  What does it mean "to travel"?   How do we travel?  What questions come up for you?  In the last stanza we looked at, Bishop sets up a careful juxtaposition between clogs (for traveling) and cages; Susan brought up the amazing painting in the Memorial Art Gallery called 3 Fujin by Hung Liu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Fujins   Here, three concubines are seated, unable to move, their faces like masks, the background dripping paint like "weak calligraphy" and bird cages come out of their knees.   What connections can exist in history?  For many of us, we have thought of travel as a physical choice.  Judith brought up the New England attitude of Thoreau who said, "I traveled widely, in Concord" where travel is a opening of awareness to what is around us.  "Is it lack of imagination that makes us come/to imagined placed, not just stay at home?"  Such a curious question.  We discussed the various angles implied.  The choice is "never wide and never free".  We don't choose where we were born, certainly emotions turn us to make choices, such as love in Bishop's case, (carrying her to Brazil).  Our choices are shaped by society... and even with our imagination we think free, that too has been "whittled" and perhaps devoid of song, although the cage is for a songbird.  The poem ends with the poet speaking, reading what she has written in the sudden golden silence after 2 hours of unrelenting oratory.  Pascal's  philosophy indeed contains the statement" "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".  Rather like Descartes, "Je pense donc je suis" (I think therefore I am).  The big question is "what makes us real-- " and this balance between the heart and mind (The  heart has reasons of which reason cannot know.).

We ended by discussing where we feel at home.

Miami yet Maine: I love that M, I A are letters that spell both places.  The poem tugs lie a tide back and forth, the p's of the soft harp of snow plucking pine... lulling to peace... (Maine) and the bongo and rhythms  of rain rapping rooftops (Cuba).  In this intimate poem, Blanco does not hide his vulnerability, where "queer childhood" declares his homosexuality, prepares us for the English of his husband, he responds to in Spanish.  It is a beautifully sensual poems filled with scents, and tastes of food.  The tug of childhood, where lavender clouds swaddle mountain peaks... with his dying father, his head cradled in his hand... Although... still... Despite... Though... a thread pulls him through, birth to death, what lives, no matter where you end up, when you die.

Complaint:  This is a formerly popular variety of poem that laments unrequited love, or tells of personal misfortune, misery, injustrice.  See La Complainte Rutebuef (late 13th century) or Ronsard, "Complainte contre fortune (1559).   Here, it is the River Rio Grande  speaking.    We remarked the flow of the poem, like a river, which carries the message -- "I was meant for all things to meet" -- both in the opening line and first line of the final stanza.  Have you ever imagined what air a river breathed, the sounds it heard long before we were born?   Blanco does not mention pollution, and I'm glad for the detail "the clouds pause in the mirror of my waters, to be home for fallen rain... " and its  power to  "turn eons/of loveless rock into lovesick pebbles, carried as humble gifts back/to the sea which brings life back to me."

Then, two stanzas of what mankind has done -- inventing maps, borders, defining mine, yours,/ us vs. them/ and disregard for life whose worth is relative.  You can hear the pain of the river protesting what it was never meant to be.  

We felt that Blanco is the river, his voice painting the natural world... for how else could he give it such voice?  

Calmly we walk: Delmore Schwartz, 1913-1966, wrote this poem in 1937.  This brilliant poem addresses the passing of time, like a piece of music, one senses the dynamics, the tones contained in the parenthesis. The first "that time is..." is a statement.  The second time it is repeated, the emphasis seems to be on "that", where the pronoun changes from "we" to "they".  Judith immediately recalled François Villon, "Où sont les neiges d'antan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_des_dames_du_temps_jadis.

Calmly we walk?  We might look calm on the outside, but fully caught in time,  that fire in which we burn.    For Schwartz, bipolar, sadly, his short life ended badly.

The Country: We ended on a light note and roared at Billy Collins' wit.  Very much the spirit of  "Tout va bien Mme. la Marquise" (Tom Lehrer does a fine translation: https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/all-is-well.pdf .  People recalled Wallace & Grommet and mice taking a rocketship up to the moon to taste the green cheese, ex.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5HmJaRhf4

 

 

poems for March 27-8

 A Portable Paradise  by Roger Robinson; Algebra  by Sarah Brown Weitzman; Circles  by Nikita Parik (inspired by Tamil Poetry and an artwork entitled "Conflict Resolution"; Spring  by Gerard Manley Hopkins; Fiction by Lisel Mueller; Why I Needed To by Richard Blanco;

We started the discussion Wednesday March 27, with announcements and news about members.  Although we gather for poetry, this makes for powerful connection and fellowship.  Mary shared this poem she wrote for her brother, Al, who just passed away, saying, these weekly gatherings gave her confidence to express herself .

My Brother AL

A man of many talents

A man of quiet

Words

He had the look of

John Wayne--Remember?? Yes he had the "look"

Did not have much to say...but you knew

Al was a gentle person

Knew how to listen and of course ,"give the" Look"

Be at peace Brother Al, rest your eyes..to give

us the "look" when we Arrive! 

  At the end, Alla recited a poem in Russian  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--j8ZkFf1NU  and translated it for us: (my rough translation:  Mama's asleep, she's tired and I am not playing; I don't spin my top but sit down and stay there.  My toys are silent. it's  quiet in the empty room.  A golden ray of sunshine is slowly creeping across her pillow.  I would also like to move, do many things:  read out loud, play with my ball, sing a song, laugh...  But no matter what I want to do... Mama is sleeping and I am quiet.   The  ray of sunlight slides across the wall and comes to my side.  It's OK,  it says, We'll sit quietly together. 

Nutshell of discussion: 

A Portable Paradise:  Starting a poem on "And" is always intriguing... as if stumbling into a conversation just in time to overhear someone's thoughts.  Lovely alliterations, with soft kisses of "P", not just portable paradise in his pocket on his person, with its piney scent what will help him deal with pressure, meditate in an empty room (and three H's pop up  with a ho-ho- ho Hotel, Hostel, Hovel) with a lamp... and "empty" becomes a verb... not a command to "empty your pockets" but rather, reconsider all we carry with us-- everything we love, memories, pour it all out on the desk.  Perhaps for you it is mountains, and you "trace the ridges" in your pocket, or perhaps white sands, fresh fish and you can shine your lamp on your paradise like "the fresh hope/of morning."  We all agreed, a perfect poem to remember what keeps us going, and no one can take it away from us.

Algebra: Although the poet does not mention the Arabic etymology, reunion of broken parts,  indeed, Algebra helps us consider "problems of space and time".  Fortunately we had Mathematician Minds in the group who had fun with the "Two trains" problem.  We don't know the specifics of where they are, where they are headed and how, so how possibly could you decipher at what point they will meet?  Many related to the problem of being called on in class, just when you were anywhere else but following the lesson.   What seems to be important are the "what ifs" .  A whimsical look at how we teach, how we enjoy the satisfaction of a formula... and how often a formula provides the satisfaction of finding answer.  The Kingston Trio, "Morrow" https://genius.com/The-kingston-trio-to-morrow-lyrics (1960) song came up!

Circles:  We all loved the powerful pull of this poem, and the unique Tamil technique of the Antati where the last word of a stanza is used in the first line of the next.  Interesting that only two words are italicized, and also contained in the larger kernel of 6 lines, the "filling" so to speak between two sets of tercets.  We all remarked how skillfully the final stanza echoed the first.  It brought up associations of other songs and folktales which use enumeration, for instance in the tale of the turnip,  https://storiestogrowby.org/story/the-giant-turnip-folktale/ or the jumprope song "Miss Susie ..." https://allnurseryrhymes.com/miss-susie-had-a-steamboat/

Spring:  proposed by Judith, but sadly she wasn't there.  Sprung rhythm, alliterations, spring forth the joys and energy of the season against a backdrop of religious references.  Hopkins, as Jesuit Priest, was only recognized posthumously for his contributions to Victorian poetry and his idea of "inscape of speech".   A beautiful rejuvenating sonnet  with the one syllable "ing"  rhyme (1,4,5,8) lengthening to the longer beginning, sinning, winning (10,12,14).  If you have never seen the eggs of a thrush, they are indeed a vibrant blue-green-- "little low heavens" -- and how lovely that "thrush"  as verb enjambs into the "echoing timber"  without mentioning the word "bird song".  Elaine mentioned how in Tuscon, AZ, if you have old tires in the yard, they'll just be that, and nothing will grow about them.  Here, however, indeed, we have the joyful "weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush" !

Fiction: In two stanzas, we have a sense of a story of a couple, without ever knowing the story, rather like the poem Circles.  Lush descriptions of spring "unrolling like a proper novel", then the odd arrival at complications. In the return trip, the use of maroon that goes wild,  scarlet that burns... back to tentative pink skillfully paints this couple,  who will most probably continue being distant, at odds with each other, and unable to start over.

Why I needed to:  This poem skillfully handles enjambments, allowing paradoxical juxtapositions and surprises from the beginning "absurd" (gods of urgency); punished good deeds "leaving me " (empty)... because I praise hating", (self).  What is in our internal inbox?  If you "emptied it out",  can you relate to the feeling of "empty"?  We all appreciated the vulnerability shared, the sense of a mosaic that we all are, our fears, weaknesses, backgrounds.  He paints his family: the mother "bitter", only to land on the next line with "sweet", the father mentioned after "bland"... the untold story in the "half" (stanza break) "moons of his eyes... his brother, at his death sharing "hurt at happy hour, so unhappily grateful for (stanza break) love's wreckage.  He paints his husband, and grateful returns again, humbling... and "half" expands to "half the life" (line break) I have left.  The repetition of "because" rolls over the ears like the very waves he describes at the end... coupled with the increase of sibilance, breaking and breaking.  Read the poem, you will want to read it again and again, finding more and more. 

poems for March 20-21

 Trash by Lowell Jaeger; Good by Wendell Berry; Greed by Tony Hoagland; Inscription for a War, by AD Hope; The Year of the Eclipse by Elizabeth Knapp;  The Stare's Nest by my Window, by W.B. Yeats, an untitled poem by Gregory Orr, Weeping...  About Those Apples by Cindy Guentherman

We started with a cartoon about Spring:   March is great! You can binge on all four seasons in one day.  I never thought about coupling the verb “binge” with “weather” as if we are consumers now even of temperatures and angles of sunlight?  (Indeed, the day before Spring,  there was a delivery of snowstorm with bitterly cold temperatures.) The Wednesday group also had fun warming up by sharing one-word/one sentences (separate handout).

Nutshell:

Trash: Perhaps many never have thought about how trash is part of the modern age of technology, as machines entered daily life, and the car, plane, cruise ship, and packaging industries contribute litter and pollution to the planet. The contrast between the organic lifestyle of Indians replaced by one which produces "trash".  The poem is clever with rhymes, enjambments and play on words such as "leaves" and "return".  Apparently Leonard YoungBear, mentioned in the first stanza is an artist.   Judith brought up the image of the Potter, (Omar Khayyám:(1048–1131, Firtzgerald's translation 1905) in the quatrain "The Pots Criticize the Potter. From “Quatrains” (Rubaiyat).  ) and the natural exfoliation if you rub palms together.  

We have plenty to fear, but the poet plays with fear of death, with the truncated end line of stanza three:  (I'm not afraid anymore/ of dying.  It's trash

The line/stanza break lands to finish the thought: "that worries me.  Caskets. I keep thinking/ and the 4th stanza provides more concrete images of trash which even if buried, is "spit back".  Ressurrection takes on new meaning, introduced by one more line/stanza break I'd sooner fall.../  

 These stanza breaks invite the reader to think about what lies beneath the grass, and where and what a fall might lead.  What comes to mind with the metaphorical woods  to feed many hungers beside my own ? Jim brought up the findings of teeth in the sand worm resembling those of te T-Rex.  We were sensitive to the paradox in the closing stanza, ("part of me will swim downstream in the cold eyeball of a fish"/"my soul /under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.).   That closing image is so positive, hopeful, and for many left a good feeling in spite of "the trash".

Goods: The title connects abstract to concrete... the goods of good perhaps, but also knowing Berry lived on a working farm, had horses,  links the opening line's use of the word "immemorial" to the last word "ancestry".  Indeed, this small 11-line poem provides the reader the kind of "satisfaction" of feelings of hunger, third, and how work-weariness is enjambed to earned rest.  "Green growth" of the mind brings up many old references, whether the call and response song, "Green Grow the rushes ho", or celebration of return of Spring.   We discussed at length the words "gayety" and "shudder" -- how a horse shudders under its skin to flick off flies, or the hooves pound the earth,  and the contrast of the plodding pace of work to a sense of gayety in the stride, the solo work in the field, falling from "loneliness to love."  This is the kind of poem so beautifully crafted, yet impossible to render "in other words".  The kind of poem to memorize because so much can be felt between the lines.

Greed: Just one word.  Both a poem about greed but also a poem about language.  How our understanding is conditioned by words, and taken out of context leads us to different directions.   Four times we see the word "greed" four times the word "just", both of which are layered with connotations.  The last line is like a dare-- can we say the word "greed" calmly, without inflection, unattached to its "traditional form of suffering"?  We don't know anything about why or how the person who wrote just this one word in this one specific intersection (we are told where it is twice) .  We  appreciated how we were told was it is not which insinuates what it could be.    From Trash, to Goods, to Greed... and we arrive at a cemetery... Kafka's  work The Trial came up... the truth is indivisible and cannot recognize itself.

Inscription for a war: see the post before this for pictures of the Fort Rosencrantz cemetery.  Many did research about the war in 480 BC at Thermopylae.  Alec Derwent Hope delivers the kind of poem that should be posted in every national cemetery honoring those killed in battle.  How could the discussion not talk about other wars and their stories?  Elmer brought up Vietnam, the pain of knowing High School buddies slain where all glory is stripped out of an epigraph which refers to following orders.  There are many other translations of Simonides words.  However it may be, the witness reading them on a burial mound, has not been among those fallen.  The irony is that we have not learned anything and continue to kill each other.  We were all moved to tears.  Looking at a sweep of graves as far as the eye can see, the first thought of a mother having sent her boy to battle but is among the fortunate to return, "It could have been my son."  Lysistrata came up, Gallipoli, the distrust of British officers, soldiers used like commodities, nations shutting down birth control so more "cannon fodder" produced.

We read the untitled Gregory Orr poem after as sequel.  Weeping.  If it is one of the "world's tasks, it doesn't lack adherents".  It's greater than finding fault.  For Gregory, reading a poem like AD Hope's makes him feel he has been given more courage to live. 

The year of the eclipse: the political implications of 2017 is part and parcel of this poem pairing both literal and metaphorical shadow over America.  This April, it will be hard not to sense the same a simlar connection.  What do we assume about the sun in the sky?  About democracy?  about what we presume to be "normal"?  What happens when all that is left of love, is the idea of it?

Kathy brought up the excellent essay by Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse.  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/ Highly recommend her book from 1982, Teaching a Stone to Talk. 

The Stare's Nest: Even though we know Yeats means starling it is hard not to feel that one is staring into emptiness in this poem.  Part of the larger "Meditations in Time of War", this was written during the Irish civil war. The repeated refrain as last line turns the key in the lock of our uncertainty, and the hardening of our hearts. Here, the hope of loosening, to allow the honey bees in, to rebuild in the emptied home,

About those Apples: This poem was so well told, it engaged us all and many shared stories and alternatives for the ending.  Most felt the weak impotence of the abusive husband was best underlined by his self-absorbed final question.  I liked that some wanted him at least to use 3 or 4 choice swear words of retaliation against the wife, as if to underscore his abusive nature.  We were curious about the note by the series editor, as the poem didn't feel like peeling an apple in a single strand.  The mid-point, "I quietly disappeared forever" perhaps could be strengthened by mentioning preparations to leave.   (I quietly prepared to disappear forever.).

Poems for March 20-21 -- Supplement of the Cemetary at Fort Rosencrans

 Poems selected included Inscription for a War by A.D. Hope, and the 6th poem in W.B. Yeats, Meditations in time of Civil War

One of my friends shared these two photos of the Cemetary at Fort Rosecrans, outside San Diego.

: 

As she puts it:  It is an overwhelming place,  which never fail to solicit tears for me.  Gravestones in every direction as far as your eye can see…

I replied to her with these links of the cemetary: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Cemetary+at+Point+Loma&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 - lpg=cid:CgIgAQ==,ik:CAoSLEFGMVFpcE9YZ0c2eERQWTJnampTWUxWVFZCeXhoME0wM1oyUXdaN3g4QTlV

 

It's hard to see... all these silent white markers, no sign of the individuals, as if whatever life they led before fighting in a war didn't matter.  Indeed, they "took the orders" but now dead,

they cannot tell us about the life they could have lived instead.

 

One photo makes it look as if the white rows are arranged like festooned ribbons,

in the foreground, so many different silent pathways for the eye to arrange, repeating

no longer (Roy Cormier's photo).  It's a brilliant photo, with the level line of blue ocean,

the grave markers in the background amassed like tiny piles of pebbles, and only tops of trees planted below, except for two which show their trunks as well.