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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

poems for November 18 and 21

In November by Lisel Mueller
Furniture Stephen Dobyns
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell by Gwendolyn Brooks
Cellophane: An Assay by Jane Hirschfield
The Envoy by Jane Hirschfield
Hirschfield’s translation of a poem by Izumi Shikibu


The poems for this week of November have somewhat of a thread addressing the role of time, and rewards of metaphors and looking at things from different perspectives.

For Mueller, she gives us the Hansel and” Gretl feel of fairy tale, or others commented,
a Rip Van Winkle-esque experience of waking up in the present, where a past life
100 years ago, is over, dreamt. "If I die before I wake" in the children’s lullaby
is replaced by waking to a present filled with coffee and sunlight. The longest line of the 19 line poem, “But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.” follows the line that “bad news is in distant places.” The Old Story and the personal “my” story point the reader to empathize with someone else living what could have been your life. It makes sense that Mueller escaped from Nazi Germany, and indeed, what might have been her story, was directed to others not as lucky.

I am reminded of Mueller’s poem “Things” in Dobyns’ poem “Furniture”, which provides metaphors on a meditation both perception of speed. The poem’s irony regarding perspectives on speed and our human tendency to rush into things (often missing the boat) and our view of the "stationary nature" of chairs, tables, is delightful. Ex. Facial movements and gestures, quarrels of chairs... and the fact that "They move
a little quicker than raindrops sculpt a rock."

The discussion focussed not on the cleverness, the contrast of our "persistent thought" and their inflexible humility, but the end:
"... Humbly, they allow

themselves to be pushed around, piled
in a corner, sold from an auction block.
Yet they always offer us the other cheek.

Let us crouch before them to gather up
the rich bounty of their wisdom. But no,"

Very tongue-in-cheek, with an enjambment/stanza break "they allow / themselves" which seems reluctant.
Martin offered the comment about turning the other cheek: if a nobleman struck a peasant, he used the back of his hand. So to turn the other cheek would force the noble to strike again, but use the palm of his hand,
thus putting the aggressor in the wrong. We would expect the a different last line after "But no,"...
not crouch, not gather up wisdom, but this:

"they don’t like us; they have never liked us."
I love the irony of the assumption -- which in a way opens the possibilities of examining relationship.

Going back to the "they / us" situation -- the enjambment for humans lies in the rushing:
"...as we rush and

rush and then arrive at our end. They see us
as we might see a speeding bullet. You ask
what has persistent thought brought them?"

Here, the human tries to explain what the non-human is about, in a way reminiscent of how each individual projects his worldview on others. Without ever saying how much we want to be "liked", or accepted,
or the problem of rushing about which interferes with creating opportunities for others to get to know us,
we end up with the world view of the non-human who has no use for us, much as we might need to sit on the fact.


Understanding the time period of poem delivers important context, as in the Brooks 14 line poem, written in 1963.
The hell mentioned in the title could be understood in a general sense, or the hell created by racial prejudice, and assassination of Martin Luther King, whose dream lies in "the puny light" of "wait". Note that the sentence continues with a semi-colon followed by eight lines introduced by "hoping"with the delayed object of what lies inward in little boxes of her will. The delay, the wait is drawn out, and she returns to the honey and bread of the beginning lines, but with a new twist --
Hoping...
"My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love."
What is "old purity"... what land of milk and honey keeps us going...is at risk?

The two clipped sentences on line five hint at hell: "I am hungry. I am incomplete." -- with no promise, guarantee of food, only the slim hope of "wait". The risk that inner "food" can survive outer "starvation" is great.
See APR Nov/Dec issue for Jane Hirschfield's discussion of this poem in her article about transformation.

The Hirshfield poem brought up quite a bit of discussion about cellophane/saran wrap, transparency,
promise of sealing (in freshness,) and the cost of transformation from "noble tree" to weightlessness.
What protects, yet reveals is not so simple: we struggled with the lines:
"Your art is audible. immodest:
to preserve against time."

and image of the flute, and old words in translation, "seen through".
This yearning for an "I" to be such a "you".










O Pen -- poems for Nov. 11 (Armistice Day)

Droplets by C.K. Williams
The Letter by Dana Gioia
Seeing for a Moment by Denise Levertov
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Radishes in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Apples in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Noise by Alicia Hoffman

11/11 when day and month match, and eleven marches like two soldiers lined up to remember
those who died in battle -- and might-have-beens layer, pocked with pauses remind us that no matter what experience, the well-crafted poem "unfastens the psyche's fortifications" to quote Jane Hirschfield somewhat out of context. If we steel ourselves against pain, we lose sight of the constant shifting involved with living that has nothing to do with "finding solutions once and for all".

The first poem by C.K. Williams threads one sentence into four stanzas filled with commas, hesitancies,
on a rainy day in fall. The sounds, particularly the "f"s have a tremulous quality played against
the relatively hard "d"s (din and downpour) "g"s (gush, gutters)and final nasal of the first and last words (Even / again), rain, not, note, nocturne, own. Interior "n"s, (planted, piano, constant, inside, mingling, intensity, wondering, longing, anymore, never, instant repeating "ings" push the "faltering, fading" into its own radiant passing. The intimacy of an "I and you" allows the reader insight into the thought of endings, in seasons, in storms, in living, juxtaposed by the practice of notes.

Whether stillness is the white space, the curved breath of a comma, the way consonants embrace vowels,
each of the poems present a texture of "moments" that allows objects of the world to change.

**
Hirschfield remarks “A good poem turns fresh ground inside us, to meet fresh need. Gioia addresses the universal nature of expectation, which drives our desire, attitudes. Where is that letter that contained "life instructions"? Surely it went astray... and we laugh at the irony. Martin pointed out how expectations have changed looking at pre and post world war II; Judith quoted from As You Like It,
and it seemed the poem succeeded in "ploughing" us to identify new ways of recognizing need.

The Levertov poem: One comment was that it had to be written in first person, as it was addressing something quite impenetrable. "It" is repeated 4 times: It was... three times. It was a cocoon; it was deep water; it IS first things -- foiled against the word, eschatology, learned as a child:
( "The department of theological science concerned with ‘the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell’.) Kathy thought of Merwin's poem, "The Old Ones" -- they have come the whole way.
Dogs as Cerberus or plural watch dogs roused from sleep... Levertov takes "Seeing" as understanding in glimmers of things -- something that happens "for a moment" if we are there to perceive it.



The "war poems" roused much discussion -- Abraham/Isaac, and what didn't need to be; the short history of human kind and how Neanderthals acted (only able to cooperate in small groups) vs. Homo Sapiens ; the lie next to the cud... corrosion of tissues... analogous to corrosion of truth.
corruption... collusion of profits...

The two Rubin poems at first blush seemed "slight" -- which the discussion seemed to discount. Wartime brings us to a certain way of thinking... so a "distant" war as metaphor is less powerful than the images Owens provides us. Comments: heart of the radish lies on the red surface, bleeding...
apple ... no one tending the orchard. // Apple as reminder of back home. Forbidden fruit... Greek legend.

We concluded with Hoffman's poem, the final one in her book, "Like Stardust in the Peat Moss".
What is noisome... and what is it we say we do, tell about, as opposed to the silent unfurling being of a fern.




Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Poems for Nov. 4 -- O Pen

From the Poetry Foundation -- Poems for Halloween
"Thomas Moore, Edgar Allan Poe, and Christina Rossetti tell rhyming tales perfect for chilling spines around the campfire. Shakespeare’s singing charmers from Macbeth and Sexton’s “lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind” are some of poetry’s most infamous witches. We’ll never look at tree branches with an innocent eye again, thanks to Paul Laurence Dunbar and Louise Glück; Adelaide Crapsey and Mary Karr ensure the same for darkened windows. Michael Collier and Michael Waters mischievously depict the gender play and genial debauchery of costumes, while W.S. Di Piero and Carl Sandburg warn us that Halloween is a day when real danger might look fake, and vice versa. We get a peek into the demons and spirits of other cultures via Annie Finch and Rae Armantrout: whether you say ghost, genie, or djinn, the tingle in the spine is universal.
“Djinn” by Rae Armantrout
“All Souls” by Michael Collier: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178287
“To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window” by Adelaide Crapsey: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175531
“The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173459
“Field of Skulls” by Mary Karr: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171884
“A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp” by Thomas Moore: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174046
“To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad” by Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174155
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174262
“Her Kind” by Anne Sexton: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171268
“Song of the Witches” by William Shakespeare: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171942

I picked three from here: What is real, and what spirits lurk in trees... followed by three poems


Samhain BY ANNIE FINCH
All Hallows BY LOUISE GLÜCK
Theme in Yellow BY CARL SANDBURG
*
and

Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker
Study by Alicia Hoffman
The Lost Garden by Dana Gioia

**
DISCUSSION

I love this group! I love that Judith, as the walking memory, will pull out the pronunciation of Samhain (don't pronounce the M) and Rich picks up her invitation to set All Hallows by GLÜCK to music, and the wonderful interactions as we all strive in our way to understand the threads pulled up by the poems.

Annie Finch seduces the reader with sound, stiching past/present, neolithic amber, ancestors and dual meanings (veil, leave). What hedge of memory do we peep through, peel away, preserve, we who "die ourselves". This poem is satisfying, and a perfect meditative trigger for All Soul's.

I didn't know that the superstition of looking at the moon through tree branches will bring trouble, but Gluck certainly brings a chill with her "toothed moon" (optimists see a smile, pessimists see a threat)
like the choice of seeing "...barrenness/
of harvest or pestilence." "Come here little one... and the soul creeps out of the tree" transcends the sense of eerie vacancy, perhaps like Demeter longing for the return of Spring and her daughter. I loved the story of believing that Jesus lived in the knothole of a family's magnolia tree! But is such childlike thinking not the realm of poetry -- where truth relies on an army of lies ?(to quote Winston Churchill).

The delight of anthropomorphizing a pumpkin who speaks in the first person in Sandburg's poem reminded some of his children's stories (Rutabaga Tales) set in the land of Liver and Onions.


I had read the Barbara Crooker poem "All Saints" in the beginning -- and we enjoyed yet another way of looking at "ordinary" -- where the usual accidents didn't seem to happen. The sounds (alliterative B, L, P, SK's) the rounding of edges from "squares of light" to "circles of sunlight", the chuckle elicited by the line "I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb" the magic of the baby's roadways made in the "sofa's ridges and hills" paint a magic that we often forget to tap into.
The final 10-line, comma-stuffed sentence, speaks of the meal consumed only to illustrate the pause of a different kind of light:

The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.

We are not the ones in charge of the stars turning on. But are left with an example of how to unwrap a day like a gift.

Alicia Hoffman's opening poem from her new book, "Starlight in the Peat Moss" works on the same theme. She picks an artist’s word, Study, and like Michelangelo, carving away stone to find what is revealed, calls on Light to help us see beyond the ordinary.
X-ray leads to the reassurance that “It’s not a far stretch, this dark/room of ourselves.”
But Study might also be the location, or the continuing verb of what we do to render
into art and word what is so close to us, and yet not known.

Finally, the Dana Gioia poem, the Lost Garden, gave rise to a long discussion about desire --
how he treats the "subtraction of desire..." as a quality. What is loss? Why is "cool" for something normally hot, something positive?
We brought up stages of grieving and how it is a blessing to be reminded of the
image of who we are inside oneself... "Oh I still have that inside me."
We don’t wish for what is not... the game of "if only" or "I wish, which impoverishes the present.
We better understand the "I want" of the way we were, still can glimpse the possible "perfect Eden"--
Luscious language, beguiling with an old-fashioned flavor, yet avoiding cliche.

All these poems ask to be read again, pondered again.