Rundel October 19 + mention of Rumi colloquium

Pittsford closed this week.
Rundel:

"How Do you Play. What's the Score" by Rob Carney
Sunday on the Rocks by Marjorie Stelmach
Portrait in Graphite and Ornamental Hagiography by C. Dale Young
Summer of Lemons by Marjorie Thomsen
Glen Big by Richard Hugo

Note to the group sent with the poems:

Enclosed, the poems for Thursday. The first two come from a site called “The Poet’s Billow” and were listed in the 2017 Pangaea prize

https://thepoetsbillow.org/literary-art-gallary/2017-pangaea-prize/.  I include the link, just in case you want to browse through other poems on the site.

I found the Rascal site equally intriguing https://rascaljournal.com/issue-01-rascal/ (I selected the last one from there.).  

In the Rumi colloquium yesterday,the keynote speaker, Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz addressed the topic of why Rumi would be relevant today — especially in America…. Her main point:

he is a poet of hope.  He reminds each of us to look deep inside — “teach your heart not to sit in sadness”.  It is through the language of the heart that we rise up what keeps us down.  Good poems do this… and I look forward to our discussion.

There was mention of “hagiography” which usually is a way to refer to writing about the lives of saints — but also could be adulatory writing about anyone important.  The C. Dale Young poem addresses this in a contemporary, American  way.   

Perhaps the best part of the colloquium (for me) was the music, where Omar, known as virtuoso and peacemaker played the Ney, a vertical flute played 

out of the side of the mouth. He also sang Sema Safa— you can see “whirling dervishes” singing this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0qMEfaQvBI 

and gave an impassioned speech at the end of how each of us carries a “quest” planted by the Beloved (God) to follow. We come in touch with it, through the singing, dancing which lights up the soul inside us.  No wonder the best “alms” to give is your genuine smile — the expression on your face when you

feel you are being the person you were meant to be!

Comments of the group:
The first poem, set in short, breathy couplets seems to refer to "score" as music, and play, as an instrument, although the subject seems to be the night sky.  The enjambments give room and slow
down the action of "pinning", the ground thawing.  The repetition of "by rule, which starts
as the end of the 3rd line; begins the 5th line also imitates the action of "pinning".
There is a sense of mystery behind rocks, skeletons persisting, but not snow... a sense of
Spring melt-- life continuing in seasons.  "That's the rule".
Why is interest temporary?  Why points deducted?
Is there a relationship to the fact "there is always a waning moon"?

How to understand "rule" -- who's in charge of the "cooking"?

The second poem had an epigram taken from a book which was somewhat distracting to some of the group.  Prayer and Praxis... inside and outside... applied to "Sunday on the Rocks" which could mean,
break-up after church, or physically walking by the shore for a picnic.
What do we glean?
The second part of the poem feels like prayers... to the wind; to the salt in the sea, the sun... the w's in the penultimate stanza -- perhaps a "marriage of heaven (w's) and earth", (part of  the title of the book from which the epigram is taken)  "spun/by our own kneeling pulse".

The w's:  "let us wheel / with the world-wheel/ wise to the world's/greeds,/wicked and bold/in the ways of the winged/...
The final stanza is filled with S's and plurals.

Although is was not an easy poem, in the end, if you ask, "were you glad to read it", the answer was yes.  Not a poem that leads to "eureka" but a feeling of listening to music.

The 3rd poem is called "Portrait" -- with the amusing detail of pencil and "ornamental Hagiography"--like an illuminated manuscript!  We are introduced to what we think is a Catholic High School student.  One sentence which caught us:
Fractured, divided to the quick, I am incapable/
(stanza break)
of being singular.

What is the relationship of being true to one thing (God? the self?)'
What do you desire?  Are you like the poet, wanting a category? a designation?
The portrait hints at failure, the worst of which is the failure of imagination.

the violent dive-bombing of humming birds feels to me in direct contrast of the "cross-stitching"
they do in flight...
how does the poet feel  watching how they have "no semblance of fear or distrust"--
being near them. does he?

The summer of lemons felt like watching a still-life being painted... What is it that  lemons sometimes lose?  And how is there absence helpful?  We arrive mid-summer, at the end
of the poem, perhaps both about an artist and his/her work,  and about a couple.

For Glen Uig, I googled this beautiful spot in Scotland to show.  There's a sense of the "wee folk"
and possibilities... a rock looks to be a castle... history and days dance in the bracken... myths
of monsters... The final stanza is like a prayer, of a lover to his loved one.

The final poem "prospect nocturne" was inspired by a painting.
Nightmare, 1959.
Again, a painter mentioned... Rothko --
and a sense of a highly abstract musical composition.
to see the painting:  https://rascaljournal.com/addie/prospect-nocturne/