2018 !!!! January 3 -- O Pen

Dear Friends,

As we approach 2018, it is easy to pen good wishes, hopes— but that doesn’t change much, whether it be December 31,

and reading The Darkling Thrush, imagining Hardy writing as Jan. 1, 1900 is about to roll in, or  reading Robert Frost’s comments about age.**    I was looking for a note of humor to continue the fun of the poem by  Meyerhofer last week … but found no match.  I quote instead Mark Twain: "New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. - Mark Twain”

I hope the medley below will suffice in variety.  As ever, I am grateful to all who attend in person and in spirit.  

Thank you for being part of my life in 2017.

Love,

Kitty

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K.C.

The Rolling English Road  by - G.K. Chesterton
This first poem was chosen not to illustrate the above quote, but rather to enjoy 
the rollicking rhythms.
For the next three, see Rundel, Jan. 4, as they were also discussed there.

If I Could Tell You  by W.H. Auden

   Holy Pictures by Finvola Drury

blessing the boats (at St. Mary's) by Lucille Clifton

Woe Are You? by Don Mee Choi 

    To the New Year by W. S. Merwin

    Design by Robert Frost

Fin Drury:  I read aloud Joe Flaherty's description of this local Rochester poet who died in 2016.  She was a powerhouse
for poetry, and  political advocacy.  Her poem on the Vietnam war is in the book from which "Holy Pictures" came.
The poem as chosen for Poets Walk where poems which take place outdoors were favored.  I thought of the title in the spirit of
"Holy Smokes" -- how can a prayer card, perhaps offered at a funeral, or picked up at a mass be like common litter,
"muddied and tire-marked"...  It's not just the faithful that I wish "were a little more careful".  The subtle humor of St. Anthony "getting out", the idea of unsolicited mail-- perhaps also of mail... and those intriguing capital letters spelling out
NEVER WRITE YOUR RETURN ADDRESS AGAIN"... perhaps part of the story of the murder of an innocent boy...
or hinting at how fate can find you...

The Don Mee Choi gave rise to a rousing discussion.  The style is deliberately choppy, unpredictable, unsettling with
enjambed broken words  and isolated lonely singletons.  Her use of the word hardly-- which has 6 definitions, often at odds
with each other, reminds me of Louis Menard's article on language in the era of Trump where a word means its opposite.

Facts about the Korean war came up : 4 million killed; 1 million displaced.  The alternate name for the Korean War is ironic:  "Peace Mission"  The role of the US and the strange post-world war II focus on "making democracy safe" -- which is as appallingly anti-democratic in arrogant, political agendas... why are there
120 US bases throughout the world?  As Judith said, "a pox on  Pax Americana… "Korea, with  more priests per capita… perhaps could have solved its own North/South divide... 

Ken's story: 

Hard.  Hardly.  Hardily…  hardly done.  meanly?  difficult…  6 definitions..

scourge is also a loaded word...

We discussed the use of "white" (very different from the Frost poem, or Moby Dick...)

White as the color of mourning... of innocence...  and also "paper dresses" 

Quite a poem with quite an impact... 

We didn't spend much time on the Merwin -- wishing Kathy, our expert were there to help 

us navigate.  "You" can be both personal and universal...  His cosmic view  seems to honor  the smallest of moments as though they were utterly significant-- whether or not anyone notices... whether or not one hears (both, in the physical sense of registering and understanding.)-- there is something positive about the ending... our hopes "invisible before us

untouched and still possible".

I shared David's comments about the Frost poem.  The title, Design, "is one of the most loaded philosophical terms:  Frost loved to provide red herrings, feints, false clues in his poems.  Darwin… and natural process of selection: are the many relationships of predator and prey—creating finally an intricate and ongoing web, or design, among the living and dying. One life is always feeding on another, sustained by another’s death.

Perhaps because the poem followed Merwin's... Martin brought up the idea as  darkness being what  can't see… unknown…

Judith gave the attribute of the color of dirty pearls to the whiteness of the spider... 

The last question is troubling... But what if...

We noted how the question mark comes before the last line... separating the "what"

as if inevitable darkness is the conclusion of scientific determinism...  

David's words: "Frost plays with his readers’ tendency to imagine a deity behind nature. But if this death-scene represents a deliberate design, the intentions of this designer are dark and appalling."