Also Known As by Jim Moore
Ruins by Eliza Griswold
Low Road by Marge Piercy
Szymborska: What happens when you take numbers and apply them to abstract nouns? With her habitual wry humor, Szymborska addresses the human condition.
She starts with those who know better, and all the rest, who are unsure of every step. Are there only
two categories? Humans should know better than to use an adverb like “always”, especially in the context of “good” barren of any defining context. And will I be the first to admit that I struggle not to feel a titch of envy when I admire someone? At least, there are 82 others per hundred like me, although I join a slightly smaller crowd of those “led to error”. Do you live in constant fear? Where does your mind go with such a question—? Do you imagine totalitarian state, make columns of which fears are real, which imaginary. And how about how you behave in a crowd? Do you become savage? Define cruelty, wisdom, justice… and each word in the phrase “getting nothing out of life except things”. The discussion touched on several possibilities, such as,
things which are of value, things as part of contemptible capitalism, or things as what is considered “devoid of emotion. The conceit of the poem comes from this juxtaposition of concrete measurement to subjective items.
What does it suggest about “ranking” and judgement? Jim suggested this poem be shared with all departments
of sociology and psychology. And who might be the one out of 99 who is not worthy of empathy?
In the end, does any of this matter, since we all face inevitable death?
Jim Moore: We enjoyed the conversational tone, the clear thinking, the turn from the idea of someone dying in the first line, to the larger vision of “sky” which blankets the earth and the surprise of the ending. In French, the word for sky is also the word for heaven or heavens, and indeed, if we compared Earth, as one small planet in the universe, to our brief existence on Earth, our personal story indeed does not need a loudspeaker. So, take time to wait, contemplate on that green bench… get over yourself!
Griswold: Take a cliché, say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and change it up. The title comes from the closing line: Rome is also built on ruins. The Poet is a journalist and one has the sense she has experienced horros up close. The opening stanza alternates the repulsive with what could be appealing… Spring in Trastevere, a town outside Rome, Ragazzi, turquoise sneakers, paperwhites… but the day is oozing…the nuns sneakers clash with the ability to mount stairs, and the alliterative p treatment of pus in pimples pushing up like paperwhites describes the adolescents. Spring — and what springs up… Like the image of a dead man left in the road in the Congo. Like this. No, like that… How spring and the idea of eggs hatching and bulbs sneak into description of a heart. The last stanza with the flock of tourists, like scavengers, but in matching hats. And the realization that being Rome’s ruins, are filled with life… the surprising healing of feeling alive, although she is too good a poet to say it that way. It’s curious that we discussed Merwin and his poem where gratitude walks hand in hand
with misery.
see below.
Piercy: This poem of resistance, well-known from the 60’s and 70s. How would you finish these sentences:
“What can they do…
“It starts when you do…
But the line break finishes the sentences this way: “What can they do/to you? with a graphic description of horrible things one could do to another.
The second phrase: “It starts when you do… needs the context of an entire stanza:
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
We decided that we would all make signs that say, “violence ends when you say WE”…
The final poem by Roque Dalton confirms the power of unanimous blood.
Another wonderful session.
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