O Pen : Poems for June 5

Coming to the Morning  by W.S. Merwin
Business by Gregory Fraser
A Word on Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska
Also Known As  by Jim Moore
The Low Road by Marge Piercy
Like You by Roque Dalton --Translated by Jack Hirschman 

See Oasis, May 16: 

1.  Merwin:  We all love Merwin and invented an adjective in his honor.  Merwinesque implies that one is dealing in multiples, not literals... 
There is something so quietly metaphysical... our origins in the sea... and the ears, shaped like seashells...
Coming to morning is a wonderful title...is coming a noun or gerund?  who is coming?  who is you? The morning?   All of man?  The first morning (feel of Genesis and in the beginning the separation of night and day) it doesn't seem to matter since everything is so interconnected.   Let there be light!

musical.   mmmmm…  stress pattern… like waves

cannot talk about Merwin poem “literally”

deals in multiples… spatial and temporal

Maui in morning… /all of man;/ cosmic/. beginnings… 

testing limits of literal: metaphor. (David). plain statements stretched to metaphor

2. Business:  busy-ness.  How do you say "this is my business" and how does that change the meaning?   What is "business" -- affairs of the world... the world.  the thusness of this.

wonderful poem combining humor and seriousness... a reminder of mindfulness.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/business

what’s the right way to understand our perceptions

Things seen are as things seen.  Wallace Stevens.

I love how the lines out of context play on ulterior meanings, for ex.

Whose life hasn’t been that jacket, (and you think of life-jacket), but the line before is about

the spare (required) sports jacket... allowing business + one's "business" to spar.

3.  Szymborska:  the one stanza where there is not statistic is about cruelty.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:    
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.     

The conceit of the poem comes from this juxtaposition of concrete measurement to subjective assessment.  Pithy and smacking of Szymborska's spittle and wit.

4. AKA.  Enjoyable, but we felt the last line unnecessary.  Getting over yourself was understood. We looked him up.

JIM MOORE is the author of five collections of poetry. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Spoleto, Italy, and is getting used to being the oldest person in the room.

overtone of “suffer the little children… keys to kingdom of heaven.”

poem about getting perspective.  how reconcile the fact of dying.

5. The Low Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNjiPNd9iwU. (eloquent reading of the poem.

The beginning makes you think of Abu Graibh…
We discussed the context of the song Loch Lommond.

you’ll take the high road… king’s road.. families on low road.
see background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond

6.  Like you:
associations: Dalton an exile from san salvadore… 

"I will die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible". — Tagore

ordinary miracles... change can come on tiptoes...