Sightings BY DONOVAN MCABEE
Origami, by Joyce Sutphen
Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
The Social Life of Water
We wondered when Cummings wrote his sonnet... picked up on echoes of TS Eliot (Wasteland, 1922) Of course the punctuation bears note -- that odd defiance of colon... no space around it, only to repeat the words "This is a garden." simple, non-poetic sentence starting the second stanza of this 14-line poem -- is it playing to be a sonnet with one stanza of 8, another of 6? There are echoes of Frost,
Nothing Gold can stay. https://poets.org/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay
First Stanza: go/snow embrace wing/lingering
blow/slow embrace sing string
the sound system: lightness of f, t sibilances altering from ss to z,whooshing in strong, (followed by silent, silently) absolute, baths, bathe. A sort of hissing in pursed lips echoed in the ps sting of harps
released in celestial followed by the tension of str in string.
In the second stanza, time shears with the sh/sh certitude of shall surely and slow to arrive at sleep.
The echo of silent in "other songs be sung" creates a sense of two worlds in the two stanzas, the first more literal, the second metaphysical.
Steal has two senses. to walk quietly/softly progress as well as to rob. The Silver-fingered fountain (those fluttering, frail f's!!!!) evokes the sense of wisdom-infused sages creating, not gold, but the reflective silver of words penned to stay.
The group picked up on the magical, mystical, almost religious overtones.
**
Such a contrast with the Ewing poem. She too plays with punctuation -- why no capital letters for the beginning of sentences? The title allows us to twist history. What happened in 1955, is happening now... maybe in Mississippi, maybe elsewhere; maybe retelling the story, how it might have been otherwise...
The skill of the opening stanza -- a grocery store! And a black teen... where plums stand for vulnerability... and a sense of coffin taking a human cradling:
"looking over the plums, one by one
lifting each to his eyes and
turning it slowly, a little earth,
checking the smooth skin for pockmarks
and rot, or signs of unkind days or people,
then sliding them gently into the plastic.
lifting each to his eyes and
turning it slowly, a little earth,
checking the smooth skin for pockmarks
and rot, or signs of unkind days or people,
then sliding them gently into the plastic.
whistling softly, reaching with a slim, woolen arm
into the cart, he first balanced them over the wire
before realizing the danger of bruising
and lifting them back out, cradling them
in the crook of his elbow until
something harder could take that bottom space."
into the cart, he first balanced them over the wire
before realizing the danger of bruising
and lifting them back out, cradling them
in the crook of his elbow until
something harder could take that bottom space."
Brought to mind : I thought I saw Joe Hill last night
Everyone loved the Obit (clock).
Clever conceit and opening!
The Clock—died on June 24, 2009 and
it was untimely. How many times my
father has failed the clock test.
it was untimely. How many times my
father has failed the clock test.
Indeed.. how we all fail to survive time.. our discussion included references to actual scientists interviewed, the need for "memory soles" on shoes, so at least you can remember when you
walk into the kitchen where you are... and the marvelous story of the Rabbi who is the judge
of differing stories, each teller told, you're right. and when the third person points out the paradox,
he too, is right.
\
**
It could be another poem about alzheimers... or Buddhism... or the "conviction" that
puts us into self-created cells. The opening and closing sentence is set up differently,...
It's as if... + and on it a single sentence
in a language you don’t know. vs.
you’d yearn
for that one single sentence in a language you don’t know
What sentence sums up your life? How is it a sentence determines how you live it.
**
The next poem starting out so lightly, almost funny, allows space for grief of a man,
perhaps an atheist, mocking religion earlier, to feel two years later, the deep faith
of the one he loved and mourns.
**
The group wanted to workshop the Sutphen.
tone: created by potential… origami… undanced floor.. —good. too Dr. Seuss-y; too tidy. a little too didactic. Sophisticated ideas for a grandmother to a granddaughter…
**
The two Hoagland poems were of course well-received.
How many times do you wonder -- "and if I could sum it up in one word..."
The title prepares us for the inability to communicate the pain of everything going along
(we think) smoothly, then pop, there goes a friendship, a marriage, darn, even the place you were reading a book, -- then, after losses, a tree...not just any tree, but one that has heart-shaped leaves Hoagland calls spade-shaped. He doesn't sentimentalize, but gives us the scene, how it is to diminish, cede to cancer... and that small and yet...that makes you feel life is on your side.
**
Even though we had run out of time (well.. continued towards 2 pm... !)
The Social Life of Water tweaked a lot of discussion... comments included.
power of water. David's scientific explanation of what happens to the two oxygen because of one hydrogen ...
personnification of each body of water.
use of verbs.
water…so versatile in form-- but the key element: it reflects.
unicity of being human… wonderful — but paradoxically isolated…
grief of being separate from the all.
We’re always excluded.
Life is ineffable. Poetry helps us grasp it better.
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