I'm Working on the World by Wislawa Szymborska
Before I Was a Gazan by Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952
For Keeps by Joy Harjo - 1951-
Don't Go into the library -- by Alberto Rios
Shikwah by Khaled Mattawa
The first poem was written by Merwin in 1976, (age 73) before he lived in Hawaii, in a collection called. Writing to an unfinished accompaniment.
Don't Go into the library -- by Alberto Rios
Shikwah by Khaled Mattawa
The first poem was written by Merwin in 1976, (age 73) before he lived in Hawaii, in a collection called. Writing to an unfinished accompaniment.
Paul noted that the first 11 lines describe nature images, quiescent as opposed to the motion in next 11 lines.
Each object is an eye.
Reminded David of other Autumn poems, like Keats' Ode, and Wallace Stevens,
Reminded David of other Autumn poems, like Keats' Ode, and Wallace Stevens,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13261/sunday-morning
A beautiful weaving of everything together. Poetry without punctuation invites the reader to try
to make sense of the words, how to interpret lines, enjambments. We struggled with
"month of eyes" -- it is an apostrophe? the "you" mentioned that puts your hand /in my hand?
John sees "eyes" in September -- which has three of them... We also wondered about "boats of the spirit" --- and yet, without knowing, that didn't change the appreciation of imagining the turning
from night to day, the wandering mist in early morning-- never to come back--
which heightens an appreciation for the "what is now"... where or whatever the shore is, there is a sense of drawing to a close of a voyage in an incessant journey.
What governs a day under its own king?
We loved the Monologue for an Onion. With the title one expects the speaker not to be an onion,
which allows for a clever personnification of the onion. What great verbs that describe what we do
to an innocent onion... no wonder it makes us cry... we are exposed for what we are... deluded,
filled with desire, chopping and weeping idiots. Is this the way to go through life?
What relationship do we seek in union... or with onion. The world seen through veils. Of course!
and we? hungry to know where meaning is... but the poet uses enjambment... where meaning/
lies with a double entendre of "resting" and "not being truthful." The line "whatever you meant to love, in meaning to// does not find solution in the next line, but is interrupted...
a core that is// not one.
Someone quoted Sandburg: Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
A beautiful weaving of everything together. Poetry without punctuation invites the reader to try
to make sense of the words, how to interpret lines, enjambments. We struggled with
"month of eyes" -- it is an apostrophe? the "you" mentioned that puts your hand /in my hand?
John sees "eyes" in September -- which has three of them... We also wondered about "boats of the spirit" --- and yet, without knowing, that didn't change the appreciation of imagining the turning
from night to day, the wandering mist in early morning-- never to come back--
which heightens an appreciation for the "what is now"... where or whatever the shore is, there is a sense of drawing to a close of a voyage in an incessant journey.
What governs a day under its own king?
We loved the Monologue for an Onion. With the title one expects the speaker not to be an onion,
which allows for a clever personnification of the onion. What great verbs that describe what we do
to an innocent onion... no wonder it makes us cry... we are exposed for what we are... deluded,
filled with desire, chopping and weeping idiots. Is this the way to go through life?
What relationship do we seek in union... or with onion. The world seen through veils. Of course!
and we? hungry to know where meaning is... but the poet uses enjambment... where meaning/
lies with a double entendre of "resting" and "not being truthful." The line "whatever you meant to love, in meaning to// does not find solution in the next line, but is interrupted...
a core that is// not one.
Someone quoted Sandburg: Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
The craving we all have, the fantasy, to peel away layers thinking then, we will understand…
intellect fails.
What do you get when you peel back an onion? An onion!
The Szymborska poem is brilliantly translated and we speculated if the translators felt the same delight they created for us in English, working with the Polish. So, the world is a book... one we can revise, improve... with chapters... for instance on speech... How it can make you feel quite extraordinary when trading a "hi there" with a fish... suspected meanings... time, suffering, death...
The poem by Naomi Shihab Nye was a beautiful example of what could be everyday... 13 lines
about a math homework problem, 6 short lines of a world subtracted. An 19 line sentence followed
by one more in two lines: And now, I would do anything/for a problem I could solve.
What problems can we solve? How do we deal with unsolvable?
The Auden, in 4 nicely rhymed quatrains seems perhaps a bit contrived, a bit light. His deft use
of "stars that do not give a damn"... We concluded that happiness comes from feeling you love sufficiently… There's a reassurance in that although human, we are born with the capacity to love.
The title is more enigmatic that pinning down one person... but the bigger concept of being more loving
when in relationship as a goal... the ending line, is so cleverly understated... as if to sound almost silly,
and yet, it is dead serious: when all is dark, empty, just the IDEA of finding that sublime, eventually,
can only come by exercising the heart.
For Keeps reminded us of other "dream" poems -- Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes,
Short sentences, and then two two-line sentences that are about relationship. Mystery. And we are part of it.
Don't go into the Library had us in stitches! History has pegged . knowledge as dangerous Ah... burn the books... keep the people ignorant..! Paradoxical intention a wonderful ploy... and the great suspension of
couplets... Don't go in. If you do.... couplet break, another couplet, another couplet break, another line...
you'll come out of there/holding something in your arms.
Sight, touch, smell, taste... Ah yes that dangerous library, full/of answers... and then the clincher...
how it changes us...
We ended on Shikwah, a poem filled with questions... for more about the poet: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/khaled-mattawa
Hard not to think of Arab Spring... of the partition of Pakistan, reading this complaint to God...
And like Auden, can we be the more loving one? We must praise God... perhaps God won't care,
just as the stars won't care... but we could care enough to wonder how God might feel if we cut him out of our life...
Hard not to think of Arab Spring... of the partition of Pakistan, reading this complaint to God...
And like Auden, can we be the more loving one? We must praise God... perhaps God won't care,
just as the stars won't care... but we could care enough to wonder how God might feel if we cut him out of our life...
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