Discussion May 6

Complaint of El Río Grande by Richard Blanco[1]  from How to Love a Country, 2019 (he read "Perhaps the World Ends Here, by Joy Harjo" saying, "poems pull light out of darkness...)

Identity Lessons by Abby Murray

Plato, or Why  by  Wislawa Szymborska

A Time to Talk by Robert Frost - 1874-1963

I Could Give All To Time  by Robert Frost

Discussion 5/6:  We decided that we would share the emails of those attending on zoom in case people had further comments to make.  As always, anyone is welcome to make comments on the blog!

Complaint  of El Rio Grande: Blanco: Everyone loved the "Complaint", meaning lament in poetic terms.  It is often "directed at an ill-fated love, or may be a satiric attack on social injustice and immorality.   The use of personnification is especially powerful for this river which starts in the Rockies in Colorado, and runs down to divide Texas from Mexico.  For a map and more information about this third largest river in the US see: https://www.americanrivers.org/river/rio-grande-river/

The opening line, "I was meant for all things to meet:"   echoed in the final stanza's last line, has a biblical authority. We noted the softer sounds in the first two stanzas, the change of tone with the introduction of "you". The repetition

on "before" three times, emphasizes  an Old Testament feel, before the arrival of those who named and used it.

The third stanza brings up the recurring theme of artificial divisions, and a stronger division between the River,

where all things meet, (repeated in first and last stanzas: sky, rain, rock, birdsong) and the "you" of civilization inventing territories, maps, definitions of who is what, and what belongs to whom, and systems where  "life's worth is relative".

The language of the 4th stanza is filled with K sounds, the I sound in divide names river, draws, splits.  One feels the cut of spic with no span, linking bank to bank, but the border and walls built where river becomes murderer. 

One feels all the things meant to meet:  the mirrored clouds, the sun's tingle, the wind and its dust, rush of mountain rain--

the quiet vowel in us.  Not the short /u/ sound.  The tongue is relaxed, set low in the mouth.  The /u/ in sun, dust, rush, love whether loveless or lovesick, humble.  So different from the long /u/ pushed forward in you, the /u/ tangled in the /tr/ and /th/ of truth. What happens to the River's I when it is seized for( long/u/ )use by the "you"?  "You name me",  where "me" is object, not subject; The river is your geography, it's identity stolen.  

Stanza 3 and 4 development the metaphor of the physical map "jigsawing the world into colored shapes and colors, into the psychological implications of Yankee, Gringo, those who belong, those who don't.  There is an accusatory, bitter tone.

As readers, most of us want to cry out, protest, weep, wrenched by anger and sorrow... and then, Blanco returns to the voice of the River... the forgiving tone of the river, who acknowledges the similarity between our human blood, and its water... the importance of this truth:  "be one in one another."  Blanco brings us to a place of hope.  A reminder to be

respectful caretakers of each other and our world.

Identity Lessons: Murray We all enjoyed the poem, seduced by a quiet scene of mother/young daughter walking under cedars and imagining all the various questions.   As Bernie said, "why hasn't anyone ever said "we are wearing the shadow of an old cedar" before?  It's such a cool image... And a 6 year old's questions, filled with insistence and honesty are irresistible.  The short lines, especially in the second stanza, echo the slow walk on the last line of the first stanza.  They quietly move to a pause at the end of each line, and visually form a sort of wedge in the shortest line "once spoken".

Although we weren't sure how to understand "wedges of bread" the sense of questions  feeding, resembling water beneath a glacier, roots under the earth share a  non-judgmental connection.  We questioned the "fight me" in first stanza.  It seemed to come out of nowhere.  It's  tricky business  to address a child's questions and match the honest curiosity with an honest answer.Perhaps the "fight me" relates to that?  It is a relief to get to the next line.  "We are quiet together."

The other question was connected to word choice.  Is "crackers" quite the right sound?  Maybe the "mother stability image" of bread as staff of life contrasts with the fragility of thin, at-risk-of-fragmenting crackers.  Certainly, the square shape and cracks of sidewalks caused by roots fits, but the tonality didn't match.  We also wondered about "fragile".  This is not a poem about fragility.  Questions cannot be killed... but things do fall apart.  Perhaps the adjective needed would express more the uncertain, unpredictable nature we have... how so simply, we could be murderers, or victims?

ABBY'S COMMENTS: Thanks so much for sending this feedback! I'm glad everyone liked the poem, and the questions about a couple word choices were warranted.

Though I don't like the word fragile (because it is overused) (especially in poetry), I do think this poem is about fragility. White fragility, in particular. The discomfort we feel when confronted by our histories, which need confronting. It's also about fragility in that it's looking square-on at the absurdity of "claiming" land and destroying it. I agree though, that there isn't fragility in the strength of questions. I'm glad that came across.

I went back and forth on using the word "crackers". I'm not sure yet if I like the tonality either-- on one hand, it's disruptive, which I'm drawn to. This poem is, in itself, a disruption... of comfort, of assumption, of blindness. On the other hand, well, it's disruptive.

"Fight me" is my own outburst. I feel surrounded by people who'd like to tell me either a) it's no use hashing up the past when it comes to white peoples' treatment of indigenous cultures, or b) I'm wrong / selfish / obnoxious to consider the truth.

I'll go back to the "wedges of bread" line. I was thinking of land as sustenance, so continents being split by glaciers and roots splitting cities pitched deep in the ground... but maybe it's not working.

Plato or Why: Szymborska:  God bless humor, intelligence, good translators who bring us Wislawa's wisdom!
The very title of the poem, refers to the philosopher who relies on questions and posits the idea of Ideal, with art being the
imperfect copy.  So Why does Plato do this?  And the Why continues in the poem, pondering the various questions for the Ideal, seeking thrills outside of its perfect world.  How delightful can you be describing the "bad company" this entails?  The idea of Wisdom limping, Harmony derailed, Beauty holding the shit of  guts with the enjambed Good perhaps involved,
although clarified with the question about the shadow.  What a litany of how the Ideal can and will never be...
How did we come to think there was even an ideal?  What rules does History leave us as Naked Truth ransacks, perhaps too busy to notice anything.  The poem is an invitation to ask ourselves questions... what's our responsibility here?
As Marna pointed out, we respond kindly to humor, but the bottom of the matter is that Szymborska leaves us with hard questions, albeit presented humorously.  Would we prefer Ideal?  Why?  Why not?  David reminded us of Odysseus and the ideal world of Calypso... but... that meant giving up all he was about -- his fame, the excitement of risks, his heroism...
Why on earth do we want perfect, is the question Szymborska turns on its head, as she personnifies Ideal Being,
pinned under an interrogation in which the reader can participate.

Time to Talk: Frost:  Ten lines sketch so much, without telling us a thing in the way in which we usually tell a story.
A simply moment of two people; one at work, one passing by.  The delightful phrase of a "meaning walk" -- to which the horse is slowed... where the message is in the change of pace... Frost tells us what the response of the farmer working the hills of squash is NOT.  Common sense would say, there's a time to work, a time to talk... with a faint echo of Ecclesiastes.
David drew a splendid picture of what was happening with "I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground/Blade-end up and five feet tall".  The handle was thrust into the soft ground, already hoed; his hoe a stand-in.  And later when he returns, it will be easy to pick it up this way. His decision is  made, but not eagerly.
He plods.  The ambivalence is clear,  even the clever break of the sentence "I go up to the stone wall/ (which doesn't sound very friendly or promising)/for a friendly visit.  There is an intimated calculation of cost here or the work in choosing fellowship.
We noted  an echo in the present moment, how with the social distancing, we tend to talk more behind our masks-- whereas close together, we paid little attention .  

I could give all to time: Frost.  Emily last week had referred to this poem mentioned in an article in the Atlantic which mentioned how  Robert Frost was not someone you could know easily.  He never fully revealed himself to others.  She had brought it up I believe with The Third Dimension  by Tony Hoagland, and the images of self-protection.

This poem is like the character of Frost -- difficult to know.  Time, personified at first as objective, 
unmoved by forces of nature.  Time does not call itself brave, does not feel overjoyed, but that double mention of grave in the last line is sobering.  Impartial... the the final word of time, we do not know
in our graves.   The impartiality continues in the second stanza.  What becomes interesting is the personal
entrance of the speaker of the poem in the third stanza.  The double mention of except-except, to say what it is he would not give to time.  We grappled at length with it.  What is it that Frost carries, crossing over to Safety?  One conjecture would be his work -- his poems, his published work.  But, there's no guarantee, although more than half a century after his death, it would seem time has not effaced that.  What makes more sense is what Elaine brought up : that the poem was written after the death of his wife, the death of his daughter, and the suicide of his son.  This is his personal experience.  Time has nothing to do with his memories, his grief.  He is almost adversarial  in guarding his private world.  And as reader, we can only
guess what that is.  If anything, it invites us to think what we would want to keep safe from time... or consider what isn't.