The Poets by Eavan Boland
August Morning by Alice Ostriker
[To Sheila Lanyon, on the Flyleaf of a Book] by W. S. Graham
Parents Named Us for the Dawn. by Xiaoli Li
The Agapanthus Triptych by Sigrun Susan Lane
explanation of the Triptych: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nPXFv517w&feature=youtu.be
Men Waiting for a Train by David Biespiel
(audio by author: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/men-waiting-for-a-train
Today’s poems, for me, underlined the power of poetry to resist intelligence, almost successfully (https://poets.org/poem/man-carrying-thing. )
and yet seduce us by the how of the sound and multiple layers of sense of words.
I am so grateful for such a thoughtful group, generous in the sharing of insights!
For a quick refresher to follow up Shelley’s “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defence_of_Poetry
Clearly, each of the poets today demonstrated their familiarity with Shelley, and probably Stevens’ words.
Please feel free to add to this quite cursory and insufficient notes:
Nutshell summary:
Boland: Repetition of “They” allows us to feel the layering of the poets, even if referenced to be stars. Without thumping us over the head with the metaphor of constellations,
those mythic names pointed out by just a few stars, Boland pays homage to poets for finding “a figure in which secret things confide”. The brightest star (Betelgeuse) the god of war as our neighboring planet, the unnamed Orion, who hunts, (are those three stars in his belt fixed?) the “undoing” as the work.. . — and for us, as reader, the de-ciphering of metaphor circling
upon metaphor. Remarkable!
Ostriker: The title celebrates the mundane as it filters into the myriad “windows”, where sacred overtones into stained glass of colorful fruits. Why malicious? One thought is the loan word of the German Shadenfreude — the joy derived from observing the misfortunes of others. But Ostriker adds the further paradoxical “abundant” to malicious — in a way that echoes the light “from the other world, the pure one”… the play on the word passion, as people pass… and the possibility of that paradise as it might be— a mosaic of views of all windows— church windows, recreation of of what we see as windows, this welcoming openness of multiple windows always waiting for our eyes. I was reminded of the body of the beloved of Gregory Orr and his Rumi-esque meditation: https://www.amazon.com/Concerning-Book-that-Body-Beloved/dp/1556592299
Graham: 3 stanzas, 3 modes of speech. Beautiful intimacy spoken literally and figuratively “on the fly”. “We two (too) are not afraid” —
what gives us courage to envision — the words penned… the self who penned them once, the self who pens different ones later, recalling the former ones… and that beloved to whom they are addressed… all these selves, still speaking.
Xiaoli Li : Thank you Jan for pronunciation! The spare simplicity, the calm with which the inconceivable damage done by forcing all the nuanced beauty of a name, honoring family tradition, to be changed to function. The misnomers because the former words evoke what cannot be admitted. Orwellian, indeed.
The saving grace: the pen name… that pen… that allows the preservation through words of what is cherished.
Lane: We read it in 3 parts, like the triptych. last words of each stanza: “That moment of seeing” // “painted them out” // the water bearing all.”
The quote from Monet — not participating in WW1, only able to paint… who lives near the train tracks, imagining the “troops carried in, bodies borne out”…
How the process of painting, like poetry, provides solace, sanctuary.
https://youtu.be/x5nPXFv517w Thank you Susan for this link to the work of art referenced in the Monet poem.
Beispiel: Please share how you felt the explosion… the vibrant language… images… how you “solved” the puzzle of what happened!
It’s as if there is “underground railroad” stuff… war.. 9/11… this is a cool site about David Biespiel : https://davidbiespiel.wixsite.com/david-biespiel/writings
Bernie sent this link about Hokusai: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/07/arts/design/hokusai-fuji.html
This could help!
No comments:
Post a Comment