September 23, 2020

 Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry by Jericho Brown: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/books/review/jericho-brown-say-thank-you-say-im-sorry-poem-coronavirus.html

Venus & Serena Play Doubles On Center Court  by Kate Rushin https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS5794638452.mp3?key=0705ab06c9cffb25d0a07d6fa9f9922d

Today God  by Starr Davis

Morning Song of Senlin  by Conrad Aiken (1889–1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk1EM7YNLW4  (Tom O'Bedlam reading)

Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Breathing Field by Wyatt Townley

Nutshell:

Say Thank you  Say I'm Sorry: these two expressions... of gratitude and apology introduced in the title  shadow the unspoken thanks for those who toil for us, whether in hospitals, service industries, grocery stores.

The discussion picked up on a tone of controlled anger... the unspoken references to racism, pandemic. ex. Surprising line breaks: for my big black/Car to quit; 

surprising combinations --at least one field trip /To a slaughterhouse. 

juxtapositions of high class touches, like gnocchi with those who wash their hands for us, return home on the bus.

What is it that any of us want in that "little"?  It doesn't have to be the  fancy items like the leather bound

Book, gimlet,  and real bread...  The humor and cynicism in having "PTSD of the Lord" -- PTSD meaning, a long term and recurring condition, coupled with  biblical plagues, floods.  The strength of the clipped speech, the theatrical pauses indeed makes it seem like an introduction to a complex play with many moods.  Many allusions, such as "who wears the mask".  Have we forgotten to say thank you? I'm sorry?  Inserted in the jumble, a request, " I’d like us to rethink
What it is to be a nation."  

Venus & Serena:  Although we didn't listen to Kate read her poem, the link is above.  The "about this poem" sums it up: "there you are, enjoying yourself, living your life, going about your business, and then, when you least expect it, someone is trying to put you in a color box, a gender box, a femininity box with their assumptions and limitations.”

Can't a tennis match just be a tennis match?

Thank you Kate for celebrating two classy sisters, " pounding history".

Today God: I only printed two lines of the longer poem, but they do stand by themselves. to read: https://poets.org/poem/today-god

It brought up discussion about how things have changed since 2016, both good and bad.  

Morning Song of Senlin: This is part 2 of the second section of Senlin: a Biography

Part 1:  His Dark Origins (8 sections )

Part 2: Futile Preoccupations. (10 sections)

PART 3: Cloudy Destiny ( 3 sections)

about the reader: an anonymous fellow one person believes is from Australia but has adopted a "received pronunciation" actor's style.   I love that he takes his name from the 1620 poem, rather of the same lilting sort as Aiken's style here.

Discussion involved admiring the music of the poem, as one critic says, "shimmering with ambivalences and ambiguities";  a certain sentimentality, Rosetti style;

 a "Chagall-esque" mystical upside-down-ness, and overtones of Eliot's Prufrock.

Perhaps one aspect of Aiken's persona... Senlin is held together by his routine... Echoes in Madeleine l'Engle's children's book, Swiftly Tilting Planet; Beatles' Fool on the Hill;

Two Countries :  I love that a poem can mean in such a variety of ways!  Knowing Naomi has a father from Palestine, it was helpful to hear Elaine's application of skin as border, and the many losses

as those suffered by Palestine.  What imagination to use skin as character -- the largest "organ" of our body... the separation of inside/outside; visible/invisible... and the remembering of "something larger" and people go places, "larger than themselves" -- which is not as straightforward as you might think.

Both Lori and Martin though of two countries as a man and woman;  we all felt the human need for touch...

Breathing Field: lovely "fields" of stanzas enjambed like connected pieces of a vertebrae... 

Yoga allusions... the pacing cannot be fast, like a walking meditation... the double-entendres

of "So much is still /. So much is still to be seen".  One idea behind final sentence:  a question for

guided meditation:  "What was your face before your grandmother was born?"