Trash by Lowell Jaeger; Good by Wendell Berry; Greed by Tony Hoagland; Inscription for a War, by AD Hope; The Year of the Eclipse by Elizabeth Knapp; The Stare's Nest by my Window, by W.B. Yeats, an untitled poem by Gregory Orr, Weeping... About Those Apples by Cindy Guentherman
We started with a cartoon about Spring: March is great! You can binge on all four seasons in one day. I never thought about coupling the verb “binge” with “weather” as if we are consumers now even of temperatures and angles of sunlight? (Indeed, the day before Spring, there was a delivery of snowstorm with bitterly cold temperatures.) The Wednesday group also had fun warming up by sharing one-word/one sentences (separate handout).
Nutshell:
Trash: Perhaps many never have thought about how trash is part of the modern age of technology, as machines entered daily life, and the car, plane, cruise ship, and packaging industries contribute litter and pollution to the planet. The contrast between the organic lifestyle of Indians replaced by one which produces "trash". The poem is clever with rhymes, enjambments and play on words such as "leaves" and "return". Apparently Leonard YoungBear, mentioned in the first stanza is an artist. Judith brought up the image of the Potter, (Omar Khayyám:(1048–1131, Firtzgerald's translation 1905) in the quatrain "The Pots Criticize the Potter. From “Quatrains” (Rubaiyat). ) and the natural exfoliation if you rub palms together.
We have plenty to fear, but the poet plays with fear of death, with the truncated end line of stanza three: (I'm not afraid anymore/ of dying. It's trash
The line/stanza break lands to finish the thought: "that worries me. Caskets. I keep thinking/ and the 4th stanza provides more concrete images of trash which even if buried, is "spit back". Ressurrection takes on new meaning, introduced by one more line/stanza break I'd sooner fall.../
These stanza breaks invite the reader to think about what lies beneath the grass, and where and what a fall might lead. What comes to mind with the metaphorical woods to feed many hungers beside my own ? Jim brought up the findings of teeth in the sand worm resembling those of te T-Rex. We were sensitive to the paradox in the closing stanza, ("part of me will swim downstream in the cold eyeball of a fish"/"my soul /under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.). That closing image is so positive, hopeful, and for many left a good feeling in spite of "the trash".
Goods: The title connects abstract to concrete... the goods of good perhaps, but also knowing Berry lived on a working farm, had horses, links the opening line's use of the word "immemorial" to the last word "ancestry". Indeed, this small 11-line poem provides the reader the kind of "satisfaction" of feelings of hunger, third, and how work-weariness is enjambed to earned rest. "Green growth" of the mind brings up many old references, whether the call and response song, "Green Grow the rushes ho", or celebration of return of Spring. We discussed at length the words "gayety" and "shudder" -- how a horse shudders under its skin to flick off flies, or the hooves pound the earth, and the contrast of the plodding pace of work to a sense of gayety in the stride, the solo work in the field, falling from "loneliness to love." This is the kind of poem so beautifully crafted, yet impossible to render "in other words". The kind of poem to memorize because so much can be felt between the lines.
Greed: Just one word. Both a poem about greed but also a poem about language. How our understanding is conditioned by words, and taken out of context leads us to different directions. Four times we see the word "greed" four times the word "just", both of which are layered with connotations. The last line is like a dare-- can we say the word "greed" calmly, without inflection, unattached to its "traditional form of suffering"? We don't know anything about why or how the person who wrote just this one word in this one specific intersection (we are told where it is twice) . We appreciated how we were told was it is not which insinuates what it could be. From Trash, to Goods, to Greed... and we arrive at a cemetery... Kafka's work The Trial came up... the truth is indivisible and cannot recognize itself.
Inscription for a war: see the post before this for pictures of the Fort Rosencrantz cemetery. Many did research about the war in 480 BC at Thermopylae. Alec Derwent Hope delivers the kind of poem that should be posted in every national cemetery honoring those killed in battle. How could the discussion not talk about other wars and their stories? Elmer brought up Vietnam, the pain of knowing High School buddies slain where all glory is stripped out of an epigraph which refers to following orders. There are many other translations of Simonides words. However it may be, the witness reading them on a burial mound, has not been among those fallen. The irony is that we have not learned anything and continue to kill each other. We were all moved to tears. Looking at a sweep of graves as far as the eye can see, the first thought of a mother having sent her boy to battle but is among the fortunate to return, "It could have been my son." Lysistrata came up, Gallipoli, the distrust of British officers, soldiers used like commodities, nations shutting down birth control so more "cannon fodder" produced.
We read the untitled Gregory Orr poem after as sequel. Weeping. If it is one of the "world's tasks, it doesn't lack adherents". It's greater than finding fault. For Gregory, reading a poem like AD Hope's makes him feel he has been given more courage to live.
The year of the eclipse: the political implications of 2017 is part and parcel of this poem pairing both literal and metaphorical shadow over America. This April, it will be hard not to sense the same a simlar connection. What do we assume about the sun in the sky? About democracy? about what we presume to be "normal"? What happens when all that is left of love, is the idea of it?
Kathy brought up the excellent essay by Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/ Highly recommend her book from 1982, Teaching a Stone to Talk.
The Stare's Nest: Even though we know Yeats means starling it is hard not to feel that one is staring into emptiness in this poem. Part of the larger "Meditations in Time of War", this was written during the Irish civil war. The repeated refrain as last line turns the key in the lock of our uncertainty, and the hardening of our hearts. Here, the hope of loosening, to allow the honey bees in, to rebuild in the emptied home,
About those Apples: This poem was so well told, it engaged us all and many shared stories and alternatives for the ending. Most felt the weak impotence of the abusive husband was best underlined by his self-absorbed final question. I liked that some wanted him at least to use 3 or 4 choice swear words of retaliation against the wife, as if to underscore his abusive nature. We were curious about the note by the series editor, as the poem didn't feel like peeling an apple in a single strand. The mid-point, "I quietly disappeared forever" perhaps could be strengthened by mentioning preparations to leave. (I quietly prepared to disappear forever.).
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