Poems for Aug. 13

 The Peninsula  by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013); The Hourglass by Ben Jonson; If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda; 38. Shedding the Old by Samantha Thornhill; Mindful by Mary Oliver; Words Ends  by Alfred Starr Hamilton

It takes a group and a handful of poems adding their voices to make for a spirited discussion!  We had voices from Ireland, Renaissance England, Chile, contemporary Trinidad/Tobago the universality of Mary Oliver and the dark dreambox words of a poet born in Montclair, NJ 1914.

The Peninsula: Paul tells us Ards means "High Place", but in this poem, it is specifically the Ard Penisula in NE Ireland. He then read the poem aloud, adding just the right touch of Irish flavor.  

 Although one could interpret "nothing more to say" as writer's block, our discussion didn't talk about the cure for it to take a drive.  Instead we reveled in the rich imagery, the beautiful personification of "horizons drinking down sea and hill"; the ploughed field swallowing, the rock where breakers are shredded into rags.  Indeed, why would you not chose the natural wildness as opposed to the urban, human world which can be stifling and detrimental -- not just to writers, but to us all. 

The pleasure of reading perfect iambic pentameter and end rhymes perhaps is a parallel example of how form coaxes words worthy of  spending time with them.  Paul made us all want to go to the fjords of North Ireland and watch the whales spouting in their pods!  Bernie pointed out the key of "uncoding landscapes"-- stripping ourselves of everything, and open to nature to receive what we have unwittingly ignored.

Everyone enjoyed this poem, especially for the flow and musicality.  We did not comment on the opening line, or the repeat in the final stanza.... "still with nothing to say".  Perhaps it is an invitation or a permission to enjoy in silence, all that is around you.

The first  enjambed stanza break accentuates the feel of "passing through"; the second gives us space to "recall" as if the reader would know the images.  

 

The Hourglass:  Ben Jonson, (1572-1637) known as second to Shakespeare for his wit provides us 9 lines

of rhymed commentary on life, love, death.  I don't know if was custom to make an hourglass of someone's ashes, but if poetic license it certainly is highly effective!!!

If You Forget Me:  I gave the note about how beautifully this poem balances feeling and control.  Love is not endless or helpless, but moves in a novel direction of looking to the future, with realistic conditions.

We appreciated how this  love poem starts in the honeymoon period.  The pull between distance and intimacy with the image of little boats, sailing towards islands, is beautifully tender. The response to his outline of what would happen if love were to end, ranged from understanding it as "tit for tat"  to realistic abandonment of a pointless pursuit.   It was interesting to discuss how we might receive the poem if we didn't know the gender of the speaker.  Is it Neruda?  Is he adopting the persona of a woman or a different man?  We discussed his name, and pseudonyms in general.  Axel found that he changed it to be able to  write poetry and defy his father. What usually pops up first is his active political resistance. If the speaker of the poem is not Neruda, how does that change your reading?  Some felt, if it were written by a woman, one would feel she has a sense of agency more so than a man who might be a bit macho.  Given the time he lived in, and knowing some of his biography, we still are in a place of conjecture.  Axel offered that the situation might seen unbelievable for a woman to be in, but if it were to happen, we might be more supportive of a woman.  Curious that the group was divided precisely into 50% male and 50% female. 

38. Shedding the Old:    It would be hard not to love this poem filled as it is with epigrams, like a fortune cookie filled with curious predictions.  Apparently 38 is the number that corresponds with a book of Oracles, in this case, the title, Shedding the Old.  The sensuous imagery, makes you want indeed to "unbox yourself" and "wild yourself" with the unusual nuggets of each line.  Many of them seem perfect for a motivational poster!  "Summon surprise!" /"Take Soul" (as opposed to "Take heart").  "Your joy is your job and yours alone."  It seems the poet is unleashing an inner oracle brought about with language play.  The line, "Something whim-/sical this way comes" perhaps was a nod to Ray Bradbury.  

for a little more about the poet (missed sending this...)

https://fightandfiddle.com/2024/09/01/perfectly-imperfect-an-interview-with-samantha-thornhill/

Mindful:  

A rival poem to Wild Geese and Summer Day with the famous last two lines, " Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life?"  I love her way of embracing duality with the linebreaks:  "something /that more or less/kills me --

and then SURPRISE, with delight, continued by comparing it with the needle in the haystack (proverbially unfindable) of light. She knows how to convince, using rhetorical devices that explain what she is not doing... pokes fun at herself (kindly) and then repeats light but with the adjective untrimmable, i.e., no trimmed wicks or proscribed rituals.  As Polly put it, "everything grows and is, in spite of" -- how can you not want to embrace an outlook that finds joy in the "very drab", that obeys an inner command to "lose yourself/inside this soft world"... where prayers are made of grass. 

Words Ends

Carolyn was not present to explain how she had heard about this poet on NPR, and was convinced to buy his book, A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind .  Born June 14, 1914 – 2005

in Montclair, NJ where he lived his whole life, he never graduated from HS, was dismissed by the US Army when enlisted and seemed to be rather a recluse.  The editors of his book note that “Hamilton’s is an extremely gentle language cultured in loneliness, the product of encountering a world while staying away from it.”  

 

Bernie gave a stab at trying to understand starting with the title.  He does not use punctuation.  Perhaps he meant a possessive Word's ...  maybe he made a typo and meant Words End. Or dropped an L, and meant world.  Already we are plunged into a world unlike anything recognizable.  The "eth" on walk, talk, think works to throw us back into time and the King James version of the Bible.  Perhaps the city is a metaphor for "everything".  How does a place define you -- the culture, the people, the circumstances.  For sure, puzzling and catches us off balance. 

Poems for Aug. 6

What the War Has Taught Us  by Bunkong Tuon; Accessory to War by Kim Stafford; What Holds the Sky by Oladosu Michael Emerald;  How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River by Barbara Crooker; Etta’s Elegy by Maureen Seaton (for Etta Silver 1913-2013); Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower  by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Joanna Macy;  Opening by Tess Gallagher

 ‘Poetry cannot, under pain of death or of failure, become assimilated to science or to morality; it does not have Truth as its goal. It only has itself. The methods of demonstrating temperament thrusts aside the diamonds and the flowers of the muse; it is therefore absolutely the inverse of the poetical temperament. The artifices involved in rhythm are an insurmountable obstacle to that meticulous development of thoughts and expressions whose goal is the truth.’-- Charles Baudelaire

Nutshell:  Aug. 6 and the 80th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bomb  : And poets carry on singing, as in Virgil's opening lines, I sing of Arms and Men.    

  What the War has Taught Us, is written by a Cambodian American... How to deal with despair, a sense of futility? August 6 was the very day 80 years ago the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  What happens then?  "A poet is made when a bomb is dropped".  Yes, this poet repeats in different ways,  futility, futility, futility over and over, but as Axel put it, with a wry smile on her face,  "and yet he writes a poem".  Wondering whether a life matters, or how to make a life matter, asking if any effort to help the world be better matters, perhaps leads to a conclusion that there will always be monstrous men, demanding monstrous wars, sowing hatred and fear.  It may well be the way of the world.  Buddhists remind us that life is suffering.   

What keeps us going is art, poetry, music.  And knowing this keeps others alive gives us the courage to keep on engaging in it.

Whether this is a poem or rather a polemic, we agreed that it carries a strong message that hopefully those who don't read poetry, might pick up and ponder. 

Accessory to War:  written by the son of William Stafford, who was not only a fine poet from the Northwest, but also an anti-war activist.  You can see the "apple does not fall far from the tree".   What is cool about this poem, is the shape -- it looks like each stanza is a bomb.  The first stanza has the brother singing his brother to sleep, and  the comfort of lullabies and stories which seem to come from the Bible.  The second stanza has a brother who will become filled with hatred and desire for revenge (I think of those who joined Hamas) because of the horror inflicted by an enemy.  The title is multi-layered.  What is accessory to war? 

1)  the weapons, but also the society which convinces its citizens that they are needed, must be used to used, with demands to pay taxes to create and deploy them. 2) people are accessories also to wars.  Whether decision and policy makers, or as pointed out in the poem, tax payers.   Polly  suggested we  add a note when we pay taxes: "I am paying taxes under protest that they be used for war, detention centers, harassment of lawful immigrants, etc."  I have calculated that x% is used for (and make a list) and therefore have deducted x%."

The juxtaposition of earning money teaching, writing, modeling peace, and having that turn into "dirty money" of taxes that deliver bombs, enforces the irony.  The ending  is brilliant... those taxes bought the rivet on the shoulder of the bomb this poem sent. Stafford joins Bunkong Tuon, "we are telling you this"-- his poem delivers a different kind of bomb.  

As one Jewish friend of ours shared what his father said about Israel: did it take a holocaust and destruction of 6 million souls in order to establish a homeland?   The irony is to see that  new "homeland" consciously destroy the previous homeland of those who had lived there peacefully before them.  This only promotes an on-going sense of injustice and "need" for war to "solve" it.  Of course, we know war has never been the answer.  The shifting of "national lines", empires, then declaring wars to maintain them, perpetrating lies about who needs to be "eliminated" as enemy is nothing new.  But that cannot stop us from writing. 

"What Holds the Sky" was written by a Nigerian multi-talented artist.  I loved that in the discussion, Judith  brought her dance background and shared the concept of "contact improvisation".

When dancing with another, if one falls, there is a trust that the other will be there, and will not only protect the falling one, but use the momentum to continue the dance, necessarily, improvised in a different direction.

How can you make times more bearable?  First, face what is with all your attention and trust.  We are living in times that "assault our psyche".  Perhaps it is a "shared fall" -- one we can only survive by interacting, interconnecting.  The 3rd poem uses faith, prayer, grace, hymn in unusual ways -- with this metaphor of a kite and the tension of pulling at the string -- each tug, a prayer/to the wind, etc. The boy in the field with the kite is near the edge of a city -- which echoes "a hymn of glass/&steel" with echoes of the sky's light like an unspoken promise.  What an infusion of faith, that nature, our sun, is there as if to balance our manmade efforts.  

How do we "weigh in" a situation, balance, share the fall?

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River:

This poem quotes Apollinaire:  "What isn't given to love is so much wasted.".  He wrote during WW1 about the horrors of that war, loss of love whether sweethearts killed, or humankind's loss of compassion which has no place in war.  Without this vital element of love, one would feel a sense of loss or incompleteness.

I love, love, love, love Apollinaire's poem "Le Pont Mirabeau" for the flow and rhythm of the Seine, under the bridge, carrying loves and losses, this continual flow again and again, echoed in the repeats of the poem. I gave a link to original and translation  in the footnote of the poems.

Barbara Crooker, in her title, suggests the flow of the river... everything reflected in it... like the poem before, where everything is "tethered to a gravity" one can't name.  Gravity as physical force and metaphorical quality.  I love that the poet wonders what she hasn't yet given to love.  It's a great question!   

She looks up at a "comma moon" -- a sweet slice of melon...  a pause in the flow of things that invites us to "give to love".  What a great metaphor for pausing, for realizing the dark contains dusky wings, and stealing again from the poem before, the dark allows us to see stars, and imagine them "leaning in to each other." 

Etta's Elegy: this poem then sums it up!  I don't know the relationship of the poet to  Etta.  The poem holds the unsayable, the dark.  As Judith remarked, it is in the style of a nursery rhyme:  "This is the house that Jack built".  This is where... this is... this is...   6 times!  The repeat of the "usable truth" (we didn't discuss what that means) is followed by the repeat of the first line introduced by AND (this is where the poem holds its breath).

There is one fragment:  This is where tumult, this is where prophecy.  These two interrupted, incomplete thoughts jostle a different way for the poem to hold its breath.  The sky "wild with sound",  is now "it" -- perhaps the poem, or perhaps the dark, "wild about the child." The final two lines powerfully express an old theme of the "crack that lets the light in".  Most of us would agree gratitude for life lived helps us in the time of loss.

Let this Darkness Be a Bell Tower:  The Joanne Macy and Anita Barrows' translation of the Rilke, picks up this darkness, asks us to be the bell.  This is in keeping with the philosophy of Joanna Macy, a Buddhist, activist and well known poet who recently passed away.  She looks at our world and calls on us to "Stand Afresh" even in the midst of great crisis.  Joanna's work came up discussing her translation of the Rilke poem. Bernie suggests these links of Joanna Macy's "Works that Reconnects." In these "kitchen table talks" Joanna Macy and her student Jessica Serrante look at what it is like to live on Earth at this moment, looking at climate crisis, injustice, war and embrace the difficult feelings that arise.   

We Are The Great Turning Podcast episode 1, about a half hour

Ep 1: Love and Loss - We Are The Great Turning | Podcast on Spotify

Back to the poem:   Judith brought up the happy coincidence of the word "change" in the second stanza which could mean also the "ringing of the changes" in terms of campagnology or bell ringing -- apparently Dorothy Sayers wrote a splendid account of it in Nine Sailors.  It brought back the old nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of St. Clements" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons

The opening:  We did not so much discuss this poem as read it as conclusion... 

 

 

July 30

Possibilities by Linda Pastan; 4 versions about a by-gone picture of Nanjing -- Painting of Jinling by Wei Zhuang (c. 836-910) translated by Zewen Senpai1 Rajat Jayanti by Kirun Kapur; Love leaves Leftovers: Marie Giesbrecht;  Love Letter from the Afterlife:  Andrea Gibson Nature Aria  by Yi Lei  

Although rife with references, PLEASE do not feel you have to read each one.  The idea is to look at the words of the poems... how they work, or don't for you.Afterwards, the notes may be helpful to further think about what you have read.  THERE IS NO NEED TO READ IN ADVANCE OR PREPARE ANYTHING!!!!!!!!   

For the versions responding to the Painting of Jinling , Eddy recommended this "explainer" video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZNYYe8H0lw. and also a link with some paintings of the Tang dynasty provided by Eddy to give an idea of that time period. https://baike.baidu.com/item/金陵图/55021942. 

Andrea Gibson:  https://www.today.com/popculture/andrea-gibson-poetry-death-letter-wife-rcna218974  Her poems are emotionally intense, and her positivity in the face of death provokes triggers many find helpful.  As spoken word artist, she activates the reader with a success I've never seen with the usual "confessional" poet. I put together this document, if this intrigues you. OPTIONAL! 

Tribute to Andrea Gibson : 8/13/1975-7/14/ 2025  This young poet was able to write poems which truly touch the heart and has been a champion of finding beauty in unlikely places and gratitude in the hardest hours.   Poet Laureate of Colorado, world-touring spoken word artist, author of seven books, Calais Maine High School State Basketball Champion, and subject of the award-winning documentary, “Come See Me in the Good Light”, and so much more.  At the end of this memorial article by her wife  are lines from her poems.  You may wish to note any that seem as if they were meant just for you at this moment in time.  Andrea's wife refers to her with the plural pronoun, which may take some time to get used to.  

As a spoken word artist, Andrea has a direct delivery that matches the words on the page as her own truly authentic and courageous self, unafraid to spell out what it is to be human.  

 

The words penned by Andrea Gibson,  8/13/1975- 7/14/2025  have invited listeners to have an experience with (her)*  (she uses the plural pronoun *them).

to read about her .  https://www.yahoo.com/news/andrea-gibson-understood-very-simple-170000712.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

NUTSHELL: My nutshells:  truly, only a few kernels relating to the poems, but as ever, the comraderie as we work our way through the poems, remains precious.  Should you wish to add/amend, kindly let me know.  

Briefest of Nutshells:

The poems this week brought sharings about music, art, how to "talk to a squirrel" by imitating its tail, and even a film recommendation (The Penguin Lesson). 

Marna shared this link about the Willow's symbolic meanings: https://japonicaplants.co.uk/2020/06/18/willows-in-the-chinese-garden/ 

 

Andrea Gibson:  As a spoken word artist, Andrea has a direct delivery that matches the words on the page as her own truly authentic and courageous self, unafraid to spell out what it is to be human.  

 

The words penned by Andrea Gibson,  8/13/1975- 7/14/2025  have invited listeners to have an experience with (her)*  (she uses the plural pronoun *them).

to read about her .  https://www.yahoo.com/news/andrea-gibson-understood-very-simple-170000712.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

 

Judith recalled a beautiful painting, Grapevine in Wind and Moonlight after reading the Nature Aria    https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1916.240/

We agreed the final poem with two translators perhaps did not reflect what the original chinese intended.  Bio of Yi Lei, 1951-2018 -- 

More:

Possibilities:  This delicate series of tercets cascading with enjambments seemed to be breathing.  The idea of "almost buying" a house, hearing music of a different family who did, with hints of biographical material about the poets family ( births, deaths, how children move away).   More importantly, Pastan presents possibilities with choices such as how we define ourselves by the music we choose to listen to.  Marna brought up the sound of winnowing, that purposeful separating of grain from chaff, juxtaposed with the more accidental openings and closings of a screendoor in the wind.  Several memories were shared -- the unexpected sound of Opera when passing a run-down home; Vivak Mercy, and more.

Jingling : 4 versions of by-gone era.  Thank you to Eddy for this link with some paintings of the Tang dynasty to give an idea of that time period. https://baike.baidu.com/item/金陵图/55021942.The first two contrasted Two Tang poets, the first by Wei Zuang responding to one by Gao Chan.  The final two were two different translations of yet another landscape which does not speak of the city or the court of Jingling, but  avoids specifics by speaking of nature.   Elmer contributed a note about mizzling, as brief spot of rain... we discussed the "unfeeling" willow, which only looks as if it is weeping.  

Marna shared this link about the Willow's symbolic meanings: https://japonicaplants.co.uk/2020/06/18/willows-in-the-chinese-garden/  (associated with spring and rebirth. Its pliability suggests meekness and humility. It is associated with friendship, because of its intertwining branches, and also with parting from friends. Traditionally a willow branch was given as a parting gift, because its name in Chinese – 柳 liǔ – sounds like a word for ‘stay’. )  

Nature Aria:

Judith recalled a beautiful painting, Grapevine in Wind and Moonlight which captures the feel https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1916.240/

We agreed this final poem with two translators perhaps did not reflect what the original chinese intended.  Bio of Yi Lei, 1951-2018 -- as Judith put it, a gallimaufry -- a hodgepodge of elements stuck together. 

We did love the image "laughing like a cloud in trousers" which perhaps has a reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "the curious case of Benjamin Button".

Poems for July 23

 Evening Walk  by Charles Simic; Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver; The Space Between by Jill Jupen;  After Hayden Carruth  by Jacqueline Winter Thomas; After Television  by Hayden Carruth;  Time of Tyranny, 49 by  Lyn Hejinian; See You Tomorrow  by Hayden Carruth; Places With Terrible Wi-Fi by J. Estanislao Lopez

 It just is luck, and 6th sense as I stumble into poems and poets who seem to treasure the power of words that restore our sense that this life is an invitation to notice, wonder and share textures and feelings of our connections.

Often the poems in O Pen express feelings that line our lives, or elaborate feelings of others so we can better understand them.  They guide us, give us faith that indeed, we can hold on for a moment to something "unsayable".   The sharings and responses of those present enrich all this. 

 The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.—James A. Baldwin (from Conversations with James Baldwin, Univ. Press of Mississippi 

Jerry's "words"; a participant's sister writes a book: https://bainbridgeisland.press/products/a-woman-in-pieces; Marna's transportation.  Hard to remind people... The focus of O pen... looking at the human condition through the lenses of poems.  However, I find myself citing people's names. Should I refrain from that? 

Nutshell: -- this is more personal than what I sent out to the O Pen group.  

Evening Walk: We enjoyed the sense of  mystery  beautifully accentuated by enjambments of the first lines of the first 3 stanzas.  Elaine coined a term of the "internal poem" for such a meditative piece that brings us "inside" ourselves, and prompts us to remember perhaps a place we have put aside.  Elmer noted the juxtaposition of nature and reality... on one hand, the poet walking, on the other, a personification of trees.  What an unusual image of a tree as staircase, rising to heaven, as the night slowly descending. Jan noted the short i sounds (listening/lips/bit/wind/fit/unpinned/ dinner) which contrast with the long I (night/high/decide/quiet/light/sky).   That helped people hear the O's at work . Lines that stood out:  3rd stanza, next to last line: happy heart, what heavy steps you take...  

Climbing China's Great Wall: We agreed the title brings us to the experience of climbing the wall, so one feels a live interaction with it, as opposed to a description of this amazing feat of engineering, replete with gatehouses and keepers, a signal system   for danger lighting fires.  (Judith suggested the movie Mulan which shows this.) You might enjoy reading some of the "truth and fiction" about it here: https://www.chinahighlights.com/greatwall/fact/  Friends of ours who live in Beijing confirmed the opening line.  In the Mutianyu area, the stairs were built before there was architectural code, which made them steeper with inconsistent rises and runs... They mentioned, since the descent is harder on the knees than the ascent, for a few RMB you can bobsled all the way down the mountain! 

Now for the poem:  I didn't notice the rhyme scheme  until the next to last tercet -- a sign of an excellent craftsman in my book.  Afaa M. Weaver weaves in history, but also human elements of soldiers, "wishing for the lovers they left behind" and the mothers, "weaving braids of grief/in their hair".  The surprise of an actual "little old woman" -- perhaps invented to bring all together in the final stanza: the stairs, the legend, skeleton of the wall, "where white cranes dance in pairs" -- the crane, symbol of purity, grace, and longevity, 

and in pairs, perhaps a symbol of faithful union.  Judith corrects herself: the bird symbol for wedded bliss in China is the (or properly are) mandarin ducks.  It is in Japan that the cranes are considered symbols of marriage.  But the crane is a Chinese symbol for long life and prosperity.

The Space Between:  the poet mentioned how Hayden Carruth supported her and I gave this link about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Carruth  and https://www.npr.org/2008/10/02/95310480/hayden-carruth-a-poet-with-a-jazzmans-touch

  We definitely felt the poet as being "beside herself" or "outside of herself".  We enjoyed the sense of mystery, especially 2nd and 4th stanzas, trying to imagine the situation.  The space between what you thought was felt, and physical distance between two people, and the ambiguity of being separated from herself, thus from another-- as one person put it, the "missingness" of love.   

Judith quoted from  Richard III, Scene 3, Sir Richard's Soliloquy:  Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.

After Hayden Carruth:  the title could be a "nod to" the poet, or perhaps a Eulogy -- and recognition of his influence.  I read the poem backwards, to play with the idea that the poem seems to be Carruth speaking back.  It is not snow...nor sleeping silence  vs.  An old man sleeps like/snow on hills.  

We remarked how when you lay your ear against your hand or someone else's skin, you hear your own heartbeat.   

After Television:  this is Carruth playing perhaps with irony.  The poem was published in 1994, so a year after the World Wide Web was made available to the public.  Stephen Jay Gould refers to Homo Sapiens as "a tiny and accidental evolutionary twig"...  -- but what are we doing to ourselves?  I didn't know about the ironic nickname    The discussion included fond reminiscences of childhood before TV.  Carruth provides delightful adjectives: squirmy trees; mumbling days, but also inexhaustible sadness. 

Judith brought up:   Homo Sap.  She also mentioned Ogden Nash about TV and being the village idiot... so for video, one is the village vidiot.

Time of Tyranny: Hejinian's work often demonstrates how poetry is a way of thinking, " a way of encountering and constructing the world, one endless utopian moment even as it is full of failures."(https://poets.org/poet/lyn-hejinian).  The 14 lines peppered with alliterations do not avoid words like ambiguate, obviate.  The poem borders a sense of science fiction, perhaps a slant reference to artificial creation of life.  We agreed... a lot of emotion. 

 Neil taught us the term, -30- used in journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-30- 

See you tomorrow:  Humorous, perhaps describing the apocalypse or his own aging.  We enjoyed the honesty.  Judith sang for us, "Beautiful Geezers"... to the tune of Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamers https://genius.com/Stephen-foster-beautiful-dreamer-lyrics

Places with terrible Wi-Fi:  A list poem which ponders what it would be like without the internet.

What is sacred?  The reference of Megiddo: an important town in the Old Testament where battles took place,  Armaggedon  so the "Tell of M" is a pun on Tel Meggido   an archeological site and a national park…

 

Poems for July 16-17

 

Margo by Fanny Howe;  Irish Weather by Tess Gallagher; White Towels by Richard Jones; The Pear by Jane Kenyon; Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon; Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye; Ode to the Grimy Breeze of an Underground Subway Platform by Abby Murray; The Music before the Music by Jeanne Murray Walker; 

In Memoriam: Fanny Howe 1940-2025

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Writes [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, “The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.” Fanny Howe,  the luminous and incontrovertible proof. Bio and more poems- tap the hyperlink!

NUTSHELL: 

Poems about dichotomy, how the contradictions seems to kill us, keep us alive.   To quote Khadijah Queen, poem -a-day Guest Editor for July "as a reader, I enjoy a poem that respects my capacity to receive and process contradiction and to deepen my empathy for the full range of human experience." 

 

Margo:  In this poem, one feels the pain of losing a friend.  Each details shows it.  Paul informed us that in Ireland, to be "planted" means to be buried.  He also said there is more sunshine in Ireland than myth would have us know.  There's a thrumming of "r" throughout the poem, whether as initial sound of rock, redden, rain or inside a word, like garden, heart, brief, Irish, perfume, tree, green, turf, burning.  Image, scent, and whispers of alliterative "p", leading after 3 lines, to this musical rhythm:  Diamonds on the stamens when the sun goes blind. As the poet says, "the poem touches on the pieces of the natural world, its colors, perfumes, sounds and finally its burning when all is said and done.  It's a poem of hope for what is not seen."

 

Irish Weather:   Paul approved of the "Irish" in the title, as accurate and that the  poem seemed "meant to be spoken".  Wonderful sounds of strong verbs like squalls, gust, plunder. And the response? short and compressed:  it's raining; sun's out.  Judith shared the saying, "when the sun is shining, the devil is beating his wife" as a way to describe a sunshower.      One  can imagine the speaker gesturing with arms the sideways rain, the spray of wheat grains.  Axel commented on the  elasticity of language and structure of two extremes,  similar to the Frost poem about the "Freedom of the Moon".  

 

White Towels:  To start a poem out mentioning solitude and loneliness could elicit endless comments  about how they are different, how they are felt and experienced.    One might choose solitude, enjoy it; loneliness often is felt with loss.  Judith shared  the first lines of Elinor Wiley: Poor Loneliness and lovely solitude.   https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/little-eclogue#google_vignette   Neil offered the idea of looking at solitude and loneliness as a Venn diagram, two circles able to intersect/overlap.   Another thought was of a sine curve, of highs and lows.  

Other comments... the poem is all "mished up"; enjoyable personification of those towels which brought up very practical advice about the comfort of warmed towels for those who are ill.  How the poem came from a collection called The Blessing, which in a way, resembles solitude which can work silently.  

 

You can tell this is a poem that invites many doors to be opened, so many possible stories of this life a man is telling to those warm towels. So much to know about his children he carries in his arms as though asleep.  Loneliness invites us to learn how to live with one another perhaps.  How to understand each other humanely.   This article about AI and Loneliness goes into it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/21/ai-is-about-to-solve-loneliness-thats-a-problem

 

The Pear:   The poem comes from her "Best Poems" and it may be an early poem, before her illness.  Marge commented it feels like a  "healing poem" for herself.   It speaks to her way of being, a quiet thoughtfulness where each line break, careful use of sounds invites the reader in.  Not too lyrical, nor too dramatic in the build up of the sun, burns hot and bright/making you more desolate.  It feels paradoxical, and prepares for the shift to the pear.  In her later work she will explore this sense of desolation in her poem, "Having it out with Melancholy".  Eddy mentioned how, like Ada Limon, she skillfully uses nature like a mirror.  53 words.  Two stanzas.  A quatrain with diminishing lengths of line even as middle repeats with middling mind, only to land on one final word: afraid.  In the next stanza, the first three lines swell to desolate. Like a turn in a sonnet, without a stanza break, the shift to the pear and the foreboding of the final two lines.  

 

Hunger:  The opening line is one of those universal truths about being human and our need for love, twisted as Bernie put it as a "sympathetic fallacy", inviting negativity but calling it good.  To get into explanation of the irrational, as in  Pathetic Fallacy: see  https://www.victorianweb.org/technique/pathfall.html

I was glad as we read it, that there was some laughter.  The contradictions, the non-sequiturs, the fact that the poem is titled "Hunger" brought up many responses.  Physical eating of the coyote, but the poet's eating of hen and duck is side by side with  what it is that we want to believe, want to be true, or want to have happen with mother goose and nonsense about three blind mice tossed in.   Indeed "We are all trying to change/what we fear into something beautiful".  As Major Jackson asks:  "what blinds us to red flags, to what we hope our instincts should catch?  We become wild in our desperation to present ourselves as worthy of love."

 

Separation Wall:  A strong title, for what seems to be unpredictable, disjointed couplets.  The opening couplet triggers introduces the idea of something becoming sour, (curdling, separate);  the next couplet:  the problem of silence, of giving up.  Indeed, why were you born then?  Reactionary treatment is no good, but not speaking, not trying to communicate, is to stop being human.  Where do we stand with "willful ignorance"?  It would be hard to read this poem and not to think about the conflict between Palestine and Israel since 1947 as well as the heartless war since Oct. 7, 2023 in Gaza.  

In the 3rd couplet, Naomi brings in fear.  How "they" as  nuclear bomb (modern powers)  are scared of a cucumber, (traditional food for the original inhabitants. The soothing tone of the mother, the grandmother, questions of how to slice cucumbers support the almost innocent depiction of the poet feeling "like a normal person with fantastic dilemmas".  The confirmation of normal takes the space of almost three couplets, for the Grandmother,  after a time, as long as "it takes a sun to set" to say "yes".  "They" vs. me.  In the discussion we did not address who is involved in the "we".  Onlookers from the rest of the world?  Israelis? Palestinians?  Zionists?  Hamas?  

No one should want babies to find out about// : the line and stanza break allows us to pause, think  about what we want and don't want the next generation to know.  We would like the babies not to find out about // the failures waiting for them.  She separates from "we" and counters.  I would like/them to believe on the other side of the wall// line and stanza break.  The hope represented by a circus, the artificial theatre that represents the world.

Our friends.  Naomi gives us the hope of that 1st person plural -- hope in the learning of juggling, of using tall poles.

 

Ode to the Grimy Breeze: The poem speaks for itself.  I love Abby's originality, starting with  things you'd rather NOT be thankful for.  How beautifully she places that almost perfect lotus, that Buddhist symbol in the grime, the heat, the smoke, the modern version of hell imposed by a dictator... how she transforms a cigarette of an armed guard into a source of choreography, how that means the dark cannot be stagnant, and light, the way light is, will explode, sparkle, disappear, in its cycles, now inviting amazement, then, goes offstage for a rest before returning.

 

The Music before the Music:  a perfect sonnet...  captures the synergy  of orchestra ... not a celebration of chaos.  Playful.  How enjoyable to think of scales as  horses on nickering runs, the plow and plant in one of Beethoven's "fields".

 https://dailypoempod.substack.com/p/jeanne-murray-walkers-the-music-before?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1603480&post_id=165041437&r=3b45d3&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=listen_now_button&triedRedirect=true

 

 

July 9-10

Almost by Bob Hicok; Straight Talk from Fox by Mary Oliver; (sequel to Astonishment by Szymborska); Desire for Melody by Larry Colker; Heavenly Length by Bill Holm; I'm here for a short visit only by Noel Coward; Untitled by James Baldwin; The Skylight by Seamus Heaney; The Socks by Jane Kenyon Morning by Yannos Ritsos; In the Corners of Fields by Ted Kooser; The Freedom of the Moon by Robert Frost 

see article by Sean O'Hare in City Magazine: "Beauty in the Ordinary": Marie Howe, who is from Rochester, has just recently won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her New and Selected Poems... Marie pinpoints exactly what I do each week.... getting people to look closely at poet choices -- and that magic of discovery when words line up to express feelings that line your life-- and the life of others! 

"You have this wood that's your life, and you burn it in order to transform it into a poem.  And so it's your life, your imagination, your memory; it's made up , it's real— language, silence, music, all of it combines."

A  poem invites you to be open to the magic of working with words, just the right one, in the right place is the aim, but there's nothing about certitude involved.  How to hold a feeling, hold something that is essentially unsayable.

It felt so good to be back, sharing poems with people curious about what makes a poem work. 

**

Nutshell of discussion for Poems July 11-12, 2025.

Almost:  Almost what?  What words might follow "almost"?  Almost perfect?  Almost "there", finished;  almost as being on the brink or lip of understanding, so kissing somewhat related, although, how kissing for a year to prove nothing is permanent seems an unlikely way of proving it so.  We admired the  succinct crystalline shortness, the slowing down of the last line with its two adverbs that give the feel of something lingering  on and on.  What is it about "almost" the poet wants us to understand?  What do we expect and want?   A young college student at Rundel was reminded of the song "Dance all night" (pre-chorus: and we talked for a while, sat for a while and one of them asked if there's anything I would change and I didn't know what to say. But I?  I'd dance all night...  https://genius.com/Rose-dance-all-night-lyrics

Straight Talk: Perhaps the first adjective associated with a fox is sly, or cunning and the last thing one would expect, would be "straight talk".  It's thus surprising to find the fox finds music everywhere,  and  even "death itself is a music... Mercy is a child beside such an invention"...  It perhaps makes us wonder how animals think... and feel it might be a welcome change to live the life of a fox.  Comments included appreciation of the sounds of nature, the critique of humans, and the message of Oliver's Wild Geese asking us what it is we are doing with our one wild life.  

Desire for Melody:  The title could be for the piano, for the young girl, or for us all.  What is melody, but harmonious arrangement, and when it is "endangered", no longer, whether  visibly "ditched", or absent,  how do we respond?  In this spare poem, the poet gives us descriptive details: the bench is black, the piano in a different state, by a rural highway, and even its position specified as "tilting slightly", and yet the whole situation is odd, with a sense of nothing being quite right.  For what is the girl waiting...? is it more than what is fitting to complete the picture?  Is it hope that a piano appear, or that music be created without it? How do we, as readers complete the picture, fill in the story of how this situation happened, imagine what happens next?  

Heavenly Length:  The title is the only part of the poem aside from the last two lines that is not part of a question.  There is no length or measurement in heaven.  What is too much?  What is it we want yet blather along, covering it with small talk?  What questions matter?  Is the poet being sarcastic, ladling on absurd questions?  What is it that we want to "get inside"?  One thought from the group:  Nothing is ever too much... We can't control how many breaths we take... so, whatever the subject, (religion, ecology, meanings, desires, all of which are suggested) are questions necessary?  

I'm here... It could be a delightful show-tune, nicely rhymed with captivating rhythms.  Are we only replays and reruns, imitating others, who in turn may be rewound as re-runs?  Where does anything unique about a soul come in?  It's good to be reminded with a jesting tongue in cheek, indeed, our life is just a short visit in a much grander scheme of things. 

Untitled:  A common formulation states that prayer is a way of speaking to the divine and meditation is a way of listening for it. Poetry synthesizes these.  How to understand Lord / Do / I , offset from the lines indented underneath.  Perhaps an unfinished question.  Many picked up on the message, "Lord, please don't add on to my pain..."  We sensed reference to  such Biblical passages as  "once I was blind but now I see" and sensitive to the importance of light repeated 3 times, first as marvelous, on the falling water, and how the reflection blinds.  The word Blinds  outside of the offset first, capitalized words, doesn't fit with them.  One person saw baptism, the water allowing the initiation to light of faith; others saw a skillful poem which invites  the reader empathize with the speaker of the poem.

The Skylight:  Rhyme, rhythm especially the first part of the sonnet reinforce the description of  a cozy cottage.  The turn, with the line-break on extravagant, with the surprise landing on sky with reference to the parable of the miraculous healing is like opening the coffin of the first stanza to the resurrection of the second one.

The socks:  Sock of course, can be a verb, the action delivered by the fists.  This poem was written before Jane Kenyon would have contracted leukemia.  I sense rage, not so much jealousy, although perhaps there was some, married to her teacher, poet Donald Hall.  What I love about this short poem, is the emotion, the ordering action of pairing and rolling socks, fitting them in the drawers.   What is going on in that final line?  One person joked, "do I want this lady in my drawers".  Perhaps a Buddhist parable as many of her other poems, once she was battling her cancer.  Note, the title is THE socks.  Second line:  YOUR socks.  YOUR drawers.  Whose fists?  She doesn't end the poem inviting the socks to be socks.

Morning :  how to understand this? Rather like Alice in Wonderland falling into the looking glass, the surface words paint the day, but who is this lone woman?  Is she suicidal?  Is "jumping from the mirror" a way to return to herself?

In the Corners of Fields:  Everyone enjoyed this poem filled with a sense of place.  It is refreshing to read a poem whose images do not require extra work.  From describing a field with broad strokes, the poem narrows to a detail of a moth, traditional symbol of a soul.  

The Freedom of the Moon:  two stanzas.  One the new moon, thus dark;  the other later, the moon has gone on to travel through its phases.   The rhyme is discreet.  One person had the sense of "taking the moon for a walk".  After discussion most concurred Frost was implying the variations of the moon-- but also our part in observing it.

haiku: back to morning, and a passionate kiss of sun.