Poems for February 19-20

 Happy Valentine's Day, however you can embellish the happy.   (It helps to make a list of positives in your life.  This might include  celebrations of loving gestures human beings give to each other )-- and I pause there, to thank everyone who is on this list for loving the conversations that come from sharing poems.  For sure, I want to thank everyone (especially Joyce who provided the pink hearts) for penning such lovely notes!  They are totallty reciprocal and I return the positive feelings!  As for the Patron Saint of Bees, and Epileptics, so cruelly martyed in the 3rd century... (Saint Valentine)  or the commercial parephenalia created and ascribed to him, I do hope big KISS will  keep things simple, and perhaps a little silly. 

Barb Murphy shares this quote  from Christian Wiman when he was Editor of Poetry Magazine: she taped it to heroffice door when she was teaching full-time:"Let us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both."

Poems for next week:  (you'll note Jim's tongue twister comes first.  I do hope you enjoy the pleasant pheasant  plucker's presence! )  You might know that the wry Frederick Ogden Nash (1902-1971) although born in Rye, New York had an ancestor directly related to the naming of Nashville.. 

We Made Quite a Do by Jim Jordan; The Cow, The Pig by Ogden Nash; The Flea by John Donne; A Caution To Everybody by Ogden Nash; Moon Gathering by Eleanor Wilner; POEM IN WHICH I INSPECT THE FABRIC CARE LABEL by Dick Westheimer 

 

Nutshell:

 

 Much ado:  We had the honor of Jim coming in person to read his poem.  It received a sound round of applause and chuckles on Wednesday, and quite a few more compliments Thursday.  What fun the contrasting modern sound (sass) with the fancier "fusillade" all with the overplay of battle play inside a play and in history!  Phew!  An audacious and ambitious project -- but as Mike said  pulled it off quite successfully!  Not overdone, but with all the delight of Shakespeare making the reader want to read that play... but meanwhile enjoying how Jim and friends are enjoying it!

 

So what makes us glad to read/hear wordplay -- or conversely find it tiresome?  It came up that alliteration is great for satire and expressing anger, but not great when it interferes with the tone or message. Wit can fall into similar pros and cons, best expressed as comedy perhaps.

 

Ogden Nash: the small sampling provided much merriment!  Graeme thought Nash might need some help with a review of anatomy for the cow;  The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the middle is milk, and the other end of entirely different ilk.  An alternative might go directly to rhyme with poo.

It brought up many fun references.  Polly shared Nash's view of the Turtle:  The turtle lives twixt plated decks/which practically conceal its sex./ I think it clever of the turtle/In such a fix to be so fertile. 

We moved on to the Flea, which  Paul helped us appreciate for its spicy suggestions and more background on John Donne quoting his use of vernacular with a liberal translation of The Canonization: "Shut up and let me love!" (Well...  the opening line is actually, "For God Sakes Woman, be quiet... ") He suggests, if you enjoyed animal poems, to check out Robert Burns, and his comments To a Louse" espied on a lady's bonnet in church.  

Thanks to Judith, we enjoyed very much "Archy" the cockroach recording the alley cat Mehitabel's story,  helping his punctuation along, since could not manage the shift key on the typewriter when recording  (note  3rd stanza, there's a small typo:  guts, not gust)..  The liberal dose of French indeed makes the Ballade resemble a take-off of François Villon.  Don Marquis, by the way, is not a Spanish Nobleman, but an American,  Donald, from Walnut, Illinois (1878-1937).  Neil brought in his copies of Archie and Mehitabel to show and mentioned the  musical  !  Bart (Rundel) summed it up: the poem is a delightful example of brio filled panache and unexpected surprises.  

Moon Gathering:  this poem by one of the newest Chancellors of the American Academy (note, she is 88!)  could have provided a month of discussion and appreciation.  The title sets up mystery with the intrigue in the play of noun and verb in the word gathering.  Who is they?  Who is we?  

  We shared feelings regarding  tone: a sense of sacred, perhaps ancient ceremony of Wickens, and travel with the ancestors of the stars.  The moon is a powerful symbol, and Wilner sets the stage with the word scrim, the light curtain used in theatre.  Her use of the future tense, shifting to present allows the reader to travel simultaneously with the poet in two worlds.  This is one of those mysterious  poems which engages the reader fully, but skirts explanation. Details include  moon as "hook", the old-fashioned well and dipper, and the scientific term, "precession" used for the wobbling state of a planet on its axis.   As for an understanding of  the three zeros standing like pawprints  it is not clear:  a reference to the millenium, the summer triangle or Canis Major (the big dipper's other Dog name)?  Without knowing, the impact of possibilities is not confusing, but enhances the intrigue.  All this lends to a sense of summoning  spirits.  

Voicemail Villanelle:  Here, the form is used to enhance a light-heartedly clever commentary on the telephone, the "menus" providing choices with the obvious lies of the two repeated rhymes We'll be with you right away; We're grateful that you called today.  

Poem in Which:  The Rattle prompt  from Denise Duhamel, is a wonderful challenge. Tap the hyperlink to read the review about her book called  In Which

 Denise writes this in a note to her Jan, 2025 poem, "Poem in which I press Fast Forward" : 

“I started writing the poems from In Which after reading Emily Carr’s brilliant essay ‘Another World Is Not Only Possible, She Is on Her Way on a Quiet Day I Can Hear Her Breathing.’ (American Poetry Review, Volume 51, No. 3, May/June 2022) Carr borrows her title from Arundhati Roy, political activist and novelist. In her delightfully unconventional essay, Carr talks about rekindling intuition in poems, offering ‘a welcome antidote to whatever personal hell you, too, are in.’ Carr’s invitation to be unapologetic, even impolite, gave me new ways of entering my narratives. Soon I was imagining I was someone else completely. Or sometimes I looked back at my earlier self, at someone I no longer recognized.”

We very much enjoyed the scenario inspired by a "care" label.  The stanza enjambments propel the poem forward, as an accumulation of slant rhymes flesh, chest, caresse, yes weave a story.  Inspecting an actual label,  the poem calls on how we label, the importance of care, as subtext.  Although she could not make it in person,  Marge Burgio, responded to the last with her poem. 

"Read the Care Label"

Don't Discard

Give a light washing

of streams from above,

May need TLC if wrinkled

Or smooth like a dove.

Perhaps a swift kick 

in the pants...

Will be the best aid!

Or just a listening ear 

without more to say...

Soft music to soothe 

at the end of the day.

{A Bible Study Class, Poems of God's splendor/Will give us the love, we/Hope to remember...]

** Indeed, we should all come with a care label: if faith in a God helps, go for it... perhaps the splendor in nature's wonder is another name for it.

poems for February 12-3

 In honor of Black History Month, the American Academy provides selection of poems newly added to their archive from literary magazines published during the Harlem Renaissance:  Black Opals, Fire!!, and Voice of the Negro.  I include a sampling.  I couldn't resist starting with an introduction to "49 songs" and a reminder about the "Cinquain Form".  

Last week, looking at David Shumate's poem, another aspect of poetry came up:  It was interesting, but a monologue.  The prime importance of poetry is the invitation to join in a suggestion of a conversation!  Hopefully the selection this week will engage you to do so!  Poems have a way to touch "the unsayable" which amplifies the challenge of guessing what the poet is trying to convey.  The last three poems in this week's batch certainly provided extra challenge.  I thank you all for offering what strikes you as we read them, and for sharing what you wonder about!

Poems 

Funk(#49 Song) by Lily Painter ;Longings by Nellie Rathbone Bright 1898 –1977;  Nameless  by Mae Cowdery Cinquains by Lewis Grandison Alexander; November Night, by Adelaide Crapsey; A Thistle Will Do by Omar Berrada Statement of Teaching Philosophy by Keith Leonard Song of the Sun  by James Longenbach (the full version here: 

Nutshell 

Funk: I provided a note about the "49 song", that originated as a "war-expedition song".  How to adapt a precious tradition that maintains its resilience in a contemporary setting?  We noted the poets slant homage with use of capital letters:  Creator, Old World, as opposed to "new world", "ford" (as car).  The rhythmic beat repeated in to the battle and back, the choice of adjectives like "unwanted" for dawn,  "wrong" for eagles, the paradoxical ending, "my warrior, we aren't// the warriors, of anything // like that, anymore"  punctuating the absence of the old "war-journey" and the honor of the warriors who used to "drift away".  After several readings,  the poet's words are confirmed:   this is a "love anthem to reimagination", inheritance, survivance, reinforcing the old by way of reclamation".

Longings:  The title informs us, and supports a tone that offsets the  powerful verb "slay" in the first line... The poet has an art of "saying more without saying" in the first two lines which on first read sound confusing.  One idea came up to read "things just things" as if speaking quickly with the "just things" as a hurried corrective.  With no comma, the "just" as in "fair" is reduced to the meaning of "only".  The line break jumps to the next line's surprising completion: things "they tell me I must do".  The alternating rhyme abcb looks like it will set up a romantic lyric.  The second stanza with windy longer lines, the curious "drams" (not a typo for "drums), is ee/ff.  The third stanza dispenses with end rhyme, and threads in the slant rhyme of ee (echo of flee?) in feel, cheek, see,(twice) green, tree.  Three "I wants" in this highly sensory stanza confirms the title, but then the satisfying drop to the voiceless fricative-filled flash flame like the fire... Black Opals is the name of the literary magazine Nellie Rathbone Bright co-founded, but also can refer to the highly-valued, rare, spectacular gem-stone used as metaphor for Black Women.  Interesting that there was another quarterly devoted to "younger Negro Artists" called Fire. 

Finality:  For a poet with such a short life, one wonders what indeed was the cause of his death given this short poem.  Some readers brought up the Buddhist idea of "no mud, no lotus", but given that the poet is black, given that so often a black person was not given a headstone or grave, that final two word ending or not so much about composting or cyclical relationship, but rather an abrupt and final nail rhyming with "forgot".  One person wondered if a pun were intended with "bare" as implied bear.  The tension of "God/Sod",  the dark roots, and that death be the only triumph of the soul,  shackles a sense of irreversibility of living conditions, whose only release is death.

Nameless:  This poem published in the Christmas issue 1928 of Black Opals, uses the "delay tactic" of inverting the placement of the subject to the end.  Sea, storm, wind... akin to beating heart, lashing storm, yearning song.  Beautifully cadenced to lead to a break in the pattern with the arrival of night, which one senses as calming, the hope of prayer as a balm.

Cinquains:  Also published in  the same issue as Black Opals (https://poets.org/poem/cinquains).  We remarked the punctuation of the first and fourth cinquain, the similar style as in Nameless,  "how like"  and mention of wind.   A short form allows a certain "cutting out any BS".  However, how the four related to each other, or if they were supposed to, was not clear.  Perhaps 4 different snapshots inside his mind.  For sure, we felt the group of four painted universal themes, not specific to people as "black" vs. "white".  

November Night:  to give an example of the cinquain form: 2/4/6/8/2 syllable lines.  This one was the inventor of the form, Adelaide Crapsey and located on the Poets Walk that stretches out on University Ave in front of the Memorial Art Gallery.

A Thistle Will Do: Rather like the first poem, a sense of preserving a heritage in modern times.  In the note, the poet refers to aspiring to the condition of "echo" and responding to the work by Palestinian artists, "May Amnesia Never Kiss us on the Mouth".   https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5272

The artists examine how communities bear witness to experiences of violence, loss, displacement, and forced migration, collecting online recordings of everyday people singing and dancing in communal spaces in Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen since 2010.  The project, considered a "performance" started in 2020 and continues. I spent a few hours trying to fathom the complexity of all the art performance which includes Infrarealismo,, the use of echo in sound, the play and punning using photography where we "are in the negative".  I am overwhelmed.  

Back to the poem.  and the Poet.  I found this interview: https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/stopping-by/stopping-by-with-omar-berrada This was very helpful, as I see he is trilingual, and most probably wrote "A Thistle will do" in English.  The opening stanza with its enjambments providing  double meaning already invites us into a magical work, and yet, he throws in the contemporary adjective, "tacky". There is a certain tenderness in his address to a daughter, a strange juxtaposition of "pixel pricks" and "unmanned hunters" with layers of echo of the past. 

Some felt the poem was a case of "willful obfuscation" -- but I am not sure.  For repair to happen, one must show the brokenness which he does with the disparate fragments of stanzas, the interrupted lyrics of songs... the break on the isolated island of the penultimate line "The song breaks".  How to say the final line?  How does he mean "landscape" -- is it related to the break of the song as the rejet of the enjambment that falls through space?  Coupled with no break,  A landscape return, starts with the same capitalization as the other starts of stanzas... and shares the same lack of a period as if to show a sample of an endless cycle.  Without the note, I would be totally lost.  

We did discuss the metaphor and qualities of a thistle as survivor in dry land, but also source of beauty, of food, and silken tufts that carry its seed.  

Statement of Teaching Philosophy:  A 15-line block, called a Statement, and yet is does not resemble a statement.  A poem should "show, not tell" -- and usually relies on symbols, images, placement in its crafting.  This seems like a snapshot of now with a memory of then.   Is the message that we, as reader, also must do the struggle?  "Punching" the cloud, could mean internet...  Perhaps everyone's favorite line because it is one thing that CAN be said, understood, unlike fear of uncertainty.  How do you understand the preparation of eulogies for all his loved ones?  Why is that not included in a lesson plan?  Do we shirk mention of death as we seek to understand the meaning of life?

Song of the Sun:  just two verses.  

I love that the final stanza, in italics stumbles through a staircase like a beam of light, broken, falling on itself with layered implications that double the meaning.  Ex:  Go if you are //Speaking.  or you could understand, Go if you are / speaking/To me.  Our eyes and brains doublecheck:  To me (I have said this before), I say it now:  I will be... The lines do not read in the way that I just wrote them -- but we are pattern-making animals, and want to see such patterns.  We especially appreciated that the final verb, "Speak" could be an imperatif --  or that the poet is listening.  The benefit of double-meanings.

Poems for Feb. 5-6

I want to Die, by Tariq Luthun; :  Out on the Flats  by Leonard Nathan; a Hundred Years from Now  by David Shumate. Apophasis Now by James Hannham;  Speech Balloon  by Imtiaz Dharker (no text available -- only a sound); Tissue  also by Imtiaz Dharker, Forgiveness  by Maria Popova.

Nutshell of discussions: Picking up from last week, from Auden's tribute to W.B. Yeats with the oft-quoted "Poetry does nothing"... this final stanza. 

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise. -- W.H. Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

For the first poem by Tariq Luthun I sent him this message.

We enjoyed discussing your poem, "I want to die..." on Wednesday and yesterday.  Everyone was struck by your powerful use of enjambments, how you "leave and recreate", breaking a line, or doubling the power of a word with the suspension and often surprising "rejet" and subsequent line.

We were wondering if you think in two (or more)  languages?  As a linguist and former French teacher and bilingual person myself, I am always curious about how multiple languages influence choice of words for sound as well as implied meaning.  If there is anything you would like to share about your background, what you idea of poetry is, etc., I would be happy to share it with everyone. 

We enjoyed as well your choice to stick with tercets with irregular lines, although when we read your poem aloud, most read up to the periods which don't follow the stanzas.   We were curious which choices you make in reading,ex. how long do you pause (or do you pause at all) at the line and stanza break  "I belong to nothing //  "but my friends —those who have entrusted me/with the gift of caring for them."

(I didn't see a link where you read the poem -- is that available?  This is the kind of poem one wants to read and listen to many times.)

We loved your word play -- how you weave it into the layers... lead us on with you with a sense of discovery.  One participant went so far as to see a palindrome in "doom exists"... as "mood" -- and perhaps "exits"... 

Are we correct in surmising the tone of the poem  supports a theme of "putting others first -- do they put me last?".  For sure, we felt angst, and one person sensed "beleaguered but fighting bacj", alnother that you are bearing witness, perhaps resigned, perhaps with a note of irony?

You can see it was a big hit.  We really felt the contradictions with joy whispered hopelessly...  and then the triple joy, which marks a turn in the poem.  

We tried to imagine the way you wanted the reader to understand the end... what kind of "warm room" would a boy yearn to be released from?  On several readings, it seems the boy is preparing to join in the fight and can only survive if hardened by indifference...  We appreciated the irony of the multiple layers implied by  "his place".

Are we close to what you might hope a reader would understand?

We welcome your response!

Out on the Flats:  we enjoyed the dream-like ambiguity of the poem .  It starts with the first  line break on Still.-- as in not moving, as in not having gone away, as in remaining in the form of a heron.  Still as a hieroglyph is unusual for a simile and lends a sense of ancient and primeval.  The image is heightened by the personnification of the morning's (soft, grey) face  that it is "carved on.   Who is the "you"?  The Heron?  Or might there be two people involved in watching the Heron?  Or might it be another heron?  As one person put it, there's a sense of solitary in the second stanza, ""when I seemed far away"-- does the "it" refer to distance between two people -- if it's a heron, would that make sense to ask "what it meant"... Turning to answer, now it is the speaker all alone, and the answer seems to hang in the 3rd stanza.  Is it a eulogy?  We all enjoyed it, but are cloaked in mystery.

A Hundred Years from Now:  a great prompt! for writing  We enjoyed the tone.  Unlike the Heron poem, the sentences and questions are familiar even if curious, for example: merging "baseball and opera into one melodic sport".  Hints of AI -- but also hints of how time is something we invent, ascribing the ideas of  "forwards/ahead/behind/after/before".  He repeats 100 years and adds a period to the 3 points of suspension -- so "from now" is also memory back in time of his grandfather.   

There are 109 words, in this block of what seems to be prose.  The question of what makes something a poem, (or verse with capital V) comes up.  Here is a technical distinction between prose (conveying content) and poetry (crafting content).  This definition is offered of the prose-poem: "A prose composition that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry. "  This definition does not include the surprise of non-sequiturs, but might they be meant as metaphors? 

Apophasis:  I gave definitions.  Just like the first poem confusing the sound of cinnamon and synonym, in this poem's title, "Apophasis Now",  without saying "Apocalypse Now",  implies it and plays cleverly  with this rhetorical device (definition:  to raise an issue by denying it or claiming not to mention it).  Bart immediately thought of the example, "I come not oto praise but to bury Caesar".    The 5-syllable words: apotheosis, the medical term apophysis, (site of tendon connection), a 3-syllable French word for epic poem (which contains the 2-syllable French word for sword [épée]0, peters down to 2 syllables of awry, and finally 1 syllable of wee.  Is there a pun on an absent "we" as in "we the people?  Neil thought of twee, British 

I quoted Imtiaz Dharker -- "Are words no more than waving wavering flags"?

Does this kind of cleverness make you glad you encountered it, or does it exhaust you, rather like the current  deluge of blunderbustery  in the news?

Speech Balloon:  Imtiaz Dharker regales us with her Scottish-Pakistani accent, delights us rhymes and variants on the refrain, "I'm over the moon he said she said, I'm over the moon".  There are no lyrics available, only the audio: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/speech-balloon/ : Her comment: Sometimes you hear a phrase and hear it again and again and it sticks in your head. This is what happened to me when I heard the same phrase on television and in news reports, and it's a phrase that seems to have stuck in the throat of the English language.

Her poem Tissue was less easily accessible.  Starting with the title, Tissue, she explores the nature of paper, transparency, surface covering, outward appearances of architecture to the final word, skin. We distinguished the making of paper (from pulp of wood fiber, rice, etc.) vs. parchment (animal skin).  Certainly her words and soundplay, inclusion of "light", perhaps a slant reference to poetry, what is preserved.  The 6th stanza with that refers to what "flies our lives like paper kites" is perhaps a key or clue -- as is the 8th quatrain with the reference of "shapes that pride can make" in the one stanza that uses rhyme.

The final word seems to anchor the poem-- how is our living tissue, never meant to last holding our very being?

Forgiveness: The beginning evokes Lucille Clifton's Blessing of the Boats, and the Irish Blessing about the road "rising to meet you, wind at your back".  Rundel participants: Colleen noted, Popova marries science and poetry in her work.  George wondered why Moon was capitalized.  He was reminded of humility as endless surrender.  

“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill."

-- TS Eliott from the Four Quartets 

Ginny: " I think overall writing a poem that describes forgiveness is a challenge and she did it beautifully".

I agree-- especially those last lines of the power of forgiveness within us, "turning/ the stone in the heart into golden dust."

 

poems for Jan. 29-30--plus preliminary remarks...

 It Is Enough by Anne Alexander Bingham; things people like to share: by Nuar Alsadir[1]; Cleaning House by Scott Owens; If  by Imtiaz Dharker** (This site will give you a good background of this poet and the scope of her work); A Downward Look by James Merrill; Day of the Dead by Peter Balakian

 Wednesday was super special with Chinese New Year (thank you Eddie for filling us in) and those present were treated to Judith's exquisitely delicious "birthday" cookies.  

I spent some time thinking about the many avenues we traveled prompted by last week's poems, 

and did perhaps a more detailed write up.  It indeed takes a village not just to raise a child, but help understand all that a poem can do!!!! Please feel free to comment! 

The poems selected for the 1/29/2025 discussion brought up the question of our expectations of poetry.  What is it we desire when we read a poem?  Judith's comments on the first poem led  to discussing the distinction between poetry and verse.  I was delighted by her beginning  recitation of How The Helpmate Of Blue-Beard Made Free With A Door: a re-telling of Bluebeard (A maiden from the Bosphorus,/With eyes as bright as phosphorus,/Once wed the wealthy bailiff/Of the caliph/Of Kelat.Though diligent and zealous, he/Became a slave to jealousy.(Considering her beauty,/'T was his duty/To be that.)  

You might enjoy this essay which examines some of the considerations of poetry.  Here's an excerpt: "According to George Orwell,  "Good bad poetry" is verse competently—even memorably—written. But his distinction leaves unaddressed the nature of the poetry itself.  "Verse, as Orwell says, tells us something we already know—as often as not something we know we already know. Verse is not an instrument of exploration, but rather a tool of affirmation. Its rewards lie not in the excitements of discovery, but in the pleasures of encountering the familiar.  "Verse does not seek to know the unknown or to express the unexpected, nor does it undertake the risk of failure that both entail. “Serious” poetry, on the other hand, is written in pursuit of an open-ended goal. It seeks to use language, in its full potential, to encompass reality, both external and internal, in the fullness of its complexity."

 

In the list poem by Nuar Alsadir, some might equate her choices as arbitrary as the lady who stirred her coffee with her big toe, (or toothbrush) but as always, the point of poetry is conversing with what is provided in that poem. The sharing of it, followed by an open dialogue enhances our understanding not just of the words, but of what it is that makes us human.

Comments from the group continued the conversation, sharing snippets about insights such as crafting of words to compress meaning.

 

At Rundel, we discussed the Second Coming  noting the value of symbolism lies in the power of suggestion of the infinite not the fixed meaning.  For sure, the power of this poem is not about "setting a statesman right" (one of Yeats' arguments for avoiding war poetry). George mentioned the book Stone Cottage by James Longenbach which paints the relationship between Yeats and Ezra Pound, and the "war years". He also quoted Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound.  As she  said, he is a village explainer; excellent if you are the village, but if not, not. (The fascination is with explaining! )

Pursuing the conversation about  poetry, one should also mention Auden whose famous line is that "poetry makes nothing happen".  See "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" elegy .What is the role of poetry in the modern world?  What is it for?  

from Part I

In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden 1907 –1973

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,

And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom

A few thousand will think of this day

As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

**

from Part II

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

 

from Part III

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

 

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

 

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

All of this is a terribly long preamble, but, suffice it to say, we were fueled by Judith's special cookies, she made (on the occasion of her 90th birthday), and I did promise to share this poem published in Amethyst by Jonathan.

 

The Road  by Jonathan Thorndike

 

Life is nothing but a road--

a farmer’s dirt path

through the winter wheat

where he can drive a tractor

 

or walk cows home to

the barn’s warmth or

stroll to a distant church spire

piercing clouds gathered above trees.

 

The footpath leads down to a river

where children in summer catch frogs

and release them in the tall grass.

Bluegills in the river wait for flies.

 

The dirt trail, a byway open to all,

made by unknown explorers,  

stamped with boot tracks of autumn deer hunters

looking for a place of rest, an open fire.

 

As you walk by abandoned railroad tracks,

the sun breaks through clouds.

Crows call to each other in the pines,

speaking about where to find food,

 

their past lives, and the ghosts of friends.

You overhear two people talking,

a gentle discussion about the rain and wind.

An old wooden bridge crosses the river.

 

Carrying a bag of rusty gardening tools,

your hands and feet are tired at day’s end.

You yearn for a pint of ale, the hearth, 

a bowl of cabbage and corned beef stew.

 

You feel a hand reaching to touch your hand.

We crave knowing who awaits in the next village,

over the next hill, who lives down the road

in the faded white clapboard farmhouse.

 

What happened to old friendships

that you savored at night like spiced wine?

The quiet of the forest, 

spring snow turning into rain--

the thought of heaven.

 

 Back to the Nutshell: 

It is Enough:   The poet, Anne Alexander Bingham (1931-2012) may well have known  Omar Khayyam. Judith thought her poem a rather sentimental  contemporary variation on it.      The 12th century masterpiece by poet/mathematician Omar Khayyam is a refreshing read, and one is reminded of echoes of poetry through out the ages in conversation with it.  For a sampling, herewith a few translated lines from the Rubiayat. 

XVI

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon

Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,

Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,

Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.

 

XVII

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai

Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,

How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp

Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.

 

XXXVII

For I remember stopping by the way

To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:

And with its all-obliterated Tongue

It murmur'd--"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

 

 

XXXVIII

And has not such a Story from of Old

Down Man's successive generations roll'd

Of such a clod of saturated Earth

Cast by the Maker into Human mould?

 

In the Rundel discussion the question of the inconsistency of punctuation came up.  If a poem is well-crafted, one would hope using the dictum "Best word, best order",  the use of space, indication of pauses, surprises of line breaks, etc. collaborate with word choices to corroborate the underlying possibilities of meaning.

 

Things people like to share:   This poem reminded Jonathan of  the poem  Things I didn't   know I loved by Nâzim Hikmet  (1902-1963).  Nuar Alsadir, a contemporary poet born in Connecticut  of Iraqi parents  is a psychotherapist with several poetry titles and awards to her credit.  Curious that two people have ordered her latest book Animal Joy!  

A list poem      is an interesting way to play with organization of nouns.  Alsadir's poem had  a lot of white space (negative space in Art plays a similarly  important role)  where  two lists are juxtaposed.  Some thought of Yin and Yang, or a way of dividing up    the way we go about determining preferences  and judge "good" and "not good". 

Some immediately wanted to set up their own list, or find out what others share. Another was reminded of the fun birthday puzzle made from little tidbits of information published on the day you are born. The associations with what is listed was as varied as the people in the room, and 

Eddie, as one of the younger participants, commented that the form used no capital letters or punctuation, much like texting.  

 

There is more to the poem than a mere list:  there is the surprise of "things I don't like to share" in a poem with a title announcing things one likes to share; there is also a fun "tongue-in-cheek" aspect, and unexpected provocation of quite animated conversation!  The poem might not be like "a lump of ice, riding on its own melting" (Robert Frost) , nor is it an antidote really for the punishment of English romantic poets as another put it, but by the end, there was a sense of celebration of our shared humanity!

 

Cleaning House: Mary announced the poem needed a new title, as this is no way to go about cleaning a house!  Whether you take the poem literally or figuratively, this poem also invited quite a bit of conjecture.  Is it one person looking back on a relationship with another person, their start in life?  Is it about the relationship of the poet to the house?  Is the "we" talking about an entire nation and pulling down the existing government and rebuilding? (last to lines).  One comment was that in America a house is no longer something handed down generation after generation. Is there any racial implication in the first stanza?  

In terms of the poem itself as five stanzas of unrhymed free verse, there are delicious moments of sound, small twists to clichés such as "courting with hammer and nails". Work is indeed a bonding experience, especially if laboring for unity.

 

If: "Born in Pakistan and brought up in Scotland, Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary film-maker who divides her time between London and India. This mixed heritage and itinerant lifestyle is at the heart of her writing: questioning, imagistic and richly textured poems that span geographical and cultural displacement, conflict and gender politics, while also interrogating received ideas about home, freedom and faith. Yet for all the seriousness of her themes, Dharker is a truly global poet, whose work speaks plainly and with great emotional intelligence to anyone who has ever felt adrift in the increasingly complex, multicultural and shrinking world we inhabit. For a number of years now, her poems have been taught on the UK national curriculum." from her website: 

 

Everyone "caught" the importance of the spacing between an unusual "stanza break" and the triple space before the final verb, kneel.

More detail about the structure.  

There are "If" is repeated three times, with the first line starting and ending with the word.  The start, If we could is repeated five lines before the end, as well as on the final if we could.  Isolating the three instances: 1) If we could pray if    2) to gratitude, if we could lose  3) ground. If we could [with the idea of praying appearing in the imperative-sounding kneel.]

This is quite fragmented syntax.  The suspension if we knew/we could turn leads to another enjambment and turning/feel that things could be different.  

 

The conditional could, would, should set the tone of the poem with five instances of "could". The overlaying of images into the 6th line, "how small the sound is" creates a dream-like surrealism or mysticism of blue hands, reflection of the moon, the break after 14 lines, only to continue another 5 lines to arrive at a question mark.  

Is ground,  as rejet (word after the enjambed "look for peace on the iron") being used to describe iron that has been ground to dust? What urgency is carried from iron to ground?

 

A Downward Look: At Rundel, as soon as we saw the name of the poet, there was mention of Merrill’s long Ouija-inspired epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Here is a perspective of looking down, probably at a bathtub filled with soap bubbles, possibly a mother and her child.  (Delta thicket implied pubic hair.) The Pittsford group felt more a travel in a weird time warp and two Nevil Shute books, Trustee from the Toolroom and Round the Bend came up.   Also a little Nemerov, 

and sang the towers/ of the city into the astonished sky...(The Makers)

 

 

Day of the Dead:  The title could be literal, or personal, not necessarily  the Mexican  Diá de los Muertos.  Everyone enjoyed the sensual, visual  details.    I was glad for the note about the poem which placed it in Hanoi, along with the Vietnamese soup, pho.  Eddie told us more about the importance of Ancestor worship -- and it just so happened that Wednesday 1/29 was the celebration of  the Chinese New Year!    We thought the explanation of the final stanza, "return your wood" as a way for the cab driver to refuse money, go back to the roots of the family,  honor the ancestors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] posted on the Slowdown: 1/22/2025: "Today’s whimsical poem, a minimalist list poem, meditates on the line between what we might be willing to let go and what we choose to keep for ourselves. — Major" I "sqwunched" the white spaces between the lines : see https://yalereview.org/article/nuar-alsadir-poem-share

 

Poems for Jan. 22-23

  

The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves  by Gwendolyn Brooks; Sonnet by Gwendolyn Brooks;  

Dream Variations by Langston Hughes;  The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats ; Regrets by Edmund Jorgensen; A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth,  Wisława Szymborska; God Only Knows by Dana Gioia[1]

**

In the set of poems discussed 1/22 and 1/23, we were reminded that humor is important, and sometimes a poem is just trying to have fun.  Here is a delightful example of an Ekphrastic poem doing just that. https://www.rattle.com/the-grass-ceiling-by-kevin-west/

How wonderful that there are so many important words waiting for us to discover them, weave them into meaningful conversations!!!!  I've done my best to compile the nutshell version of discussion with MULTIPLE associations provided by both the Pittsford and Rundel group of 1/22 and 1/23

Note:  Rundel group:  Joyce had proposed the Yeats, but was not in attendance, so we will discuss it a different time.

Nutshell:

Context flavors everything.  On January 22, two days after the inauguration of Donald Trump, I know my head was reeling with disbelief at the swift and numerous measures he took on the afternoon of January 20 disregarding any respect for law, common sense and human decency.     That it was the same day as the one designated to honor Martin Luther King felt like the sting from  a barbed tail of a Manticore (Judith kindly provided mention of this mythical beast during discussion of Yeats.)   

The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves

Although the first poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, penned in 1974, may not have been meant to address racial injustice, it would be hard not to look at the "white gloves" as the symbol of those in power and the "nice decree" of how tigers should be, the polite and dignified way expected.  Discussion included a host of references to how it feels to be black in the United States such as

Black Boy by Richard Wright; Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin.  In 1968, the dignified language of hope offered by Martin Luther King and poems by Langston Hughes did not take the "terrible /tough" inner "wearing what's fierce as face" Tiger approach.  As we saw last week in Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my past and future assassins  , without hearing his voice, one senses enormous anger. In the link provided, you will hear his voice is measured, neutral.  

The poem feels like a children's story, like Little Black Sambo.   It is reassuring to feel the pulse of the underlying message, that "what you are is who you are, which doesn't change the Tiger" .   We agreed that Ms. Brooks is having fun, but it is funny with a sharp point, balancing two realities.  We drew parallels with the Pigeon poem from last week, Injustice  with it's unspoken "dove". 

Bernie brought up  Rabbi Nachman of Breslov:  "The whole entire world is a narrow bridge and the main thing is to have no fear at all." (Act Happy!)   

 

Bernie: file:///Hasidic rabbi Nachman of Breslov, "The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is to have no fear at all" (Hebrew/ כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל).%5B1%5D Israeli singer Ofra Haza also performs a popular version of the song.

By all things Planetary: This passionate sonnet, beautifully delivered at the end of last week's session by Judith, is an example of Gwendolyn Brooks skill as a poet.  The diction, sounds, images are satisfying and convincingly send a message from a very strong woman who shows the difficulty of holding her ground when swept up by passion.  Herewith a good link that says  more about her sonnets: 

Dream Variation:  We remarked the repeats, the mirroring and variations of the two stanzas, much like Hughes' poem "Hold Fast to Dreams".  Comments included the "polite" tone, as survival strategy given his time period.  We noted the first stanza has 9 lines, the second, only 8 with no repeat, "That is my dream!"

"White" replaced by "quick" -- and that tree, which one person saw as a lynching tree, the three points of suspension in the second stanza, and night compassionate in its tenderness... "black like me".

The first stanza, where black is not judged, as skin color, but a shade, darkness, like night is dark.

Marna brought up this amazing artwork called Synedoche (in grammar, that means take a part for the whole).  Here, each block of color represents a portrait of an individual’s skin color. Each subject would sit for fifteen to twenty minutes for the artist, who closely examined a patch of his or her skin before blending an assortment of paints to replicate the exact shade. The panels are ordered alphabetically according to the sitters’ surnames, rendering Synecdoche a sort of abstracted group portrait.  

The second coming:  At Rundel, Joyce had been the one proposing this poem: On 1/30, she explained how she had re-typed the poem in larger font, as it really spoke to her, especially the lines "The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity as she thought of the Jan. 6th insurgents.  She brought up the wisdom of "Be happy for good fortune; compassionate for those in trouble; and be indifferent to evil". 

Yeats believed in the power of cyclical history, and initially the poem was called "The Second Birth".  The apocalyptic vision of the second part of the poem is just one cycle, not the end-all, be-all, and indeed, the positive and negative will continue in their cycles.  We all agreed this poem is filled with a powerful music one can get lost in, and the value of symbols in it is their power of suggestion of the infinite, not fixed meaning.   Certainly it is one of those poems that could be discussed at length and multiple times and is highly anthologized unlike other of his poems like September 1913, or the poem about his daughter.   George mentioned the book Stone Cottage by James Longenbach which paints the relationship between Yeats and Ezra Pound, and the "war years" and Yeats' view of WW1 and "war poetry".   I also had provided this link.

Paul made an excellent summary: "the Falcon" is evil... the "Falconer" is reason... the 3rd line refers to the military term "holding the center" used in war... The last two lines of the first stanza have been used in MANY ways they are so brilliant -- even for comparing good and bad cholesterol!  

Surely... repeated twice... Second coming repeated twice... The Spiritus Mundi refers to collective unconscious/soul of the universe. The shape in the sands of the desert, with lion body and head of man is the Sphinx ... 20 centuries = 2,000 years... In 1919 when Yeats wrote this, just after world war I, and a major Spanish flu epidemic akin in effect to the pandemic,  in the midst of Irish rebellion, 2 years after the Russian Revolution,  unrest in the Middle East, the mood at best is bleak.  That verb SLOUCHES... could also refer to the first coming of Christ, which far from solving the horrors humans create, provides yet new versions. 

Yeats believed in the cyclical nature of the world.   The irregular stanzaic patterns, lack of end rhyme reinforce the sense of chaos.  This is a similar treatment as Hughes, where one stanza presents a seemingly objective situation, the other a subjective state of dream.  Yeats does not spare us ghastly detail in his chillingly majestic poem touching perhaps our deepest fear that we can do nothing about our fated doom.

Regrets:  I do not know this poet, whose poem appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Rattle with only one sentence:  "I write poetry because order is a protest against despair".  

This immediately recalls the words of  Robert Frost who said "Poetry is a momentary stay against confusion."  One participant pointed out the opening line "belies the despair that follows".  Indeed, knowing how malleably changeable we are, the idea of being able to "stuff a self into your skin" and think it  reliable is also revealed as impossible to pin down as we live in our liminal space of "almost is", "might have been".

A thank you to Kathy for sending poems that give a chuckle!  Here are two of them:

  A little Girl Tugs:    

For some reason, the Rundel group picked up on the Latin abbreviation "e.g." (Exempli gratia).  The speaker of the poem is clearly adult so perhaps it is meant to reinforcee that.  

God Only Knows:  Simple, satisfying, and we could just enjoy the poem.

[1] "God Only Knows" was composed for an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City celebrating the 60th anniversary of the literary journal The Hudson Review. The event was part of the Guggenheim's Works and Process series and included not only musical settings of poems by Dana Gioia, but readings and interviews with the poet as well.

"God Only Knows" was published in Gioia's volume Daily Horoscope in 1986.