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."