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."
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