Poems for Nov. 19

 In the spirit of Thanksgiving:  The Sun's November issue  has a poignant  interview between Daniel McDermon and John Washington about open borders and photo essay  by Laurie Smith  about migrants seeking entry to the US from Mexico.  The poem below is a heartfelt companion to these. 

Los Vecinos  by Alison Luterman (the poem arrived too late to be part of the November issue, but will be included in a future issue.  The Sun sent it as a special supplement this week.)

Separate Quarters by Mary Pecaut

After the East Wing Renovation, 2025 (Italicized quotes from Donald Trump)

Tough Zinnias by Alice Fulton

Never-ending Birds by David Baker

Nutshell:

Many arrived early, and in the spirit of good-natured comraderie which characterizes "O Pen", we shared ideas about the poem, Whethering by A.E. Stallings. (We had not had enough time to discuss it last week.) Thank you to Kathy, Eddy, Polly for sharing more insights.  I am always curious to know how spending more time delving into a poem enhances the experience.  For sure, just the title introduces the idea of "alternatives" with the  homonym of weather, and what it is to "weather a storm", face the constant changes that are part and parcel of the nature of weather.  Whether or not, as choice, whether A or B as one ruminates on angles of understanding, the poem presents interlaced possibilities as sound patterns join double-meanings, overplays of poet "tapping" out as if the rain, which enhances a feel of merging the physical presence of rain with a subconscious emergence-- that "white noise" in her mind.

Los Vecinos (lohs-veh-SEE-nohs) :

There are a few Spanish terms in the poem, as it starts with a Mexican neighbor... but, as poems do, branches into the larger universals about being a human being, such as sharing music, food, wisdom handed down from generation to generation.  The Tias are the aunts, and by the 7th line, we feel the "golden circle of familia".  For those who need a visual for Nopales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nopal;

 Paul gave us a description of the cowboy in a movie taking place in the American Western desert, dying of thirst, and saved by breaking open this cactus.  The poet goes on using the voice of Teresa, about how to prepare them, their medicinal value.  By line 27, there has been the mention of ICE, and the current practice of tearing families apart, akin to the mycelian nature of kinship.  This is a perfect term to describe underground, often invisible connections -- indeed, of mushrooms, transmission of their spores, but also our interconnectedness as humans and life on this planet.  

Graeme wondered if the poem would work presented as an essay.  Many thought because of the line breaks, the reader is forced to slow down, stop at every line, and really pay attention... If you look at the action of the enjambments below, would the effect be as powerful?

                                    They're tearing apart families like clumps

                                    of seedlings, uprooting whole delicate

                                    ecosystems, but what they don't

                                    understand is the mycelian nature

                                    of kinship, how love is a weed

                                    that travels across borders in a bird's belly

                                    and pops up waving its arms, no matter the law.

Clumps ... loses any derogatory association with the break, falling on seedlings;

delicate: -- and for a moment the reader is suspended to imagine what noun would follow.

Surprise... when would you see a coupling with ecosystems...  

what they don't ... allows a long list of actions: do, say, acknowledge, etc. 

but landing on understand stresses the key importance of striving for understanding.

We all enjoyed the image of love as a seed -- which rhymes with weed, and like a weed, will not stay in any confines, but emerge wherever it can.  We also enjoyed the reference to Pete Seeger's "This land is your land" and the "spangled" applied to mariachi, not the American "star-spangled banner".

The ending echoed some of the Inauguration of JFK and Robert Frost's poem, The Gift Outright. 

I paste it below, as it addresses the complexity of America, and who's land is who's land.

Separate Quarters by Mary Pecaut  I couldn't find much about the poet, but believe she is a multi-genre writer once living in Panama City, Panama but now in Brasilia. She addresses the current outrage of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, traditionally the quarters of the First Lady.  The highlight for many of this clever comparison of marriage and architecture, avoiding "friction in proximity" was the couplet:  

Her sun-filled space—razed.   

Concrete dust, twisted rebar.                          

Although Melania is not mentioned directly, one does wonder how she feels as the current First Lady.  The dust, perhaps her husband... the space...  her marriage... the support,  twisted.   Interspersing the poem with italicized quotes from Donald Trump accentuates, forgive me if I offend, his odious narcissism which one can imagine permeates their relationship.

Tough Zinnias:  We all agreed, a new noun to replace beans, potatoes or whatever you substitute for luck. 

Zinnias are indeed tough, and thank you Elmer, Barb and other gardeners nodding at the virtues of these flowers able to "tough it out" into winter.  We enjoyed the ambiguity of  the pronoun "you":  is it the reader, or someone specific the poet is addressing?  One senses a story told by a mate whose mate has wandered off.  The following couplet could apply to a commentary of our relationship to our planet, to others, to ourselves.  What promises do we make?  have we made, but have broken?  

What will become of us? I think  

our attributes will be  engraved inside a promise //

ring in a script too small to read"

Judith was reminded of Edna St. Vincent Millay No. XI of the Fatal Interview sequence—it begins “Not in a silver casket cool with pearls…” and Eddy brought up Louise Glück (her poems such as Wild Iris  and “Snowdrops”:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/s/kgeBsKolNF 

We remarked the repeated " come" followed three times by an adverb, except at the end.

In the author's note, she says she is influenced by " Willa Cather, whose words about nature and emotion can be very moving. Under the spell of Cather’s quiet lyricism".  We were hard-pressed to find it in the poem. Perhaps the theme of  a woman's place in the world.  Some of the comments:

Poem points as the relationship of the change of season/change in her life-- - does she want it?

If you want ice water on marriage, this poem will do it. 

Never Ending Birds:  Interesting that we have words for flocks of birds... assemblies of animals, but “never-ending birds”—is a phrase coined not by the speaker of this poem, but by the speaker’s child.   We enjoyed this tender expression of a father for his daughter, this special moment shared with her and his wife.  

The Gift Outright

BY ROBERT FROST

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.