Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young (the other one on poetry foundation, not poets.org) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241444
Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer by Jane Kenyon
Love Song – a study in contradictions by Joseph Brodsky
Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare
When you chose me by Pedro Salinas
translated from the Spanish by Willis Barnstone
**
Although I didn't lead this discussion, the poems gather around "love" and loss.
I would love to hear the original Spanish for Salinas' lines -- the importance of feeling CHOSEN by another, and how skilfully the poet uses the "duende" so gladness is not one-sided joy -- but comes from a deeper place that knows shadows and dark.
"And my gladness was
sad, as small watches are
without a wrist to fasten to,
without a winding crown, stopped.
But when you said: you,
to me, yes, to me singled out,
I was higher than stars,
deeper than coral.
And my joy
began to spin, caught
in your being, in your pulse."
(Kim's notes: Generation of 27: wide variety of genres and styles; cubism, futurism, surrealism. Included Federico Garcia Lorca)
**
Dean Young -- version of Scarecrow on Fire -- in reprint section of American Poetry Spring 2011 issue, p. 55
In this one-block poem, Young leaps from statement (assumptions of "we" -- "we all think about suddenly disappearing" -- do we? What does that mean...) to question. "What counts as a proper/ goodbye." followed immediately by a last winter in Iowa and ladybugs which are now also included in the "we".
"We all feel
suspended over a drop into nothingness.
Once you get close enough, you see what
one is stitching is a human heart. Another
is vomiting wings.
Humans, ladybugs... life. Another question. Where did we get/the idea to rub dirt into the wound (when we were kids, and was that just in PA?)
and a comment on poetry. Poems ARE made of breath, the way water,/cajoled to boil says, "This is my soul, freed."
I prefer the other poem of the same title which starts this way:
Everything is brushed away, off the sleeve, Off the overcoat huge ensembles of assertions
** in it, there are no assertions of "we" and the poem leaps with lively sounds and images.
"just jars of buttons spilled, recurring nightmare of straw on fire, you the scarecrow, the scare, the crow, totems gone, rubies flawed, flamingo in hyena’s jaws, noble and lascivious mouth of the gods hovering then gone, gone the glances, gone moths, cities of crystal become cities of mud, centurion and emperor dust, the flower girl, some of it rises, proof? some of it explodes, vein in the brain, seed pod poof, maybe something will grow, another predicament
of bittersweet, dreamfluff milkweed, declarations of aerosols, vows just sprays of spit fast evaporate, all of it pulverized as it hits the seawall, all of it falling snow on water, flash of flying fish, breach and blow and sinking, far below creatures of luminous jelly constellated and darting and baiting each other like last thoughts before sleep, last neural sparks coalescing as a face in the dark, who was she? never enough time to know."
A good poem should leave you with more questions than answers! (Art of Recklessness)
Kim's notes on Jane Kenyon:
Bill Moyer's film: "A Life Together" ends, hauntingly, but lovingly, with Kenyon’s poem, "It Might Have Been Otherwise" which includes the lines:
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
-1st published in Poetry journal, then published in The Boat of Quiet Hours 1986.
-Translated Anna Akhmatova poems; married to Donald Hall.
**Akhmatova connection with Brodsky:
Kim's notes: He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for alleged "social parasitism" (living off unearned income) and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at universities including those at Yale, Cambridge and Michigan.
Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
He was appointed American Poet Laureate in 1991
**
His "Love Song -- study of contradictions opposes two lines in each quatrain --
a rescue with arrest; a free bird with a drills; play with the complexity of mirrors and roles we play -- and the great surge of lava -- and the realization that we can love, but divorce, come together, separate...
If... is only followed by because at the last line.
**
Sonnet 29
to carry on "contradiction: Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at haven’s gate; I quote my MFA guru, Robert who says "Literally, it means something like, “When the lark wakes up at dawn it sings to heaven from the earth, and this is just like what happens when I am feeling very bad about myself and then I think of you.”
How, exactly, does the poet turn from the previous lines of crying, cursing, and discontent into a lark.
Apparently a prison program uses
beginning of this poem as a spring board for the inmates to write their own version of the poem, tell their own story through their own words. Very cool idea.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
Monday, June 27, 2011
June 27: Merwin, Wright, Herbert, Jonson, Stroud, cummings, Young
Identity – W.S. Merwin (from 6/20 line up)
Bedtime Story – Charles Wright
Love (III) -- George Herbert
Hymn to the Belly – Ben Jonson
Night in Day -- Joseph Stroud
may my heart always be open to little – ee cummings
Is This Why Love Almost Rhymes with Dumb? -- by Dean Young
What a cast of characters! What wonderful poems... Time's hunger in a scary story turned into a "sometime dance"; Hymns to the Belly, love turning up in Conversation with God, and contemplating the other...
The Merwin is left over from last week -- IDENTITY:
You are what you draw, what you study, what... surrounds you, enters you, what you imagine...
http://store.metmuseum.org/met-studio-prints/hans-hoffman-a-hedgehog/invt/99080830/
or is it that what you think you draw, is drawing you --
A hedgehog becomes a means for feeling the dark undersides of stones --
but whether one becomes a hedgehog, Hans, the attention spent observing, until one becomes so keenly aware, edges disappear.
**
In the next two poems:Beispiel compares Wright to Herbert: I love the way all those somethings in the middle of the poem act on and against the natural world: wringing, making, licking, stringing, inching and scratching. In the poem, the bedtime story of existence is simply time itself. Poets are concerned with the subject of time -- I guess the concern is mortality generally -- because not a minute goes by when time does not influence our daily, imaginative and spiritual lives. So, for Wright, time is what he calls the "Something Dance."
Beispiel speaks about Wright's switchback on George Herbert, "who in his masterpiece "Love (III)" lets God into his soul. It's a poem that begins, "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back" and ends, "'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.' / So I did sit and eat." Here, Wright offers the "meat" to time. Then, like Herbert, letting time in, Wright allows the imagination to consider time more closely, well, another time." http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/06/bedtime_story_poem_on_time_can.html
How to take a scary story -- and then have it dance! Time is ravenous -- but Wright treats it a whole new way -- Marcie mentioned "atavistic" as flavor -- this is more than just spooky campfire story.
We questioned: The "generator" in the first line -- yet it has both the idea of "genesis" of something... as well as a machine. cicadas would be too confining.
Also, the "cleft feet" -- come far after the subject they are attached to. Imagine Time’s cloven feet and it seems the devil is walking.
A string of something -- imagining... followed by a string of questions of what we ought to do... How powerful to go from : "Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there." (the nails being fingernails, not spelled out as "evening's dusky blue nails" nor a handful of nails waiting to be hammered in...) should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
A great poem to memorize and tell again and again!
Along with the next ones!
The Joseph Stroud poem weaves a first line of "night not wanting to end" to leaps to different blacks, to all the glisten of light captured in obsidian, crow, watermelon seed... not scary, b/c of the guzzling sunflowers...
ee cummings beautiful love poem... and what "usefully" has to do with selves with perhaps an agenda not confined to TRULY loving...
We all chuckled and roared at both the Ben Jonson and the Dean Young.
Uplifting discussion!
Bedtime Story – Charles Wright
Love (III) -- George Herbert
Hymn to the Belly – Ben Jonson
Night in Day -- Joseph Stroud
may my heart always be open to little – ee cummings
Is This Why Love Almost Rhymes with Dumb? -- by Dean Young
What a cast of characters! What wonderful poems... Time's hunger in a scary story turned into a "sometime dance"; Hymns to the Belly, love turning up in Conversation with God, and contemplating the other...
The Merwin is left over from last week -- IDENTITY:
You are what you draw, what you study, what... surrounds you, enters you, what you imagine...
http://store.metmuseum.org/met-studio-prints/hans-hoffman-a-hedgehog/invt/99080830/
or is it that what you think you draw, is drawing you --
A hedgehog becomes a means for feeling the dark undersides of stones --
but whether one becomes a hedgehog, Hans, the attention spent observing, until one becomes so keenly aware, edges disappear.
**
In the next two poems:Beispiel compares Wright to Herbert: I love the way all those somethings in the middle of the poem act on and against the natural world: wringing, making, licking, stringing, inching and scratching. In the poem, the bedtime story of existence is simply time itself. Poets are concerned with the subject of time -- I guess the concern is mortality generally -- because not a minute goes by when time does not influence our daily, imaginative and spiritual lives. So, for Wright, time is what he calls the "Something Dance."
Beispiel speaks about Wright's switchback on George Herbert, "who in his masterpiece "Love (III)" lets God into his soul. It's a poem that begins, "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back" and ends, "'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.' / So I did sit and eat." Here, Wright offers the "meat" to time. Then, like Herbert, letting time in, Wright allows the imagination to consider time more closely, well, another time." http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/06/bedtime_story_poem_on_time_can.html
How to take a scary story -- and then have it dance! Time is ravenous -- but Wright treats it a whole new way -- Marcie mentioned "atavistic" as flavor -- this is more than just spooky campfire story.
We questioned: The "generator" in the first line -- yet it has both the idea of "genesis" of something... as well as a machine. cicadas would be too confining.
Also, the "cleft feet" -- come far after the subject they are attached to. Imagine Time’s cloven feet and it seems the devil is walking.
A string of something -- imagining... followed by a string of questions of what we ought to do... How powerful to go from : "Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there." (the nails being fingernails, not spelled out as "evening's dusky blue nails" nor a handful of nails waiting to be hammered in...) should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
A great poem to memorize and tell again and again!
Along with the next ones!
The Joseph Stroud poem weaves a first line of "night not wanting to end" to leaps to different blacks, to all the glisten of light captured in obsidian, crow, watermelon seed... not scary, b/c of the guzzling sunflowers...
ee cummings beautiful love poem... and what "usefully" has to do with selves with perhaps an agenda not confined to TRULY loving...
We all chuckled and roared at both the Ben Jonson and the Dean Young.
Uplifting discussion!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
O Pen June 20 -- Black Guitar, Jack, Mall, Nancy Jane
Black Guitar by Michelle Bitting
Jack by Maxine Kumin
At the Galleria Shopping Mall -- Tony Hoagland
Nancy Jane by CHARLES SIMIC
Although I wasn't there to lead the discussion, two of the poems have names of people.
What happens with a title? If a poem is called "Jack" or "Nancy Jane" what sort of conjectures do we already make as readers?
Would you have guessed that Black Guitar would evoke an odalisque, replete with neck, hips, lungs, pores, or glint-edged glamour, to offset interior syrup running through the O of sound like a locomotive?
What setting and characters do you imagine in the Galleria Shopping Mall?
Much of craft in a poem hangs on the title. That the poem about a guitar is about BLACK guitar, literally colors our expectations. Having a poem with only a first name whets our appetite to want to find out more. It's only in the middle of the 5th stanza that we realize "Jack" is a horse. His name is not pronounced after the title until the penultimate stanza. It stabs us that the "wise old campaigner", the occupant of the "motel lobby", the "he" who prawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters, has been let out to the world at age 22-- and he has a name. It reminds me of Kipling's poem about his son -- "Has anyone seen my son, Jack?" -- how it rhymes with "he won't be coming back". Turning one's back on an old animal -- no jacking up, only the chewing J and the dry sack-sound which accentuate
grief and regret?
Likewise, with a double first name, Nancy Jane, which sounds more like a little girl, a Mary Jane, a commonplace of a name, Simic disguises a grandmother for only the brief jump from title to first word. But this Grandma is laughing -- on her deathbed, each stanza adding a new paradox or ironic twist to the scene. Ultimately, the loneliness of each one of us, at the end is not still -- but "like a wheel breaking off of a car" -- yet moving entirely on our own.
Jack by Maxine Kumin
At the Galleria Shopping Mall -- Tony Hoagland
Nancy Jane by CHARLES SIMIC
Although I wasn't there to lead the discussion, two of the poems have names of people.
What happens with a title? If a poem is called "Jack" or "Nancy Jane" what sort of conjectures do we already make as readers?
Would you have guessed that Black Guitar would evoke an odalisque, replete with neck, hips, lungs, pores, or glint-edged glamour, to offset interior syrup running through the O of sound like a locomotive?
What setting and characters do you imagine in the Galleria Shopping Mall?
Much of craft in a poem hangs on the title. That the poem about a guitar is about BLACK guitar, literally colors our expectations. Having a poem with only a first name whets our appetite to want to find out more. It's only in the middle of the 5th stanza that we realize "Jack" is a horse. His name is not pronounced after the title until the penultimate stanza. It stabs us that the "wise old campaigner", the occupant of the "motel lobby", the "he" who prawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters, has been let out to the world at age 22-- and he has a name. It reminds me of Kipling's poem about his son -- "Has anyone seen my son, Jack?" -- how it rhymes with "he won't be coming back". Turning one's back on an old animal -- no jacking up, only the chewing J and the dry sack-sound which accentuate
grief and regret?
Likewise, with a double first name, Nancy Jane, which sounds more like a little girl, a Mary Jane, a commonplace of a name, Simic disguises a grandmother for only the brief jump from title to first word. But this Grandma is laughing -- on her deathbed, each stanza adding a new paradox or ironic twist to the scene. Ultimately, the loneliness of each one of us, at the end is not still -- but "like a wheel breaking off of a car" -- yet moving entirely on our own.
Monday, June 6, 2011
O pen 6/6/2011 : more Poet Laureates, Szymborska, Dean Young
O pen discussion – 6/6/2011
Daystar – Rita Dove
Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri -- Mona Van Duyn
Vermeer – Wislawa Szymborska
Ash Ode -- by Dean Young For more Dean Young : see interview: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/dean-young Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young From Dean Young’s new book: Fall Higher https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/util/email_poem_to_friend.asp?bid=1454&pid=1726
Patriotic Tour and Postulate of Joy –Robert Penn Warren
3 poems by women; 3 poems by men, but all with the human concern --
what is this all about? I quoted from the introduction of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" -- for what IS the point of so many words... whether poetry of witness, sharing a moment...or puzzling over the complexities of suffering and paradoxes of human motivation.
Rita Dove's title Daystar might leave you thinking about stardom, and the way we cannot see stars in the daytime, and "pure nothing" in the middle of the day -- in what seems to be a woman's effaced existence. The idea of starting a poem with "she wanted" immediately sets up a sense of lack, and the adjective police will attest to the power of verbed negatives: slumped, the pinched armor of a vanished cricket.
I love the power of "why" which makes a comment before jumping after a stanza break to answer a question.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace.
Mona Van Duyn's poem allows a reading of "you" to be a lover, the earth,
and calls on all the senses with great intimacy. A great poem to read if you feel tempted to be a pebble hoping someone will mistake you for a planet!
Szymborska -- translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak p. 55 of American Poet Spring 2011 issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)
Vermeer:
The power of paint to capture an simple act that is never finished
And the power of this small, one sentence poem which references
Not a portrait of a milkmaid, but the way she is painted,
“in quiet and concentration” and the way art can allow us to survive,
believe, hope that the world too, will go on. The unstated questions,
what will determine the world’s end – and what was the original Polish for the verb “earned” and what is “end”.
Kathy brought up the article by Mark Doty : how poetry consoles us with the thought as we witness – As long as there is beautiful art – the world won’t end…
Dean Young : Reading his poems gives image to thoughts about what we DO, what happens to us, and the slippery nature of language.
Scarecrow on Fire – in his book Fall Higher and on p. 55 is different from “Scarecrow on Fire” which poets.org has in a “flow” version where words come into a box S L O W L Y
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22196
You might enjoy listening to this poem: (I put a few lines down)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2444
Selected Recent and New Errors
My books are full of mistakes…
Conveyor belt caught the arm
New kid on the job
Worm/tequila
Do you think the dictionary says to itself…
I’ve got these words that means completely different things
And it’s tearing me apart.
Twisted silver wire of stealth and deception…
We have absolutely no proof God is not an insect rubbing our hind legs together to sing.
How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.
**
The Dean Young poems are chock full of images... first a sonnet, also an Ode...
Where the volta "flies off" (along with a woman...) to turn to the sieve of self and idea that one cannot catch another, fix another, keep another reinforced with the metaphor of the sea written in the desert.
The Scarecrow poem creates a collage of images which cinder down into further ashes.
Do we really ever KNOW anyone? What burns when we are cremated? What remains in the ashes?
Robert Penn Warren's poem with his clever repeating form provided a good example of irony.
Daystar – Rita Dove
Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri -- Mona Van Duyn
Vermeer – Wislawa Szymborska
Ash Ode -- by Dean Young For more Dean Young : see interview: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/dean-young Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young From Dean Young’s new book: Fall Higher https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/util/email_poem_to_friend.asp?bid=1454&pid=1726
Patriotic Tour and Postulate of Joy –Robert Penn Warren
3 poems by women; 3 poems by men, but all with the human concern --
what is this all about? I quoted from the introduction of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" -- for what IS the point of so many words... whether poetry of witness, sharing a moment...or puzzling over the complexities of suffering and paradoxes of human motivation.
Rita Dove's title Daystar might leave you thinking about stardom, and the way we cannot see stars in the daytime, and "pure nothing" in the middle of the day -- in what seems to be a woman's effaced existence. The idea of starting a poem with "she wanted" immediately sets up a sense of lack, and the adjective police will attest to the power of verbed negatives: slumped, the pinched armor of a vanished cricket.
I love the power of "why" which makes a comment before jumping after a stanza break to answer a question.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace.
Mona Van Duyn's poem allows a reading of "you" to be a lover, the earth,
and calls on all the senses with great intimacy. A great poem to read if you feel tempted to be a pebble hoping someone will mistake you for a planet!
Szymborska -- translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak p. 55 of American Poet Spring 2011 issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)
Vermeer:
The power of paint to capture an simple act that is never finished
And the power of this small, one sentence poem which references
Not a portrait of a milkmaid, but the way she is painted,
“in quiet and concentration” and the way art can allow us to survive,
believe, hope that the world too, will go on. The unstated questions,
what will determine the world’s end – and what was the original Polish for the verb “earned” and what is “end”.
Kathy brought up the article by Mark Doty : how poetry consoles us with the thought as we witness – As long as there is beautiful art – the world won’t end…
Dean Young : Reading his poems gives image to thoughts about what we DO, what happens to us, and the slippery nature of language.
Scarecrow on Fire – in his book Fall Higher and on p. 55 is different from “Scarecrow on Fire” which poets.org has in a “flow” version where words come into a box S L O W L Y
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22196
You might enjoy listening to this poem: (I put a few lines down)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2444
Selected Recent and New Errors
My books are full of mistakes…
Conveyor belt caught the arm
New kid on the job
Worm/tequila
Do you think the dictionary says to itself…
I’ve got these words that means completely different things
And it’s tearing me apart.
Twisted silver wire of stealth and deception…
We have absolutely no proof God is not an insect rubbing our hind legs together to sing.
How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.
**
The Dean Young poems are chock full of images... first a sonnet, also an Ode...
Where the volta "flies off" (along with a woman...) to turn to the sieve of self and idea that one cannot catch another, fix another, keep another reinforced with the metaphor of the sea written in the desert.
The Scarecrow poem creates a collage of images which cinder down into further ashes.
Do we really ever KNOW anyone? What burns when we are cremated? What remains in the ashes?
Robert Penn Warren's poem with his clever repeating form provided a good example of irony.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Blow by blow analysis of Elemental by Dean Young
Before coming up with even a SENTENCE to talk about the nets of connections in this striking poem, I found it necessary to separate all repetitions and overlaps.
In the current issue of American Poet, p. 9, CK Williams writes in an essay entitled, "That sense of Wonder and Exaltation", about what he calls "the syndrome of the sinking heart". It summarizes the reaction of the group on 5/23.
From the cowboy lovesong tone in "dearheart" to the meanings underlying "summarize", as in sum up, reduce, wrap up -- Dean Young will invite you to read again and again this one poem.
To use some of CK's words, you will "be so taken aback* that you think, 'My god how did he DO that?" and then, "envy and dismay turn to admiration and awe, which in turn lead to delight" then finally a reminder of what poetry is about in the first place.
I hope you will re-read this poem, admire its power to give you a different way to consider love, life, death, elements, words...
**
Elemental :
title. 4 elements: the first one mentioned is fire.
Spark (stanza 1) to sparks (stanza 2) – nouns –
The first – “has it say over the fire”
The second, plural, extends to apply to “we”
Stanza 3: burning: adjective for woods, then noun
Fire alliterated in final stanza with forever and fixed –
This end won’t summarize our forever.
Some things can be fixed by fire, some not. (things / not opposition)
Walked turns to wade to imply water.
Fireflies then are connected to wet grass.
Air: -- first stanza. Already you’re in the air.
Repeated in penultimate line of fourth stanza and
last line (fifth stanza) of the poem.
Night: first line;
sleep as noun, verb in stanza 4;
dreams stanza 5
Fire – implied light in the night
Water – dreams mostly composed of it (putting out fire?)
What is summarized? It must be explained by what is not.
1. Night cannot summarize day;
(implied summary in the spark’s say… which rhymes)
2. quiet doesn’t summarize the song
(can’t go on long, as duration, -- in 3 line sentence, with two songs and long.
Implied spark also is not long, but has its “say” over fire. (mysterious)
( 3. song cannot summarize internal spark)
4. Coming won’t summarize leaving
Waking (won’t summarize) sleep
Nor sleep our dreams
Implied summary of fireflies and ice
Winter/ summer
5. Your body in my hands won’t be summarized by your body far from me.
Final: 6. this end won’t summarize our forever.
The complicated syntax of stanzas 3 and 4:
Enjambments of line: wade/ coming/ leaving
Stanza leap
Ice, Winter, body, (stanza leap)
The implied parallel of waking summarizing sleep;
Sleep our dreams;
Are fireflies over the wet grass dreams? Sleep? Referring to the brevity of how long one stays (leaving);
The ice isn’t melting, but settling in an abandoned glass. (transparent container)
Also dreamlike;
Ice leads to winter which cannot summarize summer,
Implied parallel with warmth of body near which cannot summarize the body far.
Such complexity of enjambment, further meshes the imbedded images in a 5 line sentence to end with glass, followed by another series of enjambments in a 4 line (one word starts on the end of a line, to make 4 lines) ending with me.
Confusion of syntax, fuses the image.
Instead of saying your body "near", he says "in my hands", and "far" is exacerbated by my hands are nowhere; (and nowhere rhymes with air)
Nowhere is extended to boundless, flowing dreams.
End, as boundary, as completed life returns full circle to the idea of what fire can fix:
(cold, dark) which of course, is started with a spark – as if triggering the heart, crying. The repeated question Dearheart, why are you crying, resolves in the last line stating “we’re already air.”
In the current issue of American Poet, p. 9, CK Williams writes in an essay entitled, "That sense of Wonder and Exaltation", about what he calls "the syndrome of the sinking heart". It summarizes the reaction of the group on 5/23.
From the cowboy lovesong tone in "dearheart" to the meanings underlying "summarize", as in sum up, reduce, wrap up -- Dean Young will invite you to read again and again this one poem.
To use some of CK's words, you will "be so taken aback* that you think, 'My god how did he DO that?" and then, "envy and dismay turn to admiration and awe, which in turn lead to delight" then finally a reminder of what poetry is about in the first place.
I hope you will re-read this poem, admire its power to give you a different way to consider love, life, death, elements, words...
**
Elemental :
title. 4 elements: the first one mentioned is fire.
Spark (stanza 1) to sparks (stanza 2) – nouns –
The first – “has it say over the fire”
The second, plural, extends to apply to “we”
Stanza 3: burning: adjective for woods, then noun
Fire alliterated in final stanza with forever and fixed –
This end won’t summarize our forever.
Some things can be fixed by fire, some not. (things / not opposition)
Walked turns to wade to imply water.
Fireflies then are connected to wet grass.
Air: -- first stanza. Already you’re in the air.
Repeated in penultimate line of fourth stanza and
last line (fifth stanza) of the poem.
Night: first line;
sleep as noun, verb in stanza 4;
dreams stanza 5
Fire – implied light in the night
Water – dreams mostly composed of it (putting out fire?)
What is summarized? It must be explained by what is not.
1. Night cannot summarize day;
(implied summary in the spark’s say… which rhymes)
2. quiet doesn’t summarize the song
(can’t go on long, as duration, -- in 3 line sentence, with two songs and long.
Implied spark also is not long, but has its “say” over fire. (mysterious)
( 3. song cannot summarize internal spark)
4. Coming won’t summarize leaving
Waking (won’t summarize) sleep
Nor sleep our dreams
Implied summary of fireflies and ice
Winter/ summer
5. Your body in my hands won’t be summarized by your body far from me.
Final: 6. this end won’t summarize our forever.
The complicated syntax of stanzas 3 and 4:
Enjambments of line: wade/ coming/ leaving
Stanza leap
Ice, Winter, body, (stanza leap)
The implied parallel of waking summarizing sleep;
Sleep our dreams;
Are fireflies over the wet grass dreams? Sleep? Referring to the brevity of how long one stays (leaving);
The ice isn’t melting, but settling in an abandoned glass. (transparent container)
Also dreamlike;
Ice leads to winter which cannot summarize summer,
Implied parallel with warmth of body near which cannot summarize the body far.
Such complexity of enjambment, further meshes the imbedded images in a 5 line sentence to end with glass, followed by another series of enjambments in a 4 line (one word starts on the end of a line, to make 4 lines) ending with me.
Confusion of syntax, fuses the image.
Instead of saying your body "near", he says "in my hands", and "far" is exacerbated by my hands are nowhere; (and nowhere rhymes with air)
Nowhere is extended to boundless, flowing dreams.
End, as boundary, as completed life returns full circle to the idea of what fire can fix:
(cold, dark) which of course, is started with a spark – as if triggering the heart, crying. The repeated question Dearheart, why are you crying, resolves in the last line stating “we’re already air.”
May 23: Dean Young, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Poets Laureate
Open : May 23, 2011
Dean Young : Elemental
Is it Possible -- Sir Thomas Wyatt
From The Poets Laureate Anthology.
Epigraph – Archibald MacLeish
Separation – W.S. Merwin
Selecting a Reader – by Ted Kooser
Halley’s Comet – Stanley Kunitz
Dean Young:
Kimberley brought in his book Recklessn ess and mentioned how he writes about trying to avoid traps to arrive at a a poem that leaves you w/ more questions than answers…” As Mallarmé put it, three-quarters of the enjoyment of poetry lies in discovering, little by little, what it means.
Elemental, which relies on repetition, reversals, enjambments (like sneak attacks on meaning) has both flow and startling imagery. Dean Young interlaces the connections between “fundamentals” by saying what cannot summarize one thing into another. Before his heart surgery, he almost died, and so perhaps this experience provided him this striking love-poem which addresses death and survival (from the late Latin supervivere: to live after death).
It’s the sort of poem one doesn’t fully grasp – yet reads again, and find the pleasure of digging. It seems to come from stream of consciousness yet there is plenty of crafting of opposites, repetitions, contradiction which adds to the complexity and deeper clarity.
With the fire image, one person thought of cremation; another of 9/11. Others might think of Whitsuntide and Pentecostal fire. With further study, the title prepares us for interconnected spark/fire, fire/water; fire/air.
The repetition of summarize, asks the reader to reflect on what it means to “sum up” one thing, reduce it, abstract it, outline or wrap it up in another thing – just like two people in love; or the pull of dark/light, tangible/intangible, winter/summer, coming/going. One thing is completed by another, perhaps, but the spark which provides the “fixing” part of fire (light, warmth), the spark of life beat in the heart, cannot guarantee perpetuity, and skirts the edge of burning up.
The poem is from the collection “Fall Higher”. Was Dean Young reading Sir Thomas Wyatt whose penultimate stanza of “Is it Possible” mentions "To fall highest , yet to light soft"? However, Wyatt’s poem punches the reader with the word possible, which hisses to create a quite different tone. Even with the sizzle of the repeated sound in “summarize” in Young’s poem, the “spark” connects to water and air and dream with overtones of Roethke’s villanelle, “The Waking”. There is a long softness to the song, where as the clipped syllables of Wyatt cut the rhetoric into diamond hard facets.
This five stanza poem, which poses 3 stanzas hemmed in by the relentless question “is it possible” addresses very universal aspects of human nature, not confined only to the times of Henry VIII. The two stanza answer, repeats the sandwiched “possible” with the switch from “it” to “all”.
Leave can be understood both as “permission” and men leaving their ladies after the licenced marriage.
For Merwin’s modest, early three-liner poem titled Separation the one WITH punctuation in the Merwin selection that Billy Collins picked (saying
"I have long envied Merwin’s ability to transcend punctuation”)
We went around the table to say what these three lines evoke –
Here are many of the responses:
Kathy has used it to send as a sympathy card.
Another feels the reassurance that even Absence is a presence.
Another feels Absence pulling the many colors, length of a life.
Another feels Absence: the thread can’t fill the space…
Then the discussion turned to the nature of the needle: how it pierces.
How it is difficult to thread. The sound of the word stitch – and what it means to have visible/invisible stitches.
One was delighted to understand it right away. Another said she wasn’t sure if she truly understood it.
How simple. A title. Separation
Which could mean death, divorce, being apart. And how words in two breaths touch us.
**
We admired Ted Kooser’s humility in his poem about the “ideal reader”. The detail that strikes me is the moment: “at the loneliest moment of an afternoon” -- this is a reader who won’t hoard, practical, and yet, regardless that she puts the book back on the shelf, there has been some intimate connection. The wet hair, rain, raincoat details affirm the everyday carrying on of life, which he captures in deft strokes.
Stanley Kunitz’ poem “Halley’s Comet” allows a situation to offer wings to small boy wishing to be noticed. As Collins says in his introduction, "the deft way it shuffles together the domestic and the cosmic." Especially poignant as Kunitz’ father commited suicide before he was born, which gave some readers a different understanding of the "coarse (rhymes with course) gravel bed" of a rooftop.
We will discuss the next two poems June 6.
Rita Dove's "Day Star" -- an empathetic portrait of a wife and mother who commits the terrible sin of doing absolutely nothing right "in the middle of the day".
And Mona Van Duyn's sonnet, which compares love to a sensuous seismic catastrophe.
Dean Young : Elemental
Is it Possible -- Sir Thomas Wyatt
From The Poets Laureate Anthology.
Epigraph – Archibald MacLeish
Separation – W.S. Merwin
Selecting a Reader – by Ted Kooser
Halley’s Comet – Stanley Kunitz
Dean Young:
Kimberley brought in his book Recklessn ess and mentioned how he writes about trying to avoid traps to arrive at a a poem that leaves you w/ more questions than answers…” As Mallarmé put it, three-quarters of the enjoyment of poetry lies in discovering, little by little, what it means.
Elemental, which relies on repetition, reversals, enjambments (like sneak attacks on meaning) has both flow and startling imagery. Dean Young interlaces the connections between “fundamentals” by saying what cannot summarize one thing into another. Before his heart surgery, he almost died, and so perhaps this experience provided him this striking love-poem which addresses death and survival (from the late Latin supervivere: to live after death).
It’s the sort of poem one doesn’t fully grasp – yet reads again, and find the pleasure of digging. It seems to come from stream of consciousness yet there is plenty of crafting of opposites, repetitions, contradiction which adds to the complexity and deeper clarity.
With the fire image, one person thought of cremation; another of 9/11. Others might think of Whitsuntide and Pentecostal fire. With further study, the title prepares us for interconnected spark/fire, fire/water; fire/air.
The repetition of summarize, asks the reader to reflect on what it means to “sum up” one thing, reduce it, abstract it, outline or wrap it up in another thing – just like two people in love; or the pull of dark/light, tangible/intangible, winter/summer, coming/going. One thing is completed by another, perhaps, but the spark which provides the “fixing” part of fire (light, warmth), the spark of life beat in the heart, cannot guarantee perpetuity, and skirts the edge of burning up.
The poem is from the collection “Fall Higher”. Was Dean Young reading Sir Thomas Wyatt whose penultimate stanza of “Is it Possible” mentions "To fall highest , yet to light soft"? However, Wyatt’s poem punches the reader with the word possible, which hisses to create a quite different tone. Even with the sizzle of the repeated sound in “summarize” in Young’s poem, the “spark” connects to water and air and dream with overtones of Roethke’s villanelle, “The Waking”. There is a long softness to the song, where as the clipped syllables of Wyatt cut the rhetoric into diamond hard facets.
This five stanza poem, which poses 3 stanzas hemmed in by the relentless question “is it possible” addresses very universal aspects of human nature, not confined only to the times of Henry VIII. The two stanza answer, repeats the sandwiched “possible” with the switch from “it” to “all”.
Leave can be understood both as “permission” and men leaving their ladies after the licenced marriage.
For Merwin’s modest, early three-liner poem titled Separation the one WITH punctuation in the Merwin selection that Billy Collins picked (saying
"I have long envied Merwin’s ability to transcend punctuation”)
We went around the table to say what these three lines evoke –
Here are many of the responses:
Kathy has used it to send as a sympathy card.
Another feels the reassurance that even Absence is a presence.
Another feels Absence pulling the many colors, length of a life.
Another feels Absence: the thread can’t fill the space…
Then the discussion turned to the nature of the needle: how it pierces.
How it is difficult to thread. The sound of the word stitch – and what it means to have visible/invisible stitches.
One was delighted to understand it right away. Another said she wasn’t sure if she truly understood it.
How simple. A title. Separation
Which could mean death, divorce, being apart. And how words in two breaths touch us.
**
We admired Ted Kooser’s humility in his poem about the “ideal reader”. The detail that strikes me is the moment: “at the loneliest moment of an afternoon” -- this is a reader who won’t hoard, practical, and yet, regardless that she puts the book back on the shelf, there has been some intimate connection. The wet hair, rain, raincoat details affirm the everyday carrying on of life, which he captures in deft strokes.
Stanley Kunitz’ poem “Halley’s Comet” allows a situation to offer wings to small boy wishing to be noticed. As Collins says in his introduction, "the deft way it shuffles together the domestic and the cosmic." Especially poignant as Kunitz’ father commited suicide before he was born, which gave some readers a different understanding of the "coarse (rhymes with course) gravel bed" of a rooftop.
We will discuss the next two poems June 6.
Rita Dove's "Day Star" -- an empathetic portrait of a wife and mother who commits the terrible sin of doing absolutely nothing right "in the middle of the day".
And Mona Van Duyn's sonnet, which compares love to a sensuous seismic catastrophe.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
On Rainy, cold Monday 5/16: Tu Fu, an epithalamium, Neruda and Hirshfield
Open discussion: 5/16
According to Gerard Manley Hopkins “Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds in wheels shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens…”
There is indeed an “echoing timber” in the birds, that “rinses the ear”
With a heightened sense of “juice and joy”. But, Spring can also be filled with other tones. Fresh rings for royal weddings, or thinking of old friends, or keeping quiet in those hours before the business of birds announce the morning.
Before the Discussion of :
Tu fu: Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River
Carol Ann Duffy: Rings
Pablo Neruda: Keeping Quiet
Jane Hirshfield: The Supple Deer
I read outloud: ee Cummings
9
there are so many tictocclocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic
Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly
we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.
(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)
*
I Also read my poem that appeared in Nimrod: Spring 2011 issue called Growing Season. “When the sun shines on the windowpane in spring”.
It’s a splendid issue – and if you’d like a copy, they are offering the issue for $6.
Let me know if you are interested.
**
Notes:
Tu Fu : Emily mentioned “no mono aware” an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity to ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (Jap. 無常 mujō), or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware
The two translators I know who have worked with Tu Fu are Sam Hamill and Kenneth Rexroth, but I don’t know who did the translation.
How much is the translator and how much the poet? The words alone, empty, endure, frail, bamboo quiet, shrouding create wonderful tension with profusely, vociferous glories, impetuous, red blossoms glaring with white;
impetuous.
Although not oxymorons, frail splendor and crush of peach blossoms opening ownerless create a mood of the opulent energy of spring independent of any of human doings which contrasts with full fear of spring. The last stanza combines
Tu Fu’s fear and wish, the passing of blossoms scattering by the branchful although I doubt Tu Fu would have anthropomorphisized with the adverb “gladly.”
On the other hand, the adverbs for the way the conversation between Tu Fu and the buds will be conducted is perfectly believable: delicate, sparingly.
Rings:
Carol Ann Duffy’s occasional poem – the over-use of “ring”, repeat of “I might” with variations on line-break for emphasis, the “wring in pain” that comes to mind
With the sonics associated with fingers “ringed in rain”, makes you wonder if she should have declined to write this epithalamium.
“She is best at – perhaps the best at – writing the intensely private emotion, the silent moment of unshared grief that turns a life inside out, the kept secret, the undercurrent, the edge of the lie inside the truth we set our lives by. In other words, we have found ourselves in the odd position of having a poet laureate who writes the kind of poetry that tackles the least public of all our feelings. Instead of a poet of public noise we have a poet of private disquiet.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/carol-duffy-poetry-royal-wedding?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
You might enjoy reading this poem by her:
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
Carol Ann Duffy
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2001/08/valentine-carol-ann-duffy.html
or you might enjoy Robert Graves’ poem, A Slice of Wedding Cake:
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat ‘impossible men’: not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.
**
Keeping Quiet: Pablo Neruda, from Extravagaria.
Again the problem of a poem in translation.
Any crafting of sound will be at risk; the idea is to match the feeling, tone and convey any cultural implication…
We don’t count to 12, but to 10, or to 3..
Even if we don’t like something, or do something differently, aiming for understanding of what the original is trying to convey is important.
The idea of not speaking, not in any language, and being still, is good advice for any age. Neruda does not preach this. He paints a vision of what this would look like.
He allows the reader in, and the “I will go”, can refer to the counting (as in my turn to count) while the other waits, or the speaking, or the leaving.
Often we look at something and dismiss it. Like a spring branch, not yet in bloom.
But if we wait… keep still, listen, the surprise of new leaves will dumbfound us.
The idea of a “huge silence” that “might interrupt this sadness/ of never understanding ourselves” pins both the personal and collective roles of being human.
The Supple Deer.
An ecstatic experience told in carefully chiseled language. The tension between exact, and possible, exact and an undefined territory such as envy set in the motion of deer pouring through a fence, where deer, fence, observer can feel porous,
So full of “such largeness” of stag turning to stream. This small paragraph detracts from the awe Jane Hirshfield creates in just a few brushstrokes of words.
According to Gerard Manley Hopkins “Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds in wheels shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens…”
There is indeed an “echoing timber” in the birds, that “rinses the ear”
With a heightened sense of “juice and joy”. But, Spring can also be filled with other tones. Fresh rings for royal weddings, or thinking of old friends, or keeping quiet in those hours before the business of birds announce the morning.
Before the Discussion of :
Tu fu: Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River
Carol Ann Duffy: Rings
Pablo Neruda: Keeping Quiet
Jane Hirshfield: The Supple Deer
I read outloud: ee Cummings
9
there are so many tictocclocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic
Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly
we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.
(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)
*
I Also read my poem that appeared in Nimrod: Spring 2011 issue called Growing Season. “When the sun shines on the windowpane in spring”.
It’s a splendid issue – and if you’d like a copy, they are offering the issue for $6.
Let me know if you are interested.
**
Notes:
Tu Fu : Emily mentioned “no mono aware” an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity to ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (Jap. 無常 mujō), or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware
The two translators I know who have worked with Tu Fu are Sam Hamill and Kenneth Rexroth, but I don’t know who did the translation.
How much is the translator and how much the poet? The words alone, empty, endure, frail, bamboo quiet, shrouding create wonderful tension with profusely, vociferous glories, impetuous, red blossoms glaring with white;
impetuous.
Although not oxymorons, frail splendor and crush of peach blossoms opening ownerless create a mood of the opulent energy of spring independent of any of human doings which contrasts with full fear of spring. The last stanza combines
Tu Fu’s fear and wish, the passing of blossoms scattering by the branchful although I doubt Tu Fu would have anthropomorphisized with the adverb “gladly.”
On the other hand, the adverbs for the way the conversation between Tu Fu and the buds will be conducted is perfectly believable: delicate, sparingly.
Rings:
Carol Ann Duffy’s occasional poem – the over-use of “ring”, repeat of “I might” with variations on line-break for emphasis, the “wring in pain” that comes to mind
With the sonics associated with fingers “ringed in rain”, makes you wonder if she should have declined to write this epithalamium.
“She is best at – perhaps the best at – writing the intensely private emotion, the silent moment of unshared grief that turns a life inside out, the kept secret, the undercurrent, the edge of the lie inside the truth we set our lives by. In other words, we have found ourselves in the odd position of having a poet laureate who writes the kind of poetry that tackles the least public of all our feelings. Instead of a poet of public noise we have a poet of private disquiet.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/carol-duffy-poetry-royal-wedding?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
You might enjoy reading this poem by her:
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
Carol Ann Duffy
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2001/08/valentine-carol-ann-duffy.html
or you might enjoy Robert Graves’ poem, A Slice of Wedding Cake:
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat ‘impossible men’: not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.
**
Keeping Quiet: Pablo Neruda, from Extravagaria.
Again the problem of a poem in translation.
Any crafting of sound will be at risk; the idea is to match the feeling, tone and convey any cultural implication…
We don’t count to 12, but to 10, or to 3..
Even if we don’t like something, or do something differently, aiming for understanding of what the original is trying to convey is important.
The idea of not speaking, not in any language, and being still, is good advice for any age. Neruda does not preach this. He paints a vision of what this would look like.
He allows the reader in, and the “I will go”, can refer to the counting (as in my turn to count) while the other waits, or the speaking, or the leaving.
Often we look at something and dismiss it. Like a spring branch, not yet in bloom.
But if we wait… keep still, listen, the surprise of new leaves will dumbfound us.
The idea of a “huge silence” that “might interrupt this sadness/ of never understanding ourselves” pins both the personal and collective roles of being human.
The Supple Deer.
An ecstatic experience told in carefully chiseled language. The tension between exact, and possible, exact and an undefined territory such as envy set in the motion of deer pouring through a fence, where deer, fence, observer can feel porous,
So full of “such largeness” of stag turning to stream. This small paragraph detracts from the awe Jane Hirshfield creates in just a few brushstrokes of words.
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