Ilya Kaminsky

 Ilya Kaminsky figures in the April issue of Journal of American Poets.

My notes on April 1 reading by Kaminsky from Deaf Republic:  (The “Big Read” NEA grant)

(note, this is separate from “All Rochester Reads” — it is nationwide.)

 

Just as there are many different kinds of people in different cultures, "Deaf Culture" similarly draws with multiple colored-crayons

 

Several events coming up:

Artwork inspired by the book at NTID Dyer Arts Gallery from 4/3-4/28 10-4

 

 Beyond Sound: ASL Poetry and Wordplay with Eric Epstein, both Wed. April 12 (Central Library at 6:30 pm) and April 15 at 1:30 pm (Pittsford)   Registration here:   https://calendar.libraryweb.org/event/10245251

 

Performance of Deaf Republic as a play! April 14-15-16.  You can purchase tickets here:

https://rittickets.com/online/default.asp  It will be at the Henrietta Ballroom at the RIT Inn, Henrietta: 5257 W Henrietta Rd, Henrietta, NY 14467

 

4/14:  3 pm-4:30 pm Black Poetry and BLM presentation at RIT, Fireside Lounge

 

Nutshell: 4/1/2023 Reading by Ilya Kaminsky from Deaf Republic -- 

 

Ilya has a very strong Ukranian accent and learned to lip-read Yiddish and Ukranian in Odessa, but with no hearing aids. I asked him about translation of his book, which he wrote in English.  It has been translated into other languages, like Ukranian and Russian, but not by him.  His answer, spoken with gentle humility:  Because I have been living here, working with this language.  If I were living in a different country, I would write in that language.  From Odessa, to England he arrived in Brighton, NY in 1993.  

 

In the audience was Jane Schuster his beloved teacher at the HS and you should have seen their “secret signing” as they greeted each other!  I could imagine this was a special ritual they must have done in those hallways!  Wendy Lowe, from Writers and Books who used to teach sign language and was instrumental in driving him to NTID was also there— and he paid tribute to her and other poets like Tony Piccione.  In his introductory remarks, he mentioned Extraordinary Bodies  by Rosemarie Garland Thomson which had a major influence on him.  This book

is the first major critical study to examine literary and cultural representations of physical disability.  It situates disability as a social construction, shifting it from a property of bodies to a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do. Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.

 

He has a most personable and kind manner, and for the Q& A after the reading, respectfully thanked each person with the question.  For instance, a question about the difference between the two "acts" revealed  that the second part of the book is based on the story of his grandfather and how his father was hidden — and why so many tomatoes show up in the poems!  Because, one of the hiding places, was at the market behind the tomato seller!  

 

 

All proceeds from his readings have been going to support war victims.  He received the Poets for Peace prize in 2019 (His other book, Dancing in Odessa is amazing too, published that year.).  As he put it… the first part of the story (well… a “closet play in poetry" — a hybrid genre to give shape to the story as he puts it)  is to demonstrate that in spite of violence, war, people still fall in love.  Have children.  Life continues, although, sadly the story often turns  away from what could have been in peaceful times to murder and chaos.  He did mention that in Odessa, his city, they are lucky — only 1-2 bombings a day.  Other places, 1-2 bombings per hour.  He urged us to contact our politicians… as the “war is also in this room”… and referred to the war started long ago… 

 

 

**

This poem just appeared https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/157519/i-ask-that-i-do-not-die

(not part of the Big Read, and he only read poems from Deaf Republic).

Although Ilya didn't mention this particular interview with Carolyn Forché, it is well worth the read:

https://lithub.com/in-the-hour-of-war-carolyn-forche-and-ilya-kaminsky-on-contemporary-ukrainian-poetry/

from the interview in the April issue of the American Academy's Poet Talk:

"When Kyiv was bombed a few months ago by the Russians, my friend was hiding in the subway, along with hundreds of other people, hiding there for weeks, older people, children.  To keep sane, my friend reciting poems from memory.  Then when she ran out of poems to recite,

she began to translate them.  Little kids who were there in the subway hiding from bombs,

for days, gathered around her.  What are you doing?  And so the kids formed a circle and started to recite these poems with her.  That's how people got through, how they survived the time of heavy bombardment.

 

Poetry helps us articulate the most impossible moments. 

When we have nothing else, we can still hold a handful of words in our memory,

a tune, and that might be all we have got now to survive. 

If we are lucky, it is there.  Keep it safe this verbal music.  Memorize new line poems if you can.

You might need them one day, war planes or not.  when facing the blank wall that is crisis,

everyone needs a bit of music, a tune, a balm."

 

 

 

 

A little extra... March 31

 At the end of the month, I look at the long list of poems that would be so wonderful to post for discussion, and often sigh.  

On Wednesday many poems dealing with Stone and Monuments were mentioned. Forgive me for  including them, in hopes you understand there is not time/room to discuss everything. 

The Museum of Stones by Carolyn Forché - 1950- https://poets.org/poem/museum-stones

Shelley's Ozymandias: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

Nemerov's take:  https://allpoetry.com/Ozymandias-II

 

The New Ozymandias by Kip Williams

 

I met a farer from a far-off strand

Who said, “Two giant feet of bronze, gone green,

In water sit, bedecked with broken chains

That show their maker well did understand

That bonds of former slavery, still seen,

Convey defeated servitude’s remains.

 

Near by, a broken torch lies, dead and dark

In grimy water’s tide that, fitful, passes,

And on the base, these words my eyes did mark:

‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free.’ Here ends the poem,

The rest is eaten by the restless water.

Along the shore, starved, feral humans roam

Whose brandished weapons offer naught but slaughter.”

-- March 10, 2018

 

Wednesday:  With 21 in the room, there was a buoyant vigor in the room!

Poems:

 

3 from Musical Tables  by Billy Collins:

Headstones, Poetry Collection and Dictionary Wanders

At the Market  by Lori Romero

Retirement  by Monica Sok

Fanny Linguistics: Nickole by Nickole Brown.  I wrote the the PoemHunter to tell them to fix their site which attributes it to Patricia Smith.

From the Stone Age: by Alice Corbin Henderson  : see February 15-6: discussed then

Carmel Point  by Robinson Jeffers  (see : https://www.torhouse.org/)

The Moon Is in Labor  by Gail Wronsky

** Discussion:  

Billy Collins:  light-hearted humor regarding his short poems-- and immediately, there seem to be so many stories to tell... whether "gradual starvation" mean loneliness, or as advice before marriage to be sure one of the couple knows how to cook and teach the other... or s in Poetry Collection, to wonder just what is being muttered and by whom.  Without the title, it could well be a commentary on those passed over by society.  With the title, the question of who collects what and for whom becomes equally complicated.  As for the Dictionary Wanderings, this prompted Judith to share Ogden Nash:

The Lama by Ogden Nash

 

The one-l lama,

He's a priest.

The two-l llama,

He's a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn't any

Three-l lllama

At the Market:  the wonderful stanza break after And suddenly

was filled with "I'm hungry"!  Indeed, the description of vegetables and fruits, the verbs "planted" for vendors, and that growers" forest" the pathways with greens and lavendar, customers compared to bees give a vibrant life to a market scene.  In contrast, the second stanza with the "bag lady" captures a small act of kindness (small man, large slice of Ginger Gold) and the "rest of us" seem to shrink like shrink-wrapping the freshness and their selves.  How to understand the "bawdy/salute" in the ritual is as "outside" the scene as the lady...  The unexpected turn at the end unearths a truth about the sweetness that often lies hidden.   

Retirement:  The note about the poem is reassuring and offsets the shock of the threat of estrangement from the open line.  The play on the word "temples" as both the father's head and the projected pursuit of monastic life underlines the skill of this poet to look at what is involved in the intimacy of a father-daughter relationship.  It reminded some of us of Li-Young Lee's poem, The Gift.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43010/the-gift-56d221adc12b 

Fanny Linguistics: Nickole:  We had quite the merry-go-round on Wednesday imagining that Patricia Smith wrote this as a persona poem.  Patricia who is black indeed is a gifted and powerful writer and I can't wait for her Blaney Lecture to be available!  https://poets.org/academy-american-poets/programs/blaney-lecture.  So is Nickole who wrote a collection of poems published by BOA entitled "Fanny Linguistics. Fanny is indeed the Grandmother of Nickole, and there is nothing about butts involved.  What fun to give a letter arms, legs and a "broom-handle spine".  If you google the names,  Latonna Lee et all, you will learn they are real,  Southern gals.  Many  of us struggled with the /k/ of cold, coal, coke, scoop of coco.  Sure, possible reference to drugs, but that comfort of sweet cocoa, and the safety inside is the inner essence of Nickole, beyond the K in her name.   A great poem and as Judith reminded us as we debated,  "Don't let theories get ahead of the data" quoting Sherlock Holmes: "I have come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data."  Let's hope that PoemHunter answers my email to explain their misnomer!

From the Stone Age : was discussed on February 15-6:  Reading it again, since it was posted again, not just as a worthy poem,  but on the teacher site, "Teach This Poem" we were struck by the persona of the rock.  Being one with the universe... Maura brought up Robin Kimmerer's suggestion that we not call an animal with the pronoun "him, her, it" but "ki".  The plural:  kin!  The discussion included mention of Navajo stone monuments, a sense of astral connection.  Again, Maura mentioned looking up at the current "parade of planets" and how distressing to see so many blinking lights of airplanes at the same time. The notes from February follow at the end of this blog.

Perhaps it was coupling the poem with Carmel Point that the discussion felt an inspirational pull in the lines:  "It does not matter how small te space you pack life in,/That space is as big as the universe."  What is it to be stone?  to speak as stone crafted as a God?  What matter the name?  That K in Nickole? 

The first line of the Jeffers poem throws us into a stone age!  The extraordinary patience of things.  Interesting to see how he uses the pronoun "it" -- does it care? It has all time... It knows the people are a tide... as opposed to "us".  If only this poem had been heard to help un-humanize, un-center from ego, profit and greed.  It is hard to see over-building and encroachment on the wildness he loved and was once part of  Carmel Point.  Jeffers was an important prophet for "Ecopoetry"  (how curious prophet sounds like profit... ) and Kathy brought up a recent volume of such:  Can Poetry Save the Earth https://www.amazon.com/Can-Poetry-Save-Earth-Nature/dp/0300168136  The discussion included information about Adrienne Rich's reaction to Jeffers and the very wise advice to us all:  "A writer writes about what is important to them.  Leave off all criticism about it."

At Rundel, we spoke about ambivalence-- how many of us truly would give up the convenience of our gas stoves, our warm houses?  And now a good century into roads and cars, how can we organize ourselves ? 

The Moon is in Labor: Perhaps we were tired on Wednesday and felt this was one of those "interesting poems", but no cigars awarded.  Rundel enjoyed it.  Interesting way to think of the moon... and lovely use of pretending (3 times), often associated with the moon.  Two meanwhiles bring in the contrast  (friction?) with male energy.  A hint of a molotov cocktail... lip service about caring about injustice, and I'm not quite sure about the "curved horns growing out of my ears".  As for "furious", totally not convinced.  Can we trust the poet? 

FEBRUARY ENTRY ABOUT From the Stone Age:   (written in April 20, 1918)  Perhaps one could read a self portrait from stone.. and one thinks of Michelangelo liberating what is inside a stone to become a magnificent sculpture. Does this poem ring universal, although written over 100 years ago?  Southwest flavor? Some felt a flavor of ancient sculptures such as those in  Aku-Aku.  Humans have forever tried to "get at the truth", tried to "do good" , created religions, made statues to venerate what's important.  Like the Kay Ryan poem, there is a sense that there SHOULD be abrasion, like water carving stone, and here a voice from the past, speaking to the space and time which we try to define....The discussion was rich including references to Oxymandias, to Robin Hobbs' story of the king's assassins, and perhaps some Navaho flavor.  The title, gives a sense of pre-historic, and second line probably does not refer to the iconoclasm practised by taking power away from a statue by disfigurement, as the statue is speaking, and "forgets what it was meant to represent".

In some ways, it feels like a description of alzheimers... the body there, life moving through, "space, volume, overtone of volume" with the curious comparison to "taste of happiness in the throat" (associated with chords of music in line before?) which you fear to lose, though it may choke you. 

Poems:

3 from Musical Tables  by Billy Collins:

Headstones, Poetry Collection and Dictionary Wanders

Poems for March 22-23

Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition by Wislawa Szymborska

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind by Carl Sandburg

Cricket Song by George Kalogeris

How  by Heid E. Erdrich

Summer Day by Mary Oliver

I love the idea of Poetry as  an attempt to understand fully what is present... what is feeling real, but might not be. The preamble of conversation as we gathered on Wednesday started with Judith reciting her mother's dramatic rendering of this "joke":  I acted all the Russian tragedies, and they all died; then I acted all the Russian comedies, and they all died, but at least they were happy.   I didn't know about the "Little Audrey" and "Little Willie" stories with such strange twists for endings but those also came up.

How to understand them in the light of their times?

I shared the difficulty of much of modern poetry and in particular, the poem "Torture" by Sarah Katz in her book Country of Glass.  There, the words are suspended so one need feel them hanging, falling.

Sharing such a poem outloud and talking about it underlines the power of a group dealing respectfully with words. She will talk about her book, deafness, on Monday by zoom.  https://calendar.libraryweb.org/event/10291823 

This set the scene well for an "non-existent expedition" as announced in the title of the first poem.

Only "notes" and what implications of these mountains associated with sacred heights?  At first sounding like a travel-logue, Bernie confirmed from his travels that indeed these young mountains indeed thrust up

"punch holes" in a desert of clouds... a ripped canvas of sky... Intriguing start as if she is speaking to the reader, only to shift to speaking to Yeti directly.  What is there relationship?  She seems to be introducing this "imaginary" snowman in this imaginary expedition to ordinary school-like things a child might learn in kindergarten.  The next stanza, she addresses Yeti as someone old enough to understand the sadness of crimes, death.  Midway, it could be the Yeti or the reader with a general statement about hope and how we cope with the yin and yang of life.  The next stanza, a little tongue in cheek.  A different dark/light response. In the penultimate stanza has she reached the heights of the Himalayas?  Is she warning the yeti?

Asking it to think about its past?  How to understand the final stanza?  

The poem was written in 1957 and although Szymborska would refute that the Yeti symbolizes God or Stalin, she plays with the forms of address so that the reader is challenged to think of looking at his/her own life, or how to address something unknown. 

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind: This has been set to music, but also it is a treat to hear Sandburg read it himself

Each prélude could be self-contained, but the thread of repetitions and increased force of them as the story grows demand that all of them be read together.  What are playthings of the wind?  Things man creates?  Everything? If the past is a bucket of ashes... does this mean not just the bucket, but all the ashes of the past?

If Grandmother "yesterday" is gone, where is mother?  Who is the woman named tomorrow over whom we have no say?  The sharp tone of her "what of it" sends a shiver of fear.  

Prelude 2: cedar and gold are symbols of incorruptibility-- and yet the second stanza of this prelude, the cedar doors are twisted on broken hinges... There is mockery in the repeat of "we are the greatest city" .

It will be repeated twice in prelude 3 by "golden girls" reduced to the caw of crows and the  only listeners rats and lizards.  Prelude 4, those words only  hieroglyphs seen in the footprints of the rats  and this sense of wind dispensing everything, now reduced to dust... How to understand "Nothing like us ever was".  Perhaps these words  had been bragging before,  and now they give a sense that we are a mistake that shouldn't have been and a  critique of modern urban life in the 1920's. 

Set to music by composer Michael Tilson Thomas who feels it describes a party atmosphere in spite of the sobering  text.

At Rundel, I loved that Trisha shared that these preludes were telling her very own story.   

Over and over, participants in these discussions confirm the power of good poems to engage us, invite us to embroider the possibilities of meanings with examples of our lives, experiences, thoughts. 

Cricket Song:  This is a marvelous intro to this poem by Major Jackson -- a poem in itself

https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2023/02/27/822-cricket-song

First and last word...  Discussion included many marvelous associations with dictionaries, their importance, and role to help us understand etymologies, meanings.  What is in a word is no simple question in response to the complexity of language and thought!  From one word to the the unfolding of an unexpected song at a simple, ordinary sink to a line and stanza break -- "a song about what the crickets...// //could be Sing.  And the dripping faucet joins in, its gleam like the river source and back to days when poets sang their words... and indeed, the gods worked transformations so their song, no matter how tiny,

was part of the fabric of life. 

How:  One word and a stream of consciousness engages a headlong flow, where no matter if incomplete, disconnected, the questions about "how" mirror in myriad ways the "how" of being human.  How special for me to hear Trisha share how she reassures her daughter that thinking like this, having a mind so full and busy with thoughts is a perfectly appropriate use of the mind.  (Reassures me, remembering my father saying to me, "You do like to think" (as if I were in danger of thinking too much)

or my mother reprimanding me that I think too much.)  Indeed, if you recorded the hour and a half of discussion each week, you would hear this amazing river of thought unleashed.   And how!  we said.  Maura suggested we try the poem replacing "how" with "why".  Marna suggested the poem was like a theatre exercise, inviting completions, substitutions.  Kathy picked up on "absurd", "inane"... "ridiculous" how "bleak" our need... We all were moved by the emotional impact of this rush of how "how loves" and how we come to a "this".  Martin added his Jungian training with thoughts on the difference between the "how" of psychology vs. physics where understanding of the total person is enhanced by the putting together of all the experiences how they combine in each person, as opposed to a scientific analysis used to predict behavior.  

Summer Day: This poem is a beautiful reminder of possibilities when we allow mindful attention space to appreciate all about us.  As Mary D.  put it,  Mary Oliver does know how to get our attention!!

"I don't know exactly what prayer is."  So she says, but offers an example of how to kneel, how blessed we are with our one wild and precious life.  

Both the Sandburg mention of "Tomorrow" and this poem, stress the Zen wisdom of being present in the moment.  Resting is not wasting time, but is also necessary for the fullness of life.  This brought up small jokes about "yawn-demics" and how contagious a yawn can be... and Judith recited tedium-tedium-tedium, tee, di di um where the rhythm of "di-di" makes the word anything but.  

 

Bernie's share after the 3/16 discussion

 In the midst of our reading, discussion and reactions to Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic poems, we or at least I was struck by the intensity of grief, horror and fruitless repetitiveness of war and violence, each person playing out their roles, their identities: soldier, victim, resister, parent, child, man, woman.

Feeling much, I was reminded of this beautiful video of Andrew Solomon about the formation of identity and the ways we  have of "othering" people.  He describes the personal, family and social/cultural responses to "difference", people who are different in some way.  It's powerful, fascinating and deeply moving.  He  discusses his book "Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" It's about an hour long, and the first 8 minutes or so of introductory stuff seemed skippable to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPLudnTXExE

Here's his wiki entry, for more information on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Solomon

There's another powerful video that speaks more directly to the impact of war on individuals, one of the Oscar-nominated short films for this year. About 30 min long, it's a remarkable example of the power of people who embody Martin Luther King's "Beloved Community".

"Stranger at the Gate":     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbbl1S6foM

March 16: Reading Guide follow-up to March 10 discussion of Deaf Republic

From Deaf Republic : It is interesting to listen to the entire book (audio - libby) although helpful to follow along with the physical text. Although I will not be here in person,  March 16/17) these are some of the points to further discuss at O Pen:

Background

We discussed We lived Happily During the War on January 26.    The video is a must see with each word appearing as he speaks it. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/video/151644/ilya-kaminsky-reads-we-lived-happily-during-the-war 

 How would you define happiness? What is your reaction to "so-called happiness" ? to  living in ignorant bliss with our backs turned?  How do you understand "war" ?-which one? -perhaps some of the invisible ones

In this poem, the repetitions, enjambments, are powerful as is the parenthetical (forgive us), like Elizabeth Bishop in her poem "One Art".  "The Art of Losing is not too hard to master/ though it may look like (write it!) /disaster. What tone does this opening poem establish  and lead us to expect in the pages to come of this little book?  What helps lead you to pin it down?   Alone, by itself, the poem is a powerful commentary on America, the Vietnam War, but also about human nature... how it is, we can live "happily" (well-enough, in spite of circumstances) while others suffer. 

Kaminsky writes, "Deafness, here, is an insurgency, a state of being, a rebellion against a world that sees deafness as “a contagious disease.” There is also humor, or at least a profound set of ironies: “each man is already / a finger flipped at the sky.”

 

 We discussed Feb. 8-9 Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air (P. 47)  How would you read this poem out of context of the book?  As final poem in Act I of the book Deaf Republic?How do you "borrow light from the blind"?  What kind of light/insight?

Poems from Deaf Republic:

Gunshot  (first poem)

That Map of Bone and Opened Valves  (p. 16)

Discuss different tones and directions of the not-quite parallel endings of these two poems. How can a moment convulse?

What does silence do to us? to soldiers?

What is "silence" to someone who is deaf?

3 Questions : 28, 46, 66

Yet I am (p. 67)

Eulogy (poem p. 45 (before second question)

Firing Squad p. 65 (before third question)

Deafness, an Insurgency Begins (p. 14)

And While Puppeteers are arrested (p. 61)

What We Cannot Hear ( p. 32)

Checkpoints (p. 22)

In the Bright Sleeve of the sky ( p. 41)

(the above poem follows "A City like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck".  The poem after:

To Live p. 42

In a Time of Peace p. 75-6

Question Poem:  Quiet the World

 

Poems for March 8-9

Preamble:  about the choice of the McKay sonnets ...  

One of poetry’s great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music and image — things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why — is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.”-- Tracy K. Smith Staying Human:  Poetry in the Age of Technology: https://fourteenlines.blog/category/tracy-k-smith/

I was fortunate to attend the Folger Education series for High School teachers, looking at Sonnets and trying to connect them to students interested in social justice.  At first glance this doesn't seem like a natural fit, but Donna Denizé (poet and award-winning English teacher) showed how the sonnet has been used not just in the early 20th century but contemporary times and new and powerful ways to engage students in the analysis.  

She started with he 1919 sonnet of Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay, "If we must die" written with the backdrop of the story of 12 year old Eugene Williams, a black boy who didn't know how to swim who drifted into "white territory." It is a response to mob attacks of white Americans upon African-American communities during the "red summer". 

In discussion:  the question came up:  Just because there are 14 lines, is it a sonnet?  We noted the difference between McKay's work from 1919 and Robert Hayden's free verse 14-liner written in 1966.

Reading Szymborska at Friday Harbor by Patrycja Humienik

because it is "after Aria Aber, I gave the link to her poem. America 

America; If We Must Die; The Lynching;  by Claude McKay

Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden  (published in 1966)

October Sonnet by  Adrian Matejka

Whipping  by K.D. Harryman 

Rose Colored Glasses by Kenneth Rexroth

Nutshell

Reading Szymborska:  If you don't know the "Friday Harbor" in the title, the poet does hint about

where it is (San Juan Island,  Washington State).  The mention of Szymborska's poem about the Yeti

also comes in handy, as "the everlasting/snow" as the final words of it are turned to current events of

climate change. 1996 is the year of  Szymborska's acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize.

The opening line is an interesting question.  Whether or not it is about the poet's concern about Szymborska or in general, wanting more music from language doesn't really seem to be the point of  the poem.   Instead, after seven lines which hint at someone thinking back about her high school self, it feels like what I call an "overloaded diary poem" with an assemblage of thoughts punctuated by what the poet sees.

 Does the poet still not like to admit how little she knows?  Unanswerable. The poem moves us to the present,  amazing scene, and unusual image of an eagle as white-headed metronome.  Poet, rapt... as she watches the raptor.  The next question, "how can I trust myself when I am so seduced by beauty?" also melts into the jumble, unanswered.  Perhaps there is something about missing homeland?  I referenced Aria Aber's poem America, and the haunting line asking "who am I becoming here with you?"  The reference to "Sweet Pea Lane" and whoever Gabby is, saying it makes her teeth hurt, is

perhaps a clue.   

   We weren't sure what to make of "muscle of petals" although Judith gave it a whack.  Here, there is plenty of individual association ripe for application.  

At the same time, it all seemed to be making perfect sense in the spirit of a collective complicity.

3 sonnets by Claude McKay

America:   : alliterations, add punch to a cauldron of terms better suited to a monster than a country. Not/ a shred/ of terror.  The line, "I love this cultured hell" brought up a comparison with unrequited love... and indeed, as another put it, America, giving hate, also gives strength to fight it.  What does it mean to look at the worst-- and wonder if that the best there is?

The last 4 lines give dark prediction indeed.

If we must die:  In the context of the 1919 tragedy of the drowning of Eugene Williams whose raft drifted into the "white" shores of the river and mob attacks during Red Summer, the effective use of a short form where meaning is compressed also suggests the constraints beyond the form.  The capital O's, the play between long and short o sounds in an emotion-packed roll of sound act as a call to action. The constrained form of 14 lines... the idea of a stanza being a room, and the idea of  being "pressed to the wall" -- and fighting back-- not to be "penned in like hogs" while all around the mad and hungry dogs, is highly effective, with the sounds of O (O let us nobly die; O Kinsman) contrasting well with hogs, inglorious spot, accursèd lot... It is a call to face the common foe.

The Lynching: (written in 1920) Here, with three sets  of abba (no stanza breaks however), the first, establishing the subject; second, its development; third, a rounding off (in this case, the crowd coming to view the hanging body without any sorrow) and the uncanny and unexpected conclusion in the final couplet:  "little lads, lynchers" clearly formed and ready to carry on...ironic rhyming of "to be" with their "fiendish glee."

Frederick Douglass: We were struck by the repetitions of "when" in the first 6 lines, broken by three semi-colons to a colon ending line 6.  And then the continuation in 5 more comma-filled lines with 6 demonstrative adjectives (this)  before man, Douglass, slave, Negro, man, man.  As Judith put it,

where lacking in rhyme, the rhythm and music flow; the phrasing propels the liquid of legends to lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream.  We had read a while back Ross Gay, "A small needful fact" -- which echos Hayden's ending words:  the beautiful, needful thing.  Hayden creates compelling proof of what humans can do to overcome odds, but more.  How do we remember legendary figures such as Douglass?  Not rhetoric of statue, wreaths-- but that carrying on of the work for freedom so that it continues to live. 

October Sonnet:  It's called a sonnet, and indeed, has 14 lines.  Since the epigram says "after Ted Berrigan" this snapshot of Berrigan's Sonnets   might help: https://poets.org/book/sonnets

We had fun with the halloween flavor, the 13th floor (which superstition would say to avoid), the playful

"wind winds" which could be both a verbal wind or a winding.  Enjoyable unforced quality, but a rather enigmatic ending with reference to  "autumn of my reproduction" gusty apparitions, untethered things.

I loved the wind's singsong, fine-tuned, perfectly pitched and humor in the 2nd and 3rd tercets.

Whipping introduced us to the technicalities of rope and how to twine it.  Without the comment, we were lost and would have been far-fetched to find a mother's advice to a daughter on being female. 

Raw, fierce.  Knotty. One of the associations and references that came up from Judith.

https://www.longbranch.k12.nj.us/cms/lib/NJ01001766/Centricity/Domain/762/The Wise Old Woman Story.pdf

Rose Colored Glasses:  we loved the visuals... went straight to Venice, how a song about love cannot be locked up-- and why not 100 pure voices of pickpockets and prostitutes singing "La vie en rose"

hopefully remembering the feelings that polish those glasses that see the world that way.  What's lovely is the polishing of details of daily life by its infiltration.

** 

As ever, a rich and rewarding discussion-- I hazard the guess, that it's not the poems so much as the desire of everyone to collaborate in the effort of  making sense.

As ever, heartfelt thanks.