Poems for Nov. 12

 Landscape, Dense with Trees by Ellen Bryant Voigt; Autumn Grasses by Margaret Gibson; Sehnsucht by Michael Dumanis; A Woman, a Man  by Judith Dowd.

**

It is tempting to fill 4 pages each week with poems that seem worthy of spending time with them, noting craft, philosophical and psychological aspects attached to a subject, and sharing assessments of the degree of delight in reading them outloud. I get a kick when people start with, "I really like this poem" -- as I am eager  they will explain why.  

Given that the participation in the group is often 25 people, there is never enough time for all to share.  I'm not sure if there is a solution, and appreciate that in general, we listen thoughtfully and patiently to those who respond.  I invite people to respond to the nutshell, reformulating or commenting on the bones of the discussion.  A poem is never finished!!!

Nutshell: Landscape, dense with Trees: In tribute to Ellen Bryant Voigt (1943-2025) [1] , this poem draws on two of her themes,  the rural south and family, "played" out with a beautiful sounds, rhythms.

We imagined this poem with a gentle Southern accent, which gives quite a range of possibility given the rich offerings of regional accents anywhere.  The question of "how a poem sounds" is perhaps is best left to each reader seeing the written words and imagining the sonic patterns and options of  how to deliver the aural flavors of the words. 

If you look at the visual presentation, the poem is indeed "dense" with no stanza breaks, but a small height of a half-line  between each of the 33 lines.  

 

Graeme mentioned he sent it to a friend in Louisiana who indeed felt it resonated with the South.

He enjoyed, as did many the rhythmic phrasing such as the image of the lazy track of the snake in the dusty road. Others enjoyed the personification of the heat, at the end: hand at his throat,/fist to his weak heart.  How his industry, planting so many trees, was a triumph as was his heart.   Density is everywhere in the poem, with the specific naming of trees, even up to the maple used for his bedstead, and the inference of his planting perhaps camouflaging a deeper purpose.  Elmer brought up the saying that one plants a tree for the next generation and gave us the term aesthetic pruning, the art of shaping trees and shrubs to enhance their natural beauty and form through selective pruning. (It is often inspired by Japanese garden styles, focusing on the tree's essence and long-term health.)

 

The poem is a respectful ode to a Father, poignantly expressed in a soundscape, where memories are like the scrim of foliage, thickened around (the house).  

 

Autumn Grasses:  Bernie provided a beautiful metaphor, describing this poem like a necklace of Zen koans.  Kathy provided the Shibata Zeshin reference in the title with his Meiji period two panel screen. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45080 

 

You will see to the right, a full moon, to the left, a silvered emptiness.  You can imagine the sounds of the first stanza, meditate on the six questions this poem weaves in, as you look at this lovely painting.  With many names of grasses in Japanese, this link  brings you the "Seven Grasses of Autumn for inspiration of an Ikebana, a beautiful indoor arrangement connected to the view of the moon outside the window.  The final stanza gives a personal connection to the sense of harmony, felt universally.

 

Sehnsucht: In German, literally, two verbs:  to see and to search.  Dumanis defines it as "the desire for something missing".  It is often translated as wistful longing or yearning.  I drew the parallel with the Welsh term Hiraeth: a yearning for something but you can't quite put your finger on it.  

This poem struck a chord in everyone with many associations with the magical age of six -- a milestone number when typically a child starts school and is inducted into society, but is still filled with innocence.

References: Now we are 6,  A.A. Milne; the first day of school (for child and parent) by Howard Nemerov and the tradition of giving a spoonful of honey to equate learning with sweetness; Goldengrove as 2nd line in Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Spring and Fall (and other things such as the Game of Thrones universe).  

Add to this, Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel and the curious adjective bedraggled applied to a llama, a symbolic animal replete with a set of complex emotions that link between physical and spiritual realms, and many offered comments about relationships with parents, or as parents watching one's beloved child growing up.   The Unbearable Lightness of Being also came to mind.  The penultimate phrase, from ferry boats (hopefully not preparing her to cross the river Styx !) to Ferris wheels, is the father's participation in the world... perhaps missing in himself, the joy he sees in his daughter, recalled, tasted again as he shares turns licking the strawberry ice cream.

A Woman, A Man:  We enjoyed the comment the poet provided about herself and how she started writing late and is now 82.  We definitely had the sense of a participating in creating choices for a narrative with the first stanza choosing characters and possibilities for them.  By the third stanza, you wonder if perhaps you are overhearing the created characters, perhaps talking to each other.  Or is this a scene about new neighbors?  Or is it the poet talking directly to us as readers?  Does it matter how many versions of "they" are possible?  Who is "us", and what kind of happiness are you willing to share? Regardless, how we each saw the poem, we all enjoyed its wry and delightful manner!

 

We saved Whethering for another time.

A friend had shared it, puzzling over the rhyme scheme saying 'Poems are musical, meaningful, intricate.  Here's one that has rhymes in it, but I haven't figured out the scheme.  Let's say the first three lines are a,b,a.  Then I do not see another a,b until the last two lines, which is quite a scheme to enclose the whole poem within a,b and a,b.  The third line, a, does not have another rhyme until "shed" in the fourth stanza.  There's a lot of, let's call it the e rhyme: digits, it's, fidgets, spirits.  But I see no pattern."  

 My reply: For sure, there are repeating words, repeating sounds, and playing with placement is the beauty of crafting... what turns a haphazard "make it up as you go along" into next version revised. I find her creation of "belates" as verb which rhymes with precipitates, both verbs isolated as soloists on a line, underscores the depth of her other neologism, "whethering".  Sure, rain as preciptation... but can also mean "rush into" -- and what a beautiful contradiction, of "belatedly" i.e., not right away, considering the possibilities of former voices now ghosts, the "late so and so" no longer alive... but whose voice can still be here. 

The poem is filled with "haunting"  meditatation on the sounds of rain, and, I'm only hazarding a guess here... the rhyme here, tucked in on the same line as in "softer, clearer", or as echoes but in unexpected places, such as end rhyme, Haunted, on the first line, repeated as first word, 2nd line of the final stanza, and the delay of shed gently underscores a letting go of thinking we understand anything.  The final two lines elaborate on the "haunting" of all we don't know. That her kids are sound/asleep, is an extra pun on sound.

Perhaps the conceit of the poem is to take rain, and after considering all the choices we could make to describe the sounds, and go back full circle to the title.  She is "whethering" with weather providing rain.  

---

[1] A fine tribute to her: https://yalereview.org/article/tribute-ellen-bryant-voigt

I love her comment, "It's a new song when someone listens"--  See also https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ellen-bryant-voigt  for more of her poems: 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ellen-bryant-voigt#tab-poems

Nov. 5

Pumpkin by Theresa Muñoz; The Silence Afterlight by Patrick G. Roland; The Dead by Rupert Brooke;

Fear and Evening; by Charles Simic; To be in love by Gwendolyn Brooks; At the Gate (excerpt) by Lucille Clifton  At the Gate: Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 – BOA Editions, Ltd. https://share.google/Tux9N9XpQijeYYxC4

I shared also these thoughts:  No two people see the external world in exactly the same way:  We see a thing as what we think.  It is such joy the share poetry and share our thinks!

Elmer and Neil, last week-- I showed the fun to the gang.

I also shared this "give a poem" by Bart White:

Our Town

Nestled in green

rooftops    treetops    about even

slender church spire our town's tallest feature

Except for signs 3X as high

EXXON             SUNOCO        The Golden Arches

glossy bold in daylight    neon glow by night

Siren call to travelers     northbound   southbound    24/7

our essential commerce

gasoline & burgers

Towers over all

Nutshell:  

Pumpkin: There are so many different avenues in our minds to associate this noun with visual, olfactory, psychological experiences, not to mention the taste in pies, and as Judith brought up, an infiltration of pumpkin into beer of all things.  Of course Halloween came up, and how the Americanization of giant pumpkins has spread worldwide, with people sharing examples from Japan, Romania.  Ken brought up that All Hallow's Eve, the night before All Soul's Day (Nov. 1) is still practiced in Germany and Hungary. Judith brought up her experience in Japan in 1989 where the Day of the Dead ( (Obon)) is celebrated in August:  little boats with candles were set to travel in a river.  When the candle went out, or the boat tipped over, it was though the ancestor had returned from whence he came.

 

I brought up the adjectives : innocent, rippled, punctured, sunken, carved, green... The verb choices also enhance the variations of what seems overall to be a playful tone.  pushed, huddle, (while frost glistens)...  can you carry? hug.  Graeme piped up about the solo adverb:  doubtfully and that  one could entitle the poem Humanity.   Indeed!

 

The Silence Afterlight: an ekphrastic response to Lyrical Abstraction” by Rupam Baoni https://rattle.com/the-silence-afterlight-by-patrick-g-roland/

Many wanted to know more about the artist as well as the poet.  Apparently the poet is an educator who has systic fibrosis and a story teller. That aside, a very dark poem.  For Mary, the poem brought up the memory of burning leaves in Autumn, the smell, sounds, visuals.  Rose Marie shared the story of the Refugee Family, who had spent 10 years in different camps, finally in America, and then watching the house in which they lived go up in flames with all their belongings and hard-earned papers.  

Some Ekphrastic poems can stand on their own.  This one, with the double noun in the title is difficult.  We noted in the 4th stanza about the flame and the shadows it casts, how clearly the enjambed reach (of shadows) stretches into space, resolving on the next line never touch.

In the 5th stanza, a surprising conclusion about darkness, "as proof that nothing waits."

As the note from the editor says, there is a sense of possibility as a faith that is never satisfied.

Unanswered prayers, and no answer as ash falls.  Ken brought up the poet's choice, that the ash falls like a reply, and Axel underscored that "like"  means it is not a reply.

 

The Dead:  from a series of War Sonnets.  In the 5th line, "These"  curiously could be the hearts of those sent to war, but also the years.  Similarly in the 12th line, "He" could refer to Frost, but perhaps an undertone of one of the hearts.  Elaine remarked how "all the colors of life"  are in the first stanza, but replaced/erased by white in the second.  ,Many offered a fuller biography of Rupert Brooks: Yes, handsome and glorified by Henry James and such, but there were other  poets in WW1 who are even stronger like Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves[1] " He died of sepsis on a ship in the Aegean as a naval officer;  his brother died on the battlefield.  This is another of his famous poems: 

**

The Soldier

 

If I should die, think only this of me:

      That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made a War was return of earth to ugly earth, / War was foundering of sublimities, / Extinction of each happy art and faith / By which the world had still kept head in air’ware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

 

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

 

 The reference to The Stranger's Child inspired by a line by Tenneyson also came up. 

I had picked it because it was mentioned as the poem tucked in the pocket of Gareth, the husband of the main character in Dictionary of Lost Words.  by Pip Williams.  

 

 

Simic:  the first, Fear: In six lines, Simic shows the powerful and scary contagion of fear.  Alex brought up the sociological experiment with monkeys where transmission of fear happens, even if a monkey had not experienced the situation provoking it.  Judith reminded us the Ash Tree or Quaking Aspen, was used for the crucifixion of Christ.  

 

In Evening,  Simic deals with contradiction of the familiar and challenges us with such thinking about how "that which brings you into the world /take you away at death"  is one and the same.

How to understand grass.  What word or two might it repeat?  Is it the same?    Perhaps the green of Spring grass, is akin to the grass over a coffin.  Judith brought up the tale of King Midas, and the whispering by the reeds telling his secret.  

 

 

To be in love:   As Graeme put it, "I don't think there is a more perfect description".  Everything about the experience of love, whether good or bad, stems from the title.  The varied length of lines echoes  the unpredictable trajectory!  The end with the description of losing a loved one, 

indeed is both "ghastly" and one is also the other half of a "golden hurt"... She says it all and beautifully.  The poem appears in the new section of her "Selected Poems" published in 1963.

 

Lucille Clifton: The Final poem was taken from a BOA announcement of a 2026 collection of Clifton's work called, "At the Gate."  Apparently it is in her digital archive.  We wondered when it was written.    The epigram by Walter Benjamin is in  "Theses on the Philosophy of History," where he describes the "angel of history" [2]who is propelled into the future by a storm that has caught in its wings. This storm is Benjamin's metaphor for "progress," which he sees as a catastrophe that piles ruin upon ruin, despite the angel's wish to "awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed".  Clifton gives us her view-- how there is nothing—no father, mother, no poetry that can save us...  but this storm, is... from Paradise. 

---

[1] War was return of earth to ugly earth, / War was foundering of sublimities, / Extinction of each happy art and faith / By which the world had still kept head in air’

[2] (The imagery in Benjamin's book is  inspired by Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus.) 

 

 

Poems for Oct. 29

 Library of Congress by Arthur Sze; Like Apple from Seed  by Molly Johnsen; Sabbath XII by Wendell Berry;  Under the Harvest Moon  by Carl Sandburg 1878 –1967; Eyes Fastened with Pins  by Charles Simic; From the Sky by Sara Abou Rashed (After Lorca: his poem: Farewell); What We Might Be, What We Are by X. J. Kennedy

I started with a few preliminaries:  

1. I do encourage people to visit Rundel Library to see the amazing exhibit of the "Art of The Book".https://www.cityofrochester.gov/locations/central-librarys-anthony-mascioli-gallery-art-book-paper-exhibit

2. I mentioned  "Hugs from Maine" https://ralstongallery.com/  Scroll down and you can subscribe.  I cited Hieroglypic Stairway by Drew Dellinger. Listen to him read it here.  Excerpt to mull over: it’s 3:23 in the morning/and I can’t sleep/because my great great grandchildren/ask me in dreams/what did you do while the earth was unravelling?

3. I read this poem: I do not mention the war in my birthplace to my 6 year old son but somehow he knows https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158390/i-do-not-mention-the-war-in-my-birthplace-to-my-six-year-old-son-but-somehow-his-body-knows

Nutshell:

Library of Congress: 3 different people recommended this poem to me as soon as it was published in the New Yorker.  The title asks that each word be examined:  Library. Congress.  Library as a place, yes, as a in "books"... but as Wade pointed out in the 3rd line, a million books breathe... shelves holding knowledge compiled, divined for us in turn to divine.  Bernie pointed out the double meaning of adjective and verb.

Neil reiterated his feeling about seeing the poet, and himself, standing outside of oneself, looking into the depths of the enormous variety of things recorded, and how Sze captures the enormous diversity humans enjoy on this planet.  Times change, and so do ways of cataloguing, reading, but regardless, a library is a haven, a place open to all, where delving into books, one delves into conversations with cultures and time periods and self-discoveries.

Sze mentions curators three times; I gave footnotes about the reference to the Neruda poem; the Chinese, the Vai script, Farsi, and Carolyn responded to the importance of calligraphy, and kufic script;  how the hand is part of the craft of transmitting language and meaning dancing on the page.  Sze brings in the senses -- a song, a scent, the marlin blue depth, the mulberry paper.  Ending with the image of "no pear-blossom end" to what's within reach blooms with life and hope.

Like Apple from Seed:  We noted the enjambments, and many identified with seeing the moon caught in trees, and think we could free it.  As the curator of the poem says, "Stories themselves are like seeds in our lives; so much can grow from them. There is so much potential waiting inside.".

Sabbath XII by Wendell Berry.  My question is how a poem escapes becoming a sermon.  It is great to share the details:  the 3 "ifs", the crafting of the 3rd stanza, "we will suffer alone, we will suffer/

alone".  The message of compassion evokes the message that "if we do not hang together, we will hang separately." 

 

Under the Harvest Moon  by Carl Sandburg :  sounds, the juxtaposition of the two stanzas with death and love.  How to understand the word, "Mocker"?  The lyricism carries us to feeling wrapped with Love and beautiful, unanswerable questions. Eddy brought up the tradition of the Chinese Harvest moon.  

Eyes Fastened: We enjoyed the unusual perspective of the personification of Death!

Sky Burial:  Each sense is evoked in the sandwiched tercets... Imagine sky as free from "boundaries" -- but perhaps that too will be carved ... Thanks to Eddy, the nod to Lorca refers to his poem "Farewell"

If I die,
Leave the balcony open.

The boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I hear him.)

The reaper scythes the wheat.
(From my balcony I feel it.)

If I die,
Leave the balcony open!

   We ended with XJ Kennedy's delightful comic relief.  How did he come up with that Balinese Goat?

Good to be able to laugh at ourselves!!!!

addendum about Erasure poems

 On Oct. 17, 2019:

Correction on my entry which speaks about the Erasure Poem Declaration  by Tracy K. Smith, 

I had also used it in the workshop on poetry for peace.
The discussion at Rundel  brought up many words of wisdom about our Declaration of Independence.
"nothing's changed except the numbers" --  referring to who is in power and who oppressed....
The poem leaves space to complete the unspoken... plundered our...  ravaged our... destroyed the lives of our...
taking away out*, our...  abolishing our most valuable...  altering the Forms of our...**

We discussed industrialized slavery, the necessity of admitting flaws... the difference in attitude between
MLK and Malcolm X, / WE duBois and Brooker T Washington... 

*typo... should read out.  I think I was thinking simultaneously taking out... taking away...

** I added 3 points of suspension after our: the point is this: I have left out (erased) nouns after "our".  What noun(s)  do you want to put after "our"? 

Poems for Oct. 22

 Stopping along the Way by David Wagoner; The War in the Air by Howard Nemerov;  Laundry by George Bilgere; For Robert Frost, in the Autumn in Vermont by Howard Nemerov; Life  by Eric Rounds; 2008, XII  by Wendell Berry

I opened with 3 quotes from the September issue of The Sun:  If we could have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions. -- Susanne K. Langer; The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. -- Isaac Asimov;  Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Sharon Bagley

Nutshell:

Stopping along the Way:  We read this sentence by sentence, which helped accentuate the humorous run-ons which stretch over 9 lines, 17 lines and 15 lines after the first one and the rather abrupt two referring to a car honking.  Indeed, there was a lot of chuckling by the third lengthy passage describing the 'possum's response to two cars honking.  Axel brought up the bonding characteristic of shared laughter, often ignored when describing beneficial effects.  She also brought up the fact that a 'possum might seem not to care, or seem to choose to play dead.  Actually, it is not in control of the reaction, and it is its body shutting down.  As Graeme put it, "automation, not agency". How beautifully this mimics the opening, with the car's brakes making it stop "almost on its own."   We all appreciated the segue from honking cars, to the geese, with another gentle poke at our human tendency to consider ourselves important.  The "very young possum"  and its "personal intersection of human cross-purposes" later is described as comparing the sound of the car to "some distant sound/ somewhere deep, far back/ in his old, new mind".   Something "old" as in some wiring from archaic DNA perhaps.  

Not only does Wagoner treat us to a delightful account of a brief moment which paints a vivid visual painting,  but also provides wonderful sounds and rhythms.  Stopping ... along the way, as title, could be a title of a sermon or advice column.

War in the Air: The title perhaps plays on the fact that human history would confirm war is as common event as breathing air, and always seems suspended above our heads.  He adds a bitter irony with the justificatory adjectives of "clean",  "good" which one sometimes hears applied to the second world war.  Judith provided us with a description of being a bombadier which confirms the bloody messiness of war.  The motto of the Royal airforce:  Per ardua, per aspera: through hardship to the stars.   Nemerov was a pilot in WW2 and knows first hand.  His clever manipulation of clichés adds a bite to the irony introduced in the first stanza.  The use of "incompressible" to describe hitting the sea, the play of "shades" as both drawing an image but also souls of the dead, leads to a reiteration of the invisibility of the dead -- "as if there was no death, for goodness's sake".  The final line hangs like an unhinged door.  

Laundry:  Many things in daily life provide metaphors for unspoken hardship.  Many brought up memories of hanging up laundry -- and clothespins, both the old-fashioned ones and those with the hinged spring so a pin could pinch...  Bilgère uses "black/and white" deftly to define the action of blouses and shirts flapping in the wind and "immaculate" light.  Axel saw a parallel of the speaker of the poem (as a boy) and the 'possum poem as sharing a "dire situation".  Eddy admired the use of present tense applied to the past, present, and implied continuation in the future of this snapshot.  Marna was pleased that the sound of the poem, the feel of it in the mouth was as important as the visuals.  We all could relate to the hard work, the joyful feel, like laughter, and sensitive to the repeated struggling applied to laundry and  marriage.   The line breaks in the second stanza add to the sense of fragment which ends with the effective shrinking of space between her-but  and continues with initial capitals to the final period.     There is an unpinning of how we turn a snapshot of a moment,  to the creation of photograph,  left with a deeper understanding that confirms a foreboding  but also a choice to return to a joyous dance of blouses and shirts.

For Robert Frost: The question came up if Robert Frost knew this poem.  The answer is no.  He died in 1963 and Nemerov wrote it afterwards, inspired by their friendship with him Frost's views on poetry.  A beautiful sonnet with an unusual "painting" of Autumn and foreboding of death.  The key word is "reverse" like a weaving.  Just as the Chinese say, translation is like fine brocade, but to fully understand, one must look at the "tangle" of the underside hidden under the perfect façade.  Some have said that the Resurrection is the beautiful side of the tapestry, the crucifixion the reverse.  Does the tone match the content?  I wonder if Nemerov is not sharing Frost's disdain for "leaf peepers" coming up from the cities to Vermont in the Fall.  The p's of puzzled pilgrim, epiphanies.  We weren't sure how to understand, "the price on "maidenhead if brought in dead" aside from a critique of Puritanical times.  The oxymoron of "cold and fiery" repeats the "brilliant/dies; dying/realms of fire juxtapositions.  We all agreed it is a stunning poem about autumn, but also a lovely elegy.  

Life: The technique of erasure can be highly effective.  Here, a selection from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi recreates for us a beautifully poetic version of the Mississippi which before "management" was a difficult river to navigate.  Judith pointed out Twain made his living as a jokester, and hid his feelings about society but also his poetic intentions captured in his mastery of tone.  

2008, XII:  Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land and The Unsettling of America.   Kathy pointed out his consistent message, always thoughtfully crafted.  In 1973, 40 years prior to the New Sabbath Poems, he wrote Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, a more forceful delivery. https://cales.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html  He has  written a series of "Sabbath Poems" starting with a line from the Bible, but this #12, even  though a variation on a different Sabbath Poem #12,  confirms the ability of a good writer to continue to explore an important theme.  Judith summed it up: "You're weighed in the balance and found wanting."(Daniel 5:27)

  

Poems for October 15

 The Metier of Blossoming by Denise Levertov; Summer’s Elegy  by Howard Nemerov; Morning Song  by Sylvia Plath 1932 –1963;  My Daughter Explains the New World  by Abby Murray;  Love:  a human condition by Nikki Giovanni; The Table Remains Jason Gabari; Poem Without a Title  by Charles Simic

Nutshell:

The title using The Métier as opposed to the English, "Professional Trade", gives a certain distinction and personification of "Blossoming" as part of the definition of being human.  We noted  gravid buds, an unusual adjective for buds which lends a sense of gravity to the fullness.  If you have ever watched the slow rise of an Amaryllis stem and development of its large blooms, the first stanza indeed captures  an accurate description!  The comparison of the flower's growth to marks on a barn door labeling the progress of a child's height adds a human touch of pride.  There's a certain cleverness of line breaks which lends a playful tone.  The second stanza plunges the reader into a present moment.  The lines are breathless with expectancy. We puzzled at her choice of Juno, Roman goddess of marriage, families and childbirth.  It seems contradictory to call her a "maiden" giantess.  Her enumeration of the ideals of blossoming (whole, undistracted, unhurried) falls on three lines.  The line break after sheer /unswerving captures the odd choice of "swift" with a sheer "drop" that swerves to "unswerving".   We cannot be perfect -- but what an inspiring wish to "blossom out of ourselves", withholding nothing in such a way!  

It reminded Jonathan of Roethke's poem,  Root Cellar. https://allpoetry.com/Root-Cellar 

Summer Elegy: We marveled at the subtlety of the rhyme scheme, the pleasure of the sounds of internal rhyme and aliterations.  The form sustains the meaning and vivid descriptions of nature in Autumn.  I loved that one person commented how the poem provided reassurance about the inevitable end we all face, and made it seem "OK".  Another remarked there seemed to be a turn on the 14th line.  Although not a double sonnet, one could think of the next 10 lines providing echo, where the reader is invited in to consider his/her own "unripe" place, joining in the final "cut", the terminal sound /of apples dropping on dry ground.  Judith mentioned the poem has a distinct flavor of Keats, and how in a different Nemerov poem, it was not apples dropping, but acorns.  

Morning Song:  We agreed that this was a different aspect of Plath's poetry which points to her talent.  More than a poem about a mother attending and observing her baby, one senses an edgy foreboding.  "Your nakedness/shadows our safety"... "I am no more your mother/than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/effacement at the wind's hand."  We noted the shift of metaphors in the last two stanzas.  The lightness of the daughter's rising voice, wins out over the cow-heavy mother as final line.

My Daughter Explains: Abby Murray blends the idealistic young 11 year old with overtones of the adult responding, so we feel privy to a overhearing an exchange we would not be aware of.  Why not imagine a new world.  Sure, feminist, but translation available as a gift for men.  And those lions, not as symbols of empires, strength of kings, but the actual New York Public Library Lions now the librarians, and in charge.  We discussed the final stanza, how we say "rest in peace" as a final word.  It takes an 11 year old to put a spin on peace as metaphor for death. 

Love: a human condition: Quirky, profound.  We all were glad for the inventive slant on a subject that seems like nothing more could add to the copious works about love through the centuries! Do we love, because that's the only true adventure?  Perhaps the only way get "out of ourselves"?  The final two lines leave the reader to wonder about narcissism and its perpetration

The Table Remains:    Do look at the artwork, as this is an ekphrastic poem.  From the personification of a table to the stage it provides for objects as actors.  Why do people go to fortune tellers?  As a still life, the frozen objects provide more layers to the pun of "remains" in the title.  Judith provided a re-enactment of the ballet, "The Green Table" by by Kurt Jooss. This link gives you a commentary about the choreography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4U2UecJ9oE This link shows you Part 1 (17 min.) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un5kYC8jpUk This link gives you a 7 min. "extract" https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=401828120270738

Poem without a Title:  We discussed this curious title.  In the spirit of the poem before, one could think of a poem with no "Title" -- no role as Nobleman, or entitlement.  Simic, grappling with the horrors of war, and postwar returns to the conundrum of how to hang on to hope, when, desperate for answer for a way to restore peace, justice, dignity, all that a war, and dictatorships strip away.  Nobody answers. This short poem is  chillingly powerful.  

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[1] The poem was written for  Rattle's Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2025, using this image: “The Cartomancer’s Table” by Gerald Traicoff. “  https://rattle.com/the-table-remains-by-jason-gabari/   Selected as the Editor’s Choice.

Pictures sent to group Aug-sept, 2025

No  pictures for Aug. 20 or 27

Sent with poems for Sept. 3 

I am writing just after sunrise looking out at three magnificent mountain peaks in Altaussee, known as "a treasure of a place" in the Salzkammergut area of Austria.  Two photos from yesterday morning capture part of the magic of the region

Sent with poems for 9/10: So... yesterday, we spent about 5 hours in the Vienna Kunsthistorische Museum, built in 1891 in a lavish Rococo style!  The museum coffeeshop allows you to have a verlänger kaffee mit apfel strudel  gazing out at tall polished marbel columns, sweeping staircases and frescoed ceilings that rival the height of cathedrals!

We caught a glimpse of a bride and groom and their photographer before the crowds began!

sent with poems for 9/17: Greetings from Bled, (in Slovenia)-- yesterday it was raining cats and dogs (we say in French, "il pleut à verses" -- and I joke, "qu'il pleuve des poèmes!" (let it rain poems!)-

an excuse to rewrite the  19th century Slovenian poem extolling  the lake of Bled with its island and magical church,  legend of the wish-granting bell inspired by the usual picturebook image.

sent with Poems for Sept. 24: Today's  hike!  (9/17) (close to the final scramble to the summit of this mountain nicknamed Matterhorn of Bovec!)  Spectacular views of the Julian alps in this part of Slovenia on the border of Italy and Austria.  A Peace trail runs through this area, proud to proclaim NO BORDERLINES are here

Sent with poems for Oct. 1

Sent with poems for Oct. 8

(Not really chosen to illustrate the lines in Heaney's poem Oysters... about crossing the Alps.  We already miss these beautiful mountains deeply...)

But who can argue about winding streets echoing centuries of stories?

I hope this message finds everyone well.  Again, I thank all the generous souls who accepted to moderate discussions, and contribute ideas for poems.  I miss our weekly give and take where we practice attentive listening and sharpen curiosity

Sent with poems for Oct. 13:I'll be back to moderate poems for Wed. Oct. 13. Once again, thank you to all for "covering"!  It is hard to know what picture to send... Perhaps these two can work together for a metaphor?

(view of the Douro)
Chryselephantine (gold and ivory) figurines -- "Spinning Top" (from the exhibit, "Dancers" at  Museum of Art Nouveau in Salamanca)

O pen will meet as usual at noon on wednesday, which is 10/15.

This allows me to sneak in one more picture.  yes... ready to sail home TODAY.  Ice Cream  stand!Sometimes, traveling does rather flip you upside down!  (Fun statue of laughing men as one tumbles off the bleachers in a Porto park near Clerigo.