Poems for Feb. 11 + 13

The first poem I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land by Rita Dove

 came from the Washington Post article Poems for Troubled Times which shares 5 poems selected by Virginia’s new Lt. Governor, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi who holds a PhD in poetry. These five poems that have brought her comfort and inspiration over the past year and she gives a brief overview of each one: One speaks to the banality of evil, (Auden, Le Musee des Beaux Arts; another to the weight of suffering*, a third to listening to your quiet truths,** a fourth to facing darkness and finding hope***and the fifth speaks to her own past, living in a patriarchal structure and how fathers shape daughters.*A Sunset By Robert Hass : Published in 2024, this poem opens with a reference to the Uvalde school shooting two years before and closes with references to poet Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln.

**The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany by Carl Sandburg

With Lincoln's birthday coming up on Feb. 12, you might like to read about Norman Rockwell's painting of the same title: https://www.lincolnshrine.org/exhibits/continuing-exhibits/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template

*** I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land by Rita Dove (picked for the line up)

how to respond to the world when you can’t make logical sense of it

 “The truth is sometimes hard, and the truth is ugly,” she said. “But in the truth there’s also the beauty, because once we acknowledge the truth, we have clarity. And we’re able to face ourselves, we’re able to face each other. 

“As much as we have these challenges, it is art that reminds us what it means to be constantly searching for beauty — for grace — in moments of pretty significant pain,” she said. “And that is the critical role that art continues to play. And there is a truth that comes about through art, that forces us to really look and understand ourselves and our communities and our fellow humans.”

**

THE LINE UP  after however also includes Valentine's Day poems suggested by Judith...

I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land by Rita Dove;  Number 17 from The Gardener Rabindrinath Tagore; somewhere I have never traveled  by E.E. Cummings; Cover to Cover  by Ernest Hilbert; Adage by Billy Collins; Library Lovers by --Austin MacRae

Nutshell:  Poems discussed Feb. 11 + 13

As a precursor to Valentine's Day the poems selected all contain references to relationship and love. The footnote to the first poem  gives the link to Poems for Troubled Times which shares 5 poems selected by Virginia’s new Lt. Governor, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi who holds a PhD in poetry.  

I Have been a Stranger in a Strange Land was one of them. The title could be associated with Robert Heinlein but also the Book of Exodus or even a personal association of looking at one's life and feeling misplaced.  One person mentioned the Sept. 6, 2017 issue of Time which gives a lovely snapshot of Rita Dove, who as National Poet Laureate was not afraid of "pushing the conversation forward".  The epigram from Emily Dickinson comes from a  letter to Frances and Louise Norcross in which Emily confesses she doesn't know what to do with her heart, and happiness... 

The poem certainly makes one think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but given a contemporary spin as if to look at questions of Paradise in retrospect.   The opening line with its flat statement, "It wasn't bliss" followed by the enjambed question juxtaposing bliss/ordinary life is an excellent hook to engage the reader in a story of Him and Her.   We had fun imagining what the capitalized "Being There" might infer, especially with the derogatory adjective "aimless" which seems to poke fun at Zen, philosophy, ontological implications about "being and nothingness/existence and essence" .  It is one of several skillful juxtapositions which on surface seem contradictory.  The pond's "restive" mirror is another such, underlining this idea of dissatisfaction, boredom.  One person commented on the shift in the 3rd stanza, and the "dark, crabbed branches" as just like her crab apple tree with twisty dark branches;  another person sensed an intimation of the snake that would go with the "red heft" of desire in the final stanza.  This woman wants more than what "ordinary" offers, but there is no "voice", no "whispered intelligence" to guide her, only the one thing left to her, her desire.  

Who is the narrator?  One person suggested it might be the story of Rita Dove's grandparents, Thomas and Beulah, about whom she wrote in other poems.

 

A good poem to read several times, with the pleasure of increased implications!  

 

Number 17: by Bengali philosopher, poet, polymath, Rabindragath Tagore,  1861-1941, part of the Bengali Renaissance.

 Thanks to Judith, we know the accent of the tri-syllabic names is on the first syllable, and the "a" pronounced more like a "u", and that the poem is part of a series, and in the original, only numbered, not called "the Gardener".   Translation is not just about language,  although there may be linguistic  confusion with the possessive "their" in the second line, and the positioning of the indented words.  It also reflects  a culture.  Who is she? Of a different caste, yet they live in the same village... and they meet in our garden, but he never tells his name.  A subtle poem of love transcending any barriers.  Perhaps a bit "perfumy" because of the  Victorian translation, the images of nature, the refrain cast a gentle and intimate spell. 

 

somewhere I have never traveled,gladly beyond:  although some may find the lack of spaces, lack of capitalization disconcerting, the rhythms of this poem are captivating.  One person quoted Virginia Woolf as saying, she had first to  find the rhythm of the sentence -- not the right word.  The closeness of the typing, the repetition of enclose, unclose, closed, close, closes, the strength of even the most frail gesture,  the intense fragility in the intimate dance of the opening (touching skilfully,mysteriously) and shutting very beautifully suddenly is a marvelous depiction of love.   I give a note about the final line which has inspired countless other poems, films, including the ghazal  Even the Rain by Agha Shahid Ali (discussed March 28, 2018). 

 

Cover to Cover : The title intimates a poem about books, although the word is never mentioned and certainly the description is accurate:  columns, being thumbed through, the weight, location, uses other than to be read... However parallel to this and linked to the epigram, is how memories are stored between their covers, and trigger memories in the readers.  The ramshackle description is almost a whimsical take on people.  One person wanted to call it "Breathing Books" -- a poem about collecting memories and books.  The charm of it evokes memories of illustrations, different typefaces, illustrations, treasured books that are no longer.  Another person remarked, "all books are created equal" -- they serve to prop open windows, or as coasters.  Once labeled as that possibility to fashion bridges, indeed, as the saying goes, "a book is a gift to open again and again." And yet, as the last line says, "they become... everything, nothing at all."

 

Adage:  How can you not admire the ability to take a cliché, twist it, blend it with another cliché, familiar reference  and come up with a portrait of love?  Perhaps Billy Collins is reminding us of,  as well as relieving us from, the traps of proverbs and tales.  He's not afraid of poking fun at himself with his wry manipulations, and yet his statements compel you to think about why for instance someone would think that love is as simple as getting up / (enjambment... so it's more)-- getting up on the wrong side of the bed,  naked.  (as we know the definition from the story, wearing the emperor's clothes, as he puts it).

Whatever the situation is, whatever doom you predict,  even if the bird is called "early", if it's late, at least it keeps trying to show up.

 

Library Lovers:  a delightful character sketch of a couple,  she quite active, he quite passive, probably a long-term relationship, recounted by a librarian, "mixing up" their separate, long-term preferences with a pun on author's last names of Daniele Steel (romance)  and Louis L'Amour (Western novels).

Poems for February 4 and 6

 Flay Chris Abani ;  ICE by Sophie Cabot Black; The Game by Marie Howe; Telephone Repairman by Joseph Millar;  Joy by Robinson Jeffers 1887 – 1962; The Clod and the Pebble  by William Blake; Mindful  by Mary Oliver

For O Pen 

How we had talked about context last week and what it adds...Without  the title of the June Jordan poem below... where do you go?  The slow down commentary...   "the power of poetry to comment, to respond, to shed light and offer us space to form our own impressions of what the facts may mean. To decide, then, with the knowledge provided by our very own bodies, what we mean to do about it."      — Samiya from the SlowDown (I have no idea what that last sentence means.) Knowing that the title refers to The Sabra and Shatila massacre  the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut is helpful

Nightline: September 20, 1982 

 by June Jordan

 

“I know it’s an unfortunate way to say it, but

do you think you can put this massacre 

on the back burner now?”

 from Directed by Desire: the collected poems of June Jordan

For Warmth by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face between my hands.

No, I am not crying.

I hold my face between my hands

to keep my loneliness warm —

two hands protecting,

two hands nourishing,

two hands to prevent

my soul from leaving me

in anger.

Nutshell: 

Flay:  by Chris Albani, the curator of Poem-a-Day for February.  If you click the hyperlink you will see a bit of his biography as survivor of the Biafran War and his impact in the world.  He  encourages us to use poetry as the lens through which we can observe “an explosion of humanness [and] an explosion of styles.”  Certainly the title Flay explodes in subtle ways with subconscious references perhaps to Saints flayed by the devil, floggings,  but also a word that can mean a  criticism, a burning or striping away. The other verbs in the poem underline it: bores, slice, cut, punish, burns.  

The first couplets' enjambments  and layering of metaphor (point of a pen... hole /into a soul's dereliction) invite us to follow a long unfolding through four couplets of a search for a lost home. The play between inner and outer states, hints of the marks colonialism, the role of impositions of religion.   The "point" of a pen, literal and figuratively,  provides an opening and searches for right words, cites actions such as slicing  tomatoes (red, as in blood), or an  island.  We noted migrant, as in "on the move" not an immigrant, the ambiguity of punished by spice, landing in another country with the "persistant aftertaste of a lost home".  One person suggested that  braised goat evokes perhaps sacrifice or violence.   We are drawn in by  many unusual juxtapositions, then, suddenly released in the final stanza, to where "the ocean begins".  It is more a sense of a waiting for another chapter in a long voyage than a conclusion.    We noted that the poem came from the collection Smoking the Bible which added the flavor of ancient Christianity and the idea of violence.  

Back to the title, a one-word imperative. One can imagine the writer asking the pen to "flay" and expose the complexities and emotional impact of migration and the lasting scars it leaves.

ICE:  Written in 2025, the capital letters echo current events with the acronym for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Indeed, there is the problem of melting ice in our polar regions and glaciers, so  the physical moan, rumble, shifting in the poem could refer to that as well.   The opening with the mention of disappearance, without knowing details, establishes an aura of uncertainty.

Like Flay, ICE plays with line breaks... line 1 :  a small animal went out to the middle/

of what?  No sign of anything/

Further.   The enjambments are accentuated by the choice of capitalizing the first word on each line . They are both within each tercet as well as leaping over the cracks of stanzas accentuate the "breaking" without detailing the breaking up of families, the invisible breaking of hearts with erasures, losses. 

The repetition of "this" at the end, the first time as end word on the stretching past the margin of the penultimate line, and the final crack of three words.  Although it could imply a hopeless finality of This is it, the imperative to call something for what it is, stops the slippery nature of words that dismiss or justify the inadmissible.  In January I had recommended One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by  Omar El Akkad .  The poem echoes the words of this intrepid journalist,  "One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” 

The Game:  One of Marie Howe's poems from her collection, "What the Living Do", this poignant memoir of how she and her siblings survived the dysfunction of her family is a marvelous example of effective story telling.  The delicate pivot in the fourth stanza embraces a succinct ambiguity:  is this a rare (and real) exception, or more pretend?  The word Town Crier  contains the same ambiguity, of one who cries (like the grown-up baby) and conveyor of news where "all's well" repeats like the refrain of a lullaby.  It is a poem that both celebrates the power of the creative banding together of the children to survive as well as one that hints at the reasons for the necessity of "the game" 

Telephone Repairman: One usually doesn't think of the importance of a lineman, until there is a break in communication.  There is an  implied selflessness of mending, so that messages can flow again.  In two short stanzas, we have a portrait of one of the "invisible" workers, but also the universal nature of our human loneliness, not telling anyone; working by ourselves; shaking our heads in silence.  The final image of syllables fluttering as if bringing a prayer  to be loved, are like small butterflies juxtaposed with the curve of the earth. We noted the softness of the sound of these words  this restorer of signals thinks.  Some might call him a savior.  I brought up the concept of Tikkun Olam, repair of the world. 

Some were reminded of the song  Wichita Lineman... and of course with the recent icestorms, we could imagine real linemen as described in this article, https://mainstreetmediatn.com/articles/life/the-wichita-lineman-explained/.

ADDED AFTER FACT: FROM JOE: I can tell you a little more about the poem. First, it was the oldest piece in the collection, and I wasn't sure it even belonged. One of my early advisors was the poet and former nun Madeline DeFrees who helped me with the ordering of the poems in Overtime. She thought I should use it as a kind of "Announcement Poem" (or some such), by isolating it at the beginning from the rest of the manuscript. Which I decided not to do, obviously.

And finally (hopefully not TMI), the last line comes from my teacher John-Roger, who once said in a seminar he was giving, that if there were one message that all human beings could share together, it might be: "Please love me".

Joy: Most everyone found this poem perplexing as it runs counter to associations with this powerful emotion.  I highly recommend Christian Wiman's book Joy.  In the introduction, (xx-xxi) he cites Nietzsche, and the idea that joy is inevitably tragic because death is absolute, and as the "very lifeblood of being, ought to be seized at every moment of existence." 

For Jeffers, a mountain man, at odds with capitalism and clearly aware of the distinction between happiness and joy, "the whole notion of of joy is misguided and suggests some moral rot at the center of the species.  Better to live like the stars and the mountain, the dark vulture hovering watchfully over the weaker meats."   Wiman continues, "It's worth being reminded and made to feel besides its splendor, the brute, material necessity that is also at the heart of being, as well as the agency we retain when being crushed by it.  

Joy is indeed brief, as is sorrow.  Peace, strength can last for longer periods.  Joy is not dependent on our human definitions. We were not sure who is speaking in the quotations -- perhaps "everyman" admitting his desire for joy to be permanent.  Of course, how could we be feeling joy all the time, without diminishing it, becoming indifferent?  The final line perhaps is a metaphorical reference to hooding a bird of pray so it does not see, or desire, the "meat".

AFTER THE FACT: FROM KATHY:  Jeffers concept of "inhumanism" was his dominant life project.  His poetry is the vehicle he uses to  zealously and didactically put forth his philosophy of being, heavily steeped in existentialist thinkers like Heidegger and Nietzsche.  Wiman gives only cursory (and appropriately so for an introduction to a book) connection to Nietzsche.  I down-loaded a small book, THE DARK GLORY: Robinson Jeffers and His Philosophy of Earth Time & Things by TADEUSZ SŁAWEK, 1990.  It is a very dense philosophical argument many levels above my understanding.  In it, he quotes the lines you puzzled over:

“I am neither mountain nor bird
Nor star; and I seek joy.” 

I too was puzzled by the ; and but the lines quoted are deeply embedded in Slawek's  philosophical argument and I was lost and it didn't help my understanding of those lines in the poem.  

It may be that the poem "Joy" could just use some poetic craft tweaking to give the confusing  ; and some clarity.  Indulge me; I found my edit of the poem added clarity for me.  :-)

 “I am neither mountain, nor bird, nor star;

and I seek joy.”: the weakness of your breed, 

yet at length quietness will cover those wistful eyes.

The "I" and the "your" in these lines is confusing to me. Maybe the words in quotes are in the modern humanity's voice and the words starting with "the weakness of your breed" are the poets critical response.  Or if Jeffers were more generous he might have used the word "our" rather that "your".  

The Clod and the Pebble:  Going back to  Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827), he lays out arguments to define love.  Clever use of heaven and hell, for the Clod, building heaven in hell's despair and for the pebble, content to let the brook wash over it, a hell in heaven's despite.

Mindful:  The title sums up a reassuring attitude and practice of how to be fully human and alive. We admired the stanza break after the breathless,choppy  first four lines, landing on "kills me/with delight.

Allows us space and time, so indeed, how can you help  (last line before penultimate stanza) -- can invite you to think how you can help others, yourself... only to land on but grow wise...What refreshing reassurance, which prompts so many to write a daily gratitude journal.   Some thought of the song  Killing me softly. 

Poems for Jan. 28-9

 Atlantic: Hopeful images: https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/2025/12/hopeful-images-2025/685223/

How to read a poem:  who's the intended audience, the poem's function, its significance, truth and beauty of it... the bricks and windows are form, rhythm, rhyme, imagery, but it's nice to have a picture of the whole building first! Graeme shared his appreciation of the poem "The Bassoonist".

Judith encouraged us to keep up our spirits with some humor introducing us to the concepts of Pastafarianism as a means to cultivate a sense of humor with about Pasta-ors, and concluding prayers with r'Amen. 

Snow  by Naomi Shihab Nye; Snow Falling by Marianne Boruch; When the Fine Days by Donald Hall; Sherbet  by Cornelius Eady; God Could Not Make Her a Poet  by Cornelius Eady; New Year by Kate Baer

Nutshell

Snow  by Naomi Shihab Nye: This poem hints at a painful backstory, wound in a vignette about a brother and sister sledding.  One person was reminded of the film Stand by Me.

The word choices for this winter scene underline the intertwining of snow and its metaphorical applications starting with impossibility to speak with the scarf knotted over my mouth,  for grief, raging blizzard of sobs, the repeated Ho! Look at him go! pretending to have a good time, and twist of meaning after the isolated couplet "How there can be a place/so cold any movement saves you."  The urgency of the Ho! is accentuated with the banging of the hands, stomping of the feet in the final stanza with the italics:  The father could die!  The Son!  and the abrupt unfinished sentence. The ambiguous nature of possibility, is confirmed in the last fragment: "Before the weather changes". 

 

The telling is poignantly genuine, tapping into universals of distressing relationships wrapped in "a storm of snow".   

 

Snow Falling  by Marianne Boruch:   Poetry, like snow, follows its own weather patterns and contradictions.  The bold opening line opening with what sounds like Hamlet's famous existential question goes deeper stated as the "history of is or is not" followed by three nouns in italics that start with d: dread, darkness, the third, dawn, softened by the poet's "guess" that snow indeed "morphs" into "hardship, delight, mindless over and over".  This  in turn reminds me of Wallace Stevens and his poem the Snowman, and how one "must have a mind of winter."  Boruch embraces contradiction as she considers the choice of snow: freeze or melt and flood.  The syntax is tricky: one possibility in the line and stanza break to the 3rd stanza  could be the contraction of Snow's (Snow is)// only choice:  Subject/Verb.  One could stop there. Snow is only choice.  Or isn't.   

The other possibility is the use of the apostrophe as possessive as in the  "Only choice of snow: freeze."  And then the other choice presented as a fragment.  "Or melt with the consequence of flooding."

Since "choice" is singular perhaps the first interpretation echoes the paradoxical choice: freeze/melt, echoing the single flake in stanza two and its "big/little" fate.

 

She then applies the  meaning of the verb falling with another contradiction: both right now (in italics) and  before human, (so, before the Bible, or the Fall) before glass whose beginning is thanks to fire.  It is as if she preparing the stage for absolute mindfulness of the entrance of Genius, like  a Greek God of inspiration.   A cousin of genesis?  Finally in the 6th stanza, we see her creativity and imagination at work, 

although she tries to deny it in the penultimate stanza.  Is Imagination a question of prophecy or memory?

Tracing the word, snow , we see it followed by falling,morphing; see snow's only choice, snow-in-July, snow as possibly it something we can't see. It falls and the mind mute with it.

 

Her mention of pointillism seems another way to illustrate contradiction as it is a technique of making dots of opposite colors close together.  

When the Fine Days by Donald Hall: After the challenge of Boruch, it was refreshing to enjoy the unfolding of this poem with its staggered lines, mellifluous rhythms, with only Max the dog, named.  

The Camilla mentioned in the penultimate stanza is probably a reference to Alexander Pope's poem about poetry,  Sound and Sense where she is described by Virgil as being so fast that she could run over a cornfield without bending the stalks.

It would seem a fitting reference to his poet wife, Jane Kenyon  and the practice of their art, to capture in words their love of poetry and walking together in this landscape.  There is only slant reference to the fact  that Jane had leukemia and was dying.  Not today those worries.  One goes back to the title which hangs, incomplete, until the mention of the couple on the 6th line with their dog leading the way.  He records one of the fine days -- and the reader sense the fortuitous joy.  No snakes, and free to "fill/with the fullness of the valley's throat".  

Cornelius Eady: two poems.  I was delighted to read tonight that he has been elected as one of the new Chancellors of the American Academy of Poets.  

As poet June Jordan has said,

Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart.

Sherbet:  We all remarked the brilliant restraint of emotion, which only heightens a sense of anger at the racist treatment of a mixed couple in Richmond, VA.  For those who don't know this capital of Virginia, in the 1920's large statues of Confederate heroes were erected on Monument Avenue.  They were pulled down in 2020 at the beginning of  the Black Lives Matter movement.  Eady threads his questions... What poetry could describe ... He slips in the image of the waitress, "mapping the room off/like the end of a/Border dispute-- which metaphor could turn the room more perfectly into a group of islands?  What language to translate the unsaid?  To crown it all, the arrival of the sherbet, as if to say, "we have no problem here, it's you"... What do you call such rich, sweet taste of frozen oranges?  And the final question -- What do we call a weight that doesn't fingerprint, won't shift... line break... and can't explode.

Many knew the law suit of Loving (the ironic surname)  vs. Virginia,  one of the States which forbade mixed marriages. 

God Could not Make her a poet:  here, Cornelius condemns Jefferson, who actually pronounced the title. The reference to Monticello brought up the mention of Benjamin Banneker - the black architect responsible for the design of Washington D.C.   

Several people knew Phillis Wheatley's poetry, which may well have been carefully masking her true sentiments as she imitated the style of the acceptable white elite.  Click on the hyperlink for more information about her.  Below is one of her poems which perhaps hints as how it felt to be known in 2 continents, and yet be treated with the condescension Eady captures.

On Being Brought from Africa to America  by Phillis Wheatley

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, 

That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

New Year by Kate Baer: 

It's good to call a spade a spade about the hype of promises and resolutions.  Not sure  anyone was clear on the 4th line image,"thumbed through rusted nails just to /stand for its birth"-- like going through old inventory... going through motions?  I do like that the reader is asked indirectly just how to live with the new baby, who, like us, just wants to live.  

  

 

Poems for Jan. 21-2

 

Beat, Old Heart  by Carl Sandburg; Pima Canyon by Kim Addonizio; The Chance  by Arthur Sze 1950; Asphalt Bobbing Like Apples  by Charlotte Pence; Daddy Fell Into the Pond by Alfred Noyes; Another Second, Another 24 Million Pounds: A Cento* by Charlotte Pence; Bassoonist (for C.) by Robin S. Chapman

Many of the poems selected this week  are not creating a sense of enchantment-- but I am hoping by putting that reality on the table, we can pick out the hopeful threads with which to mend and restore our sense of enchantment.  I  quote below  Egon Schiele: 

"We are capable of transforming our mental universe and giving it a charm which makes life more valuable. More valuable since life becomes more joyful, thanks to the extraordinary effort needed to create this charm. 

Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so. It is an easy task, because people who are intellectually lazy are convinced that this miserable terror is “the truth”, that this terror is knowledge of the “extra-mental” world. This is an easy way out, resulting in a banal explanation of the world as terrifying. 

Creating enchantment is an effective means of counteracting this depressing, banal habit."

Nutshell:

Beat Old Heart: There's a sense of camraderie in the word "old" mentioned 5 days in this poem; a sense of an older man giving himself a pep talk to keep on going.  Perhaps in the style of a Tennyson (Ring out wild bells!)  with the insistent repetitions,  

we noted the inclusiveness of a world full of things, all beating.  The bars might be of music, or the cage of the body, or sandbars of the sea.  Curious that stragglers looks much like strugglers which made some think  the bars might be akin to a poem and the obstacles it faces.  The final word "scars" has a sense of wearing a badge of honor.   A fine poem to remind us all to continue on with resilience. 

Pima Canyon:  We are fortunate to have people who know the Arizona canyons, where you can "walk, talk and gawk".  The beauty is indeed almost savage and the poem only has one mention of it, as 

the mountain glow every evening. "The world seeps in no matter what."  One idea for the title is that it offers a parallel between the harsh aspect of the desert as metaphor for navigating Parkingson's.  Elizabeth wonders if she looks "scrawny".  Perhaps like the saguaros, "spiny and upright, pocked with nest holes".  

"Ask the Canyon"... confirms the wondering about the disease -- is it the microplastics... the fact that you can't "go back" with the uncanny detail of "having a smaller shadow"... the "dirty contrails".  The tenderness of the ending.  The maybe's, but not yet darling, not yet.

The Chance: It's not ever fair to judge a poet's merit by one poem alone.  I am not sure when this poem by the current National Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze was penned.  Who is the intended audience?  What might be the poem's function, its significance?  Scanning the 22 lines for any clues given by form, rhythm, rhyme, imagery we all tried to find a way to navigate what seemed to be a confusing  medley of messages.  Why The chance in the title, and a chance on the final line?  It seems to be a meditation delivered in stream of consciousness about passion.  

comments:  The ending is powerful and has a sense of redemption:   even if the darkness precedes and follows/ us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine. 

Yes,  but is this ending "earned", hence credible and can the reader trust it?

There is a dark/light contrast, but what is the role of the example of the magician caught in his own chains?  The author may want passion that grows and grows (as opposed to ironwood that hardens and hardens), but there is no personal evidence of either.  Perhaps the "approach 30" refers to speed limit, perhaps to age, but either way, distances to where?

Asphalt Bobbing:  The title is catchy, as it is an unusual simile.  The opening line is provocative

with a suspenseful line break.  But... it feels more an exercise using the Golden Shovel technique referring to the Declaration of Independence than a poem.   Do we want another re-hash of the news?   It may indeed reiterate things we are facing in our country right now with the second round with Trump, but comments were more about books or articles people were reminded about.  

-- The Who:  "Meet the new boss... same as the old boss" (for King George/George Washington) https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/who/wontgetfooledagain.html

Brian Doyle: The Plover :  https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/9393/the-plover

parallels the idea of bringing a new world about... islands are just tips of mountains, and it is the sea in charge.

Daddy Fell into the Pond!  We didn't really discuss this one, but it was a fun relief! 

Another Second, Another 24 Million Pounds: A cento:

Apparently some circles use the Italian pronunciation CHEN-to of this old form of borrowing lines from notable thinkers, and some use American pronunciation of SENT-o.  Be that as it may, without knowing the form, or that all the lines were from an Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, Ghost-Fishing, edited by Melissa Tuckey with a forward by Camile T. Dungy, or without matching each line with a relatively well-known poet whose poem is in this anthology, does this work as a poem?

One person puts it this way -- "form provides the bricks and windows but it's nice to have a picture of the whole building first."  What message is given?  Is it another crazy quilt?  Do we have to know where each patch came from?  Here were some of the comments:

Like reading piles of books: Is it worth all the agony?

It's fine to experiment with form -- why not a 3-D poem -- but no poem should sound like a research paper... 

incoherent b/c it doesn't use a single voice of an individual and relies on gimmick.

If she is using other's work, did she think about  keeping the spirit of each author's poem in the eco-anthology?  

This led into a rousing discussion about poetry, alphabets, the future of literature and the role AI will play to determine it.  

This left no time for the final poem, Bassoonist (for C.) except to read it, and enjoy the sounds and rhythms.   I am hoping Graeme, who proposed it, will share what makes it worth one's while.

At Rundel, we only had a short time, and noted the sense of a backstory, but without any information.

Who is C?  Why was it written?  What does modern music have to do with this?

Poems for Jan. 14-5

 The Coming of Light  by Mark Strand by 1934 –2014; Proof ~ Cornelius Eady; (Poem for inauguration of Zohran Mamdani)  The Shop by Joyce Sutphen; Dementia Sonnet  by Justin Rigamonti;  Crepuscule with Muriel  by Marilyn Hacker ; December Morning by W.S. Merwin; Issa's Porch  by Steve Williams  

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[1] go to minute 34 on the youtube for Cornelius' remarks.  He reads the poem at minute 3:00.

Nutshell:

Coming of Light:  In seven lines,  laden with l's, one senses that "late" is that moment at the end of one's life. The opening poem of his volume, The Late Hour,   (2002),   Strand delivers  images such as candles "lit as if by themselves", and dreams that "pour into your pillows", and repeats "Even this late", as if to confirm that love is always ready to bloom.  One thinks of the parallel Festival of Lights and the tone is one of reassurance even in the dark. At Rundel, Cass shared her favorite poem by Strand Moontan

filled with the same sense of magic.

Proof:  Curiously, I had heard at first, the title as Truth, knowing the context of this poem delivered by Rochester native, Cornelius Eady on the occasion of Zohran Mamdani's Inauguration as mayor of NYC.

note: third stanza, 10th line: the first word is not will but where. 

One person felt it was a beautiful love poem to this city, the starting point of so many who have immigrated to this country.  The lines are humble, yet powerful, with the repeated "you have to imagine"

shifting to an almost imperative "you've got to imagine".  What reassurance wrapped in the repeated "who said" as he rolls out dismissive talk that tries to invisibilize  those who are not part of the powerful and privileged.  The inclusion of the James Baldwin quote, with visceral touches of details describing those who have risen up from slavery, "the taste of us, the spice of us, the hollers and rhythms of us" lead to the repeated "up from" -- to a new hope infused with joy "that wears down the rock of no."  

Like the first poem's mention of candles, there is a sense of the city lit by itself, an insistence hammering out the celebration many felt with the election of Obama, that yes, the election of a Black Man to an important public office is absolute proof that all "can make it". Listen to the  Poem, [1] 

 It's inspiring for all of us to imagine all the "lucky selves waiting for our arrival, with soil for our roots".

The Shop:  I mentioned the trick of photographers in a city landscape to "put in a person". Here, the poet has written a love poem to the person who occupies this shop.  We think, it might be if not her father, a special father-figure.   It starts with an unassuming title, and tercets stuffed with adjectives to describe all the old-fashioned (non-plastic) tools.  The soul of the person is hinted at -- first a finger, then a mask for a face, arriving at the tender metaphor of the "work-lathered leather" of the old harnesses,

soft as the reins of memory/guiding him through the tangle/of one year into another.

We discussed the mood created by the mention of the dusty light, the vise that could crush , the mouthless face of the welding mask, the sense of honest work.  There's a sense of wistfulness, but not sorrow. 

A small aside about spelling of vise:  In Britain, there are two acceptable versions of the spelling: vice and vise.  It is clearly not the abstraction of vice, but the physical presence of a piece of equipment that holds things in place.  

Crepuscule with Muriel:  Do click on the hyperlinks for Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)  and Marilyn Hacker (1942) if you do not know these poets. The poem reads as an elegy for Muriel Rukeyser, a passionate political activist with a keen interest in the shared disciplines of poetry and science (symbolic language and use of the imagination.)  Hacker, another poet with a peppery biography is known for her skillful formalism and feminism.  For a firey reading of the crackling consonants in this poem click 

here : https://poetryarchive.org/poem/crepuscule-muriel/

Note how each end word has a /k/, or /x-cks/ sound.  One can imagine Hacker on the NYC subway, reminiscing about her older mentor who indeed suffered from several strokes.  Her deft description brings alive what it is like to be locked inside a body after a stroke-- in this case Muriel's mind and her "dream-life logic" -- how she encodes it "in nervous tics/translated to a syntax with connects/intense and unfashionable politics/with morning coffee, Hudson sunsets, sex"

This poem is from the collection Desesperanto, a combination word of despair and esperanto, the artificial language intended to be universally understood.  It describes Hacker's life as a lesbian, the illness of loved ones, anger over world events.

For an image of the penultimate line animal warmth of bricks, I share what the French would call "crepuscule du matin". The word refers to the kind of luminosity the sun brings both at sunrise and sunset. 

photos by Gabriel Saphar

Shortly after sunrise, 1/8/2026

 

Dementia Sonnet:  The opening sentence with its flat statement about relief, with an enjambment after doesn't/ falling on remember is unnerving. My initial thought without ending the sentence, is the contradiction that there's relief in loving someone who doesn't -- but doesn't what?  Love?  Who can't love back?  (There's relief in loving someone who doesn't/remember you.)  

  Fortunately, twelve lines later, one arrives at relieves, and the verb expands the meaning to imply "responsibility has shifted in the relationship".  A provocative poem on a delicate subject, it provided a very thoughtful discussion. Bernie, as Geriatrician, offered helpful comments about dementia and how the most difficult stage for families is when the loved one no longer remembers your name.  On the 6th line, the adjective "warped" is a curious choice, followed by rose:  perhaps to imply an association of the hardness of a rose-granite tabletop, with entering a "time warp".

The note furnished by the poet in Rattle magazine reads: “I write poetry as a way of moving through life, plumbing its shadows—poetry as a torch held aloft, poetry as a stone dropped down a well to see how far it goes. As Robert Irwin said, ‘Art is the placing of your attention on the periphery of knowing,’ and that’s what poetry is for me. All of these poems are also loose or near sonnets, because I’m partial to the simple mechanism of the volta as a realization, as a deepening, as an epiphany—one that arrives for ‘a momentary stay against confusion,’ but then goes its merry way, taking all clarity with it.”

We didn't have time to go into this, as the session was finished abruptly at 1:15.

If one counts to the 8th line, every time you leave, your name slips off, to...

indeed the poem shifts to a different direction of wondering about where one stands in a relationship without name.  I do love Robert Frost's explanation of poetry as a "momentary stay against confusion",

and am glad to read the poet's note.  Clarity is not a given in poetry which provides us with more questions than answers.  We are given instead, a meditative reminder, of the importance of touch, of breath.

  

At Rundel we discussed December Morning by Merwin and Issa's Porch.

Merwin:  There's the sense of a rush of a thought in this unpunctuated poem.  Happiness appears as end word on the first, fifth lines and moves to the beginning of the 19th line, (3rd from the end).  Does it matter who Paula is?  We enjoyed the 6th line "the Fates so near that I can hear them".  There is something painfully poignant imagining the old poet by his books.  It is not that he is the one faithful to them, as they are to him as "someone they used to know", but rather, the intimation that he has moved on. 

This is "late happiness" as in the first poem.  Never owned by anyone-- it comes when it will --

rather like those candles that seem to light themselves, the coming of love, of light.

Pittsford O Pen added these reflections: Happiness is mentioned 3 times, but not in as a typical cliché or piece of advice.  Merwin is on the brink of blindness, needing to dictate his poems to his wife, Paula,

and gently embraces old age, with gentle hints about darkness of old regrets with their rancor from which he feels released.   The late arrival of such happiness is often unplanned, unexpected, and if there is a moral, it is that one need to be open and willing to accept the fullness of a moment.

Issa's Porch.  I believe the poet is referring to the haiku master, and of course a haiku would not have a title.  Like a haiku, the three lines tease us, as if moving "ice" and "thin" along with "hole" and "argument" so we can skate on thin ice, fall in, and that's the end of the argument.  I pass the poem back to you, dear reader, to puzzle with.  Porch is intermediary space -- between outside and indoors.

Pittsford O Pen: Issa, as haiku master, is known for dealing with feelings.  He suffered severe losses, 

and able to let go of perhaps the discomfort of knowing death will have the final word.  A porch is a place to relax... out of the elements of hot sun or rain. 

  

January 7-8

i am running into a new year,  by Lucille Clifton;  Wolf Moon by Susan Mitchell; While the World Falls Apart, I watch the Great British Bakeoff in Bed  by Jillian Stacia;  A Fabulous Night. by Bruce Weigl; After Our Daughter's Wedding by Ellen Bass

I started the session with this Chinese Proverb.

 

If there is light in the soul,

there is beauty in the person;

if there is beauty in the person,

there will be harmony in the house;

if there is harmony in the house,

there will be order in the nation; 

if there is order in the nation,

there will be peace in the world.

 

Then, these ending lines from Counting, New Years Morning, what powers yet remain:

(full poem hyperlinked here  Hirshberg:

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. 

Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder. 

Today, I woke without answer.

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend  

don’t despair of this falling world, not yet

didn’t it give you the asking

 

Nutshell of discussion

i am running... :  we immediately noted the lack of capitalization and punctuation.  It heightens the sense of motion, that defies being pinned down by time.  The simile of the old years akin to a wind, and the power of the poet who seizes them, with the additional simile describing her strong fingers akin to her promises in the first 6 short lines  create a whirlwind. The reader will not know anything about the past, but senses something difficult may have happened when she was 36 since that number is repeated -- and the unpunctuated sentence continues with a "but"

into the repeat of the first line.  The last two lines have an odd syntax, but shows the power of poetry to compress:

it could be understood this way:  "I beg what I love and I beg what I leave" (as dual subject) to forgive her.

AI gives this interpretation:  "This request for forgiveness underscores the poem's themes of reconciliation with the past and the hope for understanding and compassion from both oneself and others".  What AI leaves out is the layered meanings of the verbs, "beg" and "leave", perhaps implying her leaving is also an implied permission she gives herself.

 

Poetry is NOT about answers, but invites us to reflect on our own contradictions.

Clifton's choice to avoid capitalization and punctuation applies to her work in general.  It could be argued that she is rebelling against traditional rules, but it could also possibly imply that she is not putting herself above anyone else.

 

The poem has great power and overall a spirit of uplift.   

 

Wolf Moon: This year, Jan. 3, we had a full moon, called the Wolf Moon according to classification of Indigenous North American tribes.  The implications of winter cold, where wolves would howl in hunger and to protect territory come to mind. In this 14-line poem, the title appears in the penultimate line.  Looking at the 8th line to see if there is some sonnet technique of a turn, the words "not afraid" appear only to reappear two lines later to deliver what seems to be yet another clue with the line "not afraid to let bliss devour me whole".  Or grief... Is bliss a way of thinking about death where "my forever in orbit" is some afterlife, in some stratosphere for the soul?  

 

The opening line, "hold on" perhaps is advice, or warning.  Who is "they", and who is "she"?   The kite's will, as wind, is compared to love in its ability to carry surrender and forgiveness. Is that "but" an acceptance of something greater than hanging on?   Some thought the poem about  a mother about to lose her child.  Who is "I" wanting this kite to swoop her up and "rub her nose in the sky" with the wolf moon?  Is this an ecological poem, where we who are losing our mother earth, howl at the loss of wilderness?  Is  this a parallel to the idea of hope, a speck, and gone?   

 

Regardless, there is something gripping about the poem, inviting us to find ways to question within ourselves all it evokes. 

 

While the World Falls Apart:  who can resist alliterative fun and metaphorical puns!  For fun, and comparison, I give a link to the 18th century poem:  To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris  18th c.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51877/to-mrs-k-on-her-sending-me-an-english-christmas-plum-cake-at-paris

 

A Fabulous Night... the incomplete title makes me want to sing the rest of the Moondance—"A fantabulous night for romance..." except the poet takes a quick turn from even "a gift from the cosmos" to a memory of war.  His conversational tone establishes a sense of trust to follow his balancing act  of things the reader might relate to such as the size and shape of the moon, misleading words, with his implied "private juxtapositions".   This might invite the reader to further delve into how we all hold our contradictions.  At the end, the highflown last lines seem to be straight from Shakespeare.  The  pathetic fallacy of heartbeats allowing the wind to stir the branches matches the incomplete title.  

 

After Our Daughter's Wedding:  This poem from 2002, Mules of Love brings up the strength of maternal instinct in unusual ways.  The title clues us in to place and occasion.  Remnants, half-empty glasses like lingering sunbathers.... only half-prepare the sense of loss, on line 7, where in her "flowered dress" the poet cries.  This is not a poem that will provide stanza breaks, but delivers a fell swoop of a meditation about the biologic imperative of being a mother. 

The unidentified "you" asking "do you feel like you've given her away", since  it is "our" daughter in the title , one assumes is the poet's partner.  What a contrast one participant said,

with the "Father of the Bride" !   The reference to "the" pills, could imply the possibility of an overdose and perhaps a legitimate worry along with an exaggerated list  of possibilities which also sneaks in the fact the poet got the time wrong on the rehearsal dinner.  

There's no break in the poem driving in the confirmation that we are not the ones in charge.    

 

West Wind in Winter:  Not every poem is for every reader.  Some might admire this poem,

the form and sound, the information about the poet born in 1847.  Some thought of Shelley's Ode written in a fit of romantic passion in 1819 in Florence towards the end of his short life. 

 

West Wind in Winter:  Not every poem is for every reader.  Some might admire this poem,

the form and sound, the information about the poet born in 1847.  Some thought of Shelley's Ode written in a fit of romantic passion in 1819 in Florence towards the end of his short life. 

The West Wind is a soft wind -- and appealingly drawn as comparison to "my poet" -- perhaps implying the poet inside of Alice Meynell, woman-suffragist. Judith kindly referred to this  [1]

Westron Wynde when wyll thow blow

The small rayne down can Rayne

Cryst yf my love were in my Armys

And I yn my bed Agayne

Judith continues: "The smoothed out version I know has “the small rain now doth rain,” and Christ that my love were in my arms”  which is not too far off.  It may have been in the very old Oxford anthology I used to have..." 

 

I stumbled on this lullaby by Tennyson -- with words and visual of moon which might either charm or repel.  As ever, should anyone find a treasure, please do share! 

 

 

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[1] Judith's note: It's been around since 1530, according to Wikipedia, which notes that it is quoted by Hemingway and Orwell, among others.  I recognized it in Hemingway when I encountered it in A Farewell to Arms, but do not remember it from Orwell’s Burmese Days.