Pages

Friday, March 22, 2024

poems for March 20-21

 Trash by Lowell Jaeger; Good by Wendell Berry; Greed by Tony Hoagland; Inscription for a War, by AD Hope; The Year of the Eclipse by Elizabeth Knapp;  The Stare's Nest by my Window, by W.B. Yeats, an untitled poem by Gregory Orr, Weeping...  About Those Apples by Cindy Guentherman


We started with a cartoon about Spring:   March is great! You can binge on all four seasons in one day.  I never thought about coupling the verb “binge” with “weather” as if we are consumers now even of temperatures and angles of sunlight?  (Indeed, the day before Spring,  there was a delivery of snowstorm with bitterly cold temperatures.) The Wednesday group also had fun warming up by sharing one-word/one sentences (separate handout).

Nutshell:

Trash: Perhaps many never have thought about how trash is part of the modern age of technology, as machines entered daily life, and the car, plane, cruise ship, and packaging industries contribute litter and pollution to the planet. The contrast between the organic lifestyle of Indians replaced by one which produces "trash".  The poem is clever with rhymes, enjambments and play on words such as "leaves" and "return".  Apparently Leonard YoungBear, mentioned in the first stanza is an artist.   Judith brought up the image of the Potter, (Omar Khayyám:(1048–1131, Firtzgerald's translation 1905) in the quatrain "The Pots Criticize the Potter. From “Quatrains” (Rubaiyat).  ) and the natural exfoliation if you rub palms together.  

We have plenty to fear, but the poet plays with fear of death, with the truncated end line of stanza three:  (I'm not afraid anymore/ of dying.  It's trash

The line/stanza break lands to finish the thought: "that worries me.  Caskets. I keep thinking/ and the 4th stanza provides more concrete images of trash which even if buried, is "spit back".  Ressurrection takes on new meaning, introduced by one more line/stanza break I'd sooner fall.../  

 These stanza breaks invite the reader to think about what lies beneath the grass, and where and what a fall might lead.  What comes to mind with the metaphorical woods  to feed many hungers beside my own ? Jim brought up the findings of teeth in the sand worm resembling those of te T-Rex.  We were sensitive to the paradox in the closing stanza, ("part of me will swim downstream in the cold eyeball of a fish"/"my soul /under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.).   That closing image is so positive, hopeful, and for many left a good feeling in spite of "the trash".


Goods: The title connects abstract to concrete... the goods of good perhaps, but also knowing Berry lived on a working farm, had horses,  links the opening line's use of the word "immemorial" to the last word "ancestry".  Indeed, this small 11-line poem provides the reader the kind of "satisfaction" of feelings of hunger, third, and how work-weariness is enjambed to earned rest.  "Green growth" of the mind brings up many old references, whether the call and response song, "Green Grow the rushes ho", or celebration of return of Spring.   We discussed at length the words "gayety" and "shudder" -- how a horse shudders under its skin to flick off flies, or the hooves pound the earth,  and the contrast of the plodding pace of work to a sense of gayety in the stride, the solo work in the field, falling from "loneliness to love."  This is the kind of poem so beautifully crafted, yet impossible to render "in other words".  The kind of poem to memorize because so much can be felt between the lines.

Greed: Just one word.  Both a poem about greed but also a poem about language.  How our understanding is conditioned by words, and taken out of context leads us to different directions.   Four times we see the word "greed" four times the word "just", both of which are layered with connotations.  The last line is like a dare-- can we say the word "greed" calmly, without inflection, unattached to its "traditional form of suffering"?  We don't know anything about why or how the person who wrote just this one word in this one specific intersection (we are told where it is twice) .  We  appreciated how we were told was it is not which insinuates what it could be.    From Trash, to Goods, to Greed... and we arrive at a cemetery... Kafka's  work The Trial came up... the truth is indivisible and cannot recognize itself.

Inscription for a war: see the post before this for pictures of the Fort Rosencrantz cemetery.  Many did research about the war in 480 BC at Thermopylae.  Alec Derwent Hope delivers the kind of poem that should be posted in every national cemetery honoring those killed in battle.  How could the discussion not talk about other wars and their stories?  Elmer brought up Vietnam, the pain of knowing High School buddies slain where all glory is stripped out of an epigraph which refers to following orders.  There are many other translations of Simonides words.  However it may be, the witness reading them on a burial mound, has not been among those fallen.  The irony is that we have not learned anything and continue to kill each other.  We were all moved to tears.  Looking at a sweep of graves as far as the eye can see, the first thought of a mother having sent her boy to battle but is among the fortunate to return, "It could have been my son."  Lysistrata came up, Gallipoli, the distrust of British officers, soldiers used like commodities, nations shutting down birth control so more "cannon fodder" produced.

We read the untitled Gregory Orr poem after as sequel.  Weeping.  If it is one of the "world's tasks, it doesn't lack adherents".  It's greater than finding fault.  For Gregory, reading a poem like AD Hope's makes him feel he has been given more courage to live. 

The year of the eclipse: the political implications of 2017 is part and parcel of this poem pairing both literal and metaphorical shadow over America.  This April, it will be hard not to sense the same a simlar connection.  What do we assume about the sun in the sky?  About democracy?  about what we presume to be "normal"?  What happens when all that is left of love, is the idea of it?

Kathy brought up the excellent essay by Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse.  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/ Highly recommend her book from 1982, Teaching a Stone to Talk

The Stare's Nest: Even though we know Yeats means starling it is hard not to feel that one is staring into emptiness in this poem.  Part of the larger "Meditations in Time of War", this was written during the Irish civil war. The repeated refrain as last line turns the key in the lock of our uncertainty, and the hardening of our hearts. Here, the hope of loosening, to allow the honey bees in, to rebuild in the emptied home,

About those Apples: This poem was so well told, it engaged us all and many shared stories and alternatives for the ending.  Most felt the weak impotence of the abusive husband was best underlined by his self-absorbed final question.  I liked that some wanted him at least to use 3 or 4 choice swear words of retaliation against the wife, as if to underscore his abusive nature.  We were curious about the note by the series editor, as the poem didn't feel like peeling an apple in a single strand.  The mid-point, "I quietly disappeared forever" perhaps could be strengthened by mentioning preparations to leave.   (I quietly prepared to disappear forever.).







Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Poems for March 20-21 -- Supplement of the Cemetary at Fort Rosencrans

 Poems selected included Inscription for a War by A.D. Hope, and the 6th poem in W.B. Yeats, Meditations in time of Civil War

One of my friends shared these two photos of the Cemetary at Fort Rosecrans, outside San Diego.

As she puts it:  It is an overwhelming place,  which never fail to solicit tears for me.  Gravestones in every direction as far as your eye can see…


I replied to her with these links of the cemetary: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Cemetary+at+Point+Loma&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 - lpg=cid:CgIgAQ==,ik:CAoSLEFGMVFpcE9YZ0c2eERQWTJnampTWUxWVFZCeXhoME0wM1oyUXdaN3g4QTlV

 

It's hard to see... all these silent white markers, no sign of the individuals, as if whatever life they led before fighting in a war didn't matter.  Indeed, they "took the orders" but now dead,

they cannot tell us about the life they could have lived instead.

 

One photo makes it look as if the white rows are arranged like festooned ribbons,

in the foreground, so many different silent pathways for the eye to arrange, repeating

no longer (Roy Cormier's photo).  It's a brilliant photo, with the level line of blue ocean,

the grave markers in the background amassed like tiny piles of pebbles, and only tops of trees planted below, except for two which show their trunks as well.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Poems for March 13-14

 Boy at the Window by Richard Wilbur; Wondrous  by Sarah Freligh, Supermoon  by Abby Murray, If Only Blue Could Suffice,  by Georgia A. Popoff, String Quartet,  by Carl Dennis,  Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me by Jane Hirschfield


Discussion:

Boy at Window:  This is one of those poems where the sensitivity of the poet is revealed.  Not only has Wilbur created a rhymed, perfectly balanced poem of two octave stanzas juxtaposing a viewpoint indoors looking out,, and viewpoint out, looking in, but adds an unusual metaphor for a display of compassion.  What is the boy afraid of?  Why does he weep?  Regardless of the details, Wilbur has created a snowman who looks at him akin to what we can imagine is indeed a "god-forsaken stare, as Adam gave to Paradise."

Judith brought up the agony in Eve's face, in Massacio's "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_from_the_Garden_of_Eden

Some felt that image of banishment was what hit like a thunderbolt.  Others were hit by the response of snowman, on one hand, not wanting to "go inside and die", but moved enough to melt just one drop of a tear... Again, more than this:  it is "a trickle of the purest rain".  I love that the closing lines could imply an acceptance of impermanence to some, but also that what seems to be the indoor warmth, light, has also been lent compassion of love, the response to whatever it is that makes us weep.


Wondrous:  I gave the link to the article that explains that the poem is part of Lunar Codex, sending up thousands of pieces of art and literature to the moon this past Valentine's day.  As the poet explains, we write because we want to reach someone.  Her poem about her mother reading Charlotte's Web, and that not only the mother, but the author could not read aloud She died alone without crying,  speaks to the power of words, and how they mark us, bring back memory of how they first marked us, as they continue to do so.  This elicited several anecdotes of stories.  Kathleen picked up on EB White calling himself ridiculous, which is how she felt about her sympathy for the cat, Blackie.   Another said "We all have a need to cry" -- and stories give us an outlet to do so.  Others spoke of stories they finally removed because they made their children feel so sad.  Judith recited her experience reading DH Lawrence, "The Rocking Horse" which cannot be read with a dry eye.  We could have talked of stories for the rest of the afternoon.


Supermoon: This poem immediately draws you in by the syntax...  how the specific title embraces something much bigger in the first word, "It" and that ironic first enjambment breaks on "continue"-- which underscores the cruelty of all that doesn't continue to exist.  The tenderness of a mother explaining to a child that human kindness doesn't change, leave in spite of a cruel world.  

We were indeed gobsmacked by the collective noun of the "persuasion of clouds", preceded by the images to describe craning necks up to look at the moon akin to tourists in a cathedral, and the alliterated tidy, timely face of God.  And we were so totally there, looking up -- pointing with mother and daughter  where "the gloom was thinnest"--  and I must say, for me, totally convinced that what is extraordinary, even if out of sight,  is absolutely there.

It reminded Maura of the saying on her dishtowel: "Good friends are like stars:  you don't always see them, but you know they're always there." 


If only Blue:  It would have been helpful to see the painting that inspired this poem, but although many of us tried to find it, we were not successful.   Many did however look up the word "Haints", part of the title of the collection of poems in which this one appeared.  It can refer to ghosts and haunting, but also and lot of rhyming what aint, taint even with paint... etc.  One suggestion for meaning was thinking of blue as a state of depression, and the speaker of the poem crosses the threshold of an open door, escapes it.  Blue, as mystery, as what we want "anchored and sturdied" unlike cresting waves, pillows of sleep,  as confirmation of dream-- that "all is well," -- line and stanza break-- "at least for the moment. 

String Quartet: absolutely delightful extended metaphor about conversation-- indeed, I hope Graeme will provide us with a sequel poem, "Conversation Manual"!  

We all concurred that asking questions, listening as if it matters, so requisite for a string quartet, should also apply to conversation.  Judith brought up the skill of playwrights, who manages the "conversation" so there is only one possible direction to go.  We liked the layered meaning of "manage" in the last two lines, although at first to some, disconcerting.  to manage: as in "to be able to", as well as direct, allow.

A good conversation recalled, is "an enviable place to hang your memory".  We admired the "quartet" of the ending, the wonderful "p's" in the third stanza, and glad that those like "sales technicians, office-holders, preachers" include "good people" -- able to "resist plots time hatches to make a quartet unequal, set them at odds, to pull them asunder. "  Ah... if only we could see this happen in our Congress and our country...  The poem demonstrated the good weaving involved in both musical and social conversations.

Counting:  beautiful zen demonstration.  Marna admired how the important word seemed to come at the end.  Kathleen corroborated Hirschfield's experience as indeed, what happens when you meditate.  As Hirschfield puts it, "The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old,/and still they surprised."

We were heartened by her use of "bespangle" and "bewilder" to describe words-- and that, rather like the Kindness mentioned in Abby's poem, Joy remains Joy, even if war cannot become peace.   

What a powerful ending.  It's not about finding the "right" question and hoping for answer... but that the world indeed, "gives us the asking." 

Maura provided this quote: "Poetry's work is clarification and magnification of being -- a word-woven musical innovation." -- Jane Hirschfield.


Thursday, March 7, 2024

Poems for March 6-7

 If I Should Come upon your house lonely in the West Texas Desert  by Nathalie Diaz and 6 poems by Virginia Elson from her book And Echoes for Direction (published 1987)

-- Title poem; Admission; Everything Lodges with me Here; Thumbing the Scales; How Stars and Hearts Grow in Apples;  "If Satan in Falling from Heaven Had Swerved Slightly"

Nathalie Diaz :  I had footnoted this poem as one of the two shared in an interview with Louise Erdrich discussing The Sentence, a novel which addresses the plight of Ojibwa and Indigenous people along with a strange ghost story taking place in a bookstore and portrait of complex marriage.  In the interview, Nathalie read from her book Postcolonial Love poem .  Last week we discussed "Manhattan is a Lenape World".  In If I should come across, she creates the feeling of the American SW desert, the wide, empty spaces, big sky and role of light.  There is a physicality to the sense of  hunt, and yet, the poem embraces the larger question of "loneliness" in the title:  it could be the house that is lonely, the imagined lover, or the narrator as well.  A sense of purpose, but understanding the risk of possible frustration.

To quote Neil Postman about metaphor:  It is not an ornament, but an organ of perception.  The "lasso of headlights" indeed, loops the light around someone who feels imaginary, wished for but with a strange tension of longing, the ache of yearning and perhaps fear of confronting such intimacy.   A detail supporting this : the speaker describes being  at the end of this lasso, wrapped "three times around my hips horned with loneliness", asks to be reeled in.  Later after a sensuous, orgasmic description (I will enter the door of your throat..."  lie down in you; eat at the red table of your heart)  the speaker softens "pat your hand on your lap,  lighted by the topazion lux of the moon" but then, surprise. Until then, where are you? She has imagined what she would say... sit here.  Here I still am-- but there's a sense of abandonment... did it ever happen?  could it ever happen to be so close to another?   The poems starts and ends with headlights,  but ends with her "riding the night/on a  full tank of gas... and one senses the pulse of a horse's gallop, a sense of power, and then, intense loneliness...  those headlights/are reaching out for something.  The poem ends, conveying a feeling of power and loneliness.

Everyone was impressed by this powerful poem.  The italicized words, of what she imagines this lover saying have a mysterious resonance:  This is not your new house, but I am your new home.   Then, after she turns the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off, on his bedside table, "There is nowhere to go if you are already here." Some felt a heart-breaking tenderness but also a sense of violent confrontation with intimacy in the line "break all your chairs to pieces".    It could be overly energetic encounter, or perhaps the breaking refers to the heart -- a risk for both.  Vulnerable, desiring to be lassoed together, reeled through the "bluestem prickly poppy,  yucca bells -- dust-lit stairs of a desert in bloom.  Her imagery  is stunning.

Many interesting associations.  Those who know the desert felt Diaz created it perfectly.  Judith brought up dance connections and how important it is to know the indigenous culture to truly understand the rodeo dance as one of "going great distances".  Also mentioned was the novel "End of Drum Time". https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60741781 and Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/

I shared with the group the epigraph from The Sentence by the Korean Poet, Sun Yung Shin, who also lives in Minnesota and knows Erdrich.  "From birth to time of death, every word you utter is part of one long sentence.".  (from her poetry collection, Unbearable Splendor). 

Virginia Elson:  Forgive my typos.  Yes, it is  Elson with an L.  Two poems p. 4 had 3 errors: Line 10 in How Stars was missing the "L" in gnarled; Stanza 2 in If Satan: planing (as in plane-ing, not planning) line 2 and  starting line not startling 4th line.

Polly Nelson, who did the cover illustration (was required by the editor, Judith Kitchen to change her original charcoal to pen and ink to make it clearer, ) had Virginia Elson (freshly graduated from Columbia) as  English Teacher  in 10th Grade at Brockport High School.  A remarkable teacher, and as we admired in the poems selected, a remarkable poet.  Some might have heard of the UR teacher Linda Allardt and a few other poets  Polly mentioned.  (One name I believe was Adrien Stoutenburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Stoutenburg.  Many lived near Smith Pond, and in the year 2000, Virginia gathered them for a poetry reading.  She was editor of the review "Yes".

Title poem: And Echoes for Direction: A title like this, isolated makes me think of metaphorical direction:  We all seek to head towards a place that will be worth getting to.  Unlike bats, we do not rely on physical echoes, but we have our own set of metaphorical ones. 

For those who have grown up distrusting bats, it might be hard to believe the almost rhapsodic description.   Others called on exhibitions of photos of bats which would absolutely support a sense of magical singing  creatures.

I love how beautifully Elson uses enjambment:  "dangling", dangles; "suspended animation" hangs in place before dropping to the next line to continue.  The title is repeated, but this way:  And echoes           (line break) for direction.  Moreover, memory//recalling not the wild fling of changes—// these they'd always fled in fright —// The And makes the echoes part of the list of what bats know.  The rhythms, the alliterations, the use of "foil and lift" which both could be nouns as well as verbs are nicely crafted to  invite us into the special world of bats, so often associated with dark, with death, negative, spooky connotations.  As one person put it, we are given a perspective on what other beings offer.

No one picked up on my prompt about memory as metaphorical echo.  What might now be a wild fling of changes have perhaps overridden the once long pure tone sustained.  She leaves us with the welcome openness of "mouths of bells" -- and even if "head down in sleep" the bats understand the singing.

Many titles of books came up: again https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Wild-Snail-Eating/dp/161620642X and books about bats, like Bats at the Beach, or Bats at the Library,  (children's picture books by Brian Lies. In the 2006 book, bats flock to the beach to spend a splendid moon-lit night on the sand and in the water, echoing what people do at the beach—but in a particularly batty way. The message of the book is that bats are not badand of course I thought of Randall Jarrell, The Bat Poet.  https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/285151

 Discussion included the etymology of "bats in the belfry" (crazy in the head) and Judith gave a long description of the intricacy of the mathematical patterns involved in bell ringing and campanology used in Dorothy Sayer's mystery Nine Tailors.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Tailors.

Marna commented how she enjoys poems that send her to science, and filled us in on the sophisticated language bats "sing" which has its own particular grammar.  

Admission:  Whimsical.  Elson doesn't tell us what is "welcome to cracks" at first, but elaborates the nature of them as places for "cornered dust, in-between spaces a homeowner might want to fix in sagging insultation, but which provide nest-room.  Indeed, "Flaws in the structure of things" may not be flaws, but provide possibility to "breathe and breed"-- for instance  "eggs of dreams".   We enjoyed the echo of children's song, although the words are not "come out come out" but rather, come in, come.  The poem offers a generous sense of inclusivity to what most home owners might try to dissuade admission.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olly_olly_oxen_free#:~:text=%22Olly%20olly%20oxen%20free%22%20is,is%20on%20the%20field%20or  We liked that "feeding two hungers" is not specified:  It could be in the sense of sharing between the homeowner growing the beans with the deer eating them.  Or it could be a doe and her fawn, or any number of combinations of deer.

Paul was reminded of  Yeats, "The Stare's Nest by my Window" -- Indeed, part VI of this long meditation: https://www.poetryascommemoration.ie/poems/meditations-in-time-of-civil-war-by-w-b-yeats/

 

Everything Lodges with me Here:  We are prepared by the poem before, Admission, that a home on a pond may have unwanted visitors.  As one person remarked, "She writes about trash in such a positive way!".  Trash as "secrets"?  lost tackle, foundered bait pails, tires, beer cans now "calculated jetsam— carelessness and guile both windrows for my rake.  There's a "meaty feel" in the ending referring to some city cottager:  "I'll net me soundings deeper than the roots he'll have to pull come June".  The "soundings" in the penultimate line hints at a different kind of depth than measure of water.  We liked that the poet identifies the neighbor's shortcomings, but does not chide him for it.  As the title infers everything lodges with her,  in perhaps the Rumi sense of a "guest house".

Thumbing the Scales:  Elson uses metaphor so skillfully -- and incorporates music -- and if you know about the art of bell-ringing, the title might make you think of "musical scales" -- although probably refers to the expression used for cheating: (allusion to a butcher who cheats customers by surreptitiously using a thumb to apply extra pressure to the scale when weighing meat to calculate the price.) 

"So much for fact, which has/trim ways of balancing equations". Lovely slice of an enjambment to land on "trim"!  The verb choice and alliteration sleet sliding; (which would seem to be part of a very loud storm) are lashed free/to swing /in silent carillon.   So, metaphorical bells, metaphorical scales, and commentary on Spring with her own tricks with metaphor!  It reminded some of Tennyson's "Ring out Wild Bells" in terms of the resonance, but this poem goes further, richer with the closing image of wild ice-harps, glass wind chimes ending in the soft sibilance of singing/sweet in the first warm sun this year.  The "Thumbing" in the title calls forth the sound of thrumming, as in strumming a harp.  

How Stars: As Elmer said jokingly, all about "core values", starts the alphabet with A and builds up!  A beautiful description of the 5-star pattern of apple seed.  Judith commended on Robert Graves' explanation of five as the symbol of the muse who reigns our earth, and poetry.  Many recalled the fun of "apple prints" .   Perfect closing line, not at all sentimental, nor falling in the "bad pun" department:   This is the grown granddaughter witnessing the apple orchard of her grandfather, his foresight and wisdom, and the new graftlings he never knew -- a deep dimension to "spit out stars/by the mouthful, eating the heart out."

If Satan... The titlefrom John Hollander's review of Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence.  Polly told us they studied Milton and were exposed to the eye-opener that once the Devil was in Heaven, and selected because you cannot appreciate the good without evil.  It is generally assumed Satin rebelled against God in an attempt to become equal to God, but was expelled at the beginning of time. 

It is a curious idea that maybe it was his plan to fall all along.  And just what if he had been able to "veer off into original vastness"?  We admired the nautical vocabulary, the assonance.  My typo plane-ing, rhymes with vane, rather like those batwings.  We remarked that jib is the sail, but a jibe is tactical manoeuvre to tack.  

 Maura provided us with a quote from Bob Goff:  We are all rough drafts of the people we are becoming.  (see: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Always-Becoming-Setbacks-Difficult/dp/0718078136)


It was refreshing to read such an excellent poet who said she is interested in the "recalcitrance of inanimate objects".   I looked up that expression and found quite a wealth of associations.  I'm not sure what Virginia meant by it however. 

We wondered what spurred her imagination-- what books she read, or which ideas sparked her words.  They are imbued with the senses with a sense of meaty robustness, the sounds corroborating by rounding out meanings 



Thursday, February 29, 2024

Poems for Feb. 28

Poems:

Planet Earth by PK Page; Lullaby by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha; Manhattan is a Lenape Word  by Nathalie Diaz; Body's Ken by Simon West;  Solace  by Kim Addonizio


sent with March 6-7 poems:

- two translations Neruda's Poem "In Praise of Ironing" which triggers the glosa by PK Page.  
- a link to PK Page reading her glosa:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWFTFE8Icf0
- link (and time) to the Nathalie Diaz poem.  More notes about her in this week's selection.
- link to Japanese "crows and trees" (art and poems)
- the Breton Fisherman's Prayer by Winfred Garrison referred to in Lullaby

**
Nutshell:

Planet Earth:  A glosa is a Spanish form from the 15th century  where a borrowed excerpt of 4 lines  from another writer  is taken, called "the cabeza" or head is followed by usually 4 ten-line stanzas each with 10 syllables per line.  In Page's poem, there are only 34 lines and no stanza breaks, however, she weaves in each of the 4 lines taken from Pablo Neruda's Ode,
"In Praise of Ironing" (translated by Alistair Reid.)

We remarked on the highly sensual quality of the poem, especially touch.  Many many anecdotes and memories were shared about laundry drying outdoors.  If you didn't know that "goffered" means to "crimp the lace edges of a garment" -- or also emboss a book with a repeated design, this is yet one more type of "ironing.  Judith gave us a lesson about starch and it's clean odor.
We also spoke of the exhausting work of old-fashioned laundresses  (do look at the three 19th century French paintings of them, one of which is the idealized version by Bouguereau. (You might enjoy comparing paintings here: https://eclecticlight.co/2017/08/20/a-womans-work-2-portrait-of-a-laundress/
Alla remarked on the metaphorical "warp and woof" which supports a highly intimate knowledge of the weaving that goes into muslin, which of course is underscored by the hands "caressing" or the "coaxing" of a  lover.
Apologies.  O was missing on the 9th line. 
Polly added a humorous note about taking the poem literally, as moss does not stand cleansing! 

Lullaby: The repeated opening line, although using the lulling of repetition, says the opposite.  As poet  XJ Kennedy  remarks, "tone makes an attitude clear.  The effect of poetry on us, lies in our emotional response."  Certainly, there is an unsettling of "cradle-fallen", razor-edged waves; upturned fish, trenches of our silence.  What brings us to shore, grounds us,  is in the final stanza, devoid of this repeated phrase, "We cannot carry you" .  It is our desire for things smaller than we know; a strong vessel to lift our children to tomorrow, a pair of small shows pressing into the sand.  As the note about the poem by Naomi Shihab Nye says, "Remembrance, identification are timeless gifts of poetry."  People remarked that the title allowed coherence and we appreciated how the poem carries and intimates much more than the words we read.  

Manhattan is a Lenape Word:  Lest we forget... The use of an actual car siren, the ancient Greek Siren song and the voice of a Siren in the poem combine to make us think about what was on land before it was colonized, before we began to construct the modern cities of steel and glass.   "Where have all the natives gone" reminded us of Pete Seeger, "Where have all the flowers gone".  Judith remarked on the mica that makes Manhattan's sidewalks glitter... and the very special light particular to it.
We spoke of injustice to Indigenous people.  Paul remarked on the repetition of bees. 

Body's Ken:  The Scottish "Ken" or knowing.   This poem appeared in the Slowdown and is from a contemporary volume, Prickly Moses:  Poems by Simon West.   
This was the preamble by Major Jackson: IIhttps://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2024/01/30/1052-bodys-ken
There is something old world-ish, magical in the sound, in the repeated "so", which can be both a narrative quality that allows a story to unfold, carry forward  as it continues, but also, a sense of "so it is the nature...) 
We saw a little laundry repeat  from the first poem in the "crease of things" .

Solace:  apologies again.  Yes, there was a period after the final word.   Interesting progression from "pine tree, crows"  after a statement about art, "which sometimes can enter/through a sliver" to "split tree, crow's cry tore".  Nice use of using the noun "trellis", something normally stationary, as a verb.  The long O sounds resound, and indeed, if the coat thin, a torn pocket all that is left of love, there is something consolatory about the sound of a blue canto, the sight of a split tree when solo and the ear
"found an oar" and I rowed.  
 even hear thresholds, as when a jazz quartet plays a suspended moment of held notes before the soloist improvises away from the opening melody and into a freedom of sound.

This is where realms of existence are palpably felt, where physical and spiritual worlds meet. Recently, upon landing in Ireland, I took a spontaneous drive to Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old tomb of mysterious power. The Celts refer to such thresholds as “thin places.” The Bakongo people call it the Kalûnga line, a watery boundary between the spiritual and the living. 

Thresholds are fundamentally lyrical. Important transitions in my life prove as much. Whenever I am faced with life-altering decisions, I hold the past alongside the uncertainty of the future. That tension powers both ambiguities and revelations. Poets thrive in that energy between knowing and not knowing. They attempt to convey a sense of awakening by marking language and their experiences and thoughts as memorable, as sacred, while honoring the conditions that urged them into song.

Today’s poem spotlights the rich space where language fuses and ushers in the prospect of a new relationship between objects and lived experiences. even hear thresholds, as when a jazz quartet plays a suspended moment of held notes before the soloist improvises away from the opening melody and into a freedom of sound.

This is where realms of existence are palpably felt, where physical and spiritual worlds meet. Recently, upon landing in Ireland, I took a spontaneous drive to Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old tomb of mysterious power. The Celts refer to such thresholds as “thin places.” The Bakongo people call it the Kalûnga line, a watery boundary between the spiritual and the living. 

Thresholds are fundamentally lyrical. Important transitions in my life prove as much. Whenever I am faced with life-altering decisions, I hold the past alongside the uncertainty of the future. That tension powers both ambiguities and revelations. Poets thrive in that energy between knowing and not knowing. They attempt to convey a sense of awakening by marking language and their experiences and thoughts as memorable, as sacred, while honoring the conditions that urged them into song.

Today’s poem spotlights the rich space where language fuses and ushers in the prospect of a new relationship between objects and lived experiences.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

poems for Feb. 21

 At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border  by William Stafford ; Cuscatlán by Zoë Anglesey; Trust by Thomas R. Smith; Any Kind of Light by Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer; Without Name by Pauli Murray; Yes by William Stafford;  To The Stone-Cutters by Robinson Jeffers; The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind  by Marcia Slatkin


Discussion:

Stafford: At the Un-National:  We started by focussing on the unusual title and the negative impact of "un" which in fact reverses the negative implications of wars fought in "national interest" or the poignant but tragic implication of tombs for "unknown" soldiers.  There is much "unspoken" about a field in which a battle did not happen, where a soldier did not die, and ground hallowed by neglect as opposed to the tributes to those who sacrificed their lives on "this hallowed ground".   In the title, there is a sense of "cut the bullshit" as Graeme put it.  

The quiet of birds, without sound, unfolding their wings is provides the background for peace, and that final paradoxical line of not needing to remember a place that is associated with battle.  Many comments about battles of Saratoga, of 1812, of the Canadian border where a neighboring country sheltered many Americans who refused to be drafted in the Vietnam war. 

I cannot do justice to the richness of discussion of this poem which reflects both Stafford's pacifism and his respect for nature, where harmony can breath.  Here a small sampling : the unusual image of "grass joined hands" , the use of the adjective "hallowed".  Earth and sky, and the final lines which rhyme "air so tame", and celebration of a different kind of burial, of war and all its un-named horrors.  There was an anecdote of a grandfather speaking to a grandson about a battle... concluding, "I can't remember what the victory was about."  Another anecdote ending with "you know how Americans are... " and the irony of nothing sacred only desecrated. Elaine picked up on the description of a peaceful place where one would want to be.   


Cuscatlán:  The title is the name of a place located in what is now El Salvador and if you look it up you find it means land of precious jewels. The poet,  Zoë Anglesey traveled there, in 1968,  understood the country, was a translator, poet and activist who died too young of cancer.  see https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a258a1e0abd04962c1cae34/t/5f84989c147e743111519c55/1602525342012/Zoe+Anglesey--E+edits--for+Ishmael+Reed.pdf

Taking the word in Spanish for chicken, the poet plays with associations, such as "smallfry country" and not "deep-fried chicken" but the way pollo and a peaceful country should be : unplucked and alive... The adjective "crated" applies to fresh eggs (which brought up a memory from Judith of watching uncrated eggs being carried on a bicycle in crazy traffic),  but returns in the sound of crater and perhaps metaphorical implication of living on a "crater's edge", and delivery of a crate of bombs. 

If you are going to throw eggs... put them into painter's tempera!  The discussion noted the vibrant vitality of description from the crazy swerves of drivers through mud-washed, potholed streets, street vendors, and taste of tamales swaddled in banana leaves and secrets of the grandmothers who stew chicken.   

I thank Jan for pointing out that to her the "flying truck" was one going way to fast, out of control, as opposed to my initial understanding of an airplane.  

One person pointed out how beautifully the poem captured a sense of life going on, where one tiny snapshot of a moment shows the immensity of "everything".

Trust: I immediately enjoyed the reversal of "for a yes or a no" starting with the second line...and following Stafford's  use of negative"Un-national", the "theft that could have happened but didn't..." and in the second stanza the description which would lead you to think nothing could possibly work out, and yet, everything indeed "shows up at the intended destination", like the wind "getting to where it was going" and the river, even when frozen.  As Richard noted, whatever the "right place" is, "right" can change.  The final couplet is a refreshing reminder of how "faithfully life is delivered".  I can't think of a better thing to trust!

Any Kind of Light: This is not an easy poem to grasp.  The title re-appears, re-arranged sliding off an enjambment from second to third stanza:   into light, any kind.  Whose voice is "your voice" in the opening?  What implication of the words spoken, repeated at the end by the lamp?  Three times, "you" implied, three times "dead", written in three different ways.  

There is almost something cinematographic "Watch what happens now", but also surreal.  This enhances the impact of the question in the third stanza: Why don't they stop? Stop. How to read that second "Stop."? 

The layered use of repetition, and overriding metaphor given in the note about moths drawn to light perhaps does not need the note from the poet about "indictment of damage we have done to our planet, or relationships".   Some picked up on violence, implied domestic abuse; Judith brought up the use of "Okay" as slang : does it interfere with the tone of the poem?   Is it acceptance?  Re-definition?  Something is clearly not "Okay".  And cannot stop.  That "suck of incandescent night" even sounds like a monstrous swallowing up.

Without Name: Again, negatives well-used.    Little pockets of inarticulate, wayward wandering.  Although Frost considered poetry as a tool  as a means to "momentary stays again confusion" the ending line of the first stanza summarizes a frightening unsettledness.  The final three lines indeed reassure  If language is muted, love not named but only shown in images, this amplifies it, as Major says in the note, "love and desire echo into a future without end."

Yes: It is special to hear that someone actually heard and saw Stafford reading this poem as it corroborates its "realness"!    Yes is only 3 stanzas.  The note below references his writing reflecting a similar thinking.  Although I couldn't find when he wrote "Yes", it is very much the kind of thinking of Paul Celan, during the Holocaust in a concentration camp, writing about the beautiful.  The "bonus" of possibilities if you just take one moment at a time of whatever is.  It could be the absolute worst thing... and no, there are no guarantees, nor need for proof of anything.   We were reminded of "Trust".

To the Stone Cutters:  This poem reminded Polly of watching stone cutters in Italy working on the roads, cutting pieces so pavement fit perfectly.  Carolyn brought up calligraphy, and how Roman Letters were originally only Majuscule.  For the complete transcription of the comment from the "Slow Down" https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2024/01/23/1047-to-the-stonecutters. The Morgan in question is one of the listeners of this broadcast.   

We had many takes on the poem, including the cutting of tombstones, carved words.  There are two kinds of marble, words cut into the cheaper "soft" marble will not last and become indecipherable.  Those carved into "hard" marble will remain.   The "honey of peace" in old poems brings us full circle to how we remember, what is created in a monument.    Polly brought up Virginia Elson.  I did find this poem. https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1983/10/252-4/132591815.pdf

Judith brought up the marble beauty of the Taj Mahal, and how one gazes at it in wonderment and discussion included also commentary from Mary McCarthy: from her 1959 "Stones of Florence" -- "Even the pictures in the Uffizi  had grown ugly from looking at the people who looked at them."  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/07/art.art 

The Virtue of trusting one's mind:  I confess... I added on the last two stanzas~  I was intrigued by Slatkin's poem... not quite sure what the title had to do with the goats. We did have many comments about these animals... attempts to compare the quieter, more stubborn insistence goats might have to temper tantrums of children.  What does this have to do with trusting your mind?

Polly brought up the idea of prayer.  Before bed, like the goats, you fold your legs by your bedside and recite "Now I lay me down to sleep".  


Judith brought up the Bicameral mind and Kipling's poem about two sides to his head! 

The Two-sided Man

Much I owe to the Lands that grew -
More to the Lives that fed -
But most to Allah Who gave me two 
Separate sides to my head. 

Much I reflect on the Good and True 
In the Faiths beneath the sun, 
But most upon Allah who gave me two 
Sides to my head not one.  

Wesley’s following, Calvin’s flock, 
White or yellow or bronze, 
Shaman, Ju-ju or Angekok, 
Minister, Mukamuk, Bonze -  

Here is a health, my brothers, to you, 
However your prayers are said, 
And praised be Allah Who gave me two 
Separate sides to my head !  

I would go without shirt or shoe, 
Friend, tobacco or bread, 
Sooner than lose for a minute the two 
Separate sides of my head 



Friday, February 16, 2024

Not there for 2 weeks-- February

Poems discussed Feb. 7:

Never love unlesse you can  by Thomas Campion; Thanks, Robert Frost  by David Ray; Peace and Rain  Zoey Sheffield (age 6); Leaf Removal by Al Ortolani; The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind  by Marcia Slatkin; Monarchs, Viceroys, Swallowtails by Robert Hedin; and two poems he translated: THE CODFISH by Dag T. Straumsvåg; NOT BY CAR, NOT BY PLANE Olav H. Hauge.

"Poetry forges a compassionate pact with the world and, like all enduring pacts, it is one that in the end sustains and confirms–the poet's life, ours, and the great healing powers of language."

~ Robert Hedin https://www.roberthedin.com/

 

This site gives you a taste of his poetry: https://www.roberthedin.com/examples.html

Poems discussed Feb. 14:

A hearty thank you to Barbara for choosing and moderating! 

The Snow Fairy by Claude McKay from Harlem Shadows, 1922; What Kinds of Times Are These? Adrienne Rich; Handbag by Ruth Fainlight (born 1931) First Thanksgiving by Sharon Olds; Eating Together by Li-Young Lee from Rose, Boa Editions; First Snow by Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver,  Feeling the Way by Julie Hartwig (tr. By John and Bogdana Carpenter, 2008

Apparently it came up that poems should be read and discussed on their merits first, and whatever ethnographic background of the poet might distract from this. Graeme offers this interview for further discussion: https://substack.com/@deanobeidallah/note/c-4960178

Ruth Fainlight:  Handbag:  sense of smell, noted... and does this changed knowing on her website she says," I am a poet who is a woman, not a woman poet." Most writers perhaps are uncomfortable if readers expect them to represent whatever particular group they happen to be in.