Poems for April 15-17

 The plum you're going to eat next summer  by Gayle Brandeis; Anything Can Happen Seamus Heaney; A Coat by William Butler Yeats; The Negro Speaks of Rivers  by Langston Hughes; At the Fishhouses by Elizabeth Bishop; To a No. 2 Yellow Pencil on May 1, 2020 Kimiko Hahn ; A Poet  by Sherwood Anderson 

Nutshell:

The Plum:   One person calls this poem "a huge illustration of hope".  Others enjoyed the delightful play on what is not yet seen, known, and maybe never will be.  The last two sentences put on a solid philosopher hat:  Indeed, most of nature is indifferent to us.  So how do you understand that a plum

(unaware that you exist) is growing just for you?  In terms of technique, the poet changes up the placement of the opening line so on line 9, you have a momentary twists of meaning which add an element of delightful surprise:  "The plum you are.../".  Another 3 lines,  it is only "The plum" and the "you" is absent for 3 lines, allowing more layers of meaning : "The plum / (emphasis) you are going to eat next/(maybe you are going to eat a series of plums?)summer doesn't know (doesn't know what? ).  

As some noticed, you could substitute "the plum" for "the person"  and substitute the verb "to eat" with another verb, like "to meet".  

Anything Can Happen:  No, not like the delightful book by Papashvily https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1662353.Anything_Can_Happen

but directly influenced by Ode 34 by Horace.   We noted as well echoes of the Magnificat in the 3rd stanza, where the humble will be raised up.  Apparently Heaney was working with Horace at the time, which was shortly after 9/11 which makes "the tallest towers" even more ominous.  For those unfamiliar with "stropped", it is the leather strap used for sharpening razors, with a corresponding onomatopoetic sound.  For comparison, below, a translation of the Horace. 

ODE XXXIV. AGAINST THE EPICURIANS.

 

A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Tænarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken. The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed it on another. https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1742-horace-ode-i-34/

 

A Coat:  This poem by Yeats was mentioned in the book by Niall Williams  Time of the Child.   I shared one of the lines from the story: "every true story in the parish was concluded by the phrase,"you just couldn't make it up. 270".  Some may see a similarity with the 2nd stanza of Sailing to Byzantium: https://poets.org/poem/sailing-byzantium.  

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

The Negro Speaks of Rivers:  if you listen to the link, you realize the poem was written in 1920 when Hughes was only 18, and he tells about traveling to Mexico to visit his father and thinking about what the Mississippi meant to a black man in the history of slavery.  He wrote his thoughts down on the back of a letter from his father.  What a masterful poem!  We listened to him read it, marveling at its resonance,  its depth in a moment of reverent silence.

At the Fishhouses.   You can hear Bishop say a few words about the poem then read it:  to hear her .

It looks like a long poem, but the rhythms, of the pile-ups of adjectives (some with "Oxford commas" some without), the diction and sounds paint not just clear images, but prepare a ontological dive into how we know what we know.  The repeat of "silver", whether surface of the sea, how it slicks the surfaces of all it touches; the scales of herrings; the thin tree trunks, brings a magical shimmer; the otter, the firs "waiting for Christmas", the sensory detail of the ache provoked by cold water, the bitter, burning taste,

bring us to a "metaphorical summation" -- knowledge, as drawn "from the cold hard mouth/of the world, derived from the rocky breasts/" -- then the repeated f's , (teeth on lips) forever, flowing and drawn... flowing, and flown.  Remark the first time no comma before the "and"  the second time, a comma--

as she does earlier with the repeat "cold dark deep and absolutely clear" (icy water) vs. dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, (what we imagine knowledge to be).  We remarked that "flown" is the past participle of to fly, the past participle of  flow is flowed.  

To a No.2 Pencil: Not just a pencil, but a yellow, No. 2 pencil and not just an ode to a pencil, but a poem commemorating a specific date.  As one reader noted, May 2020 would have been still the pandemic.

Perhaps that explains the space after empty, // stanza space // with no shopping in sight.  We all had a good laugh at Mrs. Rote, which rhymes with wrote and pencil-less rote learning.  We all thought it a most delightful poem.  Kimiko Hahn, current NY State Poet Reader will be one of the guests at the Writers and Books Poetry Festival Poetry (June 10, 11, and 12 | 6 – 8:30 PM ) 

Sherwood Anderson:  Apparently not a particularly successful poet, and better known for his prose, he wrote the lines in this week's selection in 1922.   For more about him:   1961 article: The Significance of Sherwood Anderson's Poetry by Winfield Scott Lenox

"His most often repeated theme during the years he wrote (1912-27)  was one in which contemporary man, with his distorted sense of values created for him by the industrialized atmosphere around him,

had descended to a level at which he found it impossible, or at least very difficult, to love and understand his fellows.  Mrs. Eleanor Anderson, the author's widow, in a recent letter to the writer of this paper said: *'Sherwood talked a great deal about 'Singingprose t and 'hidden poetry."

Judith shared her poem  

A Pox on the Pestiferous Potholes of Pittsford Plaza

 

The potholes of Pittsford Plaza perturb

Weary wayfarers, wending wary way

As slithering snow sends SUVs sliding through slush

While winter wields wailing winds.

O sigh for summer, shedding sweaters in sun

Benevolent, bountiful beams bronzing beautiful bare bodies

Lying loose and langorous, languid on lovely leas.

O for dewdrops, daisies, daily dippings

                                                In pleasant, plangent pools, potholes in past.

Poems for April 8 + 10

 Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour  by Wallace Stevens; To You by Langston Hughes; The Waking by Theodore Roethke; In Memory of W. B. Yeats [from Another Time]  by W.H. Auden; The Healing Improvisation of Hair by Jay Wright; Our Valley by Philip Levine; An Old Story by Tracy K. Smith; 

The first poem for next week came from the 2010 poster for Poetry Month and I show a mini version of the  poster.  It gave me the idea of compiling links to all the posters of  American Academy of Poets and to draw this week's selection from the 30 years of posters since 1996I 

The enclosure below  has hyperlinks to all the poems referenced on the posters -- which I hope provides a fun document to explore on one of those proverbial "rainy days" or perhaps this summer.  This year's poster has the last two lines of the poem, "The Chance" by  National Poet Laureate Arthur Sze

What makes Walt Whitman so powerful and powerfully embarrassing a founding figure for American poetry is that he is explicit about the contradictions inherent in the effort to “inhabit all.” This is also what makes it so silly to imply Whitman’s poetic ideal was ever accomplished in the past and that we’ve since declined — because of identity politics — into avoidable fractiousness. “I am the poet of slaves, and of the masters of slaves,” Whitman wrote in his journal, indicating the impossible desire to both recognize and suspend difference within his poems, to be no one in particular so he could stand for everyone. You can hate contemporary poetry — in any era — as much as you want for failing to realize the fantasy of universality, but the haters should stop pretending any poem ever successfully spoke for everyone.

 

Last paragraph of Ben Lerner: The Hatred of Poetry

 

Refract and recoil and reinforce your love of poetry with Jane Hirshfield's poem, Counting, this New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me  Jane Hirshfield

Joy indeed, remains Joy.

Nutshell:

The poems this week were taken from the 30 years of  posters created by the American Academy of Poets celebrating April as poetry month.  I had included the list with links to the posters and mention of all the poems to which they refer with the poems.

 

Final Soliloquy:  Chosen as poem on the 2010 Poetry Month Poster. Written the year before his death at age 75 (1954), the word "final" takes on a sober connotation as well as insinuating that Stevens embraced a routine practice of "soliloquy[1]",

where his inner self could share private insights.   We noted the first word, "Light" is repeated three times as noun and once as verb, the stress on "one", single, a whole, where God and Imagine know no boundary.  Who is the "we"?   The poet and his soul?  Is the "thought" in the 2nd stanza referring to the "world imagined as the ultimate good", which perhaps implies that "ourselves" might be universal, or to the "intensest rendezvous" the line before which refers back to the soliloquy?  When he describes us as "poor", is this metaphor juxtaposing our lack,  perhaps our hunger, our frozen state to the aliveness of embracing the richness of imagination?   Although there may be religious overtones, this is more a philosophical poem exploring ideas of what is involved with existence, essence.  

 

Although highly abstract and of a complexity that leads to bafflement, the poem for many  provides a sense of interior peace, beyond the outside world.  This interview  by Ezra Klein of Michael Pollan on consciousness may be of interest.  The conclusion: "we  know less after reading than before." But not without expanding the parameters of our understanding!  We can joke and say,  do you really want to pin anything down, or is it enough to let the poem keep on being the poem, radiating its generous room for possibilities?

 

To you:  Chosen as poem on the 2002 Poetry Month Poster

I believe this  link may be Langston Hughes reading.  You will see other poems as well, including A Negro Speaks of Rivers (also selected for the Poetry Month Poster in 2002) which came up in discussion.  

 

The reference to Richard Wright and "The Library Card" came up:  a true story of being Black and denied library lending in the South in the 1920's.  To whom is Langston Hughes writing this?  Specifically to black brothers and sisters, or to all dreamers who believe in the "vast horizons of the soul"?  We admired the repetitions, the holding of the breath in the suspended first lines ending with "and", the juxtaposition of sit with three different verbs: dream, read, learn about the world... It is the dream that propels us, invites us to help... the action of reaching out, joining in.  It has a kinetic energy and one could imagine the choreography of momentum, or hearing it to the background of jazz. 

 

Such a tone of optimism and graciousness!  Some saw a parallel with Stevens' Final Soliloquy, the going beyond "our problem world" to join into one "central mind... in which being there together is enough."  

 

The Waking-- Roethke 1908-1963: One many poems listed on the 2006 Poetry Month Poster 

The opening of this incantatory villanelle poses a contradiction which because of the form will be repeated several times.  How to understand how one wakes to sleeping?  Like the first poem, some saw a play between conscious/unconscious, but others imagined the original meaning of the title as a wake, the watch over a body the night before burial, or as one person put it, instead of a vigil, perhaps at a "death bed", a meditation on a "life bed".   One could easily read "waking" as "walking".   Why the capital G for ground, capital T for tree?  People brought up Roethke's struggle with depression, his family greenhouse business and his greenhouse poems like The Root Cellar.

 

The language with repeated w's (wake, waking, we, what, which, walk, where, who, lowly worm, winding) and l's (learn, feeling, slow, shall, lively/lovely, falls) and slant rhyme of long vowels is haunting yet fluid.  The 5th stanza enjambment of the first line gives a big pause between Nature (who has another thing to do) and us (//to you and me) with a delivery of advice which feels encouraging.  Another poem which could be danced, or sung in choral response perhaps.

 

In Memory of W.B. Yeats: One of the many poems listed on the 2006 Poetry Month Poster

This is only an excerpt.  For the entire poem: https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats

It helps to understand that Auden wrote this a month after Yeats' death and the full poem recognizes the chaos of Ireland spurred Yeats to write poems. "Despite all you wrote, Ireland is still full of chaos and bad weather, since poetry doesn't actually change anything. It lives on in the metaphorical region (of the mind or culture) where it comes from, a fertile area where the powerful would never want to meddle. It flows down like a river from the pasturelands of loneliness and the hubs of sorrow, from painful inner places (and/or fierce communities) that we devote our lives to. It flows on, a process, like speech or the mouth of a river.".

The lines selected are at the end of the elegy, and good advice to fellow poets.  Many enjoyed the lines "with the farming of a verse/make a vineyard of the curse."

 

The Healing Improvisation of Hair: Used on the 2008 Poetry Month Poster

No one could really make "head or hair" of this one.  

Following the heels (to heal?) of Yeats, Carl Sandburg's Four Preludes was brought up which starts :

The woman named Tomorrow  /sits with a hairpin in her teeth  /and takes her time  and does her hair the way she wants it / and fastens at last the last braid and coil /and puts the hairpin where it belongs  

and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?  

 

In an interview Poet Dante Michaud, says this: " This poem has all the hallmarks of Wright’s poetry—supple lyric: “[A] day so thin its breastbone / shows.” An inhabited eye. In Wright’s poems, there’s often a real observation that transports Wright into the body of a character in his mythopoetic landscape. ...And robust phrasing: “bottom juice,” “the grit of solitude.”

He goes on to mention Jay Wright's response to a student asking why he seemed to be weaving so many different sources together in his poetry:  “[It’s] already woven, I’m just trying to uncover the weave.”

 

Our Valley: Chosen on the 2012 Poetry Month Poster

This poem, from Levine's book News of the World published in 2009 is quite different from his earlier poems about workers in Detroit.   We noted the long unrolling of one sentence in the first 8-line stanza.  Even the Mountains, have no word for  the "something" so massive, irrational, powerful... The next 8 lines increase the grandeur beyond mountains, ocean, to that "huge silence we think of as divine". The final stanza combines eco-sermon and back to the title, it's not about "our" as something we possess, but the way nature determines not just the valley called home, but our life.

 

 

An Old Story: Chosen for the 2019 Poetry Month Poster

We noted the formal capitalization of each line and how deftly the poet stops a first word with a period.  Terrible. Dream. Passed.

She manages cadences and rhythms with enjambments, alliterations and that solo stanza of 3 words  hanging to the right  -- A long age -- falling on the word passed.  An old story indeed.

Knowing she was National Poet Laureate under Obama, our first African-American President, not just once but for two terms, the first word "we" and the final word, "color" can assume she is addressing both racist assumptions and behaviors since the founding of the United States, but also the universals of being human in terms of how we behave to each other and our planet.

Color as healthy and necessary diversity -- indeed  brings up tears of joy, mixed with the deep sorrows when it was gone.

 

---

[1] A soliloquy is a dramatic convention where a character speaks their inner thoughts, feelings, or secrets aloud while alone on stage or un-heard by others. It serves to provide direct insight into a character's motivations, or to reveal key plot points, often fostering a sense of intimacy with the audience

Poems for April 1 + 3

 Apocatastasis by G.C. Waldrep; Solar Eclipse by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; To Daffodils: by Robert Herrick; Gold Street Barn by Henri Cole; Beannacht (Blessing) by John O'Donohue;  Water Front Streets by Langston Hughes; The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks; Ode I, by Ricardo Reis

The poems this week look at how we perceive the word, but also perhaps bring up the perennial question of why a poem is labelled as a poem..  This site will list elements of poetry and one can wonder about "free verse".  Indeed, we have expectations of poems, that they will create meaning with sound, have some sort of pattern and engage feelings.  Contemporary poems do not always provide recognizable meter or rhyme, but most  are sensitive to the effects of line breaks, whether it be to disrupt syntax with enjambments or provide layered meanings.

 

The first poem refers to Christopher Smart (1722-71) known for his long and tumultuous Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb) peppered with seemingly nonsensical fragments. [1]His poem was written in 1759 but was not published until 1939 -- well after Whitman or even T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland.

 

G.C. Waldrep  seems to be as interested in him, opening with one of his lines from  trying to sort out how poetry can help us "trim" the chaos of the world and restore a sense of order.  He closes with what may well be a reference to the Ode Song to David,[2] which Smart composed when confined to a lunatic asylum.  I could go on at length, as does this entryabout Smart. 

 

The Poems

Apocatastasis: Don't let the title put you off.  Yes, it means "restoration of creation to perfection" which would indeed lead you to theologically-oriented philosophers and poets.  The "rhyme" with "crystalline", detail of flowing stone, maimed[3] sycamores onwards to a simile with steel and smoke and grey sky hanging low as stiff washing in the second 6-line sentence does seem like a lot to swallow.  But we are rescued with anthropomorphizing, seeing the world as extensions of ourselves and a reminder of the gift of metaphor.  Waldrep could have stopped at 14 lines, but gives us a little 4-line afterthought about the importance of feeling and maybe just allow things to be as they are.

 

Solar Eclipse: The poet, of Filipina and Malayali ancestry, gives us the place under the title and teaches us the Tagálog for I love you. What does the delightful opening with the detail about four-year-olds asking about 250 questions a day have to do with a solar eclipse? She ties it in with the question of how to stay curious. The poem is joyful and replete with the onomatopeaia of the "gurgle of a bubbling brook", the playful "kicky paddle" describing how we "hurry towards something new".  The detail of the 3 minutes and 38 seconds duration of the eclipse described as "the moon loving the sun" applies to the brief moment of strangers resting together to watch our star, the sun.    It provides a more reflection about our human nature with the metaphor -- "we get clouds stretched/over all our eyes." Perhaps the question is,  what do we "eclipse" (to continue anthropomorphizing ) in our world?  And the final question, "why do some of us forget to look up and notice ... (the "afterglow") provides us with an invitation to be open to mindful noticing in general of love all around us.

 

To Daffodils: Herrick, 1591-1674 merits continued attention in the 21st century as a poet who prizes the art of writing well, styling himself after the ancient Greek and Roman masters.  What a feeling of excitement, and what a mastery where rhyme enhances the pleasure of the message, albeit the moral reminder of momento mori (we are not eternal) spread over a day from morning to night.  I don't know of any other poem that compares us to the short life of daffodils which I find somewhat endearing. The theme was common in his time but remains popular.  Herrick is the author of the line Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may.  

 

Gold Street Barn:  Contemporary Henri Cole (not to be confused with Ashcan School Artist Robert Henri ) provides us with painterly diction in 14 lines where the idea of "negative space" is dropped casually on the first line.  The 7th line, "I hope beyond hoping we live beyond this life" embraces  the idea of all humanity, with a hint of nostalgia for by-gone days in the heavy emptiness of what is left.  His enumerations add to the heaviness, where "emptiness is not nothing, but the opposite of fullness".  Staying with this paradox, indeed, one can mourn what was, but the 6 wingèd creatures and all the rest of them arrived in the gold daylight/falling upon the sensuous list of what one finds in brambly undergrowth mushrooms, blueberries, lichens, ferns is indeed a different abundance.  It cannot replace the memories, but as he concludes, his grief is gone.  

 

Beannacht (Blessing): This interview with John O'Donohue provides his background in the intense and raw landscape of Ireland, and his sense that in his love of the landscape he is married to the Divine.  The poem, written for his mother after the death of his father, has the feel of a sermon, and the penultimate stanza sounds like the traditional Irish Blessing "May the road rise up to meet you and the wind be ever at your back".  The currach is a boat and as metaphor works beautifully for the journey of life.  In his book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings O’Donohue explains “blessings” as a way of life, a lens through which the whole world is transformed. 

 

Water Front Streets: In two stanzas, both starting with the same line, Hughes captures the choices of a port.  The rhyme in the first stanza: abab:   There, dreams wondrous rare... (a) with away/gay (b)  a vision of what could be but isn't; In the second stanza, the rhyme of there (a) has no echo.  sea/me : Hughes hints at how to live where things are not so beautiful: carry your own dreams in your heart.  What skill in 8 lines for a multi-layered message!

 

The Bean Eaters: "yellow" in the first line refers to the prestige of lighter skin color.  I loved how mostly in lower case, first line describes what they eat predominantly; Mostly Good first line second stanza describes who they are as if Mostly were a first name, Good a family name. 

Like the poem Gold Street Barn, the enumeration accentuates a fullness of what is, but one senses hardship at the end of a hard life.  Perhaps that rented back room was a shop once, I imagined with beaded voodoo dolls and fringed  shawls for sale.  The rhyme scheme: aaba;  cded; then the repeat of remembering, the rhyme of twinges/fringes.   The sounds contain alliterations, repetition: plain chipware on plain and creaking wood; keep on putting... and putting.  One person remarked the accumulation of "ings".  Looking only at o's : long ō, of mostly, clothes, over, tobacco, yellow

short o: dolls, cloths.

two oo :wood and good like a pair of eyes, pronounced unlike the oo of room.

This is the kind of poem that calls out for us to notice every tiny detail that goes into creating a perfect portrait of this old couple.  

 

Ode: Ricard Reis is the heteronym of Fernando Pessoa.  His odes were first published in 1924 but this fictitious character, writing in classical style produced this ode in 1935.  This is a more detailed explanation of his odes.  We admired how the translation sounded like a contemporary poem in English, with a Zen flavor.  There's a certain calm in the delivery of the rather Taoist  message to let go and pass through life serenely,, not worrying about "wasting the hours" but honoring moments and placing them like flowers in a vase!

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Jubilate Agno, even in its fragmentary form, is Smart's "prophetic book": a doxology, evangelical and philosophical manifesto, personal diary, and commonplace book all in one, as well as a remarkable experiment in poetic form. consists of two sets of loose papers, each set containing closely written series of verses all beginning with the same word, Let and For Coincidences of page numbers and dates, together with verbal links between the two sets, suggest that they were intended to be related antiphonally, like the versicles and responses in parts of the Anglican liturgy, or as in Hebrew poetry... The Let verses are invocatory and mostly impersonal, calling on the universal choir of creation to glorify the Lord; the For verses add comments, reflections, topical references, and details of Smart's private life and feelings.

 

[2]  at the precise arithmetical center of the poem, stands a sequence of ten stanzas corresponding to the ten-string harp of David, the instrument and symbol of creative power. Far from being "a fine piece of ruins," in fact, the poem is constructed on numerological principles with "exact regularity and method,

[3] The "maimed" trees are pollarded  a kind of pruning.  

notes to myself -- For April 1

 From Graeme: "I love The Bean Eaters for its simplicity and obviousness. I would challenge anyone to offer an interpretation, but that might not stop them.

Of Robert Frost by Gwendolyn Brooks

There is a little lightning in his eyes.

Iron at the mouth.

His brows ride neither too far up nor down.

 

He is splendid. With a place to stand.

 

Some glowing in the common blood.

Some specialness within.

One Way – see poem… 

 

The arrow points to Times

Square where once the Wins-

ton man would blow 1,000

rings of smoke each day

but the photographer caps

the sign so it reads left to

right, [arrow], ONE as his

lens goes on its way, the

way we each go, seeing

what we see on façades

some of us never asking

a question about what lies

inside, what is left out. 

Notes to myself: bout Christopher Smart (1722-71) Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb): This is one of my favorite parts: https://interestingliterature.com/2020/08/christopher-smart-my-cat-jeoffry-analysis/ - google_vignette

 

Looking up G.C. Waldrep [1](b. 1968 --so I'm a good 16 years older!) I stumble on J. Gallaher also a youngster, b. in 1965 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57005/in-a-landscape-i

Is this a poem?  

https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/poetry/elements-of-poetry/

Meter, lineation, Point of View, theme, metaphor... free verse[2]

 

excerpt of Heart by Dorianne Laux

The heart shifts shape of its own accord—

from bird to ax, from pinwheel

to budded branch. It rolls over in the chest,

a brown bear groggy with winter, skips

like a child at the fair, stopping in the shade

of the fireworks booth, the fat lady's tent,

the corn dog stand. Or the heart

---

[1] G.C. Waldrep was born and raised in the South. He earned his BA from Harvard University, a PhD in history from Duke University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa

[2] Free Verse: lines are unrhymed, and there are no consistent metrical patterns. But, that doesn’t mean it is entirely without structure. Used in modern and contemporary writing and is useful when the writer wants to mimic natural speech patterns. Examples of free verse poetry include: ‘Historic Evening’ by Arthur Rimbaud, ‘O Me! O Life!’ by Walt Whitman, and ‘What Are Years’ by Marianne Moore.

vs. Rhymed Poem: there are many different types of rhyme in poetry, such as end rhyme, internal rhyme, and half rhyme. They give poems a musical feeling, whether they appear at the end or in the middle of a line. Examples of the first can be seen in poems like ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening‘ by Robert Frost, ‘The Tyger‘ by William Blake, and ‘Sonnet 18‘ by William Shakespeare.

poems for March 25 and 27

 Spring Follows Winter Once More, by Tom Hennen; Jamestown, 2019 by Camille Dungy; The Garden, by Camille Dungy; Try to Make Her by Morrow Dowdle; Herb Lore by Mary E. Caragher; The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider; Small Kindnesses  by Danusha Laméris; This Only by Czeslaw Milosz   

Nutshell

Spring Follows: the poem comes from a book Darkness Sticks to everything which title I countered with a link to Spring (Gerard Manley Hopkins version of  the "juice and joy" of Spring with his exuberant sprung rhythm: https://poemanalysis.com/gerard-manley-hopkins/spring/) We remarked the first 5 lines, with a downward look, the next two with an upward view.  The etymology of "Paradise" is "enclosed garden".  The capital P perhaps is to strive for something universal beyond any religious affiliation.  Notice it is not to knock on the gates, but rather, the gates opening "just enough" to let out an inkling of what lies within.  It is hard not associate this short poem with burial but it is not so much "death and resurection" as eternal cycles of life and the reminders of seasons.  The title sums it up, "once more" restoring both hope for sense of possible order and a reminder of how history repeats.  The release of a flock of geese provide a welcome unlocking of positive energy. 

Camille Dungy: The publisher's website includes a review of her book, America, A Love Story  and a sample poem.  I highly recommend you read this book.  A sample cannot suffice to show how gently she can pierce a heart, but at you will receive more than a hint at her skill.

Jamestown 2019:  What has changed in 400 years?  The poem paints a memorial not only to the first slaves, but as the title hints, 400 years later, to all black people. It reads like a ballad,  a lullaby without punctuation aside from two commas, slowly, slowly,  and breathing with multiple em-dashes.  The repetition of what rhymes with...  followed sometimes by single words (water/empty/crying) or a build-up of words is powerful.   Example: 2nd stanza, 2nd line —what rhymes with mothers/  enjambed to waiting, 3rd line repeated, mothers waiting  and then in the final stanza, what rhymes with snatch a life and name it /building—  this burden— which could be the musical term, or the burden of sorrow...  but the poem doesn't end there.  nor does the song or the sorrow: The final question, what rhymes with help the mothers love/these babies— the final two lines repeat help,  gathering speed in an increasing cresendo almost unbearably overwhelming.

help them help them help them /—help them rocks their stolen babies down.  

The Garden: As we know from her  book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, selected last year as one of "All Rochester Reads" Camille is gardener working both earth and poetry to teach lessons.   The metaphors, such as "stakes", as risks, as well as how to plant these wooden supports so things grow, are skillfully handled, as are the enjambments which challenge assumptions:  "Some will assure you..." indeed, one would like to be assured that "there is a place on earth/for everyone.  I will prove/ them wrong, confirms the slippery nature of language and human behavior. We commented on the use of the word "dirt", wondered at "everything shot through/ with holes" which  sounds authentic and not particularly  positive.  One person wondered if it might not be the garden speaking at the beginning, with the poet reiterating the lessons at the end.  

Try to Make Her:  Some had read this article about a young woman in India faking snake transformation.The visual formatting is quite snake-like with high suspension.  Arriving at "Love exists,/"  more than half-way through the poem, it is followed by a lovely confirmation that this young woman found it.

Herb Lore:  a thank you to Rick, who introduced us to his Great Aunt, Mary E. Caragher (1890-1963  Bio : born in Lima. Genesee Wesleyan Seminary and Geneseo State Teachers' College, U of R, BS and MA in Engl.  moved to Rochester, as HS teacher, and member of Rochester Poetry Society. Poetry, nostalgic memories of childhood and great love of trees, infused with haunting Celtic mysticism.  "though 50 generations/willed me faith and reason,/I was a Druid child. Great tolerance and beautiful understanding of the beliefs of others... from Place of Apple Trees; nd Golden Year.  in Gleam (anthology of Roch. Poetry Society, 1964  

For those who know herbs and references to herbs in literature, here is a delightful poem calling on the "natural" lessons delivered by them and a wise and patient father.  Perhaps "lore" in the title pays tribute to acquired knowledge collected.  

For the last three poems:  I don't think it matters if we call them "a poem" or just the jotting down of thoughts that are worth reading.  Perhaps if a poem, the definition is "lines (13-18)  worth reading  that mirror back something that lifts your spirits, project a larger thought than the words provide.  

The Patience of Ordinary Things : a lovely tribute in 14 lines that reminded some of Van Gogh's art transforming honest objects such as a simple chair, or boots, to art.  Here, the ordinary becomes imbued with patience, merits the adjective lovely, and generous, and we believe the opening line:  it is a kind of love. We noted the title of the book and the press:  From The Weight of Love (Negative Capability Press, 2019)  Negative Capability, a term coined by Keats allows a thing to develop as it will, and asks us to be patient to see what what arises.  

The question of mood came up... how it colors how we see things.  If the soap is in a bad mood, it will stick, obviously, and if you are in a hurry, of course "the nylons will insist that you make a run".  If you are in the mood for such puns, this book was recommended.   https://www.amazon.com/Get-Through-Next-Five-Minutes/dp/1324091630

Small Kindnesses: Listening to Danusha read this poem is a very calming things to do.  I love her image, "brief moments of exchange... fleeting temples we make".  Mostly, indeed, we don't want to harm each other.  

This Only:  Whether Milosz wrote this in Polish, translated it himself, or when he wrote it, I do not know. I am just glad to have read it.  How do you understand the title?  He does not puncutate it, but one meaning might be to separate the words to emphasize, This.  What is this?  It is presence, physical, or a memory, a feeling, sound and rhythm, and a desire.  How to explain this as one precious thing?  Seeing as understanding perhaps, without need to peg down in language, expectation, fear, hope.  Seeing as letting the world in perhaps... How do you imagine that edge where there is no I or not-I?  Thank you Milosz for carrying us beyond whatever our "ordinary" life provides.  

   

 

March 18 + 20

 Origami  by Meg Yardley; For Air by Ed Robeson; Butchering by Rhina p. Espaillat; No Swan so Fine by Marianne Moore;  American History by Michael S. Harper; Night Bird  by Danusha Laméris; Lessons at the Legendary Institute for Yarn Spinning by Rigoberto González; The Lanyard  by Billy Collins

I fully subscribe to Ross Gay's statement about "Joy, as practice of survival."  I  

Nutshell of discussion of poems for March 18 + 20

 

I opened with this quote from Isabel Allende: We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that sudden strength forward.  In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity people do amazing things.  The human capacity for renewal is awesome.

 

Because the subject of War and Peace is on everyone's mind I shared few quotes from the Peace Postcard initiative[1].  Interesting that the first poem brought up the Japanese legend of thousand cranes and the story of the Japanese girl, Sadoku, one of the many who suffered from the effects of the Atom Bomb

 

  

Origami:  brought up many associations which included the Japanese legend of folding paper into origami cranes. The hyperlink will give you the story of the Japanese girl, Sadoku, one of the many who suffered from the effects of the Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. She folds 1,000 cranes knowing the Japanese legend, that whoever does this will be granted a wish. Lest we forget about the bombing of two cities... 

 

How do we make sense of our world?  How can we repair the damage we see, unfolding a paper,

the creases of failures?  The uses of the word folding take us  from origami to the idea of wrinkles you wish you could smooth away, folds of empty spaces, cities, language, wind, valley, bill folds. The act of creating an origami bird is a meditative calming and methodical practice  that offsets the unpredictable.  I like that kami refers to origami paper but also to Japanese deities.  

 

The poem itself uses many enjambments as if each stanza is folding through space.  Indeed, the word "fold" is key, used in all but three stanzas (5th, 8th and final)   What is the bird base referred to in them?  This many-layered poem has the reader imitating folds of possibilities in the mind. 

 

Night Bird:    Who is saying the opening "Hear me"?  Is it the night bird, the poet? Should we believe or mock the prophetic tone?  The jump to the odd detail about the nephew and the therapist who dismisses that "he" (perhaps the therapist, perhaps the nephew) at play "sank a toy ship and tried to save the captain) is yet one more instance of not knowing more than the surface of the words. 

 

14 lines calls us to examine the poem as a modern sonnet.  Note the repetition in the six lines after the volta "Not, he said"echoes in the final line "Not, I'm sure".  The commas accentuate the contradictory hesitation.  What is what?  and how can we be sure?  The title is repeated at the end as a night bird, just one instance of something communicated. We noted the rhythm of one-beat words on the final line as if drumming echo that we do want to read meaning into what we hear.  

For Air : After a first read of this poem filled with gaps, unexpected spaces, as well as enjambments I re-read the first line:  There is a place in me for air.  I re-read it again and think of the breathing of rhythms and music but just like the scrambled syntax of "making sense like a cart/we are each other's horse before", I am also prompted to wonder if Robeson is implying  something comes before "____ for air" ?  Maybe a verb, like  gasping for air... or maybe an adjective like, "desperate", or a noun, "a craving for air".

Our minds play with empty spaces, try to fill in what's not said, or possibly erased.

This interview gives helpful insights into Roberson's experimental methods which refuse parsing.  He uses  "double-jointed syntax"  (Mackey) to explore and bend themes of race, history and culture.  "I'm not creating a new language.  I'm just trying to un-White-Out the one we've got" (2006 interview with Chicago Postmodern Poetry)

We discussed the last word in the first stanza, taking note there were other instances of ignoring rules of capitalization and punctuation.  What is given?  How it is to be understood?  It is the beginning of a math proof (corroborating the later mention in the 5th stanza, "geometries of air".  The repeat of "shod with a vibration of the unsaid"  feels fresh as the words line up  on the last line of the 4th stanza, and return at the end of the first line of the 5th stanza-- a new bounce of meaning preceded by "geometries of air".  

Many saw ressemblance to Jazz, which uses a different part of the brain than classical music.  The poem is visual in its choreography and all the senses are employed --with synaesthesia  (fragrance if sound wave and beat),  music, poetic beat, heart beat,  balletic leap.  However the possibilities of meaning, there is something delightfully refreshing confirmed with celebratory champagne.

It is fun to see how many different ways Robeson plays with "air": in stanza three, "the surface the air impresses upon..." the way things do that they be.  Other prepositions

No Swan so Fine:  Another sonnet where the oppressive opulence of Louis XV is compressed brilliantly with sound and image of a small detail of  a swan "lodged in a candelabrum..." which may indeed ressemble this: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsNxyBEoUU8/

The final sentence brings relief!  Apparently Marianne Moore would find inspiration from lines in magazines or elsewhere, hence the opening sentence in quotation marks.  It doesn't matter if she actually went to Versailles... 

Lessons at the Legendary Institute:  The word play in the title, teases us about what the double meaning of yarn as part of embroidery and as story. We loved the note about the Indigenous grandmother whispering, "If you're going to make things up, do it well."  Gonzáles does exactly that -- we don't have to know the tale, but we get the point-- and loved the idea of anger / demoted to delight...  The visual disposition of the poem resembles a weaving pattern, spinning out stanza by stanza.  

The Lanyard: The perfect blend of humor and compassion, where indeed, one could say "tears demoted to laughter" as we read the double viewpoint.  So many know about the "camp project" or the school project, but as one person commented, not all of us had mothers who made us feel our efforts were deserving of recognition.  

** A small aside:  Paul had brought in 4 years ago

a cudgel made from the limbs of blackthorn trees, common around the Wexford town of Shillelagh.  So called the same.   A hole was drilled near the end of the shaft to accommodate a lanyard to wrap around the wrist so as not to lose hold during the fray. These 

"Faction Fights" were no little gang dust-ups at the street corners. There might have been a 

thousand or more men involved to spit in the eyes of opponents while fracturing skulls. It 

was not uncommon to have four hundred killed over two or three days of fighting.

[1] This year, 5 Countries, 3 Canada Provinces, 35 States and 168 poets participates which adds up to about 4733 postcards circulating peace during February.  (World Peace Poets).  It's wonderful to receive a piece of mail with the Metta prayer on it,  or a recipe card for making Peace:  

Frost with/ample presence/active listening/building layers of trust.

March 11+13

 Dear March—Come In, Emily Dickinson;  Four Years Later  by Julia Kolchinsky; Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen; She says, being forbidden: -- by Leonora Speyer;  The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye; Coffee in the Afternoon  by Alberto Rios; Birdbath by Henri Cole; 

A final Poem to enjoy as a PS by Seamus Heaney: https://poems.com/poem/postscript/ (Thank you Bart)

Preamble to  Nutshell for March 11-13, 2026

I believe Poetry is the handmaiden of serendipity because every week, a certain magic happens when a group of people come together and read aloud a bunch of poems.  Who would think that a breathless em-dashed  Dickinson poem about March written in 1874, 

a 2026 villanelle about the on-going war 4 years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,  

a 1917 sonnet by Wilfred Owens, written in an Edinburgh hospital, where he was treated for shell shock, 

a 1926 sonnet referencing Canut the Great, 

a contemporary parable about an onion, a narrative about a visit over coffee, and a poem of 14 unrhymed lines filled with the emotional force referencing what is delivered by song, 

not only  could provide a memorable hour of animated discussion, but seemed to be matched as if to celebrate the way poetry can catch the heart off guard and blow it open (last line of the dividend poem, Postscript, by Seamus Heaney.You can see already from the hyperlinks, each piece is loaded with a treasury of references and contexts.  

Add to this, countless stories, associations, in the discussions, such as the wit of Ogden Nash, coffee with the meal  or the delight of the tongue twister lyrics from  Trout Fishing in America's  "All I want is a Proper Cup of Coffee"  and the opening quote by Ross Gay, " The heart's perhaps the most reliable clock we have.  This link will bring you to the October 2022 issue where you can read his words about Auden's poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" It's not that "Poetry makes nothing happen."  but rather, as Ross points out, what happens is that poetry spreads seeds which lie dormant, and then bloom out of control like wildflowers  in a summer meadow when given the fire of a common hearth around which we gather,  feasting on the act of communal sharing. 

 Nutshell of discussion of the poems: 

Dear March:  At first read, it would seem an enchanting celebration of this month known for its gusty nature and what some call "March Madness", with a little tongue-in-cheek humor as if the month were a special lover.  Who is speaking?  When the breathless litany of welcome, of questions, of accusation calms down in the last four lines, Emily provides us with an insight into our human paradox of love-hate relationships with seasons and weather.  Perhaps there is a bit of dismissal-- and she doesn't really allow March to answer her question 7th line, how are you, and the Rest.  Instead, she teases us with a play on double meaning of "rest" when things hibernate in Winter, and implies the larger "rest of nature" with which March is spending its time outside its designated season.

The trilling of t's -- triffles look for trivial turns the opening "Dear March" from a private letter, to what is dear, as in precious, or perhaps what comes at a price,  as we blame what we praise and vice-versa.  She capitalizes many of the nouns, but blame, mentioned twice,  only receives a capital letter when it concludes the poem, side by side with Praise, (twice-capitalized). The deft touch of the rhyming of dear/mere as interchangeable descriptions emphasizes the contradictory and inconstant attitudes we adopt with blame and praise.  Will you greet March differently now each year? Or even each time you read this poem!   There is no one analysis, no singular certainty here, but rather an echo to the many flavors and personalities of March with a small underlining of what it is the heart desires. 

 

Four Years Later:  The hyperlinks will lead you to Kolchinsky's bio and her other poems about the Russian invasion and on-going war.  The power of the villanelle lies in the repeating of the two lines: It's difficult to remember the war.//Everything returns as it was before. What do we choose to remember about the past?  Fail to recognize or even mention?

 

Anthem:  Wilfred Owens was friend with Siegfried Sassoon fellow anti-war poet, who suggested Anthem for the title,  and that the adjective doomed replace dead.  Written in October 1917 while recuperating from shell-shock in an Edinburgh hospital, this sonnet has a visceral effect with the rapid rattle of repeated consonants and grim images. As one participant whose husband is a war veteran commented,  one senses the anger of a soldier caught in the brutal absurdity of the first world war. The villanelle before, is from the viewpoint more of distant observer.  Both use poetry to make sense of being caught in the violence of wars which should never have been.

 

She says, being forbidden: Published in 1926, the title of this sonnet sounds like it could be a woman's lib poem.  As I quoted from Harriet Monroe in the footnote ," her prevailing mood is that of a conqueror; she hits back against whatever blows of fate, and faces even death unbowed.”  Be that as it may, the poem becomes even more powerful when you realize it is referencing  Canut the Great and lesson of waves.

 

The Traveling Onion:  The epigraph explains the history of the onion, however, the adjective, traveling gives a folk or fairytale flavor to the title.   It is soon clear this is more than an ode  extoling the onion for its physical qualities, honoring its commendable humility in its career!  Oh the stories, the recipes even a reference to Shrek and how Ogres are like onions (starts at minute  .47 on the hyperlink. Back to the poem, lesson, delivered like a moral in a fable,  points to  translucence, not needing to stay around to be given credit or recognition.  Here is another example an "onion" poem.   

 

Coffee in the Afternoon: Who is he?  Who is she?  We had as many conjectures as participants. Did they know each other? Did the poet just make the whole scene up?  I was delighted with the variety of responses.  Many anecdotes of unusual encounters over coffee were shared but also some were sensitive to the  possibility of a "grief visit", or an "end-of-life visit".  Whatever scenario, the poem by the lack of specificity about who, when, where, allows the reader to pick up on clues and expand on them.  For example, how do you make a pot of coffee from memory?  How the 5th stanza sounds like a repeated visit, not just a repeated gesture of helping oneself to "tea food".  Most everyone agreed the key was that the visit was liniment-- and after, tea or coffee, confusion plain and nice and a balm for the nerves of two people in the world.  

The last couplet packs an emotional punch to the simplicity of the power of such a simple moment.  Most agreed the final line no matter how enigmatic, confirms the importance of the visit, no matter the missing details about the people involved.

Joyce shared this story of visiting a coffee farm on top of a mountain in Nicaragua on a Pack, Paddle, Ski Adventure with Rick French.  First they bounced in the back of a truck and finished the journey on horseback!  At the farm they were treated to a small ritual that spelled  "welcome" in Costa Rica with coffee offered by natives to American tourists.  Knowing they like milk in coffee, they squeezed some fresh from a cow.  They all shared the richness of the flavor, sipping from paper cups with everyone in a circle, and then the natives all disappeared.  A memorable experience filled with the goodness of coffee and sharing.  

 

Birdbath. If you didn't look him up already, Henri Cole comes from an unusual background. 

We laughed heartily at line 4, and relished the anthropomorphism of birds and italicized words of what men say, which imitates sounds of a robin.  How is it when an Opera sings the story it is so different from silently reading the words?  Cole tosses us the challenge to live and sing the things we cannot say.  

 

A hearty thank you to everyone who attended.

 

  

 

 

PS to myself.  

Postscript -- I originally had all 4 lines.

You are neither here nor there,/ A hurry through which known and strange things pass/As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. 
from Rattle:  This link will take you to her other poems about the invasion. This poem written in 2022 gives some of her biography and an example of erasure technique -- in this case Putin's February 21, 2022 speech that rewrites history as justification for war. 
I had cited these three lines: The heart's perhaps the most reliable clock we have -- Ross Gayhttps://www.bookey.app/book/inciting-joy/quote

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/158591/out-of-time-time-the-fourth-incitement

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ross-gay

All those hours spent trying to outstare the distance of what the days must come to.  Carl Philips

The poem as the champagne of what the body has bottled in its strain -- Ed Roberson  

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