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.

 

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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Poems for March 4 + 6

 [collage]by J.I. Kleinberg; The Peninsula by Seamus Heaney; The Red Wing Church by Ted Kooser; At the BBQ Spot by Tara Betts; Shelf Life  by Hemat Malak; When I do count the clock that tells the time[1] by William Shakespeare; Alive by Naomi Shihab Nye 

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[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/92652/the-music-of-poetry - music of the line of this sonnet discussed.

Nutshell: 3/4+6

 

The first "poem" was a collage of what looked to be as torn piece of paper.  There is no title. Click here For a good article about the history of concrete or visual poetry.  We didn't really get into a discussion of any "meaning", as one could chase one's tail at length to imagine the possibilities of what was on the paper and why we only see a few staggered lines.

For those who feel like taking time to decipher implications here are some questions.

1.  What is the emotional effect of what you see, without reading the words?

2.  How many different ways can you "piece" the actual words together so they make some sort of meaning?  Do you add punctuation?

3.  Does the amount of time spent trying to decode this piece feel worth your while?

 

The Peninsula: For some, this poem which at the end mentions "uncoding all landscapes", followed by the last two lines, also seemed somewhat baffling.  Even if a reader not felt to be in the shoes of the speaker,  Heaney offers good counsel.   Looking at the form where each stanza uses enjambment to spill down to the next stanza, you might sense a feel of traveling through space, which mimics the speaker's drive around the peninsula which may well be The Ards Peninsula in NE Ireland. (This site gives you a map and satellite view ).

 

The sound and rhythm carry us throughout the poem:

 -- lines filled with l's and r's such as

That rock where breakers shredded into rags,

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,

 

--the pile-up of l's  in the end-words of the second stanza;

--  the rhyming patterning of AbcA, BddB, CefC (with a pile-up of g's in the endwords).

 

He breaks pattern in the final quatrain, but repeats much of the opening,

When you have nothing more to say, where the vowel rhyme of say[1] has been echoing all along--

And drive back home, still with nothing to say

 

I bolded still as many remarked how although indicating prolongation, Heaney takes a sharp turn, Except...  dropping end rhyme pattern.  However, he repeats the ex in the final word extremity  It is dark, and the poem ends but the work of the reader lies ahead.  You will uncode.  ponder "things founded clean on their own shapes. "  

 

What a wonderful discussion, where so many offered different angles of understanding of interior/exterior tension,  man-made/abstract,  man/nature, what is grounded/ungrounded -- and the unique boundaries of sky and sea "in their extremity" as if melting into a bigness.  It was helpful to be reminded of the definition of foreshore (3rd stanza): the part of a shore between high- and low-water marks, or between the water and cultivated or developed land. On the peninsula, one is aware of the rise and fall of tides, and the personification of "islands riding themselves out into the fog" giving a sense of shifting movement, like the rock shredding the breakers into rags. 

I added a link to another Heaney poem in the selection for 3/11+13.https://poems.com/poem/postscript/

The Red Wing Church:  One finds out soon enough that Red Wing refers to a town in Nebraska.

Everyone enjoyed the sense of community, and gentle humor.   Although at first glance, it might seem the poem points to a breakdown of "organized religion", there is something uplifting to see "religion" being recycled.  The pews are not destroyed and indeed, the church is not a place, but a gathering of people.  Interesting that the Quakers called traditional churches, "steeple houses"... The rebuilding of a church came up as well, as in Notre Dame in Paris, or the Frauenkirchein Dresden.

 

 At the BBQ Spot: Delightful description using sparkling language[2] one normally would not think of applying to flies.  We enjoyed the wonderful sounds and word play such as plastic bags as "ornaments or omens"; unexpected reversals Christened from maggots and scat... clustered like gathered stems of bouquets... and the hilarious twist of an ending -- where a trash heap, dead or alive, is indeed heaven for a fly.  It's always a joy to see something beautiful made of something ordinary, and in this case, irritating.  Adding to the pleasure is to learn something new in the process, as many had never seen or heard of such a fly-catching system. 

 

Shelf Life:  People were curious about the name of the poet, Hemat.  Apparently as Himmat in Urdu and  Hindi it means "courage, determination" and in Ancient Egypt Hemat translates to "woman" or "female servant".  One person looked her up and saw this line on her website: "I lie in a field; a poet drops a pebble; I ripple."

 

The note about the poem explains the prompt of "referencing small talk in a big way".  There were a few "small talk" instances, such as "nice dress" or

"everything will be OK honey" but from title to final line, the poem seemed more inspired by the poem by Bruce Weigl  the Tale of the Tortoise.  

 

Each scenario elicits sympathy, and then, suddenly is erased as if it never happened.

We wondered about what reality lies behind the couplet: Something happens when tomorrow rips/to its last few threads.  This is the only short stanza that is a couplet and seems to set up the idea of "take-backs".  

 

The title, Shelf Life, implies a potential "expiration date", but the poem leads us to a very different sense of "metaphoric" shelves, at present empty.  Or maybe it is life stored on a shelf that no one is aware of?

 

Some imagined a lonely person escaping loneliness through imagination; others imagined that everything did indeed happen, and this is a way to try to mend and heal.  We all felt the acute emptiness, the sense of being stripped naked emotionally.  I know I was totally engaged in the poem, and wanted to know more about the speaker.  

 

Sonnet 12: Is it fatherly advice to a younger man? I did give a reference to the sound lines 5-8 where the abundance of b's, echoes of repeated vowels, could arguably turn any sense into nonsense.  It is thought this is part of a series of "Fair Youth" poems, in particular, a "procreation" section, as remedy for inevitable aging.  I love the first line... and see it an invitation for us all to write as did Bruce Weigle, who inspired the last poem -- to tell a story "to fill a hole in your mind, or to try and mend something that's been torn by a violent wave that washed through you once." 

As an aside, Judith brought up this hilarious, but scientifically accurate book by her niece.

Alive: How do you explain the title?  What does it mean to be "alive" and who is to judge how to be?  We all enjoyed the leaps from mundane to significant, perhaps an implied proverb such as "don't cry over spilt milk".  Starting with "Dear Abby", one immediately is prepared for an answer of sound, compassionate advice, delivered with the straightforward style of a good friend.

The fun of the poem, is that the questions are not answered.  The reader can consider what is reasonable, when a joke goes to far, and whether telling a dog to stop barking is worth the effort. And what do you do about flat statements about what is remembered from school?  

 

Now that you are equipped knowing that "stories, poems, project, experiments and mischief" are how we learn about life... how do you answer the question about the man or the dog?

---

[1] day, runway, gable, glazed, (perhaps legs, if you pronounce it laygs) landscapes, shapes

[2] Although it is not up to us to workshop a poem, I like the sound of the adjective myriad someone proposed to replace multiple on the first line of the second stanza.

poems for Feb. 25+27

 In honor of Black History month: 

I look at the world -- Langston Hughes

A Song for many movements -- Audrey Lorde

Behind Stowe by Elizabeth Bishop

Literary Theory by Ada Limon; Epitaph on a Tyrant by W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973; Hearing your words and not a word among them (Sonnet XXXVI)  by Edna St. Vincent Millay; Two Set Out on Their Journey by Galway Kinnell 1927 –2014;  “Tonight I Am In Love” by Dorianne Laux;  

The Gift to Sing  by James Weldon Johnson; Joy by Lisel Mueller   read by Nick Cave here: https://youtu.be/nzLp7Va4MOQ

'Tis the last session of this short month of February, with no extra "leap year" day (next one in 2028),

filled with hopes of Spring, of Love, preparations, remembrances... 

At the end of each month, this is what happens:

The Choosing Process

Oh dear 

ones

each week, before us, a random

group of poems, words

that share a look at the world

that sing in multiple movements

Oh dear,

I say, not out of dismay, "ones"

meaning you, the reader, the random

poems, the endless array of words,

the oh dear help me-- oh dear world

what helps us sing symphonic movements

O dear

belovèd ones

where one is a sum of many, and random

finds pattern in poems, words

to share together, to look at the world

the endless way to dance its movements.

Nutshell of poem 2/25 + 27

Literary Theory:  It seems that Limón is exploring the grey shades of language but with a hint of the larger context of humans vs. nature.  Thank you Jessica for sharing the anthology she edited and introduced, You are Here , which explores the human relationship to nature.  

 

What is "literary theory" and how does the title work in this poem?  It is interesting that she starts with the sound of words within words where allow starts with an open vowel, swallow indeed, forcing allow inside.  To swallow: verb is one thing, but the noun, could be a winged gnat hunter is entirely different, and would that be how you might describe the swallow?

 

We picked up on the adjective brutish, and the blinking like a morse code to confirm or refute definitions.  How do we define meanings?  I like that her poem ends on the undefined word,

swallow, a word that is read... but the meanings expand beyond it to all that could mean.  Are you a bit curious to know how "all her feathers show"-- and how might yours?

 

Epitaph:  Published in Auden’s book Another Time.    Scholars generally believe Auden was inspired to write it after spending time in Berlin, Germany, in the 1930's.  Regardless, a fine summary and definition of a tyrant.  The cadence sounds noble, the contrasts of end rhymes 

(what he's after/laughter; understand/his hand/ fleets/streets) embellishes the negative connotations.  

 

 Hearing your words:  This sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who would summer in Maine captures  the wild nature of the Maine Coast. Her moods often are revealed in description of weather and here the sense is one of repressed anger.  Who is the  "you" that speaks "words"-- without a word among them to her liking?  There is marvelous tension, whether the onslaught of waves, the sturdiness of the women and their gardens with dahlia tubers dripping from their hands, and the men out to sea.  Endurance is key.  To enjoy a taste of Millay, this site offers insights as well as samples.

 

Two Set Out on Their Journey:  Almost like a sermon or a parable, illustrated by a brother and sister, probably older in life, contemplated their lives.  Although we don't know the details, the emotion is strong.  What do you feel reading the words unfolding in five lines: If an ancestor has pressed/ a love-flower for us, it will like hidden/between pages of the slow going,/where only those who adore the story/ever read.  Re-read, and "slow going" feels like the slowing down towards the end of life, and the flower, the advice to be mindful as we go about life, the reading a sort of review of it.  Indeed, a gift of growing older is to find what seems so deadly serious, isn't.  

Sure, there will be sorrow... but that gift of time... indeed lightens the heart.

 

 

Tonight I am in Love:  the title is in quotes, but I couldn't find the reference.  For some, it might seem like an exercise in selecting lines from English poetry from the 13th century, (the anonymous sonne under wode) through Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Wyatt , William Blake and many others about love. It is a love poem to  poetry, and all it brings... we are indeed "wounded with tenderness for all who labored" (the wound introduced by reference the stanza before of

" Jesus’ wounds so wide." and references to Christianity which would have been more part of the time period that anything to do with the poem.)  It could be the line "For God Sake's hold your tongue and let me love" first line of John Donne's Canonization was the narrator's wish to write her own lines, bolstered as she is by old familiars.  

 

The Gift to Sing:  I think of the lot, this was a strong favorite because of the message so beautifully delivered as music. It feels authentic, and real. Only one end rhyme per stanza with the refrain, which subtly changes from tentative singing (blackening clouds about me cling)  to persistent singing (shadowed by Sorrow's somber wings   to an affirmation of singing itself (whatever time may bring). If you are not familiar with the poet, do enjoy this link.

 

Joy: The title becomes clear in the 12th line of the 3rd stanza.  The delay of addressing what joy is, filled with different voices discounting the power of music increases the resounding repeat,

joy joy, the sopranos sing,/reaching for the shimmering notes/while our eyes fill with tears.

What is the nameless opposite?  All that is not sung, expressed, not included, on that other seemingly parallel line of sorrow.  The poem reassures us, so often baffled by emotion, yes, 

joy to be joy, needs all the notes of our experience.

Poems for Feb. 18+20

            Cat in the Slipper by Wendy Van Camp; Song of the Mischievous Dog  by Dylan Thomas; Shall gods be said to thump the clouds, Dylan Thomas; Against Endings by Dorianne Laux;  Blood by Naomi Shihab Nye; Come Back! by Camille Guthrie Oread*  by H.D.;  Tombs and Wombs  by Alicia Cook

 

Nutshell:

Cat in the Slipper: A nonet is a shrinking syllabic form of nine lines.  The form suggests a slipper; each line acts rather independently as it paints a picture .  The sounds are warm and fuzzy,  and even if you might prefer the last word to be "slipper", the rule calls for a one-syllable word.  You might think of a homonym - shoo! and imagine someone wanting to reclaim the slipper!

Song of the Mischievous Dog:  Everyone felt the playful lilt of inner twice-rhymed lines alternating with end  rhyme.  Who has heard a unicorn described as a horse with a horn and two humps on its head (with a huff of 4 alliterative H's!!!) It's an unusual to have a dog be the speaker, describing a moment of bliss ... whether it's true a dog wants to chase "stones" as well as rabbits.   The rhyme seems to write the whimsy (doubtful of biscuit, I'm willing to risk it) and there's a blithe innocence that frees the reader from needing to delve into deep meaning!

Shall Gods Be Said to Thump the Clouds: I'm not sure how old Thomas was when he wrote this, but this is quite a contrast where, 3 tercets set up questions about Gods, with a definitive answer in the first lines of the 4th tercet regarding their existence.  God are stones.  One more question -- can they drum or chime? There's a sense of yearning that however stone may speak, it be able to be understood. The musical cadences  of the lines are powerful and illustrate our human propensity for anthropomorphizing gods in nature, in weather, which some might feel borders anti-religious. 

Paul recommended the 1986 book by Dylan's wife Caitlin :  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/caitlin-with-george-tremlett-thomas/caitlin-life-with-dylan-thomas/

Against Endings : The title holds the key to the poem.  We want a line to end, but often in poetry, the line carries on the meaning with an enjambment.   There are two curious ones:  line 8 : two// (line and stanza break)//dogs and line 15: up//(line break)//through.  Others do the work of double meanings and a pleasant surprise as in line 3: only the music/ of voices;  line 5: voices in darkness/below stars; line 12: obligatos afloat/on the humid air.   There are no periods, so some of the lines feel they hang in space, not needing any completion.  The poem asks us to read it slowly, allow it the time it is taking to consider what seems to be an urban scene.  We made many conjectures: a city block with kids playing up until dark; perhaps two teens in love, not wanting the night to end;  perhaps a European city.  The musical terms are lovely, contralto of questions; laughter's plucked strings; human duet; obligatos afloat... and different kind of thumping with a rap song.  For sure, we were wrapped up in the scene, could feel it strongly.

Blood: Without context, a daring title that immediately gets you wondering which of the many associations the poem will bring: the stuff in our veins we all share?  our bloodline as in family? as in shared blood of a country or culture? as in spilled blood from accident or murder?  The poet repeats the adjective "true" before "Arab" as if to emphasize the larger definition of a nationality, not sullied by misinterpretation.  One person wondered if in the second stanza, perhaps the skin peeled away was a sign of threatened identity.  Another brought up that the watermelon was symbolic  with the colors of the Palestinian flag.  There is an innocence in the third stanza about a girl wanting to see the Arab, perhaps, but also puzzlement.  "We don't have one", on second read could me, there isn't one singular, specific Arab. The question, "Once we die, do we give [our name, Shooting Star"] back?" as a good response of what a true Arab would say, also gives rise to consider how we call each other and what we keep about our names and meanings. 

The 4th stanza has intimations of terrible chaos.  How to tend one's home, the stone walls, gardens, under threat of destruction?  Of what good a table mat stitched blue,  waved as flag as if we all share sky and ocean?  Where can the crying heart graze?  The poem asks you to beg the question of how we can talk using the word  civilized????? Who calls anyone, any country  that?

Come Back! : Do look up the poet. She enjoys working with other texts and references, in this case, H.D.,  the famous Hilda Doolittle who with Ezra Pound established the imagist group in London in 1911.  The poem juxtaposes an idealization of this elegant, eloquent poet (1886-1961), the news of her time with the news of ours a century later.  There is a juxtaposition between HD's experience of the Blitz in London with our experience of 9/11.  One person thought of the Simon and Garfunkel tune, Mrs. Robinson . Who is standing there, at the top of the stair?  The poem pleads for help, for restoration -- to make good things, like imagination come back.  We would have appreciated commas in the 4th line  (bolded below) of the 5th stanza When bombs fell around your family/You seemed so sure in your poems/Walking down a London street/Thinking of Egypt, of Mary, of ruins/You stepped through a broken wall to see/A bomb-blackened apple tree flowering/It guided you through the Blitz/

Here when cherry blossoms appear after the winter/I think,  Pretty pink ladies/Dont catch a disease and die on us. 

Apologies for the scrambling there when the pdf and pasted text disagreed.  The rest of the poem after the quoted text is only two stanzas: one starting with I remember the Two Towers falling.  The final stanza starts: Where to now, H.D.?

Tombs and Wombs: Although the poem is an ekphrastic response to a stunning photograph, it certainly can stand on its own.  One senses the narrator is grieving a lost child.  The photo of these pre-columbian burial mounds, entitled "Deserted" is located near St. Louis, MO. See Chohokia   Each stanza is riven with a sense of aching, of desperate and visceral  waiting, -- but infused with what is not longer,  may never be.

I added a final poem for the Wednesday session to lighten the spirits.

OK Let’s Go Maureen N. McLane

 

Let’s go to Dawn School

and learn again to begin

 

oh something different

from repetition

 

Let’s go to the morning

and watch the sun smudge

 

every bankrupt idea

of nature “you can’t write about

 

anymore” said my friend

the photographer “except

 

as science”      

Let’s enroll ourselves

 

in the school of the sky

where knowing

 

how to know

and unknow is everything

 

we’ll come to know

under what they once thought

Poems for Feb. 11 + 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

Nutshell:  Poems discussed Feb. 11 + 13

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

Poems for February 4 and 6

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

For O Pen 

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

Nightline: September 20, 1982 

 by June Jordan

 

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

do you think you can put this massacre 

on the back burner now?”

 from Directed by Desire: the collected poems of June Jordan

For Warmth by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face between my hands.

No, I am not crying.

I hold my face between my hands

to keep my loneliness warm —

two hands protecting,

two hands nourishing,

two hands to prevent

my soul from leaving me

in anger.

Nutshell: 

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

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

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

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

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

of what?  No sign of anything/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

yet at length quietness will cover those wistful eyes.

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

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

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

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