What do salmon, the color white, tomatoes, seals called Earl, conversations with the dead and telephones have to do with each other? They provide detail for the grieving of loss -
I think of Rilke's first Duino Elegy:
If I cried out
who would hear me up there
among the angelic orders?
And suppose one suddenly
took me to his heart
I would shrivel
**
We discussed:
Joan Swift: Steelhead
Komarovo (with epigram from Ahkmatova -- 6th Elegy)
Madelyn De Frees: To Marilyn Monroe whose favorite color was white
Lucia Perillo: Early Cascade
Louis Jenkins: Earl, The Telephone
**
Ai: Conversation
Anna Ahkmatova: 6th Northern Elegy
A secret border in human closeness
We might think the salmon know something about endurance, just as those who desire something more colorful than white just might eat a ripe tomato, alone, and suddenly think of a conversation with the dead, where there is no knowledge or memory.
The idea that if the dead return, we would not know them... (Ahkmaotova)is frightening -- and Jenkins deals with it in a humorous way -- if all seals are called "Earl", it doesn't hurt so badly to know one of them is killed by an Orca -- as another "Earl" will show its bewhiskered face. So finally, who do we know when we are living -- and why would it be surprising that our memory of someone not correspond to the stranger before us. Who are we, living, or dead.
Perhaps as Ai concludes, the dead are the ones who can see ten times more clearly, the truth
a terrible, horrible awe no living person could stand.
And the telephone, to bring us connection, is just as useless as a heart which cannot accept a caress, just as empty as a movie star who only comes to life on a screen, just as empty as a woman, who will eat ripe tomatoes alone, gagging on their sweetness, tasting the bitterness of solitude.
And we grieve our losses, and like the salmon, we catch the fish, as slippery as desire, then let them go, realizing like all who desire, they know nothing.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Monday, May 10 -- voice
What is it that we want our voice to call out -- and how in tune are we to our own inner voice?
Thanks to Lorrie, who discovered an anthology of Black Writers on Nature, we enjoyed discussing a poem by June Jordan : b. 1936 --
It takes a room full of people, carefully in tune, looking, searching deep into the spaces around the words, their sounds, to find all sorts of different meanings.
I love her voice in poems like "Apologies to All the People in Lebanon", and "A Poem about Intelligence for my Brothers and Sisters." The Secret of Intelligence...
-- more later.
I shared
Lucille Clifton:
hag riding
why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride
The voice of Jack Gilbert, illustrated by a Utube where someone draws as the poem is spoken --
Jack Gilbert:
" How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite."
How we say Love, and get it all wrong. The details are sensuous, archaic, biblic. Etruscan tombs,where indeed, couples smile, as Emily pointed out, may give us a clue... or not. Like our words.
Linda Pastan : Traveling Light: the favorite of the group: Tone management (word choice, use of vernacular, the switchblade weather) to create a sense of lurking danger and that all is not so well with "I'm only leaving for a few days" -- and what we guess about such specific instructions... in spite of which "our lives have minds of their own". It brought out memories of preparing for traveling; the larger metaphor of traveling through life, and what it is we really need.
Alberti, translated by Mark Strand: Song : reminded me of a song sung as ashes are sprinkled out to sea.
Stephen Dunn: One Source A Love Poem
Terrific fun -- the tropical storm (Barbara) and how changeable she is -- which is as suspect as the reporting of the behavior.
Thanks to Lorrie, who discovered an anthology of Black Writers on Nature, we enjoyed discussing a poem by June Jordan : b. 1936 --
It takes a room full of people, carefully in tune, looking, searching deep into the spaces around the words, their sounds, to find all sorts of different meanings.
I love her voice in poems like "Apologies to All the People in Lebanon", and "A Poem about Intelligence for my Brothers and Sisters." The Secret of Intelligence...
-- more later.
I shared
Lucille Clifton:
hag riding
why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride
The voice of Jack Gilbert, illustrated by a Utube where someone draws as the poem is spoken --
Jack Gilbert:
" How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite."
How we say Love, and get it all wrong. The details are sensuous, archaic, biblic. Etruscan tombs,where indeed, couples smile, as Emily pointed out, may give us a clue... or not. Like our words.
Linda Pastan : Traveling Light: the favorite of the group: Tone management (word choice, use of vernacular, the switchblade weather) to create a sense of lurking danger and that all is not so well with "I'm only leaving for a few days" -- and what we guess about such specific instructions... in spite of which "our lives have minds of their own". It brought out memories of preparing for traveling; the larger metaphor of traveling through life, and what it is we really need.
Alberti, translated by Mark Strand: Song : reminded me of a song sung as ashes are sprinkled out to sea.
Stephen Dunn: One Source A Love Poem
Terrific fun -- the tropical storm (Barbara) and how changeable she is -- which is as suspect as the reporting of the behavior.
Monday, May 3, 2010
O Pen discussion May 3
Opened with one of the love poems by Shikubu --
Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning.
Indeed, this Spring, nothing seems usual. And how one yearns for the first morning of anything.
As if chanting, "today is the first day of the rest of my life" -- and for a moment, all feels so possible.
Today brought so many poems before "O Pen" ... and I wonder how Shakespeare might have dealt with it all. Sonnet 87: "Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,/In sleep a king, but waking no such matter."
Frost's 14 line poem, "Mowing" seems to join the master-mistress play on a - king --
mist-a-king; ma-king; wa-king -- nutshells hiding the nut in #87.
the whisps of hay, the scythe at work --
the word "swale" which contains the whisper and "wail" but means
"low, hollow place, often boggy," 1584, special use of Scottish swaill "low, hollow place," or dialectal East Anglian swale "shady place" (c.1440); both probably from O.N. svalr "cool," from P.Gmc. *swalaz.
The negatives: no dream; no easy gold.
the associations: fay/elf; idle hours
Dream returns bolstered with fact of work. And yet that magic of the hay, cut, left to rest in the sun -- and that too is work, the making.
**
The Digging: Seamus Heaney
How the pen is squat; snug as a gun in first and last stanza.
How the stanzas gather strength from 2 lines to 3, to 4, to 5, back to two.
to 8; to 4 to 3.
The repetition of dig and digging. How time inserts "his straining rump among the flowerbeds/bends low, comes up twenty years away;
Digging into a legacy.
**
Wonderful find of two poems by Rachel Contreni Flynn
Rachel Contreni Flynn was born in Paris in 1969 and raised in a small farming town in Indiana. She got her BA from Indiana University in Bloomington where she majored in journalism and history. She received her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2001. Her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song, was selected by Stephen Dunn as the 2003 winner of the Dorset Prize. She has recorded her work for the Bloomington/Normal Public Radio station, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was featured as The Spoon River Review's Illinois Poet in 2005. She also received an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Flynn works at Fortune Brands, Inc., a Fortune 500 consumer products company. She teaches poetry courses and workshops occasionally, and lives in Mundelein, Illinois with her husband, Patrick, and their children, Grace and Noah
The Yellow Bowl
Dead Center
Beautifully crafted -- the yellow bowl like a still life; the "if" suspended and accelerated
loneliness has lost its shape, and this quiet is only quiet.
Dead Center: Ominous detials and what it is to lose a mother; what it is to test a father;
stages of grief.
**
Louis Jenkins:
Earl and Telephone:
Poignant. Delightful. Earl -- all seals (substract the R) (and the seal voice)
and how we live by denying what is painful...
The problem of hearing. The problem -- what to listen to -- and just what is said.
Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning.
Indeed, this Spring, nothing seems usual. And how one yearns for the first morning of anything.
As if chanting, "today is the first day of the rest of my life" -- and for a moment, all feels so possible.
Today brought so many poems before "O Pen" ... and I wonder how Shakespeare might have dealt with it all. Sonnet 87: "Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,/In sleep a king, but waking no such matter."
Frost's 14 line poem, "Mowing" seems to join the master-mistress play on a - king --
mist-a-king; ma-king; wa-king -- nutshells hiding the nut in #87.
the whisps of hay, the scythe at work --
the word "swale" which contains the whisper and "wail" but means
"low, hollow place, often boggy," 1584, special use of Scottish swaill "low, hollow place," or dialectal East Anglian swale "shady place" (c.1440); both probably from O.N. svalr "cool," from P.Gmc. *swalaz.
The negatives: no dream; no easy gold.
the associations: fay/elf; idle hours
Dream returns bolstered with fact of work. And yet that magic of the hay, cut, left to rest in the sun -- and that too is work, the making.
**
The Digging: Seamus Heaney
How the pen is squat; snug as a gun in first and last stanza.
How the stanzas gather strength from 2 lines to 3, to 4, to 5, back to two.
to 8; to 4 to 3.
The repetition of dig and digging. How time inserts "his straining rump among the flowerbeds/bends low, comes up twenty years away;
Digging into a legacy.
**
Wonderful find of two poems by Rachel Contreni Flynn
Rachel Contreni Flynn was born in Paris in 1969 and raised in a small farming town in Indiana. She got her BA from Indiana University in Bloomington where she majored in journalism and history. She received her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2001. Her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song, was selected by Stephen Dunn as the 2003 winner of the Dorset Prize. She has recorded her work for the Bloomington/Normal Public Radio station, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was featured as The Spoon River Review's Illinois Poet in 2005. She also received an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Flynn works at Fortune Brands, Inc., a Fortune 500 consumer products company. She teaches poetry courses and workshops occasionally, and lives in Mundelein, Illinois with her husband, Patrick, and their children, Grace and Noah
The Yellow Bowl
Dead Center
Beautifully crafted -- the yellow bowl like a still life; the "if" suspended and accelerated
loneliness has lost its shape, and this quiet is only quiet.
Dead Center: Ominous detials and what it is to lose a mother; what it is to test a father;
stages of grief.
**
Louis Jenkins:
Earl and Telephone:
Poignant. Delightful. Earl -- all seals (substract the R) (and the seal voice)
and how we live by denying what is painful...
The problem of hearing. The problem -- what to listen to -- and just what is said.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
poems for April 27, 28, 29, 30
April 27
First, butterfly
in the waking spring
plays the flowers
Seconds yesterday's butterflies
in my stomach
at the piano
Butterflies
never staying long enough
to be cared for
Not needing to know
anything beyond fingering
the air in silent music.
**
April 28
Tones
affirming stone
like the one in the furrow here
as soft as a polished egg
waiting for the wind
to sway a golden stalk
with one red-winged blackbird
closer to listen.
Listen closer,
blackbird
stalks the wind
polished soft
egg in the furrow,
stone affirming
tones.
**
April 29:
In this poem, Tolerance and Vitality are vertical,
love (third letter of Tol...erance)
finds its V in vitality, and starts again with
the "l" . The format does not cooperate to see this.
A Deadman Tells about A Boy
who built cities
of words like this:
T
o
l o v e
e i
r t
a a
n l o v e
c i
e t
y
always holding hands
each syllable in love
with the sound of it all,
the sound of the sea
lit by day by that near star,
sun.
And the deadman explains
how fear started.
no one touched
how love crumbled
darkness sieved.
The dead man says
to keep building.
**
April 30
The 'Scuse Me Bird
In the garden this year,
a new bird has arrived saying
"scuse me... scuse me"
too shy to present himself
by the row of rhyming red tulips
under the weeping Siberian pea,
too blithe
to be begging forgiveness
or interrupting,
just a simple two note phrase
loud, soft, down, up,
"Scuse me, scuse me"
his own little phrase,
that turns two syllables
into something beyond song.
First, butterfly
in the waking spring
plays the flowers
Seconds yesterday's butterflies
in my stomach
at the piano
Butterflies
never staying long enough
to be cared for
Not needing to know
anything beyond fingering
the air in silent music.
**
April 28
Tones
affirming stone
like the one in the furrow here
as soft as a polished egg
waiting for the wind
to sway a golden stalk
with one red-winged blackbird
closer to listen.
Listen closer,
blackbird
stalks the wind
polished soft
egg in the furrow,
stone affirming
tones.
**
April 29:
In this poem, Tolerance and Vitality are vertical,
love (third letter of Tol...erance)
finds its V in vitality, and starts again with
the "l" . The format does not cooperate to see this.
A Deadman Tells about A Boy
who built cities
of words like this:
T
o
l o v e
e i
r t
a a
n l o v e
c i
e t
y
always holding hands
each syllable in love
with the sound of it all,
the sound of the sea
lit by day by that near star,
sun.
And the deadman explains
how fear started.
no one touched
how love crumbled
darkness sieved.
The dead man says
to keep building.
**
April 30
The 'Scuse Me Bird
In the garden this year,
a new bird has arrived saying
"scuse me... scuse me"
too shy to present himself
by the row of rhyming red tulips
under the weeping Siberian pea,
too blithe
to be begging forgiveness
or interrupting,
just a simple two note phrase
loud, soft, down, up,
"Scuse me, scuse me"
his own little phrase,
that turns two syllables
into something beyond song.
The anthologist
The Anthologist by Nicholson BakerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm never sure what to call the phenomenon of starting a book and giving it 5 stars right away, noting pages,
finding inspiration for new writing, and then mid-way, lose interest, and can't wait to finish it, not because I am being pulled by it, but just want the experience to end. However to call this, attention-span challenge due to overdose of desire to read more than eyes and mind can absorb, and then extricate my reader's responsibility and be objective about the book itself... is perhaps not as easy as it could be.
The tone of the book is chatty, slightly ADD, which can be both intriguing and annoying. Certainly Baker has a lot of knowledge, and you will end up with a mosaic of information about poetry and be able to construct a fine reading list. However, the final chapters seemed to fizzle and I would have been happy to end on the last sentence of Chpt. 10 -- "I think I'll do a quadruplet rhythm, a love-has-gone-and-left- me- rhythm: one gray-green bead and then three other beads of near-random colors, and then agray-green bead again."
I found the few examples in musical notation to be more an interruption and distraction. It's part of his delight in showing off, and his rambling manner. In spite of perhaps a negative comment here and there, I do recommend this book.
View all my reviews >>
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