poems for June 6

Pasture by Ben Clark http://www.versedaily.org/2012/pasture.shtml
Cello's Teardrop Melody by Paul Gillie
to be sent separately: My New American Lawn, Alan Michael Parker (APR, 2012)
My Son, Under the Waterfall by Alan Michael Parker (Writer’s Almanac, 2009)
Lives – by Rimbaud

Where to begin? Perhaps the best place is the atmosphere 14 people generate,
reading aloud two poems that chose couplets, one poem with a preambling epigram about wood for a cello, and looking at two versions of translation of a poem from over 140 years ago...

"Pasture" is a complex poem, juxtaposing opposites like prayer and stalking with a bat; murder of lightening bugs and "visioning" angels; how to understand the sacred verb "anointing" with war paint, and then, without saying the word dead, the mother is pronounced into a clearing,
the adjective "thin" linking mother/son with her nightgown/his sweaty chest. We all sensed the rage...

The title of Cello's Teardrop Melody might trigger the imagination... but brought forth associations with nature -- where the wood comes from, the sounds of birds in the very spruce which provides a cello's form -- first the hand holds the bow... then drags the bow.. a synaesthesia of movement and sound and shape... Marcie asked if one didn't like nature, would one still like the poem -- Larry confirmed. A beautiful poem of connection/separation, the sense of a life cycle of trees and an entire year of school curriculum to think about --
ecology, music, words, geography -- from forests of England to Brazil and Pernambucco.


My Son, Under the Waterfall by Alan Michael Parker (who also wrote "My New American Lawn")
is a delightful snapshot of what a 13 year old can be and also the joy of waiting a turn
on "sliding rock" or under a waterfall... perhaps the tone is adolescent -- and yet, it is all of us, "everything seems/ not to have happened, life itself, and yet be/
dumped upon you". How do you hold the voice of a girl? the continuations and turns are delightful, the girl, being the one who calls on a Friday to ask about homework (hmmmmm) and feelings any adult can relate to "keep hold

of these feelings, of each single feeling
no matter the future, to stay true to what you feel"
only to get back to 13 year old reality next stanza:

"and not to give the next kid a turn"

Marcie asked another good question. Did anyone not like this poem? No. We loved it.
childhood memories revived and a comforting sense of recognition, yet beyond those adolescent years.

We ended with "Lives" -- pointing out the differences from the translations.. Ashbery captures "Amazement and strength that dazzles" -- the artist stance that requires an outrageous announcement of "this is what I do." Marcie was reminded of the music man...

and the whole sessions ended too soon.

poems for May 30

Winding up E.E. Cummings

Myself & Me(A dialogue)
Buffalo Bill's (Tulips and Chimneys (Tulips: portraits)
on littlest this (95 poems: #15)
out of night’s almosT Floats a colour(in (95 poems-- #47)
“but why should”(95 poems: #66)
that melancholy (95 poems : #25)

**
We'll start with:

next to of course god america i – E.E. Cummings (1926)
The first poem discussed, May 23, was written by a poet born in 1981 (77 years after the birth of Cummings) reminded me of his second poem below (in Section Two of his book, is 5 (1926)


I gave an example of visual/verbal synaesthesia with this poem – like a typewriter haiku.
(first poem from 95 poems – 1958)
l(a (first poem from 95 poems (1958)

MOOn Over tOwns mOOn -- an example from his book “No Thanks” (1935)

look at the OO -- do you see eyes, an owl?

the wind is a Lady with - An example from his book & [AND] | 1925 (first poem in the first section called Post Impressions)

i thank you God for most this amazing (from XAIPE – Greek for Rejoice: 1950)

O pen May 23

Love Poem BY DORA MALECH
E.E. Cummings:
From ViVa, III snowflake
Love is : (#39 of 50 poems) hear Cummings read it here: and listen
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/11427
Love is the only every God (#38 of 50 poems)
love is more thicker than forget (#42 of 50 poems)
old age sticks (95 poems #57)
In the rain (set to music by Hilary Tann) (from Tulips: section called “Amores” 6th of 10 sections containing 11 poems.

What does a Love Poem mean? Today we read through contemporary poet Dora Malech who captured for some the whirlwind breathlessness that takes away any words, yet uses the cliches of her time. Martin reminded us to think about what a poem invokes in the reader.
For him, not the magic of what cannot be expressed. I read the forward to "is 5".


This is not like his dedication to various publishers in "No Thanks" where names of publishers are put in the shape of a cup, but rather teases the reader to go beyond mere words or considerations of technique. He goes back to the poet as "maker" and how the images he makes compete with each other. He also extols the verb as the way to rejoice in "an irresistible truth" immediately cloaked in parentheses and referred to "ONE" the first of the five-fingered volume.

Today's discussion addressed the wordlessness of being in love.. the show-offness of art, the way words can be painted on the page to make us feel one way vs another and an appreciation of love as thickness everywhere.

More a general discussion on cummings than on the poems but a better sense of appreciation of Cummings.

O Pen -- May 16

We will start with a prélude, followed by the Kenneth Patchen we did not read/discuss last week, followed by two more love poems by him, a serenade. If time, Jane Kenyon’s
reference to Mme. Bovary
Prelude by Oliver Bendorf (posted in Linebreak April, 2012)
As We Are So Wonderfully Done With Each Other – Patchen (see last week)
The Sea is Awash with Roses -- Kenneth Patchen
There are not Many Kingdoms Left – Kenneth Patchen
Serenade by Kevin Young (posted on Knopf, 4/22)

So many of the poems left us puzzled, or out of words... so I shared eight more below.

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare by John Milton
two poems by Alice Ostriker:
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
The Vow of the Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog
Dogma by Nick Courtright
Crystal Flowers, 1949 by Florine Stettheimer
two poems from the book, Lasting: Poems on Aging, Edited by Meg Files
A brief history of fathers by David Citino
From Hafiz on Aging... translated by Daniel Ladinsky
That’s Not Me by Ruth Stone

**

The prelude feels enigmatic -- Kim's idea of transgender makes sense -- two neckties... tampered pronouns..
David brought up the reference of "olive tree limbs" and the story of Odysseus' bed which only he and Penelope know about--
so another secret. How does poetry allow us to enter "hidden" territory?
Starting with Patchen's love poems, how to understand a title, "As we are so wonderfully done with each other"... filled with beautiful sonorous images such as "floors of music" ... lips splashing the speech of flowers... and the tactile appreciation of soft curving...Sleep is an entry to a different milkwhite cloak of childhood lies but why the desire to stay there...
is it a love poem? the idea of love-making as spent energy, and sleep as refuge from waking relationship hints perhaps at the complexity beyond the (marriage) bed.

The sea awash with roses, with the repeating first and final stanza; the repeating pleasure (small p, end of line) and Pleasure (capital, beginning of line) speaks to the ephemeral which yet continues. We spoke of customs throwing flowers out to sea after people have died.

The next love poem, is filled with beautiful images all the ways to write beyond words -- write the lips of moon on a shoulder -- stillness over all the swans of the world; a pen of rivers and mountaintops -- and places -- on her pillow, her hair, and then to add a political note -- where the outside world can only be profanation.

Serenade, to continue with the music, is an odd mood for such a title -- a bit bitter (that'll fix me/for trying sleep)
It is anything but a serenade -- rather a tirade against sleep set as a plea, leaving the reader feeling the frustration of the speaker bathed in milky dark...

Thinking of Mme. Bovary evokes the novel -- flies, hot boring countryside... and then the curious crocus piercing through an oak leaf -- appetite -- not just for the luxury of sun -- but like Emma.. wanting so much more.
and then the ant... and a discussion of Methodists... (4 methodists hide a 5th) and Mary's point: is the twig put there to help or hinder the ant?

I like that we had no answers -- and could be comfortable with extra time, although I filled it with other poems that might have been discussed. The fun of helping poems along, how we might write an Alice Ostriker poem -- taking it to a narrative... finding wit in the dogs of dogma, and the skinny stanzas of Crystal Flowers --

all different ways of feeling different people feeling the world.

O Pen: poems for May 9 -- Larkin + Patchen

Poems for May 9

Thank you Mary for sharing Paul Muldoon’s review of “The Complete poems” by Philip Larkin in the April 22 NYT Book Review. “Like Bishop, Larkin is not particularly well served by having every napkin-or matchbook-jotting published”. Indeed, it is a good reminder or human expression, whether a Picasso, a 20th century archetypical British poet or unidentified soul on the street, we all bear many phases, and wear faces, fashioning and wearing us in turn.


The May/June 2012 issue of American Poetry Review shares many sides of Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911 – January 8, 1972) in a retrospective including articles by David Rivard, Henry Miller (Patchen: Man of Anger and Light, 1946), an interview by Gene Detro, dozens of examples as well as complete poems. Reading Patchen is to follow a crazy quilt, stitched with the “language of revolt”, distinctive “poem-paintings”, his pacifism, his heroic suffering from a crippling back injury, and a sense of the title of his last book, “Hurray for anything”. What is it we praise, celebrate, criticize, support without knowing? And what tone do we use? for bio: http://www.poemhunter.com/kenneth-patchen/ and more poems: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=Kenneth+Patchen



To quote Rivard (p. 23, APR) “As Patchen’s champion, Kenneth Rexroth wrote in one of his own poems, “today the evil is clean/and prosperous, but it is/everywhere, you don’t have to / take a streetcar to find it,/ and it is the same evil.”
It was hard to choose from among so many poems. If you have a favorite of Larkin, or Patchen, do let me know.

Poems:
Church Going – by Philip Larkin
5 Poems by Kenneth Patchen
In Order to (utube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjIe7EvqFQQ )
Nice Day for a Lynching (vs. The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-colored Gloves which uses only two words in the body of the poem. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175617
Lonesome Boy Blues
The Origin of Baseball
As we are so wonderfully done with each other