Poems for August 6
“A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.” Paul Valéry
Kim Addonizio puts it this way: “Poetry is not a means to an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive."
What sort of “poetic state” do these poems produce in you? How do they heighten the engagement with being alive?
Best wishes,
Kitty
Tree Marriage – William Meredith
Waiting – W.S. Merwin
Creek by Kwame Dawes
Serenade -- Virginia Konchan
it may not always be so; and i say by E.E. Cummings
Gulls by Wm Carlos Williams
**
Wonderful discussion... about connections, expectations, stages of growth that allow us to transform, accept, transcend.... with so many different "takes" and shared experiences.
Note: the Cummings is a rhymed sonnet -- One person thought it was "disingenuous" --
He has worked the form, without being trite, and gone to
a depth of love few can achieve.
That one bird... Terribly afar can be both acceptance of loss, opening to
the what is next, and feeling what was draw further away -- I think of the
French "terrible" -- as not horrific, but intensely great, almost God-like.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
comments on July 30 poems taken from June 2012 Poetry Magazine
“Chi cerca la vita, trova lo stile; chi cerca lo stile, trova la morte.”
Italian poet Eduardo De Filippo
(English translation: Searching for life, one finds form; searching for form, one finds death.”)
Today was a day of synchronicity... stumbling on the above quotation-- and then what
"Vermeer termed “dead coloring” or “underpainting” (a technique pioneered by Titian (arguably the most influential Italian painter of the High Renaissance) and frequently employed by Flemish painters, as a means of creating a layered effect on a canvas." -- which suited the poems by W.S. di Piero about art: Cezanne, a shoe box and Vermeer.
The 11 line "On a painting by Cezanne" evokes still life objects --the first 3 lines layer adjectives to stone, the pear, and doubles nouns of bread hills, tablecloth snowfall. The next two lines leap into the powerful image "The dog of work gnaws the day’s short bone,SNARLS a mountainside into lavendar and green." A single line about the viewer, "In the mind where objects vanish, almost is all." then another two lines about the elements, and the final three lines where the INVISIBLE is copied... "to improvise the soul of things and remake solid life into fresh anxious unlifelike form."
How to talk about this poem without quoting each line to show how with words, di Piero creates the paradox of "Nature Morte" -- the living stilled in death -- that "anxious" uncertain vibrancy of new, coupled with the opposite.
The three poems, taken from Poetry's June 2012 issue which coupled di Piero's poems with his essays from "City Dog" gave us some insight into the mind of the poet --
and his family: "The voices of my world were not tender and unquestioning". Snarl returns, "Everyone around me, it seemed, spoke in the brittle, pugnacious tones I still hear when my own voice comes snarling out of its vinegary corner." In a way,
objects in a still life become like family circumstances" filled with "extremity of unease and rage" I see in the energy of Cezanne's brush
(Although Martin referred to his Mont Ste. Victoire as peaceful... I find it unsettling.)
What we discovered in these poems, was perhaps related di Filipo's search for meaning, especially in "The Shoe box" a sort of collection of life-blood in memory, contained in rhymed, sonnet form. The rich texture of the diction (opening line: A high school mash note’s stammering lust),"snapshot glare" and the "loose joinery" of the first sentence, looped in five lines, then moves to dreamspeak to a colon marking the Volta. New sounds... "a wind-harp’s warp, words yarding across staves,
fluty sounds ribboned to sad, screechy tunes." bridge to "things" which turn out to be abstract, wish, desire -- all that lies in the thin veil between life and death...
ending with what we pack into our own bag of collected, protected items: fear.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring is a one sentence, "thin" column which starts with a painting, a blends into the here and now of a contemporary pierced girl. The discussion veered into what we see and judge... but as di Piero says in his essays, what counts to him is the "signature form (of) feeling. Then just about any line or stanza or phrase will enact in miniature the weave of the entire poem,
"unconscious squawks through the finer tones of consciousness." as in his final 4 lines: pearls not sea-harvested
but imagined seen put there
by a certain need and fancy
because love says it’s so
picture that picture this.
The hinge of "so" -- emphasizes the picture, but also refers to how love determines the way we imagine...
Levertov's "invocation" has a prayer like feel with a great wish for the protection of what we cherish, value, the calling on the Lares, or Roman household deities... The language allows for multiple understandings of both fear and hope in the second (final) stanza:
Deep snow shall block all entrances
and oppress the roof and darken
the windows. O Lares,
don’t leave.
The house yawns like a bear.
Guard its profound dreams for us,
that it return to us when we return.
Dove's November beginnings, works a magical music in the sounds of each of the 3 stanzas... one person wanted "zephyrs" instead of zithers at the end, to keep the wind image -- but the sound is far more effective. Winter... and aching in secret...with a tongue-in-cheek way of passing the dark times (memorizing a gloomy line or two of German) but promising to play the fool in Spring...
Although the discussion went in many directions, it was a satisfying romp through a small sample of June 2012, Poetry.
Italian poet Eduardo De Filippo
(English translation: Searching for life, one finds form; searching for form, one finds death.”)
Today was a day of synchronicity... stumbling on the above quotation-- and then what
"Vermeer termed “dead coloring” or “underpainting” (a technique pioneered by Titian (arguably the most influential Italian painter of the High Renaissance) and frequently employed by Flemish painters, as a means of creating a layered effect on a canvas." -- which suited the poems by W.S. di Piero about art: Cezanne, a shoe box and Vermeer.
The 11 line "On a painting by Cezanne" evokes still life objects --the first 3 lines layer adjectives to stone, the pear, and doubles nouns of bread hills, tablecloth snowfall. The next two lines leap into the powerful image "The dog of work gnaws the day’s short bone,SNARLS a mountainside into lavendar and green." A single line about the viewer, "In the mind where objects vanish, almost is all." then another two lines about the elements, and the final three lines where the INVISIBLE is copied... "to improvise the soul of things and remake solid life into fresh anxious unlifelike form."
How to talk about this poem without quoting each line to show how with words, di Piero creates the paradox of "Nature Morte" -- the living stilled in death -- that "anxious" uncertain vibrancy of new, coupled with the opposite.
The three poems, taken from Poetry's June 2012 issue which coupled di Piero's poems with his essays from "City Dog" gave us some insight into the mind of the poet --
and his family: "The voices of my world were not tender and unquestioning". Snarl returns, "Everyone around me, it seemed, spoke in the brittle, pugnacious tones I still hear when my own voice comes snarling out of its vinegary corner." In a way,
objects in a still life become like family circumstances" filled with "extremity of unease and rage" I see in the energy of Cezanne's brush
(Although Martin referred to his Mont Ste. Victoire as peaceful... I find it unsettling.)
What we discovered in these poems, was perhaps related di Filipo's search for meaning, especially in "The Shoe box" a sort of collection of life-blood in memory, contained in rhymed, sonnet form. The rich texture of the diction (opening line: A high school mash note’s stammering lust),"snapshot glare" and the "loose joinery" of the first sentence, looped in five lines, then moves to dreamspeak to a colon marking the Volta. New sounds... "a wind-harp’s warp, words yarding across staves,
fluty sounds ribboned to sad, screechy tunes." bridge to "things" which turn out to be abstract, wish, desire -- all that lies in the thin veil between life and death...
ending with what we pack into our own bag of collected, protected items: fear.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring is a one sentence, "thin" column which starts with a painting, a blends into the here and now of a contemporary pierced girl. The discussion veered into what we see and judge... but as di Piero says in his essays, what counts to him is the "signature form (of) feeling. Then just about any line or stanza or phrase will enact in miniature the weave of the entire poem,
"unconscious squawks through the finer tones of consciousness." as in his final 4 lines: pearls not sea-harvested
but imagined seen put there
by a certain need and fancy
because love says it’s so
picture that picture this.
The hinge of "so" -- emphasizes the picture, but also refers to how love determines the way we imagine...
Levertov's "invocation" has a prayer like feel with a great wish for the protection of what we cherish, value, the calling on the Lares, or Roman household deities... The language allows for multiple understandings of both fear and hope in the second (final) stanza:
Deep snow shall block all entrances
and oppress the roof and darken
the windows. O Lares,
don’t leave.
The house yawns like a bear.
Guard its profound dreams for us,
that it return to us when we return.
Dove's November beginnings, works a magical music in the sounds of each of the 3 stanzas... one person wanted "zephyrs" instead of zithers at the end, to keep the wind image -- but the sound is far more effective. Winter... and aching in secret...with a tongue-in-cheek way of passing the dark times (memorizing a gloomy line or two of German) but promising to play the fool in Spring...
Although the discussion went in many directions, it was a satisfying romp through a small sample of June 2012, Poetry.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Poems for July 30
Poems for July 30 ( A peek at Ekphrasis – “Vivid Description of a thing” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5918)
“What does it mean to engage directly with the world – look at the world surrounding you—and “repurposing of language”, take advantage of the familiar while making it unfamiliar and surprising.” from Naomi Beckwith p. 267, Poetry, June 2012
Invocation – Denise Levertov
November for Beginners- Rita Dove
3 poems by W.S. Di Piero
On a Picture by Cézanne
The Shoe Box
Girl with Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer
"Poet on a Mountaintop" by Shen Chou:( 1427–1509, painter in Ming dynasty, not to be confused by another Shen Chou, artist in 19th c.) http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc100/Art11.html “First you make a bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then and not until then can you paint the landscape.” John Marin, 1928.
The Chinese characters in the painting are translated this way:
White clouds sash-like
wrap mountain waists,
The rock terrace flies in space,
distant, a narrow path.
Leaning on a bramble staff,
far and free I gaze,
To the warble of valley brook
I reply with the cry of my flute.
from p. 11 of http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc100/Art12.html
“What does it mean to engage directly with the world – look at the world surrounding you—and “repurposing of language”, take advantage of the familiar while making it unfamiliar and surprising.” from Naomi Beckwith p. 267, Poetry, June 2012
Invocation – Denise Levertov
November for Beginners- Rita Dove
3 poems by W.S. Di Piero
On a Picture by Cézanne
The Shoe Box
Girl with Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer
"Poet on a Mountaintop" by Shen Chou:( 1427–1509, painter in Ming dynasty, not to be confused by another Shen Chou, artist in 19th c.) http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc100/Art11.html “First you make a bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then and not until then can you paint the landscape.” John Marin, 1928.
The Chinese characters in the painting are translated this way:
White clouds sash-like
wrap mountain waists,
The rock terrace flies in space,
distant, a narrow path.
Leaning on a bramble staff,
far and free I gaze,
To the warble of valley brook
I reply with the cry of my flute.
from p. 11 of http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc100/Art12.html
Monday, July 16, 2012
Poems for July 23
Poems for July 23
Slur by Jacek Gutorow
To The Field Of Scotch Broom That Will Be Buried By The New Wing Of The Mall by Lucia Perillo
Brendel Playing Schubert by Lisel Mueller
Fevers of a Minor Fire by Sandra Longhorn
New England Weather by Archibald MacLeish
Not the End of the World by Paul Hostovsky
Gutorow captures the land of not-quite/almost/inbetween. Applying the idea of boundaries to a musical slur, that softening of an accent, what links one note to the next, the poem explores the impermanence of time, supported by an elasticity in the 13 uneven lines.
Kathy shared a quotation about Lucia Perillo -- "hopefulness, not luck, fought for tooth and claw" -- hope is not that thing with feathers, but something gritty to face face manmade devastation... "helicopters chewing the linings of clouds above clear-cuts". How do we live our lives? Shrug our shoulders, rest in our habits? And even how are we "defibrillated" and to what end? Marvellously strong language that challenges...
Mueller challenges our instant reaction to applaud after keeping inside our emotions for hours... as if we cannot stay "where the enchanted live" -- without talking about
our guardian selves" there is yet this idea that we would be better off in a state
of receptive gratitude, rather than the absurd noise that jerks us away from the magic of a live performance.
Sandra Longhorn's poem has an eerie primal quality about this relationship between "Madame" and the subservient, offset by what seems to be a humorous tongue-in-cheekness -- the calloused tongue, lumbering; a little vampirish in the "neck ravaged" (based on your favored advice) and "pilfered blood" and red meat; What is this feral oath-- waiting to erupt as if inspired to speak by the spirit at a Quaker meeting? or truly UNholy?
What needs saying -- and who is in charge of ourselves -- some wildness? some consciousness that chooses the diabolic? In reading the author's blog, the inspiration draws from Lucy Brock-Broido and Emily Dickinson... and when spoken outloud, what strikes the ear are images which stand out in a bath of sound -- perhaps indeed, a very hot day, the return of inspiration, and a lonely writer,
addressing her muse.
A welcome relief then, to slip into the comfortable New England vernacular,
and talk about "summer weather..." where they'll be thunder for sure... although,
of course, the link to Sumner Boyden, buried in the New Hampshire cemetery, which brings the subject around to death, our time and place for it.
We ran out of time to discuss "Not the end of the World" -- for next week!
Slur by Jacek Gutorow
To The Field Of Scotch Broom That Will Be Buried By The New Wing Of The Mall by Lucia Perillo
Brendel Playing Schubert by Lisel Mueller
Fevers of a Minor Fire by Sandra Longhorn
New England Weather by Archibald MacLeish
Not the End of the World by Paul Hostovsky
Gutorow captures the land of not-quite/almost/inbetween. Applying the idea of boundaries to a musical slur, that softening of an accent, what links one note to the next, the poem explores the impermanence of time, supported by an elasticity in the 13 uneven lines.
Kathy shared a quotation about Lucia Perillo -- "hopefulness, not luck, fought for tooth and claw" -- hope is not that thing with feathers, but something gritty to face face manmade devastation... "helicopters chewing the linings of clouds above clear-cuts". How do we live our lives? Shrug our shoulders, rest in our habits? And even how are we "defibrillated" and to what end? Marvellously strong language that challenges...
Mueller challenges our instant reaction to applaud after keeping inside our emotions for hours... as if we cannot stay "where the enchanted live" -- without talking about
our guardian selves" there is yet this idea that we would be better off in a state
of receptive gratitude, rather than the absurd noise that jerks us away from the magic of a live performance.
Sandra Longhorn's poem has an eerie primal quality about this relationship between "Madame" and the subservient, offset by what seems to be a humorous tongue-in-cheekness -- the calloused tongue, lumbering; a little vampirish in the "neck ravaged" (based on your favored advice) and "pilfered blood" and red meat; What is this feral oath-- waiting to erupt as if inspired to speak by the spirit at a Quaker meeting? or truly UNholy?
What needs saying -- and who is in charge of ourselves -- some wildness? some consciousness that chooses the diabolic? In reading the author's blog, the inspiration draws from Lucy Brock-Broido and Emily Dickinson... and when spoken outloud, what strikes the ear are images which stand out in a bath of sound -- perhaps indeed, a very hot day, the return of inspiration, and a lonely writer,
addressing her muse.
A welcome relief then, to slip into the comfortable New England vernacular,
and talk about "summer weather..." where they'll be thunder for sure... although,
of course, the link to Sumner Boyden, buried in the New Hampshire cemetery, which brings the subject around to death, our time and place for it.
We ran out of time to discuss "Not the end of the World" -- for next week!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Poems for July 17
Could Have by Wislawa Szymborska
Psalm (1976) by Wisława Szymborska,
A Poem for S. – by Jessica Greenbaum
Tempo for a Winged Instrument -- Katharine Coles
Fireflies by Linda Pastan
Tanka – by Pamela A. Babusci
Pyrotechnics by Amy Lowell
Discussion notes:
Although there are different translations and versions of the Szymborska poems, the conceit and concept of both "Could Have" and "Psalm" have the hallmark of her genius, and her talent for endings. "There but for the grace of God, go I" comes to mind
in "Could Have"... we heard a bit of the Polish, the poem interpreted in sign language and accompanied by images and music. ). See http://movingpoems.com/2012/05/wszelki-wypadek-could-have-by-wislawa-szymborska/
it could have happened... it HAD to happen... this sense of the relentless drive of fate, whether earlier, later, nearer, farther off... and our role why some are victims, others saved... and the overwhelming feeling of putting yourself in the victims shoes -- but since it's so painful, we rarely do. Szymborska takes us right to the edge --not saying there is a duty to feel -- "your heart pounding inside the other" -- but like fate, that is the nature of things. How much can we allow ourselves to feel?
I brought up Ruscha's information man -- the words and feelings and thoughts we have not said -- maybe every 18 days, 19 minutes, 3 hours, we do need to say the word "Praise", or "love".
we are just one dodge away, the reasons and their opposites are useless. -- there is no explanation -- As Americans, we have had little experience with invasion, although we have our shameful treatment of indians, negros, racism...
For Psalm, we weren't sure what 1976 had to do with it -- general upheaval in Europe that year, rising unemployment -- or maybe Psalm # 1, 9 76 -- we need that many..
The wit is amazing: adjectives such as "leaky" for boundaries for man-made states,
the "provocative" hops of mountain pebbles, "reprehensible" drifting of fog for the physical elements; "subversive" moles, and "impudent" octopus disrupting the "sacred" borders; "conspiratorial" and "indecipherable" squeaking and muttering on "obliging" airwaves... verb choices: the idea of a privet hedge "smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river"! syntax. "Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers..." (great onomatopoeia) "among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant (between the border guard's left and right boots)... the incongruous details and cliches -- "Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos prevailing on every continent!"
Indeed, only what is human can truly be foreign.
The Alphabet poem for S. does not use the letter Y -- like the idea that a work of art should contain an imperfection so as not to be blasphemous by trying to be like God... and takes us through letter by letter the creation of words, sounds, recordings of human actions. "Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy." and the humor. That is why I will only use your initial...
Who is S. What is her name? We can identify with her perhaps better without precision.
The "how flaws Venerate the human being, aspirations Without spite"-- returns to the work of art (in this case, the poem) which hopes for good news... raising our Zarfs (goblets) to the names in the Book of Life, in this case, S. and her husband --
picking up on the theme of "could be us...)
The next poem made some think of a hang glider... others cliff swallows.
light of thoughtfulness as both weightless, invisible and inspiration. Thrumming
has a second meaning pertinent to weaving, although the closing sentence "Heart /of muscle, thrumming down swift" is enigmatic. The title holds it all together --
a poem all about tempo. Love the verb "uh-ohing"!
Fireflies elicited a poem Martin brought in which has the line, "I never understood any of the poems in the New Yorker" -- but Linda Pastan's Fireflies is one which captures the nature of these transitory summer luminaries with the short bursts of sound in irregular couplets.
Pamela A. Babusci's tanka fit in beautifully -- reminding Martin of the adolescent girl in the Movie Moonrise Kingdom.
Prytechnics also had a lovely 3 part "story of life" -- the intimate spark of desire,
the crowd, the larger political picture falling apart, and ending with the
infinity of stars... No one pays attention to the burnt fingers...
Carmin brought up the International Dark Sky association -- Bangor, Maine promotes the dark city -- so that we can appreciate the beauty of the night sky.
Psalm (1976) by Wisława Szymborska,
A Poem for S. – by Jessica Greenbaum
Tempo for a Winged Instrument -- Katharine Coles
Fireflies by Linda Pastan
Tanka – by Pamela A. Babusci
Pyrotechnics by Amy Lowell
Discussion notes:
Although there are different translations and versions of the Szymborska poems, the conceit and concept of both "Could Have" and "Psalm" have the hallmark of her genius, and her talent for endings. "There but for the grace of God, go I" comes to mind
in "Could Have"... we heard a bit of the Polish, the poem interpreted in sign language and accompanied by images and music. ). See http://movingpoems.com/2012/05/wszelki-wypadek-could-have-by-wislawa-szymborska/
it could have happened... it HAD to happen... this sense of the relentless drive of fate, whether earlier, later, nearer, farther off... and our role why some are victims, others saved... and the overwhelming feeling of putting yourself in the victims shoes -- but since it's so painful, we rarely do. Szymborska takes us right to the edge --not saying there is a duty to feel -- "your heart pounding inside the other" -- but like fate, that is the nature of things. How much can we allow ourselves to feel?
I brought up Ruscha's information man -- the words and feelings and thoughts we have not said -- maybe every 18 days, 19 minutes, 3 hours, we do need to say the word "Praise", or "love".
we are just one dodge away, the reasons and their opposites are useless. -- there is no explanation -- As Americans, we have had little experience with invasion, although we have our shameful treatment of indians, negros, racism...
For Psalm, we weren't sure what 1976 had to do with it -- general upheaval in Europe that year, rising unemployment -- or maybe Psalm # 1, 9 76 -- we need that many..
The wit is amazing: adjectives such as "leaky" for boundaries for man-made states,
the "provocative" hops of mountain pebbles, "reprehensible" drifting of fog for the physical elements; "subversive" moles, and "impudent" octopus disrupting the "sacred" borders; "conspiratorial" and "indecipherable" squeaking and muttering on "obliging" airwaves... verb choices: the idea of a privet hedge "smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river"! syntax. "Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers..." (great onomatopoeia) "among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant (between the border guard's left and right boots)... the incongruous details and cliches -- "Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos prevailing on every continent!"
Indeed, only what is human can truly be foreign.
The Alphabet poem for S. does not use the letter Y -- like the idea that a work of art should contain an imperfection so as not to be blasphemous by trying to be like God... and takes us through letter by letter the creation of words, sounds, recordings of human actions. "Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy." and the humor. That is why I will only use your initial...
Who is S. What is her name? We can identify with her perhaps better without precision.
The "how flaws Venerate the human being, aspirations Without spite"-- returns to the work of art (in this case, the poem) which hopes for good news... raising our Zarfs (goblets) to the names in the Book of Life, in this case, S. and her husband --
picking up on the theme of "could be us...)
The next poem made some think of a hang glider... others cliff swallows.
light of thoughtfulness as both weightless, invisible and inspiration. Thrumming
has a second meaning pertinent to weaving, although the closing sentence "Heart /of muscle, thrumming down swift" is enigmatic. The title holds it all together --
a poem all about tempo. Love the verb "uh-ohing"!
Fireflies elicited a poem Martin brought in which has the line, "I never understood any of the poems in the New Yorker" -- but Linda Pastan's Fireflies is one which captures the nature of these transitory summer luminaries with the short bursts of sound in irregular couplets.
Pamela A. Babusci's tanka fit in beautifully -- reminding Martin of the adolescent girl in the Movie Moonrise Kingdom.
Prytechnics also had a lovely 3 part "story of life" -- the intimate spark of desire,
the crowd, the larger political picture falling apart, and ending with the
infinity of stars... No one pays attention to the burnt fingers...
Carmin brought up the International Dark Sky association -- Bangor, Maine promotes the dark city -- so that we can appreciate the beauty of the night sky.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
poems for July 10 + the need for a Utopia!
1. two translations of Vermeer by Wislawa Szymborska
2. Ingeborg Bachmann: Every Day; I Know No Better World
3. Dreams – by Langston Hughes
4. True Discourse on Power by Peter Grizzi (2011)
5. Providence by Natalie Trethewey
The two translations of the poem by Szymborska brought up the problem of not knowing the original. There seems to be a language for everything -- not just reflecting a culture, but a language music speaks, as opposed to lyrics to a musical; how in Spanish one says, "The bus has left me" but in English, "I missed the bus" -- which gives an unspoken weight to how one views the role of fate, or the individual. As in music,
some phrases speak and stir the heart, whereas lyrics with catchy rhymes, have a witty glitter. Having seen the ballet of Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev with the choreography of Kenneth MacMillan, I was taken by the language of dance which captured the story,
the skittering pointe of the young Juliette, the love of love as the music arpeggios up with woodwinds, with a swoon down in the strings.
How to understand Vermeer, then. What does Szymborska mean by deserving, or earning the end of the world... and what is the role of a thing of beauty, and what relationship does it have with that? Is it that as long as there are things of
beauty, and until they wear out, fade, disappear, the world keeps going... or is it
that because of them, the world has no right to end?
The Bachmann poems used the same strategy as Advertisement which we saw last week -- juxtaposing contrary ideas. We celebrate heros, but war is not about that, and the irony of medals being awarded "when nothing more happens" alludes to the end of an individual life, as well as the delusion that a war might be over. In the case of Every Day, we felt the poem could end after the first stanza. The discussion revolved around what we really are "celebrating" on July 4 -- how easily we disregard the body count published in the City Newspaper, how every day, somewhere, something awful is happening, and we pay no attention with our summer barbecues and recreation.
I know no better world, as title, is contradicted by the first line asking whomever might know of one to speak. Who are we as a society... this sense of being alone,
and the dead, no longer part of the group of the living. The dream of returning home is caught in the dream of armament, caught in the dream returning home. A disquieting poem, where we would have wanted to look at the German original to try to grasp a better idea of it.
For Langston Hughes, we discussed the timeliness of it, the change and hope in 1963,
which today could not sound the same.
The Peter Grizzi also employs paradox -- what is a true discourse on power, when the word is not mentioned, and the first line starts with the word ghost... Time, space, which we know in THIS life, but which mystics say do not exist once we are dead, and witness: I have witnessed cruelty
break and gulp and sweat then
punch out a smile.
The specifics of how we mark time: storms, weather.
The final poem by the new poet laureate hangs survival from a hurricane on the word "Providence". It's from her book Native Guard. Last week's poem
Ship Island was where union soldiers took confederate prisoners – guards were black.
This poem had a sense of what it is like to be uprooted.
All in all, a fine discussion of how politics, government enter into our lives,
and different voices, time periods which provided us lenses. Human beings have always dreamed of a utopia -- and perhaps art gets us closest there...
2. Ingeborg Bachmann: Every Day; I Know No Better World
3. Dreams – by Langston Hughes
4. True Discourse on Power by Peter Grizzi (2011)
5. Providence by Natalie Trethewey
The two translations of the poem by Szymborska brought up the problem of not knowing the original. There seems to be a language for everything -- not just reflecting a culture, but a language music speaks, as opposed to lyrics to a musical; how in Spanish one says, "The bus has left me" but in English, "I missed the bus" -- which gives an unspoken weight to how one views the role of fate, or the individual. As in music,
some phrases speak and stir the heart, whereas lyrics with catchy rhymes, have a witty glitter. Having seen the ballet of Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev with the choreography of Kenneth MacMillan, I was taken by the language of dance which captured the story,
the skittering pointe of the young Juliette, the love of love as the music arpeggios up with woodwinds, with a swoon down in the strings.
How to understand Vermeer, then. What does Szymborska mean by deserving, or earning the end of the world... and what is the role of a thing of beauty, and what relationship does it have with that? Is it that as long as there are things of
beauty, and until they wear out, fade, disappear, the world keeps going... or is it
that because of them, the world has no right to end?
The Bachmann poems used the same strategy as Advertisement which we saw last week -- juxtaposing contrary ideas. We celebrate heros, but war is not about that, and the irony of medals being awarded "when nothing more happens" alludes to the end of an individual life, as well as the delusion that a war might be over. In the case of Every Day, we felt the poem could end after the first stanza. The discussion revolved around what we really are "celebrating" on July 4 -- how easily we disregard the body count published in the City Newspaper, how every day, somewhere, something awful is happening, and we pay no attention with our summer barbecues and recreation.
I know no better world, as title, is contradicted by the first line asking whomever might know of one to speak. Who are we as a society... this sense of being alone,
and the dead, no longer part of the group of the living. The dream of returning home is caught in the dream of armament, caught in the dream returning home. A disquieting poem, where we would have wanted to look at the German original to try to grasp a better idea of it.
For Langston Hughes, we discussed the timeliness of it, the change and hope in 1963,
which today could not sound the same.
The Peter Grizzi also employs paradox -- what is a true discourse on power, when the word is not mentioned, and the first line starts with the word ghost... Time, space, which we know in THIS life, but which mystics say do not exist once we are dead, and witness: I have witnessed cruelty
break and gulp and sweat then
punch out a smile.
The specifics of how we mark time: storms, weather.
The final poem by the new poet laureate hangs survival from a hurricane on the word "Providence". It's from her book Native Guard. Last week's poem
Ship Island was where union soldiers took confederate prisoners – guards were black.
This poem had a sense of what it is like to be uprooted.
All in all, a fine discussion of how politics, government enter into our lives,
and different voices, time periods which provided us lenses. Human beings have always dreamed of a utopia -- and perhaps art gets us closest there...
discussion of poems of July 2
Blake:
I've never seen a poem like this one: corny rhymes, the repeat of laughing
each line in the first quatrain, twice in the second, once in the third; repeat of green as woods, hill, and color of laughter (joy of it, air, merry with it picked up by meadows laughing with lively green). Lovely movement, like a breeze on a balmy summer day -- a sweet insouciance of a love poem.
Ingeborg Bachmann:
"In Advertisement she blends the bland hopes of advertisers with the syntax of lives full of very real broken hopes:
But where are we going
carefree be carefree
…………………..
…………………..
but what happens
best of all
when dead silence
sets in
This attention to syntax prepares us for the concern with pure language systems."
For more about her:
http://www.parametermagazine.org/bachmann.htm
Martin was the one who saw by taking out "carefree", the poem became clearer.
What is promised to us in shiny advertisements? The poem, Reklame, is translated by James Anderson directly from the German as Advertisement. Born in 1926, Bachmann spent the 50's writing radio plays, the third of which is called "The Good God of Manhattan" which relates to this poem. What is this business of dreams?
What is it we say, refuse to say, cannot say, hold within us, like Rumpelstilskin
delighting "that no one knows his name". What do we launder with our silence?
But where are we going
when it grows dark and when it grows cold
but with music
what should we do
in facing the end
and to where do we carry
our questions and dread of all the years
but what happens
when dead silence
sets in
**
Bardo, by Peter Grizzi, is one of those poems one can read again and again, where
as discussion of it unrolls, more and more layers trigger more and more layers.
This is the sort of poem, where if you don't know what Bardo is, and it's the title, it would behoove you to do some research...
St. John of the Cross, Novalis, Midi, as perhaps noon, where there is no shadow, midhaven as safe harbor.
The Tibetan word bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state", and the meditative waiting stays for a moment the incessant business we "whir". Carmen noted that Midi is also a company which produces electronic equipment, which corresponds to the mechanical whine. The stuckness of ice... and possibility of understanding flow, the repeated negatives... the long I of white, and short i's of assymetries, imagination, winter, midi, midhaven, solstice... God as the name one cannot mention...
The penultimate couplet underlines the loneliness -- "if I say the words, will someone understand them" -- what do children understand of their parents, or parents of children; what do we understand of God, what does anyone understand of anyone -- as we use the words "whirr" and "nether"... to get back to the initial "mechanical whine".
Reading the poem, it is reassuring that one is not along in asking troubling questions... "I am not OK, you are not OK, and that's OK" as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says.
The ending line:
Is there world?
Are they still calling it that?
marks this separation of speaker (in Bardo) from "other". Who’s he asking -- who is they?
It was interesting to puzzle about the couplet
my homespun vision
sponsored by the winter sky.
the warmth of spinning wool to be woven juxtaposed with the cold and distant, darkness of winter sky (and what does that mean?)
**
Everyone liked Black Boys Play the Classics by Toi Derricotte
this snapshot of kids playing in the train station; the white guys throwing in coins, the workers listening, the young boy enraptured -- and a statement on how we judge others: Oh. black kids can do that, huh. vs. "Beneath the surface we are one"...
judgmental vs. reflective...
**
Theories of Time and Space by new poet laureate Natalie Trethewey
is a wonderful invitation to think about the transitory nature of life -- how everything is constantly new -- the who we are, constantly changing with the where we're at...
Her simple phrasing: Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been ends up here:
someone will take your picture:
the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return
return where? the opening line of the poem, without a capital, "there's no going home" and return has no period.
The Kitchen Maid at Emmaus, based on a painting by Velasquez,
equates the servant with the objects she uses. We talked about how objects conjure up a presence of someone... a sort of "resurrection".
the painting by Velasquez uses strong color: Christ with orange; the very white of the cloth, the darkness of the disciples.
The last sentences:
...She is echo
of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her:
his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans
into what she knows. Light falls on half her face.
The other title of the poem is Mulata...
for Trethewey... this is her heritage -- for all of us... we are only part of
a whole -- and how beautifully put -- we "lean into what we know" -- but just like a baroque diagonal and sharp contrast of black and white... light is partial, as if divided between visible, invisible...
I've never seen a poem like this one: corny rhymes, the repeat of laughing
each line in the first quatrain, twice in the second, once in the third; repeat of green as woods, hill, and color of laughter (joy of it, air, merry with it picked up by meadows laughing with lively green). Lovely movement, like a breeze on a balmy summer day -- a sweet insouciance of a love poem.
Ingeborg Bachmann:
"In Advertisement she blends the bland hopes of advertisers with the syntax of lives full of very real broken hopes:
But where are we going
carefree be carefree
…………………..
…………………..
but what happens
best of all
when dead silence
sets in
This attention to syntax prepares us for the concern with pure language systems."
For more about her:
http://www.parametermagazine.org/bachmann.htm
Martin was the one who saw by taking out "carefree", the poem became clearer.
What is promised to us in shiny advertisements? The poem, Reklame, is translated by James Anderson directly from the German as Advertisement. Born in 1926, Bachmann spent the 50's writing radio plays, the third of which is called "The Good God of Manhattan" which relates to this poem. What is this business of dreams?
What is it we say, refuse to say, cannot say, hold within us, like Rumpelstilskin
delighting "that no one knows his name". What do we launder with our silence?
But where are we going
when it grows dark and when it grows cold
but with music
what should we do
in facing the end
and to where do we carry
our questions and dread of all the years
but what happens
when dead silence
sets in
**
Bardo, by Peter Grizzi, is one of those poems one can read again and again, where
as discussion of it unrolls, more and more layers trigger more and more layers.
This is the sort of poem, where if you don't know what Bardo is, and it's the title, it would behoove you to do some research...
St. John of the Cross, Novalis, Midi, as perhaps noon, where there is no shadow, midhaven as safe harbor.
The Tibetan word bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state", and the meditative waiting stays for a moment the incessant business we "whir". Carmen noted that Midi is also a company which produces electronic equipment, which corresponds to the mechanical whine. The stuckness of ice... and possibility of understanding flow, the repeated negatives... the long I of white, and short i's of assymetries, imagination, winter, midi, midhaven, solstice... God as the name one cannot mention...
The penultimate couplet underlines the loneliness -- "if I say the words, will someone understand them" -- what do children understand of their parents, or parents of children; what do we understand of God, what does anyone understand of anyone -- as we use the words "whirr" and "nether"... to get back to the initial "mechanical whine".
Reading the poem, it is reassuring that one is not along in asking troubling questions... "I am not OK, you are not OK, and that's OK" as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says.
The ending line:
Is there world?
Are they still calling it that?
marks this separation of speaker (in Bardo) from "other". Who’s he asking -- who is they?
It was interesting to puzzle about the couplet
my homespun vision
sponsored by the winter sky.
the warmth of spinning wool to be woven juxtaposed with the cold and distant, darkness of winter sky (and what does that mean?)
**
Everyone liked Black Boys Play the Classics by Toi Derricotte
this snapshot of kids playing in the train station; the white guys throwing in coins, the workers listening, the young boy enraptured -- and a statement on how we judge others: Oh. black kids can do that, huh. vs. "Beneath the surface we are one"...
judgmental vs. reflective...
**
Theories of Time and Space by new poet laureate Natalie Trethewey
is a wonderful invitation to think about the transitory nature of life -- how everything is constantly new -- the who we are, constantly changing with the where we're at...
Her simple phrasing: Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been ends up here:
someone will take your picture:
the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return
return where? the opening line of the poem, without a capital, "there's no going home" and return has no period.
The Kitchen Maid at Emmaus, based on a painting by Velasquez,
equates the servant with the objects she uses. We talked about how objects conjure up a presence of someone... a sort of "resurrection".
the painting by Velasquez uses strong color: Christ with orange; the very white of the cloth, the darkness of the disciples.
The last sentences:
...She is echo
of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her:
his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans
into what she knows. Light falls on half her face.
The other title of the poem is Mulata...
for Trethewey... this is her heritage -- for all of us... we are only part of
a whole -- and how beautifully put -- we "lean into what we know" -- but just like a baroque diagonal and sharp contrast of black and white... light is partial, as if divided between visible, invisible...
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