Hymnal by Hafizah Geter
Apples, peaches by Donald Hall
Winter Solstice by Janlori Goldman
Late December by Joe Millar
Winter Mantel by David Livewell
**
The question comes up in my mind often, about the arbitrary nature of selecting a poem for discussion. It might be because on a particular day, I happen to be thinking about something addressed in a poem, or perhaps I have just read something about the poet, recognize the name, or simply, something in the title looks appropriate for the season, as in three of the poems discussed on the last day of December, 2012, last Monday.
What is it that we seek from poems, and how do we "complete" them as readers are questions that provide a mirror for our own self-interrogations as we read.
In the case of Hymnal, the discussion among the 18 of us present, was filled with different angles about this "block of 17 lines" -- whose form was as tight and unrelentless (no stanza break, so "breathing space) as the hard smiles of the aunts.
Do we know exactly what abuse or reasons for it the speaker refers to? do we know the circumstances of the father who at age 9 held a shotgun and what exactly happened? As David pointed out, we could argue a long time about comparative evils, and pit faith against our hard core beliefs. It reminds me of "the incoherence of incoherences" -- or how faith and reason/philosophy in their very argumentation will not come to a dialogue that can make sense to either party. Some agreed that violence can only breed violence, some not, but the point of a poem is not to support a "right or wrong" way of thinking.
Why do we laugh at certain details, cringe at others, and which associations are
merely our experience pinned on to the poem as opposed to images proposed to us by the poem?
Hymnal, as title is an interesting point of departure. A collection of songs of Praise. Can it be applied to the rigid belief system confirmed each Sunday in the hard pews, the righteous beatings? The end lines, referring to the spirit,
point to some hope, and also the triumph of the writer, to go beyond such confines,
recognizing how difficult it is to break through the cover ups, self-deceptions, the pain of injustices, etc. The theme of covers: the couches in plastic, the potpourri, the smiles, the "dress like roses" -- what we do to look our best despite circumstances pulls at the details of shotgun, switches, moonshine, and the rot at the root of a family tree.
By relief, Apples, Peaches, which refers to a jump rope rhyme, is a clever imitation of pure rhyme, but substituting modern items and Twinkies and wonder bread, move on to Plague and pestilence, Unicorn sphinx, German women's name, news journals, and each mention of death, is counted in shortened space. How many seasons, months, hours, days, breaths -- until we're dead, cold, stiff, rigid, eaten by the worm.
Clever but sobering. The rhyme allows us breathing space, unlike "Hymnal" and yet, also is relentless, and we can feel the squeezing of the undeniable inevitability,
as marks of culture, history, tick us along to the ultimate end.
Janlori Goldman's "Winter Solstice is "for Jean Valentine, about whom we did not talk, except a slight reference to her as a language poet, which perhaps is reflected in the occasional wide spaces on the line. The 20 line poem has a melancholy feel from the sonics, (slow sheathing of moon in shadow; flow in ... filter out... ripped roots... a meditative flow with the repeated images of round moon, home, space of curling in and repetition of "before that" as if circling through a nostalgic recollection.
We ended with the long title of Plutzik's poem, 3 lines long, which "coupled" with the three couplets. The contrast between realistic title and elevated language of the couplets creates a space for the reader to think on omens and fact, the fragility of what could be depending on your circumstances.
And now, we speed on the first week of 2013.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
poems for December 17
Poems for December 17 : NOTE: THERE IS NO MEETING DECEMBER 24
but we will meet on December 31.
Reindeer Moss on Granite by Margaret Atwood
Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo
By intuition, Mighty Things by Emily Dickinson
Baby Villon by Philip Levine
My Cathedral by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Prophecy by W.S. Merwin
Apparently, the world is pronounced as coming to an end, again -- and Jim brought in the spread from the NY Times Sunday paper of poems addressing this. Beginnings and endings are a great topic of conversation, and the poems read aloud and shared
above, all seemed to share in an understanding of cycles and connections.
We did not have time for Linda Pastan's "Mosaic", originally slated for discussion.
Starting with Atwood, whose conceit in "Reindeer Moss" works such a tiny living thing, stanza by stanza from the large, (language is gallic -- which as John pointed out penetrated most of Europe)to smaller units. Dialect, (David mentioned Yeats on Ezra Pound's translations, "clear as if said in dialect") then syllable, and the specificity of sound. And yet, like water wearing down boulders, cliffs, mountain tops, the moss, spores as rumours (both sound, and an invisible spread of what is understood) penetrates -- perhaps an indirect hint that language too can have such an effect. The tone and spirit of the poem has an ancient feel of reverence to it,
as do the Dickenson and Longfellow poems, "Intuition asserts itself" and tall trees contain the same awe of cathedrals.
In the Dickinson poem, the question of "who asks" and "who is you" takes a back seat, to the larger idea that "mighty things" don't need justification... It feels rather like we are eavesdropping on a delightful snippet of conversation where "omnipotence lisps" and in which we "overhear" sea in the see; eye in I.
The Longfellow sonnet has perfectly embraced rhyme until the final two lines...
"...listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship with out words.
Almost everyone had a favorite memory of a "sacred place", a childhood outdoor space where trees arch into an architecture of sacred proportions. Carmin referred to a relative who calls himself a "blue domer", worshipping the unhampered largeness of the sky. Kathy thought of Wendell Berry's Timbered Choir.
In Philip Levine's "Baby Villon", the details evoked everything from Kristellnacht to child soldiers in Africa, outcasts and boxers. Indeed, if you google, you'll find many boxers and the dates, 1924... But the last lines "knock us out". What humanity to imagine someone, who is everyone, as brother, cousin, as self, transformed
by the pain.
Joy Harjo: "Perhaps the World Ends Here":
I love the title, which mentions end, and the opening stanza which starts with "the world begins" and the metaphor of table: what do we bring to the table? set on the table? do at the table? from "a" table, to "the" table, to a specific series of "this" table, is repeated 4 times. (as house, as starting place for war; as where we birth, and lay out the dead; sing, pray, give thanks). The 3rd and 4th stanzas refer to table as "it", what we chase away from it; what happens under it; instructions and making men/women at it-- as if to carry a larger sense of "table" as life and life's instruction manual. The middle of the poem, not only made me chuckle, but provides a reassurance about our human imperfection :
"Our dreams drink coffee with us, as they put their arms/around our children. They laugh with us at our poor/falling down selves and as we put ourselves back/together once again at the table.
Ending with Merwin, his "prophecy" demonstrates what Dogen says, "One side of your hand is in the daylight./The other side is in the dark."
So... how will the world end this December? We take each word, to understand
the sound of world, as our "year" comes to an "end" -- only to begin something,
again.
but we will meet on December 31.
Reindeer Moss on Granite by Margaret Atwood
Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo
By intuition, Mighty Things by Emily Dickinson
Baby Villon by Philip Levine
My Cathedral by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Prophecy by W.S. Merwin
Apparently, the world is pronounced as coming to an end, again -- and Jim brought in the spread from the NY Times Sunday paper of poems addressing this. Beginnings and endings are a great topic of conversation, and the poems read aloud and shared
above, all seemed to share in an understanding of cycles and connections.
We did not have time for Linda Pastan's "Mosaic", originally slated for discussion.
Starting with Atwood, whose conceit in "Reindeer Moss" works such a tiny living thing, stanza by stanza from the large, (language is gallic -- which as John pointed out penetrated most of Europe)to smaller units. Dialect, (David mentioned Yeats on Ezra Pound's translations, "clear as if said in dialect") then syllable, and the specificity of sound. And yet, like water wearing down boulders, cliffs, mountain tops, the moss, spores as rumours (both sound, and an invisible spread of what is understood) penetrates -- perhaps an indirect hint that language too can have such an effect. The tone and spirit of the poem has an ancient feel of reverence to it,
as do the Dickenson and Longfellow poems, "Intuition asserts itself" and tall trees contain the same awe of cathedrals.
In the Dickinson poem, the question of "who asks" and "who is you" takes a back seat, to the larger idea that "mighty things" don't need justification... It feels rather like we are eavesdropping on a delightful snippet of conversation where "omnipotence lisps" and in which we "overhear" sea in the see; eye in I.
The Longfellow sonnet has perfectly embraced rhyme until the final two lines...
"...listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship with out words.
Almost everyone had a favorite memory of a "sacred place", a childhood outdoor space where trees arch into an architecture of sacred proportions. Carmin referred to a relative who calls himself a "blue domer", worshipping the unhampered largeness of the sky. Kathy thought of Wendell Berry's Timbered Choir.
In Philip Levine's "Baby Villon", the details evoked everything from Kristellnacht to child soldiers in Africa, outcasts and boxers. Indeed, if you google, you'll find many boxers and the dates, 1924... But the last lines "knock us out". What humanity to imagine someone, who is everyone, as brother, cousin, as self, transformed
by the pain.
Joy Harjo: "Perhaps the World Ends Here":
I love the title, which mentions end, and the opening stanza which starts with "the world begins" and the metaphor of table: what do we bring to the table? set on the table? do at the table? from "a" table, to "the" table, to a specific series of "this" table, is repeated 4 times. (as house, as starting place for war; as where we birth, and lay out the dead; sing, pray, give thanks). The 3rd and 4th stanzas refer to table as "it", what we chase away from it; what happens under it; instructions and making men/women at it-- as if to carry a larger sense of "table" as life and life's instruction manual. The middle of the poem, not only made me chuckle, but provides a reassurance about our human imperfection :
"Our dreams drink coffee with us, as they put their arms/around our children. They laugh with us at our poor/falling down selves and as we put ourselves back/together once again at the table.
Ending with Merwin, his "prophecy" demonstrates what Dogen says, "One side of your hand is in the daylight./The other side is in the dark."
So... how will the world end this December? We take each word, to understand
the sound of world, as our "year" comes to an "end" -- only to begin something,
again.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Poems for December 10
Great Things Have Happened -- by Alden Nowland
Contrary Theses (II) -- Wallace Stevens
Butterfly -- Margaret Atwood
Crickets -- Margaret Atwood
Bear Lament -- Margaret Atwood
I was going to start with Rilke's sentence, “Human beings are put on Earth to experience the beauty of the Ordinary”. But opted instead, given the rather loud sounds of the set up of a Hannukkah party which surrounded 18 of us, focussed on the "how" of delivery of a poem. Would these poems be different if read silently in the total peace of your favorite place, sitting in your most favorite chair/sofa/spot on the floor/bed?
The "How" tells as much of a story as the "what". If you start a sentence with "Oh, I suppose..." this will be quite different from a declaration, well, my favorite moment in 1963 was... Just as "But of course we were lying", which drops out of the sky to make you wonder if you should try to believe the speaker, intrigued by such candid surprise, and wondering what "truth" will be told.
Alden Nowland hooks us in, and before you know it, the hinge of the present, remembering the past, folds in the middle on one sentence, ""Is that all?" I hear somebody ask." and the second part of the poem continues the 4 am-cinnamon-toast-eating-occasion, is transformed to a trip to a country never visited before, where "butter is a small adventure" -- and then comes the confirmation of the Great Thing: "except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love."
The exception, imbedded in the exception, of the unique possibility in relationships (with perhaps a raised eyebrow for the 3) and reminding us to look at what moments cry out, "this is really special, really precious."
Emily compared the advent of expecting a child to the country metaphor: You think you are going to "Italy"... but then the child is born, and it turns out it is not the sunny boot, kicking in the Mediterranean, but the North Sea and Dutch dykes...
Wonderful poem allowing reflection about expectation, context, the "how of a moment".
Stevens had a very different approach, setting up oppositions:
not only concrete and abstract, but "natural world/human", the adjective "bombastic" modifying "intimations" and a sense of humor with "martyrs a la mode; alexandrin verve, not verse; wide-moving swans. Although not an easy poem to grasp, the unexpected adjectives like "chemical" to describe the late-autumn afternoon (yellowish, like sulfur), the sonic effect of cutting "c" threads through the entire poem (chemical, mechanical, barked, park, walk, abstract, contours, cold, conclusion, chrysanthemus) with locust and bombastic containing but the cutting edge, and sibilant, the locust joining the other labials in "leaves" and "yellow".
A touch of synaesthesia, "leaves falling like notes from a piano" heightens the scene of a perfect almost winter day.
The three Atwood poems come from her book "The Door". Although you might suspect with a title like "Butterfly" there would be some sort of resurrection, here, it is a story of her 90 year father when he had the experience of seeing one as a boy, and how it transformed his life; how now, in vain, he tries to return to that time and place growing up. She matches a tercet filled with natural detail of the child's world with a tercet matching the abstract world of his work as an adult. The former is followed by the crux of the poem: It must have been an endless/
breathing in: between/
the wish to know and the need to praise/
there was no seam.
the spotting of the butterfly, such a small incident,(heard parenthetically) "shot him off on his tangent. Those who wouldn't know the logged-out bush lots might call them poverty. For him, the wanderings of his life, cannot allow him to get back to meanderings of the river that ran through his 10 mile square of home.
For Crickets, many memories came up: Pinnochio, who is reminded by Jiminy Cricket
comes in the "consciousness" of the chirpers, the idea of finding crickets on the hearth, perhaps a blessing for the heart of the home. Beautifully constructed poem with the sound of the crickets singing first, "here, here, here, here" contrasts with their being stepped on...and for those that survive, there is nothing to eat. "We have become too affluent./Inside, they’d die of hunger." Now they sing
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. But we're as cruel as the ant in Aesop's fable. We have no more hearth for them. The poem could end here:
Nevertheless, they wake us
at cold midnight,
small timid voices we can’t locate,
small watches ticking away,
cheap ones; small tin mementoes:
late, late, late, late,
but the last song carries to four more lines; bedsheets (like shrouds); bedsprings (one thinks of source; beginnings, return) and the ear now hears ghost-like heartbeats.
The final poem, "Bear Lament" sparked a lively discussion about protection of animals, poaching, Eric Good, the NY Restaurateur who gives tons of money to save tortoises (maiming the beauty of the shell to save the animal)
The poem, rife with enjambements cutting endlines as if to whip us awake, addresses
3 levels of survival: environmental, both Earth, and Species as well as our own old age. What will happen to us in all these instances?
Elaine referred to Annie Dillard: Holy the Firm.
Contrary Theses (II) -- Wallace Stevens
Butterfly -- Margaret Atwood
Crickets -- Margaret Atwood
Bear Lament -- Margaret Atwood
I was going to start with Rilke's sentence, “Human beings are put on Earth to experience the beauty of the Ordinary”. But opted instead, given the rather loud sounds of the set up of a Hannukkah party which surrounded 18 of us, focussed on the "how" of delivery of a poem. Would these poems be different if read silently in the total peace of your favorite place, sitting in your most favorite chair/sofa/spot on the floor/bed?
The "How" tells as much of a story as the "what". If you start a sentence with "Oh, I suppose..." this will be quite different from a declaration, well, my favorite moment in 1963 was... Just as "But of course we were lying", which drops out of the sky to make you wonder if you should try to believe the speaker, intrigued by such candid surprise, and wondering what "truth" will be told.
Alden Nowland hooks us in, and before you know it, the hinge of the present, remembering the past, folds in the middle on one sentence, ""Is that all?" I hear somebody ask." and the second part of the poem continues the 4 am-cinnamon-toast-eating-occasion, is transformed to a trip to a country never visited before, where "butter is a small adventure" -- and then comes the confirmation of the Great Thing: "except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love."
The exception, imbedded in the exception, of the unique possibility in relationships (with perhaps a raised eyebrow for the 3) and reminding us to look at what moments cry out, "this is really special, really precious."
Emily compared the advent of expecting a child to the country metaphor: You think you are going to "Italy"... but then the child is born, and it turns out it is not the sunny boot, kicking in the Mediterranean, but the North Sea and Dutch dykes...
Wonderful poem allowing reflection about expectation, context, the "how of a moment".
Stevens had a very different approach, setting up oppositions:
not only concrete and abstract, but "natural world/human", the adjective "bombastic" modifying "intimations" and a sense of humor with "martyrs a la mode; alexandrin verve, not verse; wide-moving swans. Although not an easy poem to grasp, the unexpected adjectives like "chemical" to describe the late-autumn afternoon (yellowish, like sulfur), the sonic effect of cutting "c" threads through the entire poem (chemical, mechanical, barked, park, walk, abstract, contours, cold, conclusion, chrysanthemus) with locust and bombastic containing but the cutting edge, and sibilant, the locust joining the other labials in "leaves" and "yellow".
A touch of synaesthesia, "leaves falling like notes from a piano" heightens the scene of a perfect almost winter day.
The three Atwood poems come from her book "The Door". Although you might suspect with a title like "Butterfly" there would be some sort of resurrection, here, it is a story of her 90 year father when he had the experience of seeing one as a boy, and how it transformed his life; how now, in vain, he tries to return to that time and place growing up. She matches a tercet filled with natural detail of the child's world with a tercet matching the abstract world of his work as an adult. The former is followed by the crux of the poem: It must have been an endless/
breathing in: between/
the wish to know and the need to praise/
there was no seam.
the spotting of the butterfly, such a small incident,(heard parenthetically) "shot him off on his tangent. Those who wouldn't know the logged-out bush lots might call them poverty. For him, the wanderings of his life, cannot allow him to get back to meanderings of the river that ran through his 10 mile square of home.
For Crickets, many memories came up: Pinnochio, who is reminded by Jiminy Cricket
comes in the "consciousness" of the chirpers, the idea of finding crickets on the hearth, perhaps a blessing for the heart of the home. Beautifully constructed poem with the sound of the crickets singing first, "here, here, here, here" contrasts with their being stepped on...and for those that survive, there is nothing to eat. "We have become too affluent./Inside, they’d die of hunger." Now they sing
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. But we're as cruel as the ant in Aesop's fable. We have no more hearth for them. The poem could end here:
Nevertheless, they wake us
at cold midnight,
small timid voices we can’t locate,
small watches ticking away,
cheap ones; small tin mementoes:
late, late, late, late,
but the last song carries to four more lines; bedsheets (like shrouds); bedsprings (one thinks of source; beginnings, return) and the ear now hears ghost-like heartbeats.
The final poem, "Bear Lament" sparked a lively discussion about protection of animals, poaching, Eric Good, the NY Restaurateur who gives tons of money to save tortoises (maiming the beauty of the shell to save the animal)
The poem, rife with enjambements cutting endlines as if to whip us awake, addresses
3 levels of survival: environmental, both Earth, and Species as well as our own old age. What will happen to us in all these instances?
Elaine referred to Annie Dillard: Holy the Firm.
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