Last year, in December, I had shared Jane Hirschfield’s "A Hand Is Shaped For What It Holds or Makes” which ends with these lines:
"A life is shaped by what it holds or makes.
I make these words for what they can't replace.”
http://beautywelove.blogspot.com/2011/09/hand-is-shaped-for-what-it-holds-or.html
As this will be the last session of “O Pen” for 2013, I thank you all, grateful for your revelations and responses to “hold” after sharing.
As the Dalai Lama said of Nelson Mandela this week, “The best tribute we can pay to him is to do whatever we can to contribute to honoring the oneness of humanity and working for peace and reconciliation as he did.” Sharing poetry is one place to start.
Poems:
Dream by Eileen Myles
The Cloud – Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Published with "Prometheus Unbound", 1820.]
Mentioned in The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng)
Christmas Trees by Robert Frost
Taking Down the Christmas Tree by Jane Kenyon
So what do you think of when you hear the word "dream"? Sentimental "follow your dreams", sweet dreams,
midsummer night's dreams and folly, deep and troubling sleep, Martin Luther King-like dreams?
The physical nature of dreams is chaotic, with thoughts creating scenes that jump, are interrupted... whereas the idealization of dreams seeks a unified fulfillment... What works for me in Eileen Myles, is the repeated words, that create "recognition links" -- so "small signs" travel through a stanza break to:
I saw a brown
sign with wisdom
on it
I saw a brown
one leaning
with wisdom
on it
sign/brown/wisdom...
one leaning
and then, leaping through yet another stanza break
to a fringe of a mirror/leaning
first, over a pond,
then leaning against...
the moulding
cardboard or
wood which materials do you
BREAK
does your wisdom prefer
which a- BREAK*
partment
At this point, some emotional truth seems to emerge -- something universal enough for a reader to care.
I felt brave to
have touched
her love the screen
never mind the door, dogs and cats coming in and out,
now the sign is TWO signs and there is fear
and three forms of fading... and another emotional truth:
"because I do not want
you to have died in vain"
The question arose why people struggled so with this poem, but have enjoyed other "dream" poems.
Certainly people had a lot to say about it!
Reading the Shelley, but with the context of a prisoner in a Japanese war camp in Malaysia hanging on to it, heightened the appreciation of "Cloud" and poetry. The internal rhymes, slant rhymes, alliterations give something solid to recognize in spite of shifting shapes "between earth and heaven".
The last stanza, particularly the last lines, make the reader feel the power of the cloud-- the true possibility, one might say faith, of hope
"Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again."
The Robert Frost Christmas letter provided us a wonderful stage of a New England farm where a crusty farmer considers the offer of a slick city man regarding trees suitable for Christmas. The art of common speech,
blended with beautiful images, personifications, allow both a meditation on human nature, but also the relationship of humans to trees. There is plenty of craft to admire in such a long narrative poem,
but more evident in Jane Kenyon's "Taking Down the Christmas Tree. "Olfactory" light, and the very tactile sound of "tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop".
There is a wrenching sadness, with the moon shining with only "half a heart"... a destruction (pulling limbs)
which makes the ten year old feel "depraved". Comments included how we murder the trees to help us be merry.
The idea of the "kosher kill" where we give thanks to those we kill.
It is easy to read dessicrated...vs. desiccated...
The tone is not uniform, but ends with a surprising
"If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant."
Perhaps the dark foreshadows Kenyon's Leukemia...
but even then, I find hopeful to linger on the final word, "extravagant"--
a full acceptance of the moment, of taking down, rather like "full catastrophe living".
Friday, December 20, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
Poems for Lunch: December 12
From a Drumlin, November, Late Afternoon –Mike Yaworski
What the Heart Cannot Forget by Joyce Sutphen
First Snowfall in St. Paul by Katrina Vandenberg
I Looked Up by Mary Oliver
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
+ Untitled (Abraham Lincoln)
If you are already subscribed to Garrison Keilor’s Writers Almanac, forgive the repeats in poems 2-4— but even so, sharing and responding in a group, in person, elicits a different response to a poem perhaps already heard on the radio, or read in a daily email. Mike generously agreed to share the first one.
Hearing a poem, read by the author, can be a wonderful bonus, when rhythms and cadences match the poet's intent, and indeed, Mike's poem, filled to the brim with alliteration and parallel structures is no exception.
It evokes the landscape of Auburn where he grew up, which, even in the dormancy of November, offers a sense, indeed a real FEELING of endless beginnings, possibilities.
The topic of "sentimentality" came up with Joyce Sutphen's poem, along with a discussion of both title and final stanza. What is remembrance when coupled with the "heart"? Sutphen starts with a large generalization,
"Everything remembers something" that evokes the beginning of the Earth. Each tercet then proceeds to exemplify the idea of memory, cloud, turtle, tree, and finally the human casing of skin, frame of bones,
acts of the feet (dance) and arms (lifting up a child). Is the last stanza necessary after arriving at
this sense of connection? She repeats the title repeated, reversing the subject/object: the Heart remembering Everything, and embraces everything again, as something both lost and found and personalized
with a double meaning of "the heart cannot forget" by itself, but attached to the idea that if we love,
we then have a basis for what it is we will remember.
We discussed the process of poetry -- how often we can edit or revise our original idea, but lose something with such refinement. By taking away the last stanza, perhaps the sense of having the point nailed in so we don't miss it, might not be there, but the reader might not think about the "how" of remembrance the same way.
The next poem needs to be seen as well as heard, as if read "according to the syntax of things" the flow would not capture the feel of beginning drivers braking and skidding in the first snow. The delight of seeing
the poem scratch out the effect of the jerking whine of wheels as the girls learn to take the driver's seat.
Mary Oliver's poem repeats the first three syllables of the title to complete a sentence which leaves us in mystery: what is "it" in "there it was"? We thought of owls, the silence that ruffles as they use their enormous wings. The use of metals for color evokes a phoenix rising, an otherworldliness one feels as the sun sets, catches the "opulent" wings "wreathed in fire". We discussed the role of the judgmental reference to fear of death, limitation of faith which seems to come out of the blue. Such "misery" and "wretchedness" exclude possibilities. "Looking up" thus expands beyond physical observation to mood, with a spiritual connection.
Although I had originally chosen the Hopkins as a natural segue to Mary Oliver's poem, Elaine was quick to point out the connection with Joyce Sutphen's poem -- starting with the physical details and leading to the trinity. Taashire picked up on God creating Man in his likeness, which led to a discussion of the paradox of
God being thoroughly, yet invisibly present. What keeps us going is the faith in practicing what is filled with justice and grace.
We ran out of time to discuss Sonnet 73. Another sensual poem that starts with a visual observation of autumn leaf, the implied sound of their shaking and echo of birds in the branches (in undiminished choir lofts!) and both end of day and life. (sleep, as death's brother). The second sentence brings in the poet's desires... and how "self-substantial fuel" in Sonnet I returns in the self-nourished, self-consuming fire of 73. The third sentence represents, according to Helen Vendler, a change of mind, thus 73 is an example of the "sonnet of self-correction". She goes on to summarize: "Once it is admitted that youth wanes, it is clear that the only locus of true life is the present..." The couplet tie "leave" as noun in line 2 and verb in line 14
re-enacts the loss of love.
What the Heart Cannot Forget by Joyce Sutphen
First Snowfall in St. Paul by Katrina Vandenberg
I Looked Up by Mary Oliver
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
+ Untitled (Abraham Lincoln)
If you are already subscribed to Garrison Keilor’s Writers Almanac, forgive the repeats in poems 2-4— but even so, sharing and responding in a group, in person, elicits a different response to a poem perhaps already heard on the radio, or read in a daily email. Mike generously agreed to share the first one.
Hearing a poem, read by the author, can be a wonderful bonus, when rhythms and cadences match the poet's intent, and indeed, Mike's poem, filled to the brim with alliteration and parallel structures is no exception.
It evokes the landscape of Auburn where he grew up, which, even in the dormancy of November, offers a sense, indeed a real FEELING of endless beginnings, possibilities.
The topic of "sentimentality" came up with Joyce Sutphen's poem, along with a discussion of both title and final stanza. What is remembrance when coupled with the "heart"? Sutphen starts with a large generalization,
"Everything remembers something" that evokes the beginning of the Earth. Each tercet then proceeds to exemplify the idea of memory, cloud, turtle, tree, and finally the human casing of skin, frame of bones,
acts of the feet (dance) and arms (lifting up a child). Is the last stanza necessary after arriving at
this sense of connection? She repeats the title repeated, reversing the subject/object: the Heart remembering Everything, and embraces everything again, as something both lost and found and personalized
with a double meaning of "the heart cannot forget" by itself, but attached to the idea that if we love,
we then have a basis for what it is we will remember.
We discussed the process of poetry -- how often we can edit or revise our original idea, but lose something with such refinement. By taking away the last stanza, perhaps the sense of having the point nailed in so we don't miss it, might not be there, but the reader might not think about the "how" of remembrance the same way.
The next poem needs to be seen as well as heard, as if read "according to the syntax of things" the flow would not capture the feel of beginning drivers braking and skidding in the first snow. The delight of seeing
the poem scratch out the effect of the jerking whine of wheels as the girls learn to take the driver's seat.
Mary Oliver's poem repeats the first three syllables of the title to complete a sentence which leaves us in mystery: what is "it" in "there it was"? We thought of owls, the silence that ruffles as they use their enormous wings. The use of metals for color evokes a phoenix rising, an otherworldliness one feels as the sun sets, catches the "opulent" wings "wreathed in fire". We discussed the role of the judgmental reference to fear of death, limitation of faith which seems to come out of the blue. Such "misery" and "wretchedness" exclude possibilities. "Looking up" thus expands beyond physical observation to mood, with a spiritual connection.
Although I had originally chosen the Hopkins as a natural segue to Mary Oliver's poem, Elaine was quick to point out the connection with Joyce Sutphen's poem -- starting with the physical details and leading to the trinity. Taashire picked up on God creating Man in his likeness, which led to a discussion of the paradox of
God being thoroughly, yet invisibly present. What keeps us going is the faith in practicing what is filled with justice and grace.
We ran out of time to discuss Sonnet 73. Another sensual poem that starts with a visual observation of autumn leaf, the implied sound of their shaking and echo of birds in the branches (in undiminished choir lofts!) and both end of day and life. (sleep, as death's brother). The second sentence brings in the poet's desires... and how "self-substantial fuel" in Sonnet I returns in the self-nourished, self-consuming fire of 73. The third sentence represents, according to Helen Vendler, a change of mind, thus 73 is an example of the "sonnet of self-correction". She goes on to summarize: "Once it is admitted that youth wanes, it is clear that the only locus of true life is the present..." The couplet tie "leave" as noun in line 2 and verb in line 14
re-enacts the loss of love.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
poems for Dec 9
Poems for December 9
No Option by Byron Hoot
Applesauce by Ted Kooser (W.A. 12/3)
Days -- -- Billy Collins
Cave — by Mark Levine
The Dead – William Helen
Untitled by Ryan Van Winkle
I had a chuckle looking at the last names of the authors of the first and last poems-- but what is in a name is quickly dispelled by a title, or clever refusal of one. "No Option" starts with a limited choice of breads, which if used to teach ESOL might well be confusing. Why are choices limited to White or Wheat? The discussion brought up all the "might have beens" locked into childhood and how the poem elicits both things and people that may have been lost, as well as how our experiences are "ingrained".
Kooser's poem about apples also allows access to memory, and then develops both an inside/outside, kitchen apron with sailboats to sailing the world that brings a sense of "fractal" lines tracing a person in more than one scene. Perhaps my favorite part is the delightful anthropomorphism
"as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they'd come cold and sour from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in close to the fire.
Mark Levine's "Cave" provided many levels, perhaps an association with Plato's cave, and how memory shadows what we want to remember and truth... Is the boy the younger version of the speaker of the poem, the "echo" the equivalent of walking into a telescope backwards, equally distorted?
The diction of the second stanza mimics a difficult passage, to some metaphorical woods
We wended through a half-formed unintelligible
brushy wood to a place I knew called "cave"
and the final sentence has an contorted syntax equally enigmatic:
I wanted one, back then, when I had something to offer,
when I wasn't in this place, where light passes through me,
when I wasn't like this,
which is what,
when I wanted one,
as he, poor boy, wanted me.
I wanted what? a boyhood? a chance at something missed by wanting to be so grown up.
If not a sense of failure, certainly a sense of great sadness, emptiness.
*
The Dead gave rise as well to much discussion: Indisputable details of the Holocaust followed by clouds, reassurance of memory -- THERE you are... but also perhaps a sense of desperation in the "HERE I am", unable to join those who have passed on. He sees them "for the rest of his life,
doing all they possibly could—
forming, obeying the wind."
The ending reminds us we do not have control.
Billy Collins gentle irony was a good antidote, and we ended with the "Untitled" which is a style the poet has adopted where the epigram will create a portrait -- and the words in the epigram will appear in the poem
-- calling it "untitled" leaves a sense of anonymity, and yet, there is a vastness in remembering living connection where time is not in short supply.
As ever, these short notes do not do justice to a rich discussion -- pondering the ways words can pull
associations and details of our lives, experiences, and shared with others.
Friday, December 6, 2013
poems for lunch -- Dec. 5
Folklore – Dean Young
Symposium – Paul Muldoon
Betty Friedan’s Final Advice – Stephen Dunn
Tanager – Billy Collins
Concerning Essential Existence by Mary Ruefle
Untitled (Marie Howe) by Ryan Van Winkle
Untitled (Abraham Lincoln) by Ryan Van Winkle (tbd Dec. 12)
What truth is handed down through tales, proverbs, or even cliches?
Dean Young makes a provocative collage of "almost" sayings -- that follow the rhythm
and syntax of something familiar, but yet provide an eerie sense of something not being
quite right. "Feeding stray shadows/ only attracts more shadows."
Starve a fever,/ shatter a glass house".
There is an affable tone in sentences like "People often mistake/thirst for hunger so first take a big glug"followed by an anti-war "almost slogan" and a personal comment "I don't want you to be wasted on me" with a totally out-of-context "even though/all summer the pool was, I didn't/get in it once.
And then the game is rolling with repeat of wasted... more proverbs, details of hospitals, TVs, Civil War, until "Your turning point/may be lying crying on the floor."
What is folklore, but shared lessons to help all humanity... but leaving us, after a wild romp, still with the problem of coping with whatever comes down the road.
The next poem, called Symposium, shares a similar technique of borrowing from proverbs. Why Symposium?
Yes, it basically was a Greek drinking party, and perhaps this could be a fun party game. Wiki describes it as a "key Hellenic social institution. It was a forum for men of good family to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others. They were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of young men into aristocratic society. Symposia were also held by aristocrats to celebrate other special occasions, such as victories in athletic and poetic contests."
No only a title with a long history behind it, but the form is a rhymed sonnet. The last two sentences,
conclude like he who has "shot his bolt" ( to have already achieved all that you have the power, ability, or strength to do and to be unable to do more). Instead of "where there is smoke, there is fire"
"there's no smoke after the horse is gone." I love how clever Muldoon says so much nonsense which we can understand without needing paraphrase.
In reading Stephen Dunn's poem, I was glad to hear elucidation about both Betty Friedan, but also a reference
to how to deal with "unintelligible". Why three stanzas? Does "serious fun" deserve a breath after one stanza before plunging into "After the ceremony" -- have you forgotten dear reader, the slant reference to the ship's captain not to marry? But which ceremony, for whom, and why the advice in the next two stanzas.
The tone seems playful, a gentle irony which may or may not include the Shakespearian reference to "heaven" as "vagina". Jim was reminded of Joseph Campbell's "Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake" (known as the greatest book that nobody's read). Apparently Campbell's critique provided material for his later, Hero with 1,000 faces).
A different sort of irony is presented in Billy Collin's Tanager, balancing realities. He reminds us of how conditional perception really is.
Mary Ruefle uses parallel syntax to drive her point home -- perhaps her horse joining Muldoon's.
The Van Winkle poem merits more discussion -- but we enjoyed the wave form, the sense of tide coming in and out, sounds, rhythms, and sense of loss of language... "all I ever got from the sea" sounds like a metaphor... and the final newspaper "say" should wake up radar...
O Pen : December 2
November for Beginners by Rita Dove
Remembrance Day by Evelyn Lau
Advent by Mary Jo Salter
After Pisarro – by Byron Beynon
if the night is long, remember your unimportance by Grace Marie Grafton
Teacher W.S. Merwin
In today's discussion we focussed on titles: What does "Beginner" evoke, or "Remembrance" or "Advent"?
Something about beginnings, brings a sense of hope, as we remember the past and move forward. What is new,
for architecture? I think of the currently oldest standing bridge in Paris called "Le Pont Neuf". Certainly the poem "After Pisarro" could mean the traditional, "In the style of", but how does the perfectly aligned
right margin correspond to that? This 17 line poem brushstrokes a present moment long past, with the
long, final fragment, "His early canvas/for a new, tragic century, created from observation through "rented" panes. (I apologize for bad typos: 5th line: strength; of course 15th line, umbrellas; no period, line 16 after day; of course only one s on observed.
The two poems by Grafton and Merwin are similar: one created "after a line", although with a completely different tone, reflecting quite different times. Merwin's poem, from the Miner's Pale Children, was created in 1970, addressing what seems to be quite real pain, played like a record at the close of a year.
The parallel construction:
What I live for I can seldom believe in
Who I love I cannot go to
What I hope is always divided
supports an image of acute emotional pain, followed by "but" which changes perspectives, that do not rely on justifying, or sure promises, and "yet" this too is part of learning.
Grafton's poem, taking the line "if the night is long remember your unimportance" adopts a flippant tone,
with delightful details of play-acting including "no one wants to be the bramble. "Oh me."
The speaker of the poem goes on to ruminate on the role of the wraith, whose only strength is time
to ruminate on self-improvement courses. Cheeky, fun, but self-absorbed without letting the reader in.
But to return to the opening poem, the enjambed lines, the braiding of mood with a hint of King Lear,
We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
What is it that aches in us, that we keep in secret, what is it we memorize before leaping into a stanza
beginning with a gloomy line, yet which ends with Zithers? The titles is intriguing -- as we review the year, start with November -- the softness of snow... and end with promising to play the fool in Spring. It is not a primer, but more "where to start", November, which doesn't necessarily have the "easy way out" with snow-- but rather is a pre-advent advent season, to prepare us for celebration, born in Spring.
Remembrance day probes beyond "armistice" day. What is time when shopping on a dismal November 11th is interrupted by 60 seconds of remembrance? The poet doesn't make a break from that experience to recounting her friend's memory of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, including horrifying details of a street urchin's head in a bucket, the rest of him used for food. Bunkers provide relief -- and you realize, the speaker of the poem is still in the store, the 60 seconds of remembrance over, and back to the poem goes on to search for the perfect dress, and the store a relief from remembering.
Mary Jo Salter's poem, "Advent", in 20 tercets combines weather, building a gingerbread house five days before Christmas, and the Advent calendar with windows so carefully coaxed open to reveal the old masters who painted the Christmas story. All this while the gingerbread house receives shingled peppermints, and the shutter, snapped off, retrieved... with a mysterious last stanza "a page torn from a book/still blank for the two of us,/a mother and her child." Comments included making Mary real... the sense of vulnerability, with the future waiting to be written.
Remembrance Day by Evelyn Lau
Advent by Mary Jo Salter
After Pisarro – by Byron Beynon
if the night is long, remember your unimportance by Grace Marie Grafton
Teacher W.S. Merwin
In today's discussion we focussed on titles: What does "Beginner" evoke, or "Remembrance" or "Advent"?
Something about beginnings, brings a sense of hope, as we remember the past and move forward. What is new,
for architecture? I think of the currently oldest standing bridge in Paris called "Le Pont Neuf". Certainly the poem "After Pisarro" could mean the traditional, "In the style of", but how does the perfectly aligned
right margin correspond to that? This 17 line poem brushstrokes a present moment long past, with the
long, final fragment, "His early canvas/for a new, tragic century, created from observation through "rented" panes. (I apologize for bad typos: 5th line: strength; of course 15th line, umbrellas; no period, line 16 after day; of course only one s on observed.
The two poems by Grafton and Merwin are similar: one created "after a line", although with a completely different tone, reflecting quite different times. Merwin's poem, from the Miner's Pale Children, was created in 1970, addressing what seems to be quite real pain, played like a record at the close of a year.
The parallel construction:
What I live for I can seldom believe in
Who I love I cannot go to
What I hope is always divided
supports an image of acute emotional pain, followed by "but" which changes perspectives, that do not rely on justifying, or sure promises, and "yet" this too is part of learning.
Grafton's poem, taking the line "if the night is long remember your unimportance" adopts a flippant tone,
with delightful details of play-acting including "no one wants to be the bramble. "Oh me."
The speaker of the poem goes on to ruminate on the role of the wraith, whose only strength is time
to ruminate on self-improvement courses. Cheeky, fun, but self-absorbed without letting the reader in.
But to return to the opening poem, the enjambed lines, the braiding of mood with a hint of King Lear,
We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
What is it that aches in us, that we keep in secret, what is it we memorize before leaping into a stanza
beginning with a gloomy line, yet which ends with Zithers? The titles is intriguing -- as we review the year, start with November -- the softness of snow... and end with promising to play the fool in Spring. It is not a primer, but more "where to start", November, which doesn't necessarily have the "easy way out" with snow-- but rather is a pre-advent advent season, to prepare us for celebration, born in Spring.
Remembrance day probes beyond "armistice" day. What is time when shopping on a dismal November 11th is interrupted by 60 seconds of remembrance? The poet doesn't make a break from that experience to recounting her friend's memory of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, including horrifying details of a street urchin's head in a bucket, the rest of him used for food. Bunkers provide relief -- and you realize, the speaker of the poem is still in the store, the 60 seconds of remembrance over, and back to the poem goes on to search for the perfect dress, and the store a relief from remembering.
Mary Jo Salter's poem, "Advent", in 20 tercets combines weather, building a gingerbread house five days before Christmas, and the Advent calendar with windows so carefully coaxed open to reveal the old masters who painted the Christmas story. All this while the gingerbread house receives shingled peppermints, and the shutter, snapped off, retrieved... with a mysterious last stanza "a page torn from a book/still blank for the two of us,/a mother and her child." Comments included making Mary real... the sense of vulnerability, with the future waiting to be written.
Monday, December 2, 2013
O Pen November 25
Morning Prayer – Kazim Ali
Chorus by Catherine Barnett
Variations on a Theme by W.S. Merwin
I Am Vocal and the Salt -- by Alice Notley
Epilogue by Robert Lowell
In the APR (Sept/Oct. 2013) Kazim Ali has five poems followed by an interview with Christopher Hennessy.
He stresses that poetry traffics in the unsayable, not communication. Ali speaks of Emily Dickinson as a "totem poet" (for her penchant for mixing dictions, her breathtaking fearlessness and focus on the soul."
He further stresses that he works in breath "which is to say a sentence that moved through a poem, held by an idea." Language is material we use to create experience, and create a sense of self which is only perception.
For Ali, his love of syllables and vowels "could tolerate words and consonants because they came along with the package", but he works in breath, "how a sentence moves through the poem, held by an idea."
In Morning Prayer, four couplets, held at the waist by the single line "season to season" divide a setting of resonance from two questions. The first, about what it is in us that reaches to know what's after...
the second, an almost meditation on spirit -- is the function to give light, or to hold it.
The discussion of the poem included the feeling of sound as resonance, the idea that a potter can hear when the form of the pot is right from the sound, the image of the Grail, the idea of an autistic child (created by Elizabeth Moon, author) who states, "if light has speed, dark must too."
I enjoyed this poem more than the ones in the APR, partly because the words couched in so much white space,
allow the connection of thought and word, in a changing vibration that does not stay dark or light, contain or give.
The second poem brought to mind the function of the Greek Chorus, to comment on the action. The metaphor of the "elephant in the room" extended to the elephant squeezed into a church is both delightful and effective. I love the anthropomorphizing, the abstract "curtain of light" and metonym in a dirty gown of wrinkles,the whole galaxy shivering! The opening provided by elephant, opens the room up to the larger idea of church, not as building but gathering of spirits in a grand "all of it".
Merwin's poem brought up the musical idea of "fortspinung" -- a musical motif-- a spinning out of thanks,
with an opening, amplification and conclusion. Because of Merwin's style where each line suspends, able to
resonate both with what comes before and after, the theme of "blind gratitude" becomes a thread to life itself and the unknown that guides us. (The blind seer, and idea of the Dog Star, Sirius)
These lines
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
remind me of Ali's question of what it is "in us" that reaches to know... in this case not what is "after" -- but "before" -- unknowns that have no beginning or end -- and the opportunity to see, visit, revisit them.
The Notley poem addresses so much in the words, "Salt" both by itself (Lot, salt of the Earth) -- and coupled with "voice" and use of first person gave rise to a lengthy discussion. Above the salt, below the Salt and Aethel as lords, and athel as salt cedar that sucks up salt...
Martin understood a psychotic divided into several personalities and voices... but the question remains -- why ARE we here? Which elephants are in the room? How do we reconcile our complexity. Certainly a poem to revisit.
The final poem, rather like a epilogue to the poems gathered picks up Notley's concerns,
"All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?"
John provided the Vermeer painting reference with the map. I was reminded of this quote about photography by Susan Sontag:
"As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure."
-- from Susan Sontag, On Photography
The coupling of 4 adjectives, lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
for the snapshot intrigues me. Why LURID, which implies anything but "threadbare" (bright, brilliant, vivid, glaring, shocking, fluorescent, flaming, dazzling, intense;)
Knowing that this is the last poem of Lowell's last book is paradoxically reassuring. The first line which scans so nicely, "Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme"
no matter which tone attached to it (paying homage, shaking fists at form, at writing itself) remain insufficient to create something unique... Is the question "why are they no help to me now" perhaps recognition that something in the speaker has changed, as if understanding whatever "help" they had provided is also insufficient for the stage he is in. How do we give "living name" to each figure captured?
I love questions that prod us to open up our experience...
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
poems for November 18 and 21
In November by Lisel Mueller
Furniture Stephen Dobyns
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell by Gwendolyn Brooks
Cellophane: An Assay by Jane Hirschfield
The Envoy by Jane Hirschfield
Hirschfield’s translation of a poem by Izumi Shikibu
The poems for this week of November have somewhat of a thread addressing the role of time, and rewards of metaphors and looking at things from different perspectives.
For Mueller, she gives us the Hansel and” Gretl feel of fairy tale, or others commented,
a Rip Van Winkle-esque experience of waking up in the present, where a past life
100 years ago, is over, dreamt. "If I die before I wake" in the children’s lullaby
is replaced by waking to a present filled with coffee and sunlight. The longest line of the 19 line poem, “But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.” follows the line that “bad news is in distant places.” The Old Story and the personal “my” story point the reader to empathize with someone else living what could have been your life. It makes sense that Mueller escaped from Nazi Germany, and indeed, what might have been her story, was directed to others not as lucky.
I am reminded of Mueller’s poem “Things” in Dobyns’ poem “Furniture”, which provides metaphors on a meditation both perception of speed. The poem’s irony regarding perspectives on speed and our human tendency to rush into things (often missing the boat) and our view of the "stationary nature" of chairs, tables, is delightful. Ex. Facial movements and gestures, quarrels of chairs... and the fact that "They move
a little quicker than raindrops sculpt a rock."
The discussion focussed not on the cleverness, the contrast of our "persistent thought" and their inflexible humility, but the end:
"... Humbly, they allow
themselves to be pushed around, piled
in a corner, sold from an auction block.
Yet they always offer us the other cheek.
Let us crouch before them to gather up
the rich bounty of their wisdom. But no,"
Very tongue-in-cheek, with an enjambment/stanza break "they allow / themselves" which seems reluctant.
Martin offered the comment about turning the other cheek: if a nobleman struck a peasant, he used the back of his hand. So to turn the other cheek would force the noble to strike again, but use the palm of his hand,
thus putting the aggressor in the wrong. We would expect the a different last line after "But no,"...
not crouch, not gather up wisdom, but this:
"they don’t like us; they have never liked us."
I love the irony of the assumption -- which in a way opens the possibilities of examining relationship.
Going back to the "they / us" situation -- the enjambment for humans lies in the rushing:
"...as we rush and
rush and then arrive at our end. They see us
as we might see a speeding bullet. You ask
what has persistent thought brought them?"
Here, the human tries to explain what the non-human is about, in a way reminiscent of how each individual projects his worldview on others. Without ever saying how much we want to be "liked", or accepted,
or the problem of rushing about which interferes with creating opportunities for others to get to know us,
we end up with the world view of the non-human who has no use for us, much as we might need to sit on the fact.
Understanding the time period of poem delivers important context, as in the Brooks 14 line poem, written in 1963.
The hell mentioned in the title could be understood in a general sense, or the hell created by racial prejudice, and assassination of Martin Luther King, whose dream lies in "the puny light" of "wait". Note that the sentence continues with a semi-colon followed by eight lines introduced by "hoping"with the delayed object of what lies inward in little boxes of her will. The delay, the wait is drawn out, and she returns to the honey and bread of the beginning lines, but with a new twist --
Hoping...
"My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love."
What is "old purity"... what land of milk and honey keeps us going...is at risk?
The two clipped sentences on line five hint at hell: "I am hungry. I am incomplete." -- with no promise, guarantee of food, only the slim hope of "wait". The risk that inner "food" can survive outer "starvation" is great.
See APR Nov/Dec issue for Jane Hirschfield's discussion of this poem in her article about transformation.
The Hirshfield poem brought up quite a bit of discussion about cellophane/saran wrap, transparency,
promise of sealing (in freshness,) and the cost of transformation from "noble tree" to weightlessness.
What protects, yet reveals is not so simple: we struggled with the lines:
"Your art is audible. immodest:
to preserve against time."
and image of the flute, and old words in translation, "seen through".
This yearning for an "I" to be such a "you".
Furniture Stephen Dobyns
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell by Gwendolyn Brooks
Cellophane: An Assay by Jane Hirschfield
The Envoy by Jane Hirschfield
Hirschfield’s translation of a poem by Izumi Shikibu
The poems for this week of November have somewhat of a thread addressing the role of time, and rewards of metaphors and looking at things from different perspectives.
For Mueller, she gives us the Hansel and” Gretl feel of fairy tale, or others commented,
a Rip Van Winkle-esque experience of waking up in the present, where a past life
100 years ago, is over, dreamt. "If I die before I wake" in the children’s lullaby
is replaced by waking to a present filled with coffee and sunlight. The longest line of the 19 line poem, “But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.” follows the line that “bad news is in distant places.” The Old Story and the personal “my” story point the reader to empathize with someone else living what could have been your life. It makes sense that Mueller escaped from Nazi Germany, and indeed, what might have been her story, was directed to others not as lucky.
I am reminded of Mueller’s poem “Things” in Dobyns’ poem “Furniture”, which provides metaphors on a meditation both perception of speed. The poem’s irony regarding perspectives on speed and our human tendency to rush into things (often missing the boat) and our view of the "stationary nature" of chairs, tables, is delightful. Ex. Facial movements and gestures, quarrels of chairs... and the fact that "They move
a little quicker than raindrops sculpt a rock."
The discussion focussed not on the cleverness, the contrast of our "persistent thought" and their inflexible humility, but the end:
"... Humbly, they allow
themselves to be pushed around, piled
in a corner, sold from an auction block.
Yet they always offer us the other cheek.
Let us crouch before them to gather up
the rich bounty of their wisdom. But no,"
Very tongue-in-cheek, with an enjambment/stanza break "they allow / themselves" which seems reluctant.
Martin offered the comment about turning the other cheek: if a nobleman struck a peasant, he used the back of his hand. So to turn the other cheek would force the noble to strike again, but use the palm of his hand,
thus putting the aggressor in the wrong. We would expect the a different last line after "But no,"...
not crouch, not gather up wisdom, but this:
"they don’t like us; they have never liked us."
I love the irony of the assumption -- which in a way opens the possibilities of examining relationship.
Going back to the "they / us" situation -- the enjambment for humans lies in the rushing:
"...as we rush and
rush and then arrive at our end. They see us
as we might see a speeding bullet. You ask
what has persistent thought brought them?"
Here, the human tries to explain what the non-human is about, in a way reminiscent of how each individual projects his worldview on others. Without ever saying how much we want to be "liked", or accepted,
or the problem of rushing about which interferes with creating opportunities for others to get to know us,
we end up with the world view of the non-human who has no use for us, much as we might need to sit on the fact.
Understanding the time period of poem delivers important context, as in the Brooks 14 line poem, written in 1963.
The hell mentioned in the title could be understood in a general sense, or the hell created by racial prejudice, and assassination of Martin Luther King, whose dream lies in "the puny light" of "wait". Note that the sentence continues with a semi-colon followed by eight lines introduced by "hoping"with the delayed object of what lies inward in little boxes of her will. The delay, the wait is drawn out, and she returns to the honey and bread of the beginning lines, but with a new twist --
Hoping...
"My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love."
What is "old purity"... what land of milk and honey keeps us going...is at risk?
The two clipped sentences on line five hint at hell: "I am hungry. I am incomplete." -- with no promise, guarantee of food, only the slim hope of "wait". The risk that inner "food" can survive outer "starvation" is great.
See APR Nov/Dec issue for Jane Hirschfield's discussion of this poem in her article about transformation.
The Hirshfield poem brought up quite a bit of discussion about cellophane/saran wrap, transparency,
promise of sealing (in freshness,) and the cost of transformation from "noble tree" to weightlessness.
What protects, yet reveals is not so simple: we struggled with the lines:
"Your art is audible. immodest:
to preserve against time."
and image of the flute, and old words in translation, "seen through".
This yearning for an "I" to be such a "you".
O Pen -- poems for Nov. 11 (Armistice Day)
Droplets by C.K. Williams
The Letter by Dana Gioia
Seeing for a Moment by Denise Levertov
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Radishes in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Apples in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Noise by Alicia Hoffman
11/11 when day and month match, and eleven marches like two soldiers lined up to remember
those who died in battle -- and might-have-beens layer, pocked with pauses remind us that no matter what experience, the well-crafted poem "unfastens the psyche's fortifications" to quote Jane Hirschfield somewhat out of context. If we steel ourselves against pain, we lose sight of the constant shifting involved with living that has nothing to do with "finding solutions once and for all".
The first poem by C.K. Williams threads one sentence into four stanzas filled with commas, hesitancies,
on a rainy day in fall. The sounds, particularly the "f"s have a tremulous quality played against
the relatively hard "d"s (din and downpour) "g"s (gush, gutters)and final nasal of the first and last words (Even / again), rain, not, note, nocturne, own. Interior "n"s, (planted, piano, constant, inside, mingling, intensity, wondering, longing, anymore, never, instant repeating "ings" push the "faltering, fading" into its own radiant passing. The intimacy of an "I and you" allows the reader insight into the thought of endings, in seasons, in storms, in living, juxtaposed by the practice of notes.
Whether stillness is the white space, the curved breath of a comma, the way consonants embrace vowels,
each of the poems present a texture of "moments" that allows objects of the world to change.
**
Hirschfield remarks “A good poem turns fresh ground inside us, to meet fresh need. Gioia addresses the universal nature of expectation, which drives our desire, attitudes. Where is that letter that contained "life instructions"? Surely it went astray... and we laugh at the irony. Martin pointed out how expectations have changed looking at pre and post world war II; Judith quoted from As You Like It,
and it seemed the poem succeeded in "ploughing" us to identify new ways of recognizing need.
The Levertov poem: One comment was that it had to be written in first person, as it was addressing something quite impenetrable. "It" is repeated 4 times: It was... three times. It was a cocoon; it was deep water; it IS first things -- foiled against the word, eschatology, learned as a child:
( "The department of theological science concerned with ‘the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell’.) Kathy thought of Merwin's poem, "The Old Ones" -- they have come the whole way.
Dogs as Cerberus or plural watch dogs roused from sleep... Levertov takes "Seeing" as understanding in glimmers of things -- something that happens "for a moment" if we are there to perceive it.
The "war poems" roused much discussion -- Abraham/Isaac, and what didn't need to be; the short history of human kind and how Neanderthals acted (only able to cooperate in small groups) vs. Homo Sapiens ; the lie next to the cud... corrosion of tissues... analogous to corrosion of truth.
corruption... collusion of profits...
The two Rubin poems at first blush seemed "slight" -- which the discussion seemed to discount. Wartime brings us to a certain way of thinking... so a "distant" war as metaphor is less powerful than the images Owens provides us. Comments: heart of the radish lies on the red surface, bleeding...
apple ... no one tending the orchard. // Apple as reminder of back home. Forbidden fruit... Greek legend.
We concluded with Hoffman's poem, the final one in her book, "Like Stardust in the Peat Moss".
What is noisome... and what is it we say we do, tell about, as opposed to the silent unfurling being of a fern.
The Letter by Dana Gioia
Seeing for a Moment by Denise Levertov
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Radishes in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Apples in War Time by Stan Sanvel Rubin
Noise by Alicia Hoffman
11/11 when day and month match, and eleven marches like two soldiers lined up to remember
those who died in battle -- and might-have-beens layer, pocked with pauses remind us that no matter what experience, the well-crafted poem "unfastens the psyche's fortifications" to quote Jane Hirschfield somewhat out of context. If we steel ourselves against pain, we lose sight of the constant shifting involved with living that has nothing to do with "finding solutions once and for all".
The first poem by C.K. Williams threads one sentence into four stanzas filled with commas, hesitancies,
on a rainy day in fall. The sounds, particularly the "f"s have a tremulous quality played against
the relatively hard "d"s (din and downpour) "g"s (gush, gutters)and final nasal of the first and last words (Even / again), rain, not, note, nocturne, own. Interior "n"s, (planted, piano, constant, inside, mingling, intensity, wondering, longing, anymore, never, instant repeating "ings" push the "faltering, fading" into its own radiant passing. The intimacy of an "I and you" allows the reader insight into the thought of endings, in seasons, in storms, in living, juxtaposed by the practice of notes.
Whether stillness is the white space, the curved breath of a comma, the way consonants embrace vowels,
each of the poems present a texture of "moments" that allows objects of the world to change.
**
Hirschfield remarks “A good poem turns fresh ground inside us, to meet fresh need. Gioia addresses the universal nature of expectation, which drives our desire, attitudes. Where is that letter that contained "life instructions"? Surely it went astray... and we laugh at the irony. Martin pointed out how expectations have changed looking at pre and post world war II; Judith quoted from As You Like It,
and it seemed the poem succeeded in "ploughing" us to identify new ways of recognizing need.
The Levertov poem: One comment was that it had to be written in first person, as it was addressing something quite impenetrable. "It" is repeated 4 times: It was... three times. It was a cocoon; it was deep water; it IS first things -- foiled against the word, eschatology, learned as a child:
( "The department of theological science concerned with ‘the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell’.) Kathy thought of Merwin's poem, "The Old Ones" -- they have come the whole way.
Dogs as Cerberus or plural watch dogs roused from sleep... Levertov takes "Seeing" as understanding in glimmers of things -- something that happens "for a moment" if we are there to perceive it.
The "war poems" roused much discussion -- Abraham/Isaac, and what didn't need to be; the short history of human kind and how Neanderthals acted (only able to cooperate in small groups) vs. Homo Sapiens ; the lie next to the cud... corrosion of tissues... analogous to corrosion of truth.
corruption... collusion of profits...
The two Rubin poems at first blush seemed "slight" -- which the discussion seemed to discount. Wartime brings us to a certain way of thinking... so a "distant" war as metaphor is less powerful than the images Owens provides us. Comments: heart of the radish lies on the red surface, bleeding...
apple ... no one tending the orchard. // Apple as reminder of back home. Forbidden fruit... Greek legend.
We concluded with Hoffman's poem, the final one in her book, "Like Stardust in the Peat Moss".
What is noisome... and what is it we say we do, tell about, as opposed to the silent unfurling being of a fern.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Poems for Nov. 4 -- O Pen
From the Poetry Foundation -- Poems for Halloween
"Thomas Moore, Edgar Allan Poe, and Christina Rossetti tell rhyming tales perfect for chilling spines around the campfire. Shakespeare’s singing charmers from Macbeth and Sexton’s “lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind” are some of poetry’s most infamous witches. We’ll never look at tree branches with an innocent eye again, thanks to Paul Laurence Dunbar and Louise Glück; Adelaide Crapsey and Mary Karr ensure the same for darkened windows. Michael Collier and Michael Waters mischievously depict the gender play and genial debauchery of costumes, while W.S. Di Piero and Carl Sandburg warn us that Halloween is a day when real danger might look fake, and vice versa. We get a peek into the demons and spirits of other cultures via Annie Finch and Rae Armantrout: whether you say ghost, genie, or djinn, the tingle in the spine is universal.
“Djinn” by Rae Armantrout
“All Souls” by Michael Collier: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178287
“To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window” by Adelaide Crapsey: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175531
“The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173459
“Field of Skulls” by Mary Karr: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171884
“A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp” by Thomas Moore: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174046
“To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad” by Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174155
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174262
“Her Kind” by Anne Sexton: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171268
“Song of the Witches” by William Shakespeare: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171942
I picked three from here: What is real, and what spirits lurk in trees... followed by three poems
Samhain BY ANNIE FINCH
All Hallows BY LOUISE GLÜCK
Theme in Yellow BY CARL SANDBURG
*
and
Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker
Study by Alicia Hoffman
The Lost Garden by Dana Gioia
**
DISCUSSION
I love this group! I love that Judith, as the walking memory, will pull out the pronunciation of Samhain (don't pronounce the M) and Rich picks up her invitation to set All Hallows by GLÜCK to music, and the wonderful interactions as we all strive in our way to understand the threads pulled up by the poems.
Annie Finch seduces the reader with sound, stiching past/present, neolithic amber, ancestors and dual meanings (veil, leave). What hedge of memory do we peep through, peel away, preserve, we who "die ourselves". This poem is satisfying, and a perfect meditative trigger for All Soul's.
I didn't know that the superstition of looking at the moon through tree branches will bring trouble, but Gluck certainly brings a chill with her "toothed moon" (optimists see a smile, pessimists see a threat)
like the choice of seeing "...barrenness/
of harvest or pestilence." "Come here little one... and the soul creeps out of the tree" transcends the sense of eerie vacancy, perhaps like Demeter longing for the return of Spring and her daughter. I loved the story of believing that Jesus lived in the knothole of a family's magnolia tree! But is such childlike thinking not the realm of poetry -- where truth relies on an army of lies ?(to quote Winston Churchill).
The delight of anthropomorphizing a pumpkin who speaks in the first person in Sandburg's poem reminded some of his children's stories (Rutabaga Tales) set in the land of Liver and Onions.
I had read the Barbara Crooker poem "All Saints" in the beginning -- and we enjoyed yet another way of looking at "ordinary" -- where the usual accidents didn't seem to happen. The sounds (alliterative B, L, P, SK's) the rounding of edges from "squares of light" to "circles of sunlight", the chuckle elicited by the line "I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb" the magic of the baby's roadways made in the "sofa's ridges and hills" paint a magic that we often forget to tap into.
The final 10-line, comma-stuffed sentence, speaks of the meal consumed only to illustrate the pause of a different kind of light:
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
We are not the ones in charge of the stars turning on. But are left with an example of how to unwrap a day like a gift.
Alicia Hoffman's opening poem from her new book, "Starlight in the Peat Moss" works on the same theme. She picks an artist’s word, Study, and like Michelangelo, carving away stone to find what is revealed, calls on Light to help us see beyond the ordinary.
X-ray leads to the reassurance that “It’s not a far stretch, this dark/room of ourselves.”
But Study might also be the location, or the continuing verb of what we do to render
into art and word what is so close to us, and yet not known.
Finally, the Dana Gioia poem, the Lost Garden, gave rise to a long discussion about desire --
how he treats the "subtraction of desire..." as a quality. What is loss? Why is "cool" for something normally hot, something positive?
We brought up stages of grieving and how it is a blessing to be reminded of the
image of who we are inside oneself... "Oh I still have that inside me."
We don’t wish for what is not... the game of "if only" or "I wish, which impoverishes the present.
We better understand the "I want" of the way we were, still can glimpse the possible "perfect Eden"--
Luscious language, beguiling with an old-fashioned flavor, yet avoiding cliche.
All these poems ask to be read again, pondered again.
"Thomas Moore, Edgar Allan Poe, and Christina Rossetti tell rhyming tales perfect for chilling spines around the campfire. Shakespeare’s singing charmers from Macbeth and Sexton’s “lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind” are some of poetry’s most infamous witches. We’ll never look at tree branches with an innocent eye again, thanks to Paul Laurence Dunbar and Louise Glück; Adelaide Crapsey and Mary Karr ensure the same for darkened windows. Michael Collier and Michael Waters mischievously depict the gender play and genial debauchery of costumes, while W.S. Di Piero and Carl Sandburg warn us that Halloween is a day when real danger might look fake, and vice versa. We get a peek into the demons and spirits of other cultures via Annie Finch and Rae Armantrout: whether you say ghost, genie, or djinn, the tingle in the spine is universal.
“Djinn” by Rae Armantrout
“All Souls” by Michael Collier: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178287
“To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window” by Adelaide Crapsey: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175531
“The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173459
“Field of Skulls” by Mary Karr: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171884
“A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp” by Thomas Moore: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174046
“To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad” by Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174155
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174262
“Her Kind” by Anne Sexton: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171268
“Song of the Witches” by William Shakespeare: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171942
I picked three from here: What is real, and what spirits lurk in trees... followed by three poems
Samhain BY ANNIE FINCH
All Hallows BY LOUISE GLÜCK
Theme in Yellow BY CARL SANDBURG
*
and
Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker
Study by Alicia Hoffman
The Lost Garden by Dana Gioia
**
DISCUSSION
I love this group! I love that Judith, as the walking memory, will pull out the pronunciation of Samhain (don't pronounce the M) and Rich picks up her invitation to set All Hallows by GLÜCK to music, and the wonderful interactions as we all strive in our way to understand the threads pulled up by the poems.
Annie Finch seduces the reader with sound, stiching past/present, neolithic amber, ancestors and dual meanings (veil, leave). What hedge of memory do we peep through, peel away, preserve, we who "die ourselves". This poem is satisfying, and a perfect meditative trigger for All Soul's.
I didn't know that the superstition of looking at the moon through tree branches will bring trouble, but Gluck certainly brings a chill with her "toothed moon" (optimists see a smile, pessimists see a threat)
like the choice of seeing "...barrenness/
of harvest or pestilence." "Come here little one... and the soul creeps out of the tree" transcends the sense of eerie vacancy, perhaps like Demeter longing for the return of Spring and her daughter. I loved the story of believing that Jesus lived in the knothole of a family's magnolia tree! But is such childlike thinking not the realm of poetry -- where truth relies on an army of lies ?(to quote Winston Churchill).
The delight of anthropomorphizing a pumpkin who speaks in the first person in Sandburg's poem reminded some of his children's stories (Rutabaga Tales) set in the land of Liver and Onions.
I had read the Barbara Crooker poem "All Saints" in the beginning -- and we enjoyed yet another way of looking at "ordinary" -- where the usual accidents didn't seem to happen. The sounds (alliterative B, L, P, SK's) the rounding of edges from "squares of light" to "circles of sunlight", the chuckle elicited by the line "I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb" the magic of the baby's roadways made in the "sofa's ridges and hills" paint a magic that we often forget to tap into.
The final 10-line, comma-stuffed sentence, speaks of the meal consumed only to illustrate the pause of a different kind of light:
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
We are not the ones in charge of the stars turning on. But are left with an example of how to unwrap a day like a gift.
Alicia Hoffman's opening poem from her new book, "Starlight in the Peat Moss" works on the same theme. She picks an artist’s word, Study, and like Michelangelo, carving away stone to find what is revealed, calls on Light to help us see beyond the ordinary.
X-ray leads to the reassurance that “It’s not a far stretch, this dark/room of ourselves.”
But Study might also be the location, or the continuing verb of what we do to render
into art and word what is so close to us, and yet not known.
Finally, the Dana Gioia poem, the Lost Garden, gave rise to a long discussion about desire --
how he treats the "subtraction of desire..." as a quality. What is loss? Why is "cool" for something normally hot, something positive?
We brought up stages of grieving and how it is a blessing to be reminded of the
image of who we are inside oneself... "Oh I still have that inside me."
We don’t wish for what is not... the game of "if only" or "I wish, which impoverishes the present.
We better understand the "I want" of the way we were, still can glimpse the possible "perfect Eden"--
Luscious language, beguiling with an old-fashioned flavor, yet avoiding cliche.
All these poems ask to be read again, pondered again.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Poems for Lunch -- November 6
I read the November issue of Poetry after our discussion 10/31 about Whitman's "Wound Dresser" and felt as if Tom Sleigh had been privy to it. Tom Sleigh's article starts with his return from Mogadishu, Somalia and sources of rage. And then he continues with insights about the much-neglected David Jones, the great English/Welsh/Cockney painter and poet,author of "In Parenthesis" in part about his experience in WWI.
The title of this long work perhaps can shed light on Whitman's use of parentheses. WWI was like a "curious existence in parentheses" -- but how do you make sense of the 19,000 men killed in one day in Mametz woods?
Jones makes the terror and chaos real through the accents of the voices, rhythms of vernacular and slang, and sensual detail.
Once Jones said he wanted poetry to “be incarnational” – literally “dressing the spirit in flesh”.
There are no Keatsian sound effects, no lushness of orchestration as in Owen’s “Spring Offensive” in which the soldiers experience the traditional enchantments of pastoral.
The walk across no-man’s land is described as “small, drab, bundled pawns severally make effort/moved in tenuous line.” (p. 192)
When is a poem an “alibi for thought, a lot of word-masquerading, a rhetorical jumping up and down and waving of hands... to get someone to pay attention. The marks on the page have less permanence, less vividness of effect than the henna staining the camel and goat seller’s beard in a refugee camp.
He ends with the thought that the artist in necessarily empirical rather than speculative.
The question for the artist for Jones is “Does it?” rather than “Ought it?” – and that perception can’t be faked because it’s important to be... incarnational.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/87/2#!/20585867 (The Wall)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/97/4#!/20588159 (The Tutelar of the Place)
In contrast Wilfred Owens' poem below is highly anthologized.
Sleigh The entire issue had gripping poems about experiences that leave the reader gasping about what "reality" is like in other parts of the world and other times. Vantage points of the poor, the crazy, those about to board a train for Auschwitz-Birkenau, not having chosen an injection, those who didn't thanks to mercury chloride. Poems of parts of the world rife with violence where
"Memory shrinks // until it fits in a fist
memory shrinks // without forgetting
in chiseled columns. A strange poem about kisses and a nine-tailed fox and secrets and singing sentence into stone. All in all, a sense that poets are trying to make things new just as Marianne Moore and modernists were trying. The same problem -- how do we write -- and what matters in our poems. What keeps us reading poems?
So the line up for next week:
October nor'easter by Marge Piercy
Dulce et Decorum Est -- Wilfred Owens
Bad Year Anthem by Matthew Nienow
Things by Lisel Mueller
**
So often we think in opposites: right/wrong, black/white and indeed in art, the play of light/shadow, positive/negative (whether space or syntax) is fundamental to fleshing out an idea. Piercy gives us four stanzas in which the word "hard" is repeated (although stanza 2, transformed to hardly touched-- which hints at a series of possibilities). She threads the vowels so the ear can travel through the eee-ip--eee
rip of storm, the ay-uh... uh-ay of "rain scuds" (which feels like a noun but kicks the wet off the ocean as a verb). By the third line, the water is scimitar and if you had any doubt about the power of a Nor'easter,
you will be convinced of how it strip everything down to the bone. But isn't that what happens in life as we survive yet another year, arriving at fall's shorter days? Piercy ends with a novel and beautiful luminescent stone. But it is the "If" of standing bare that allows her to see "my bones/
still shine like opals/where love rubbed sweetly,/hard, against them.
Owens' poem leaves me raw. It is interesting to me how even with a snapshot of a real scene, the conversation goes to the political exigencies behind war. It is easier to focus on "issues" as opposed to the grim reality of slaughter. I had forgotten that Vietnam was both the first and last war televised.
Comments on the Nienow poem included assessing how a young, 30-year old poet thinks and a sense that he is on the edge of saying something very wise as he lives his boat-building life. What is this duality he senses in stanza 2: "I stand aside as what is removed is whisked alongside me.
The smallest particles of what is removed thicken the air,
making a dream inside which one cannot live. All day! Accessible, clear, not overdone. The loneliness hinted at in the Nienow poem is shared in a plural "we" and our universal impulse to anthropomorphize. It came up that we add the smiley faces to machines to make them friendlier, give us a sense of connection and response. The verb tenses include two conditionals -- like invitation -- give bells tongues so we could listen... "we gave the country a heart,/the storm an eye,/the cave a mouth so we could pass into safety.
Poems for Lunch -- October 31
Cinquain by Adelaide Crapsey, (1878-1914) (on Poets Walk)
Listen!
With faint dry sound
like steps of passing ghosts
the leaves, frost-crisped break from the trees
and fall
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go
Unbidden by Rae Armantrout
When I Buy Pictures by Marianne Moore
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Wound Dresser by Walt Whitman
**
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
-Hafiz
**
It may well be Halloween, but we gathered today dispensing with Shakespeare's witches, stereotypes in the stew rather quickly.
The Hafiz points out how we cannot be one without the other, what we do not say, balanced by what we long for, but rarely hear. Armantrout carries out this balancing of past, future, done/undone, plural ghosts swarming to singular voice, yet each with something undone, rather like the yellow flowers of the palo verde which bloom at the edge of the green branches in singular blossoms. We might miss the yet "unblushed" yellow, or carry the edges which cut like a scissored blade of grass. The enigmatic last sentence testifies
to our subjectivity, more curious about circumstance, provenance than in the word or thing of itself.
From there, Marianne Moore's poem which presents a tangle of phrases pinned by colons and semi-colons before arriving at the first period. We think to buy, but are "imaginary possessors" balancing "intensity of mood" with the "real" things which seem to have appeared from an antique market.
Perhaps as she said about Gertrude Stein, "Looking harder, one is abashed not to have understood instantly; as water may not seem transparent to the observer but has a perspicuous opacity in which the fish swims with ease.", it took us some time to navigate the waters of her poem.
"Where does the poem prick your interest" is one of my favorite questions. In this poem, we discussed at length this line:
the silver fence protecting Adam's grave, or Michael taking
Adam by the wrist.
first man... archangel Michael --what do we know? Noah's flood took care of any grave... or is Moore referring to the ancient barrow in England? Or an image of Archangel Michael reaching to save souls in purgatory, by Jacopo Vignali, 17th century?
The other details are puzzling as well: 6 shades of blue for artichokes (right up a surrealist's alley)
and snipe-legged 3 part hieroglyphic -- why three parts? and why snipe-legged?
She seems to chide herself, following these details with:
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or
that detracts from one's enjoyment.
Four "It" amplify the possibilities... Elaine brought up the fact that it must be "lit with piercing glances into the life of things" is in quotes -- as if borrowing from some authentic source.
Back to the "sorts" -- our mood, and the thing itself... and how it is infused with a larger sense of spirituality.
From there, to Syzborska's rather tongue in cheek look at what a poet expects to do, and how the blind will listen... The second stanza seems broad enough to go beyond the poet's experience, which is turned on its head through "the test of darkness", (and perhaps wisdom equated with seers and the blind) as if to capture the feeling of what it is to offer one's own world to someone who "visibly" has a very different one.
He reads-- since it's too late to stop now--
He's like to skip--although it can't be done--
and we as reader can consider the details given... examine our own sense of "courtesy"...
The Wound Dresser bears a complex syntax replete with parenthetical (inner) emotion to end with a question after ten lines: Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
In case the exaggerated adjectives --"unsurpassed heroes" balanced by "(was one side so brave? the other was equally brave)don't have effect on the reader's answer, he asks again:
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
Very different poets, who invite us even after reading, to ask, what remains --
perhaps not bones of the dead, which like names on tombstones will fade leaving no trace--
but what stays with us after reading such fine poems? For me, a sense of gratitude for such a fine group of people sharing thoughts on how to understand both words and the contexts in which they were written.
Listen!
With faint dry sound
like steps of passing ghosts
the leaves, frost-crisped break from the trees
and fall
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go
Unbidden by Rae Armantrout
When I Buy Pictures by Marianne Moore
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Wound Dresser by Walt Whitman
**
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
-Hafiz
**
It may well be Halloween, but we gathered today dispensing with Shakespeare's witches, stereotypes in the stew rather quickly.
The Hafiz points out how we cannot be one without the other, what we do not say, balanced by what we long for, but rarely hear. Armantrout carries out this balancing of past, future, done/undone, plural ghosts swarming to singular voice, yet each with something undone, rather like the yellow flowers of the palo verde which bloom at the edge of the green branches in singular blossoms. We might miss the yet "unblushed" yellow, or carry the edges which cut like a scissored blade of grass. The enigmatic last sentence testifies
to our subjectivity, more curious about circumstance, provenance than in the word or thing of itself.
From there, Marianne Moore's poem which presents a tangle of phrases pinned by colons and semi-colons before arriving at the first period. We think to buy, but are "imaginary possessors" balancing "intensity of mood" with the "real" things which seem to have appeared from an antique market.
Perhaps as she said about Gertrude Stein, "Looking harder, one is abashed not to have understood instantly; as water may not seem transparent to the observer but has a perspicuous opacity in which the fish swims with ease.", it took us some time to navigate the waters of her poem.
"Where does the poem prick your interest" is one of my favorite questions. In this poem, we discussed at length this line:
the silver fence protecting Adam's grave, or Michael taking
Adam by the wrist.
first man... archangel Michael --what do we know? Noah's flood took care of any grave... or is Moore referring to the ancient barrow in England? Or an image of Archangel Michael reaching to save souls in purgatory, by Jacopo Vignali, 17th century?
The other details are puzzling as well: 6 shades of blue for artichokes (right up a surrealist's alley)
and snipe-legged 3 part hieroglyphic -- why three parts? and why snipe-legged?
She seems to chide herself, following these details with:
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or
that detracts from one's enjoyment.
Four "It" amplify the possibilities... Elaine brought up the fact that it must be "lit with piercing glances into the life of things" is in quotes -- as if borrowing from some authentic source.
Back to the "sorts" -- our mood, and the thing itself... and how it is infused with a larger sense of spirituality.
From there, to Syzborska's rather tongue in cheek look at what a poet expects to do, and how the blind will listen... The second stanza seems broad enough to go beyond the poet's experience, which is turned on its head through "the test of darkness", (and perhaps wisdom equated with seers and the blind) as if to capture the feeling of what it is to offer one's own world to someone who "visibly" has a very different one.
He reads-- since it's too late to stop now--
He's like to skip--although it can't be done--
and we as reader can consider the details given... examine our own sense of "courtesy"...
The Wound Dresser bears a complex syntax replete with parenthetical (inner) emotion to end with a question after ten lines: Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
In case the exaggerated adjectives --"unsurpassed heroes" balanced by "(was one side so brave? the other was equally brave)don't have effect on the reader's answer, he asks again:
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
Very different poets, who invite us even after reading, to ask, what remains --
perhaps not bones of the dead, which like names on tombstones will fade leaving no trace--
but what stays with us after reading such fine poems? For me, a sense of gratitude for such a fine group of people sharing thoughts on how to understand both words and the contexts in which they were written.
Monday, October 28, 2013
O Pen -- Poems for October 29
I had started last week's session with a poem by Hafiz, published in the Sun (October 2013 issue, p. 13, versions by Daniel Ladinsky). We didn't have time for the Galway Kinnell, "Why Regret" --
and perhaps again, this week, there are far too many poems. So, take them home, read them and enjoy.
Both Kinnell and Hafiz remind us to engage with ordinary things, common acts. Yes, even when you are the one turned away from the factory, the one whose house is burning and you see it on the news, or you are the one at the airport and thinking about what "vacation" means, there comes a time when "connecting" no matter how imperfect in our mind, is the less painful risk than folding tightly everything you are.
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
-Hafiz
to hear the poem last week: Galway Kinnell, Why Regret: http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2006/12/15/20061215_kinnell28.mp3
(from Strong is your Hold)
From Jim Daniels, Places / Everyone
Mops
Factory Love
5000 Apply for 100 Jobs
Watching My Old House Burn on the News
**
Vacation by Rita Dove
Risk, by Anaïs Nin
and perhaps again, this week, there are far too many poems. So, take them home, read them and enjoy.
Both Kinnell and Hafiz remind us to engage with ordinary things, common acts. Yes, even when you are the one turned away from the factory, the one whose house is burning and you see it on the news, or you are the one at the airport and thinking about what "vacation" means, there comes a time when "connecting" no matter how imperfect in our mind, is the less painful risk than folding tightly everything you are.
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
-Hafiz
to hear the poem last week: Galway Kinnell, Why Regret: http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2006/12/15/20061215_kinnell28.mp3
(from Strong is your Hold)
From Jim Daniels, Places / Everyone
Mops
Factory Love
5000 Apply for 100 Jobs
Watching My Old House Burn on the News
**
Vacation by Rita Dove
Risk, by Anaïs Nin
Poems for Lunch : October 24 // O Pen October 29
From Jim Daniels, Places / Everyone
Mops
Factory Love
5000 Apply for 100 Jobs
Watching My Old House Burn on the News
**
Vacation by Rita Dove
Risk, by Anaïs Nin
Backyard by Carl Sandburg
Jim Daniels, "Places/Everyone": The into w/ Simone Weil
"Many indispensible truths, which could save men, go unspoken for reasons of this kind; those who could utter them cannot formulate them and those who could formulate them cannot utter them. If politics were taken seriously, finding a remedy for this would be one of its more urgent problems."
The Rita Dove poem was one of the ones Cathy Smith posted in her
**
We enjoyed the Jim Daniels’ poems, but unlike Li-Young Lee’s poem “Persimmons” where images wind mysteries which invite multiple layers of reflection, his more pedestrian style of observation leaves the sense of having read something interesting,
say about mops, and a chuckle at the personification of a machine, or recognition for the need for connection, but not necessarily a poem that leads to a big “wow”. I’m sure each person could summarize better, but below what I took away.
Mops has a few surprises, “each mop the obvious/ same woman’s hair” not really begging to be better understood – job and woman... then a priest and pleasure, and need for more cleaning – and the unexpected detail that a broom which tells the same story which has a stand-up comedian effect.
(Who likes to clean... who doesn't...)
Factory Love brought back a memory of working in a factory – the attachment and frustrations of machine, on the forklift hi-lo, and yet that universal need to care for someone in a committed way.
5,000 Apply for 100 jobs brought up an observation that “a bit of joy inside that big sadness” is more like relief... and the fictitious “Happy Hour at the Goodwill Store”
is the bright spot – not so much the job one has, as much as feeling momentarily connected.
Each poem was "unexpectedly expository" -- bringing various experiences together...urging us to find ways to connect...
Watching My Old House Burn on the News is indeed a catchy title – and a commentary on what deserves a 60 second spot. Time disappears as the memory of the house in which the speaker was conceived, now abandoned, returns back to what it was like
long ago, rain and crying babies now rain and a mother’s tears – the “like those flames, that fire” refers to the way the tears fall ....
The question came up if others thought the poems were authentic – or rather disingenuous. What do we want a poem to do? Dazzle us with brilliant description, as in Rita Dove’s poem? Convince us of the reality surrounding a working man or perhaps provide a glimpse into the ordinary which allows us a sense of empathy.
We know when a poem moves us to tears, compels us to spend time with it and gives us a sense of satisfaction (a huge thought in 8 simple lines, as in Nin’s poem which starts with “And” – with a whole untold backstory behind it, risk repeated in title and twice in the poem with the opposition of tight bud/blossom and the tightrope of what is painful.
Backyard, by Carl Sandburg was satisfying for the transformative power of moonlight, to turn all to silver... the magic of the moon – how some pay tribute, others ignore, lost in dream, romance in the air and “white thoughts” – and how many different ways to read the last line: shake out more and more / silver / changes.
or shake out more / and more silver changes
or shake out more and more /// silver changes.
**
For O Pen:
Perhaps again, this week, there are far too many poems to thoroughly
discuss, so, take them home, read them and enjoy.
Both Kinnell and Hafiz remind us to engage with ordinary things, common
acts. Yes, even when you are the one turned away from the factory, the one
whose house is burning and you see it on the news, or you are the one at the
airport and thinking about what "vacation" means, there comes a time when
"connecting" no matter how imperfect in our mind, is the less painful risk
than folding tightly everything you are.
Mops
Factory Love
5000 Apply for 100 Jobs
Watching My Old House Burn on the News
**
Vacation by Rita Dove
Risk, by Anaïs Nin
Backyard by Carl Sandburg
Jim Daniels, "Places/Everyone": The into w/ Simone Weil
"Many indispensible truths, which could save men, go unspoken for reasons of this kind; those who could utter them cannot formulate them and those who could formulate them cannot utter them. If politics were taken seriously, finding a remedy for this would be one of its more urgent problems."
The Rita Dove poem was one of the ones Cathy Smith posted in her
**
We enjoyed the Jim Daniels’ poems, but unlike Li-Young Lee’s poem “Persimmons” where images wind mysteries which invite multiple layers of reflection, his more pedestrian style of observation leaves the sense of having read something interesting,
say about mops, and a chuckle at the personification of a machine, or recognition for the need for connection, but not necessarily a poem that leads to a big “wow”. I’m sure each person could summarize better, but below what I took away.
Mops has a few surprises, “each mop the obvious/ same woman’s hair” not really begging to be better understood – job and woman... then a priest and pleasure, and need for more cleaning – and the unexpected detail that a broom which tells the same story which has a stand-up comedian effect.
(Who likes to clean... who doesn't...)
Factory Love brought back a memory of working in a factory – the attachment and frustrations of machine, on the forklift hi-lo, and yet that universal need to care for someone in a committed way.
5,000 Apply for 100 jobs brought up an observation that “a bit of joy inside that big sadness” is more like relief... and the fictitious “Happy Hour at the Goodwill Store”
is the bright spot – not so much the job one has, as much as feeling momentarily connected.
Each poem was "unexpectedly expository" -- bringing various experiences together...urging us to find ways to connect...
Watching My Old House Burn on the News is indeed a catchy title – and a commentary on what deserves a 60 second spot. Time disappears as the memory of the house in which the speaker was conceived, now abandoned, returns back to what it was like
long ago, rain and crying babies now rain and a mother’s tears – the “like those flames, that fire” refers to the way the tears fall ....
The question came up if others thought the poems were authentic – or rather disingenuous. What do we want a poem to do? Dazzle us with brilliant description, as in Rita Dove’s poem? Convince us of the reality surrounding a working man or perhaps provide a glimpse into the ordinary which allows us a sense of empathy.
We know when a poem moves us to tears, compels us to spend time with it and gives us a sense of satisfaction (a huge thought in 8 simple lines, as in Nin’s poem which starts with “And” – with a whole untold backstory behind it, risk repeated in title and twice in the poem with the opposition of tight bud/blossom and the tightrope of what is painful.
Backyard, by Carl Sandburg was satisfying for the transformative power of moonlight, to turn all to silver... the magic of the moon – how some pay tribute, others ignore, lost in dream, romance in the air and “white thoughts” – and how many different ways to read the last line: shake out more and more / silver / changes.
or shake out more / and more silver changes
or shake out more and more /// silver changes.
**
For O Pen:
Perhaps again, this week, there are far too many poems to thoroughly
discuss, so, take them home, read them and enjoy.
Both Kinnell and Hafiz remind us to engage with ordinary things, common
acts. Yes, even when you are the one turned away from the factory, the one
whose house is burning and you see it on the news, or you are the one at the
airport and thinking about what "vacation" means, there comes a time when
"connecting" no matter how imperfect in our mind, is the less painful risk
than folding tightly everything you are.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
O Pen : October 21
Elegy for Muncey-- Jim Daniels
Pursuits – Heather Christle
Personally Engraved -- Alice Fulton
Why Regret – Galway Kinnell
Postscript by Seamus Heaney
Jim Daniels, like Philip Levine, comes from Detroit, champions the working class -- but what does that say about his poetry? The poem selected today gave us plenty to discuss -- from the title, "Elegy" which often is a controlled statement, to the epigraph linked to the final lines. "Anything less than death is a minor accident",
quote of the Muncey for whom this elegy is written. Looping a long sentence in short lines, where the end words are in competition for where they place their weight in the phrases, the poem falls into two sentences, the first skimming into 20 lines. Our conversation went from a description of rooster tails, memories of the Detroit river,
and the way the poem was both gruff in a "shirts-off-drunk" rowdy way, and tender. Is Muncey to be cheered,
crowd-style making a statement, calling a hero,or the last name said quietly, softly, echoing the words "blessed".
Roostertail and angel/ death dancing/... a very unusual and moving way to pay tribute to this hydroplane champion who died in an accident in Acapulco, and the impact one human being can have.
Pursuits, in the October issue of Poetry also provided a long discussion -- how "it is" has a surprising power to introduce, predict, perhaps confirm a feeling, in this case, called forth by snow, juxtaposed by that called forth by commerce. Conversation touched on Wordsworth, Keats, and the glory of what words can do.
Snow / not beginning: perhaps a touch of eternal
the difference of being "in" the snow vs. to be "of" the snow... and memories of innocent play...
It is not... It is... Everywhere... It only gets worse. What would you thread into this progression?
table: as chart as well as where one sits to be nurtured; repetition of the word "touch"...and a sense of many hungers -- that cannot satisfy as they are not yours. Wonderful poem to set one thinking about human experience, our complaints, wishes, and what it is that we do or refuse to compromise.
We would like to invite Alice Fulton to come up to Rochester and speak to us! 3 fine poems in the October issue of Poetry -- all of which embrace the idea of "new" -- which "... will benew / whether you make it new / or not.
Almost cliche, twists on expected phrases, witty "please state" which sounds like "police state"
hardscape (not landscape, seascape, city-scape, inscape) but the scraping of art to machine.
We chuckled through it, admiring the notes of sarcasm, contradictions, texture of phrases such as "all you need is
a chain saw and die grinder". And what is a dedicated ice maker / dedicated to? Visions of ice-sculpture contests, or of frosty personalities at a town meeting with Uriah Heep rubbing his hands. What is the role of you?
As for the scarf on the snowman, indeed, it separates head from heart... What is engraved? And how do you use "personally" in advertising, as if it would matter?
Buzkashi took us to a discussion of horse racing, Kipling's ballads and Afghan and British traditions!
The she-goat and woman intertwine -- the heat drives a man "in the ground like a stake" while the mountains watch, "still in the "milk broth of oblivion". Enigmatic and unsettling.
We will discuss "Why Regret" next week having spent an hour discussing just these three.
Postscript as title is intriguing: is it the words below it? What is the context? There is a touchy excitement starting a poem with "And..." -- the diction and lilt of the first 11 lines are cut short by the next sentence:
useless to think you'll park and capture it.. that "it" again -- that wildness, that opportunity not taken. The final line takes us to a here-and-now that cannot be pinned down -- a blend of familiar and strange...
"as big soft buffetings come at the car sideways / and catch the heart off guard and blow it open".
Wind, encounter, accident, the mystery is there, and for me, the urge to check the heart.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Workshop on Wonder-- Just Poets, Oct. 19
October 19, 2013
Notes and a few poems inspired by the Just Poets retreat at the Gell Center 10/19/2013
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -- Albert Einstein (from M.J.’s collection of quotes.)
**
Workshop with M.J.
Imagine 10 pieces of paper, with duos and trios drawing images inspired by words: awe-- thought-- solitude-- puzzle-- connection-- dream-- mystery-- prediction-- hope -- city-blocks -- garden --
Worlds: 10 creations
Our mood hums as pencils etch, colors scratch, markers
slip into spirals; lines connect
thought to puzzle, unpuzzle, then puzzle again.
We reach for edges, uncharted
Escher-fish, our fins flung to wing.
Each thought ladder-leaps
up to dream, as if to catch
the murmurs in marvel.
A gypsy skirts yin-yang,
prediction softens, winds into tune.
**
"There are those much more rare people who never lose their curiosity, their almost childlike wonder
at the world; those people who continue to learn and to grow intellectually until the day they die.
And these usually are the people who make contributions, who leave some part of the world a little better off than it was before they entered it." William H. Sheldon (from M.J.’s collection of quotes.)
Inspired by John's peripatetic walk: by Thoreau's cabin.
tatatata doo-li-da, sings Niam, three years old.
What is it we are here on Earth to sing?
Come without vanity
bOw your head
gaMble faith
Pass
Around
your gIft
aNd
lifT
voice without complaint.
(note that C - O - M - P - A - I - N - T -- is complaint transformed to "com paint" -- like an invitation to paint with our voices and lives -- how easy a letter can lever meaning!)
**
I went to the woods because I wanted...
trees for company... the sound of the wind.
By the Gell Center treehouse, you see how three large pine carry the weight,
and inside, the smell of turpentine of the fourth. If you ask who lives here, an echo
will voodoo answer: you do, you do, you-ooo, and doing turns to living silence.
**
Writing prompt from Donna and Claudia's workshop on the non-narrative poem
Mischa
murmurs
in
silence
calm
halos
abound.
His red hat echoes the last of the sun,
as he walks towards the church.
It protects him from the cold.
At Vespers, every man's lapel bears a white flower
to remember the man who saved the old books slated for shredding.
He turned the words and meanings to music before he died.
Mischa murmurs in silence,
calm
halos abound.
Rivers of wings surround
Mischa, in calm.
At first flutes shape notes like icicles
and then the strings sweep the sound
of wind in summer wheat,
the horns call down autumn
halo after halo of leaves around bare trees.
And then the flutes return like Spring
birds abound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLFX1ZWKemk
Glazunov : the seasons
(prompt from poems provided by Claudia:
Ashbery: Glazunoviana
Laura Sims, Behind her Eyes)
Notes and a few poems inspired by the Just Poets retreat at the Gell Center 10/19/2013
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -- Albert Einstein (from M.J.’s collection of quotes.)
**
Workshop with M.J.
Imagine 10 pieces of paper, with duos and trios drawing images inspired by words: awe-- thought-- solitude-- puzzle-- connection-- dream-- mystery-- prediction-- hope -- city-blocks -- garden --
Worlds: 10 creations
Our mood hums as pencils etch, colors scratch, markers
slip into spirals; lines connect
thought to puzzle, unpuzzle, then puzzle again.
We reach for edges, uncharted
Escher-fish, our fins flung to wing.
Each thought ladder-leaps
up to dream, as if to catch
the murmurs in marvel.
A gypsy skirts yin-yang,
prediction softens, winds into tune.
**
"There are those much more rare people who never lose their curiosity, their almost childlike wonder
at the world; those people who continue to learn and to grow intellectually until the day they die.
And these usually are the people who make contributions, who leave some part of the world a little better off than it was before they entered it." William H. Sheldon (from M.J.’s collection of quotes.)
Inspired by John's peripatetic walk: by Thoreau's cabin.
tatatata doo-li-da, sings Niam, three years old.
What is it we are here on Earth to sing?
Come without vanity
bOw your head
gaMble faith
Pass
Around
your gIft
aNd
lifT
voice without complaint.
(note that C - O - M - P - A - I - N - T -- is complaint transformed to "com paint" -- like an invitation to paint with our voices and lives -- how easy a letter can lever meaning!)
**
I went to the woods because I wanted...
trees for company... the sound of the wind.
By the Gell Center treehouse, you see how three large pine carry the weight,
and inside, the smell of turpentine of the fourth. If you ask who lives here, an echo
will voodoo answer: you do, you do, you-ooo, and doing turns to living silence.
**
Writing prompt from Donna and Claudia's workshop on the non-narrative poem
Mischa
murmurs
in
silence
calm
halos
abound.
His red hat echoes the last of the sun,
as he walks towards the church.
It protects him from the cold.
At Vespers, every man's lapel bears a white flower
to remember the man who saved the old books slated for shredding.
He turned the words and meanings to music before he died.
Mischa murmurs in silence,
calm
halos abound.
Rivers of wings surround
Mischa, in calm.
At first flutes shape notes like icicles
and then the strings sweep the sound
of wind in summer wheat,
the horns call down autumn
halo after halo of leaves around bare trees.
And then the flutes return like Spring
birds abound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLFX1ZWKemk
Glazunov : the seasons
(prompt from poems provided by Claudia:
Ashbery: Glazunoviana
Laura Sims, Behind her Eyes)
Friday, October 18, 2013
Poems for Lunch: October 17
Living Room by Marie Ponsot
Persimmons by Li-Young Lee
A Fantasy – Louise Glück
The Sound Of Trees – by Robert Frost
How do form and meaning work? We'll start with a "tritina" and end with a version of Robert Frost who experiments with rhyme but understands the importance of the "meter-marking argument" and function of rhyme. (The text used for discussion is that of the original versions of this poem
is as it appeared in the August, 1915, issue of The Atlantic Monthly. There are some differences between this text and the text of the poem as it appeared in later editions of Frost's poetry.)
**
We read through the Marie Ponsot poem in several ways -- stanza by stanza, as well as line by line to slow down the way the words combined and recombined. Highlights noted: the sound -- of K's, P's, M's, D's...
one conditional "if" among 3 stanzas of things at risk of breaking, aching, buckling --balanced by a positive final line using the end words, and a repeated hypenated word in each stanza. (paint-stuck; house-warm; storm-hit; wind-break) The title,then is understood not as a room in a house, perhaps with a family picture, but a "living" room, where life-space is alive... which is to say, colliding, joining, separating..."if we force it open the glass may break." How do we frame what is special to us? That is what we must put up as wind-break. Truly, a must-read.
We discovered much about persimmons, and memory in Li-Young Lee's poem, and a sense of "ripeness" which comes at a time we may or may not notice. This much longer poem winds mother, father, persimmons, into a satisfying metaphor of a fruit confused with the word "precision" and other words now forgotten. We noted the precise instructions of how to sniff, eat, chew. What gets you into trouble? fight, fright? And what comforts? birds, yarn. And did you know every persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing? This is where the poem turns and loss includes blindness.
Louise said it reminded her of Wallace Stevens, "13 ways of looking at a blackbird".
Glück's "A Fantasy starts out with a vernacular "I'll tell you something:" Who would guess it would be followed by "every day/people are dying." And then, to add to the suspense: "And that's just the beginning". From there, the funeral home, the birth of widowhood, the sequence of how we cope with grief for which there really are no guidelines, only prescribed motions. The "suddenly" in the 3rd stanza underlines the arrival of people who will participate in mourning, in contrast to the sickroom, the months of isolation. The final stanza goes to the heart --
the desire to move backward -- not to perhaps the great intimacies of our back story -- but "just a little".
Powerful poem indeed.
We ended with Frost and the "sound of trees" -- what the wonder is.. the contrast of rooted trees and people who wish to "unroot"... what we say, but don't do, or what going is about... what is reckless, what needs saying, and how do the trees say it? There were as many responses to the poem as people in the room!
Another wonderful session!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Poems for October 14
Love Is More Thicker Than Forget by E.E. Cummings
opening poem: set to music: Uta Fricke Quartett - Love Is More Thicker Than Forget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mYEa_QMZ4c
The Hunchback in the Park by Dylan Thomas
And You, Andrew Marvell, Archibald MacLeish
Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/andrew-marvell
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell
May my heart always be open (on poets walk) by E.E. Cummings
I was reading James Dickey's notes on lectures and agree that the Thomas and MacLeish poems he mentioned are well worth the read…
I am curious to know if you think the music enhances the first e e cummings … and for those who have not yet discovered "Poets Walk" on University by the Memorial Art Gallery, the final Cummings poem is carved in granite on the corner of University and Prince.
Monday was the 14th and ee cummings birthday (b. 1894!) -- so of course there were several "poems of the day" as tribute -- one of which was "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) and on Writer's almanac "5" which is a visual delight.
The two Cummings poems for today's discussion look "traditional" in regular-looking stanzas and yet both play with syntax to tickle our imagination to think deeper. We know one doesn't say "more thicker" or more seldom,
and what could "less it shall unbe" be? Everyone's mind was set a-whirring, including an association with Corinthians (Cummings father was a minister, so a biblical reference is highly possible -- as in the prayer-like "may my heart always be open). The opposition between "mad and moonly" and "sane and sunly", the sea and the sky leaves a sense of love both as being sandwiched between, and yet, less always and less never, the least and littlest, thick and thin, where "unbeing" and forgiveness and eternal roll all about. One person quoted Sandburg: "I understood it until you explained it to me."
Indeed. For the second Cummings, "may my heart always be open" we have a return to "little" -- poised just like a bird to which the enjambment falls in the first line. The second stanza 3rd line "may i be wrong"
had varying responses: inverted syntax (parenthetical, I may be wrong) as well as a request not to be cast into
an old-man's inflexible thinking proclaiming "rightness". The final stanza has a feel of of "may" as a conditional "should" or "if" to join the "could fail" -- this impossible yet delightful metaphor of pulling "all the sky over him with one smile" with a sense of contradiction -- only a fool could do this, only a fool could fail to do this.
The playfulness invites us to stay with the poem, entertain possibilities -- encourages us to go beyond irritation or annoyance that meaning is not a straight forward shot.
The way in which he takes givens and plays with syntax, underlines the importance of "play", which has a simultaneous layer that is often quite serious.
We both read and listened to the Dylan Thomas and spoke of the problems both of how we "hear" and how a poem is read. A poem is meant to be "heard" -- but sometimes the poet is not able to read aloud to do service to the poem his imagination provided in his head. Sometimes also, as readers,we try to find signs in the poem to guide us, as we receive the words through our own filters. For me it was the "k" in the first stanza — it's a hard consonant— no tongue involved with forming it, and the air has to be forced out, not in the gluggy-"g" way but crackled and spat. The final stanza repeats the words: park, dark, but the bell is now a kennel, the lock perhaps now, a lake. The conversational "Mister, hey mister" the childhood ownership of "sailed my ship" runs parallel to this "old man sleeper". Why only two periods? Who is the woman
that might "stand in the night after the locks and chains // all night in the unmade park"? Whatever is happening, "the wild boys, innocent as strawberries" also do not know, wrapped as they are in their own imaginations, inviting us also to remember such times.
I love the idea of the "And" anaphor in MacLeish's poem as biblical and as the slant reference to Corinthians in Cummings "love is…" and "may…" As I noted, James Dickey called the MacLeish poem "one of the most beautiful poems that the English tongue has ever conceived of." Some felt the floating appreciation of the earth, even without the modern idea of being able to look down at it from an airplane. We did touch down on the 17th century's fascination with planispheres... and this idea of the shadow of the earth as it revolves, crossing all the various countries -- felt also like crossing over time. For some, the shadow of the night coming on was part of a song of joy... for some, a more sombre music. We all wondered what MacLeish was thinking of to title the poem as he did. Perhaps he was thinking of "To His Coy Mistress" -- but in Marvell's 8 stanza "Definition of Love", we have metaphysical "poles", ("though love's whole world on us doth wheel")-- cramp'd into a planisphere. It was helpful to discuss the times, the revolutionary times, uprisings, court intrigues, dictates of fate.
I'm reminded of the Mobile in front of the MAG -- where two arms sweep where the wind nudges them -- but never will meet.
How great to have a group discuss four poems, all embracing "love" in some way -- including quoting the lyrics,
"if loving you is wrong, then I don't want to be right."
opening poem: set to music: Uta Fricke Quartett - Love Is More Thicker Than Forget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mYEa_QMZ4c
The Hunchback in the Park by Dylan Thomas
And You, Andrew Marvell, Archibald MacLeish
Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/andrew-marvell
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell
May my heart always be open (on poets walk) by E.E. Cummings
I was reading James Dickey's notes on lectures and agree that the Thomas and MacLeish poems he mentioned are well worth the read…
I am curious to know if you think the music enhances the first e e cummings … and for those who have not yet discovered "Poets Walk" on University by the Memorial Art Gallery, the final Cummings poem is carved in granite on the corner of University and Prince.
Monday was the 14th and ee cummings birthday (b. 1894!) -- so of course there were several "poems of the day" as tribute -- one of which was "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) and on Writer's almanac "5" which is a visual delight.
The two Cummings poems for today's discussion look "traditional" in regular-looking stanzas and yet both play with syntax to tickle our imagination to think deeper. We know one doesn't say "more thicker" or more seldom,
and what could "less it shall unbe" be? Everyone's mind was set a-whirring, including an association with Corinthians (Cummings father was a minister, so a biblical reference is highly possible -- as in the prayer-like "may my heart always be open). The opposition between "mad and moonly" and "sane and sunly", the sea and the sky leaves a sense of love both as being sandwiched between, and yet, less always and less never, the least and littlest, thick and thin, where "unbeing" and forgiveness and eternal roll all about. One person quoted Sandburg: "I understood it until you explained it to me."
Indeed. For the second Cummings, "may my heart always be open" we have a return to "little" -- poised just like a bird to which the enjambment falls in the first line. The second stanza 3rd line "may i be wrong"
had varying responses: inverted syntax (parenthetical, I may be wrong) as well as a request not to be cast into
an old-man's inflexible thinking proclaiming "rightness". The final stanza has a feel of of "may" as a conditional "should" or "if" to join the "could fail" -- this impossible yet delightful metaphor of pulling "all the sky over him with one smile" with a sense of contradiction -- only a fool could do this, only a fool could fail to do this.
The playfulness invites us to stay with the poem, entertain possibilities -- encourages us to go beyond irritation or annoyance that meaning is not a straight forward shot.
The way in which he takes givens and plays with syntax, underlines the importance of "play", which has a simultaneous layer that is often quite serious.
We both read and listened to the Dylan Thomas and spoke of the problems both of how we "hear" and how a poem is read. A poem is meant to be "heard" -- but sometimes the poet is not able to read aloud to do service to the poem his imagination provided in his head. Sometimes also, as readers,we try to find signs in the poem to guide us, as we receive the words through our own filters. For me it was the "k" in the first stanza — it's a hard consonant— no tongue involved with forming it, and the air has to be forced out, not in the gluggy-"g" way but crackled and spat. The final stanza repeats the words: park, dark, but the bell is now a kennel, the lock perhaps now, a lake. The conversational "Mister, hey mister" the childhood ownership of "sailed my ship" runs parallel to this "old man sleeper". Why only two periods? Who is the woman
that might "stand in the night after the locks and chains // all night in the unmade park"? Whatever is happening, "the wild boys, innocent as strawberries" also do not know, wrapped as they are in their own imaginations, inviting us also to remember such times.
I love the idea of the "And" anaphor in MacLeish's poem as biblical and as the slant reference to Corinthians in Cummings "love is…" and "may…" As I noted, James Dickey called the MacLeish poem "one of the most beautiful poems that the English tongue has ever conceived of." Some felt the floating appreciation of the earth, even without the modern idea of being able to look down at it from an airplane. We did touch down on the 17th century's fascination with planispheres... and this idea of the shadow of the earth as it revolves, crossing all the various countries -- felt also like crossing over time. For some, the shadow of the night coming on was part of a song of joy... for some, a more sombre music. We all wondered what MacLeish was thinking of to title the poem as he did. Perhaps he was thinking of "To His Coy Mistress" -- but in Marvell's 8 stanza "Definition of Love", we have metaphysical "poles", ("though love's whole world on us doth wheel")-- cramp'd into a planisphere. It was helpful to discuss the times, the revolutionary times, uprisings, court intrigues, dictates of fate.
I'm reminded of the Mobile in front of the MAG -- where two arms sweep where the wind nudges them -- but never will meet.
How great to have a group discuss four poems, all embracing "love" in some way -- including quoting the lyrics,
"if loving you is wrong, then I don't want to be right."
Friday, October 11, 2013
Rundel: Poems for Lunch: October 10
POEMS DISCUSSED:
Words for Worry by Li-Young Lee
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
Angels of Radiators by A. Poulin, Jr. (professor, poet-translator, editor) (b. 1938-1996)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/a-poulin
Hurry by Marie Howe
Three Days of Forest, a River, Free by Rita Dove
Sunday, 9/30, Li-Young Lee was guest of BOA editions and read at the Memorial Art Gallery accompanied by sitar player, David Whetstone. The program included Words for Worry. Outside the MAG, you might have seen the tiles for “Poets Walk”: Li-Young Lee has one, as does BOA founder, A. Poulin, Marie Howe and Rita Dove. You might enjoy imagining what phrase or words you would use from the poems to put in a tile on a poets walk. For more information: (http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/poets-walk)
The first poem by Li-Young Lee is worth reading in different ways in order to appreciate the nuances of "Worry".
It starts "in media res" -- in the middle of things -- "Another word for father is worry" -- as if we have dropped in on a conversation. A single line. Stanza break. 3 couplets. A quatrain with hypenated words creating names and ending with five lines where the final 3-line sentence breathes. More than a catalogue, it reminds a reader of the experience as a child, providing a parent with worries... and if a parent, one thinks of one's children.
Lee shows the various facets -- the embodiment of "worry" as father, boiling water, taking care of a child --
which segues into the word "son" -- with a play on "delight" and "hidden". One person remarked on the use of indigenous people to hyphenate names, often with a verb -- so a son is also the action of leaving and returning.
The language in the quatrain adopts an elevated Biblical register, which makes me think of Father-Son as Christian relationship, although followed by a fragment which starts the final stanza: "But one word for father."
And after this exploration of words for "worry" -- the reassurance of the final sentence which flows easily,
unlike the previous choppy rhythms.
The second Li-Young Lee poem feels like a meditative breath which takes us "up" as James said, "like an out-of-body experience" -- a superior point of view... and yet freedom spirals to fasten onto each falling thing.
A good poem doesn't need to explain, postulate or pound sense into the reader. This is a perfect example
of suggestion, contradiction gathered into the unity of "love".
A. Poulin, founder of BOA and renowned teacher and figurehead in Rochester, provides a poem which creates
the sounds of old cars, regulators and the feel of angles of night, cold, and the "angels responding to blank space" which respond to "sing wild allelujahs warm as Spring". The metaphorical "furnace fails like heaven"
and work of the radiator where "The water that will turn/to steam and turn to heat/and rise as grace runs out."
requires the mortal action of going down to turn the valve to "filling up" for those angels to return...
As one person put it: here's a simple, mundane object like a radiator, given "high-flown" worth.
The poem by NY State Poet Laureate, Marie Howe, "Hurry up darling" brought a few of us to tears -- how what we do as parents, then is imitated by children, who take, tease and grow up, and hold the keys... It's so easy to recognize in the opening enumeration" We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store/
and the gas station and the green market and/ "
the pace with which we lead our lives. Howe cleverly stops this endless bustle by following "and" with
Hurry up honey, which spins the crux of the poem into orbit.
The poem by Rita Dove, US Poet Laureate, 1993–1995, recreates a gripping narrative of an escape to freedom,
which bears examination about the twisted logic of slavery. We started the discussion by examining what "duty's whistle" means, both in and out of the context of the poem. It follows the opening sentence: "The dogs have nothing better /to do than bark;" But, isn't that what dogs do? And when do they bark -- to greet, to warn,
when they are in pain, i.e. to communicate." And dogs as a fill-in for "inferior to human", or perhaps at best,
faithful servant... and later, "Who can point out a smell/ but a dog? " -- both the dogs set to chase a fugitive -- but also the ability of a dog to point out things for what they are. The paradox in this stanza is worth noting as well: "The terror of waking is a trust/ drawn out unbearably/ until nothing, not even love, /makes it easier, and yet /I love this life:"
The title prepares us with the word "free" to understand more fully the final word of the poem "underground".
the river to cross, as the river Styx or the Ohio and boundary between life/death... the visible/invisible,
all these themes intricately bound up in a poem where each line bears the weight of saying one thing, but meaning yet another -- what Robert Frost calls "ulteriority". Case in point: the final sentence broken into 5 lines: Faint tongue, dry fear,
I think I lost you to the dogs,
so far off now they're no
more than a chain of bells
ringing darkly, underground.
Thank you all for coming and for the wonderful discussion and sharing!
poems for October 7
Green-Striped Melons by Jane Hirschfield
Make It New by Alice Fulton
from Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner
The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop
This week's poems are in response to a letter to the editor of Poetry Magazine, criticizing Michael Robbins' review of the Norton Anthology, Postmodern American Poetry.
You might enjoy this 2008 article about Ezra Pound who coined the term "Make it New" --
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_menand
What does "make it new" mean in 2013? Below some old, some new, some long, some short. The point is not to belabor an academic approach so much as to see how each poem is working.
**
For 10/7, I picked four poems, two of which are “old” to form a sandwich around two of which are “new”, using these terms loosely. Although the name Ezra Pound is often inseparable from his phrase, “Make it New” (the “it” meaning the culture of the past) perhaps the question is more to make artistic expression something which allows
a reader, viewer, witness to ponder on what brings vitality, meaning—and to walk away
feeling that the experience (poem, concert, art exhibit, performance, etc.) in some way underlines that life matters.
The first poet: Jane Hirschfield’s biography underlines her contributions as poet, essayist, teacher, translator, ambassador. To quote Rosanna Warren from the American Poet site,
“Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature...Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield's poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance.” - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563#sthash.cDE3eE7R.dpuf
The first poem, taken from her 2001 anthology, “Given Sugar, Given Salt”
demonstrates how she shares “riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature”.
One could read “Green-Striped Melons” as 3 stanzas (broken into two quatrains, one couplet) which have nothing to do with traditional meter. Or count syllables and admire her delicate weave of repetition:
“they lie” and a line break to “under stars” vs. “they lie under rain in a field”. vs.
the fragment. “Under sun.”
The Comparison of melons to “some” people continues the idea of something hidden, unexpected expressed by “under”. The group picked up on a play of implied homonym weight/wait for ripeness and ambiguity of “lie” as both position and how depth is deceptive, whether in melons, people or paintings. Judith recalled the concierge in “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”
Born a year before Hirschfield (1952), the second poet, Alice Fulton, is known for her innovative use of language and her explorations of “poetry as sensual math”, “fractal poetry”etc. The poem under discussion, “Make it New” which appeared in Poetry Magazine, this October (2013) demonstrates her facility to vivify both line and cliché, to make the reader think about perception, and what it is that we really “know”. One person offered the idea of the setting of a graveyard (inscriptions on implied tombs in a blizzard), corroborated by “what I do for a dying”. The “how” of the lines play in multiple ways.
There is an injunction to avoid collective thinking, a twist on the slang for “get out of here”, and an idea of a cathedral, although “stained” glass might mean also, hoist up what we have sullied, colored rose, or altered to suit our personal agendas:
"Avoid the hive mind. Go fly a kite,
raise a stained glass window in the sky.
It’s the opposite of making love to drudgery,
what I do for a dying."
We all laughed when reading the poem sentence by sentence and Larry read with full exclamation as the punctuation demands.
“... The curiosity rover
lands on Mars! “
Curiosity as adjective, also acts as name without a capital letter and rover, points at the space between the couplets as if roving to land... The next statement, uses the 1890 word “hooligan” (note, not new slang, although echoing the vowel sound “oo”.) Again, she breaks into a stanza break – and we discussed “rests” as “remains” or “lies” or even, unassembled. The idea of video games, or an abacus for “reckoning frame” comes to mind.
“New is a hooligan.
It breaks the reckoning frame and rests
in pieces."
At this point, I hope you will want to read the whole poem, to appreciate the format, the tone. (see: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246476 )
I often ask “which line hits you the most” – and for many of us, it was the final couplet which contains the personal expression of grief.
“Let me collect its dna
from the tears on your desk.”
We read through and admired the Ben Lerner, whose poem title,
"from Mean Free Path" evokes this bit of physics: the average distance a particle travels between collisions..., and Lucretius. Lerner, with a light dust of humor over something serious, threads musical references, repetitions, into a personal voice, caught in its sphere, desiring to connect, find a way to communicate.
What the “this” is that surrounds us on our journey? – How do we talk about it with others? He opens with:
“What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that.”
(source: Paris Review, 2013: http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5870/from-mean-free-path-ben-lerner
The final poem, The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop we have read before – but the pleasure does not diminish. Each time we visit, revisit a poem, we are making it new.
Comments included: “It’s like seeing a movie... you don’t have to figure anything... It’s a communion-- nature—with history. We too are on the bus moving into darkness... It’s a symbolic journey where people talk about tragedies and remember and tell... but something arrested for a moment... by moose in complete innocence... reminds of something else of life. new mood. moving into sleep. wakened..."
The moose reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ Aslan – the largeness of spirit some call God,
in a visible visitation. The question of why we all feel “this sweet/
sensation of joy?” does not ask for answer, so much as remind us to take note, remember,
as it comes in the midst of our living stories.
Friday, October 4, 2013
poems for lunch! Rundel October 3
Hurray for poetry as part of lunch! Yesterday was the first of 6 sessions offering "food for thought" in form of sharing the reading of poems.
Poems:
Some Like Poetry: Wislawa Szymborska
A Monday in May: Ted Kooser
A Grandfather: Marie Thurmer (selected by Ted Kooser)
Baby Listening: Billy Collins
Happiness: Jane Kenyon
The wit of arranging a poem by repeating the title, a word at a time, on the first line reminds me that form comes in many guises. Some / like / poetry -- can be said in many ways -- suspending and threading quite different meanings. Some... like poetry.
"Some-- /thus not all.
Like / (as a verb, with a list of likes.)
Poetry/ followed by a question about what it is.
It amazes me that 7 people can discuss 3 stanzas and pick up on so many dimensions that lie in wait for the reader.
Whether it is the vernacular response to the fact of many "shaky answers" about what poetry is... the small proportion of people who like it; the other things one likes (which includes the sense of control, of having an upper hand, as well as the tenderness of stroking a dog) the "it" onto which we hold, even if we don't know...
"like to a sustaining railing."
Part of the fun is to read a short poem in many different ways. Reading the Kooser poem as three sentences,
feels differently in the mouth and mind than read line by line. Two parts, like a contrasting weather report...
the breakdown of houses, and what lies under "leaf, cobweb, feather"... the note of nostalgia with the sentimental maple... the threading of bright and somber sounds (peak/leaf/each/weep)and (our/shower/hours).
We all enjoyed the poem selected by Kooser, but noted that the "we" might be an archetype for human beings , not just one caregiver. O like "om" universal ocean, consciousness, or dying breath. the plural meaning of "response we wanted" the almost mistake of understanding the O, where both the one slipping away and the one remaining might remember each other, both say goodbye.
We chuckled at the wit of Collins -- the surreal ideas -- although Mike mentioned British vernacular -- which adds to the humor. If we called the service "baby monitor" it would lose out on some of the absurd. We all agreed that the ending had an unexpected darkness -- bathed in ambiguity.
We ended on Kenyon's poem, where the first 3 stanzas describe the haphazard nature of happiness. The final stanza feels like anything but circumstances that would allow happiness-- the indent moving from humans to inanimate infused with a sense of death, as if to echo the "unmerciful/hours of your despaire.".
What a joy to spend an hour with delightful people and give poems a chance to do their work as both prompts for the shapes of the sounds and sense.
10/4/2013
the boulder, shade of pine barrens, sea, wineglass -- what we might associate
Poems:
Some Like Poetry: Wislawa Szymborska
A Monday in May: Ted Kooser
A Grandfather: Marie Thurmer (selected by Ted Kooser)
Baby Listening: Billy Collins
Happiness: Jane Kenyon
The wit of arranging a poem by repeating the title, a word at a time, on the first line reminds me that form comes in many guises. Some / like / poetry -- can be said in many ways -- suspending and threading quite different meanings. Some... like poetry.
"Some-- /thus not all.
Like / (as a verb, with a list of likes.)
Poetry/ followed by a question about what it is.
It amazes me that 7 people can discuss 3 stanzas and pick up on so many dimensions that lie in wait for the reader.
Whether it is the vernacular response to the fact of many "shaky answers" about what poetry is... the small proportion of people who like it; the other things one likes (which includes the sense of control, of having an upper hand, as well as the tenderness of stroking a dog) the "it" onto which we hold, even if we don't know...
"like to a sustaining railing."
Part of the fun is to read a short poem in many different ways. Reading the Kooser poem as three sentences,
feels differently in the mouth and mind than read line by line. Two parts, like a contrasting weather report...
the breakdown of houses, and what lies under "leaf, cobweb, feather"... the note of nostalgia with the sentimental maple... the threading of bright and somber sounds (peak/leaf/each/weep)and (our/shower/hours).
We all enjoyed the poem selected by Kooser, but noted that the "we" might be an archetype for human beings , not just one caregiver. O like "om" universal ocean, consciousness, or dying breath. the plural meaning of "response we wanted" the almost mistake of understanding the O, where both the one slipping away and the one remaining might remember each other, both say goodbye.
We chuckled at the wit of Collins -- the surreal ideas -- although Mike mentioned British vernacular -- which adds to the humor. If we called the service "baby monitor" it would lose out on some of the absurd. We all agreed that the ending had an unexpected darkness -- bathed in ambiguity.
We ended on Kenyon's poem, where the first 3 stanzas describe the haphazard nature of happiness. The final stanza feels like anything but circumstances that would allow happiness-- the indent moving from humans to inanimate infused with a sense of death, as if to echo the "unmerciful/hours of your despaire.".
What a joy to spend an hour with delightful people and give poems a chance to do their work as both prompts for the shapes of the sounds and sense.
10/4/2013
the boulder, shade of pine barrens, sea, wineglass -- what we might associate
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Poems for September 30
Wedding Cake by Naomi Shihab Nye
Sea Surface Full Of Clouds by Wallace Stevens
2 stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" -- Wallace Stevens
In Love with You by Kenneth Koch
“Almost anything great that has survived the test of time has a riddle in it, a long arc between comprehension and understanding.” from interview with Ange Mlinko http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/06/17/poetry-must-still-dance-an-interview-with-ange-mlinko/
The first poem has plenty to puzzle about -- from the surprise of a mother giving a stranger her baby so she can spend an hour washing her hair and changing her clothes, to the question of whose "mother" is claimed by "my" and onward to the end line knowledge a baby knows: a small finger, funnier than the whole arm. What is layered in poem and metaphor of dress, ritual, etc. brings the reader back to a universal recognition of an alphabet coiled in baby curls, the cooing, mewling of "new, new, new" and so much to "chew", an ache associated with a nub of a dream, the proprietorship to protect innocence, the power of detail. Delightful, and yet, not transparent -- meanings layered in title, dress, dreams, not yet lived experiences to come.
By contrast, the 1923 poem by Wallace Stevens creates a symphonic painting, like a theme and variation.
John pointed out the 6/8 time of a barcarolle; we had fun with textures of umbrellas, chocolate, patterns, colors, sounds until Martin pointed out the disquieting feel of juxtapositions and negative vocabulary. Judith thought more of Raoul Dufy and his spring-like colors, as opposed to the hectic and confusing chaos of Art responding the World War I. Is it just an experiment? Is the music like the Elizabethan court musicians, who were in fact spying on the nobles for whom they performed.. Why the interpretation of the sea in French? If it is a virtuoso exercise,
it is more imaginative than contemporary ballet demonstrating correct movement. The sea IS imagination...
Judith pointed out "pistache" -- French, which could easily be mistaken for "pastiche"...
Richard explained from his sailing experience about jelly fish on the deck ("breakfast jelly yellow streaked the deck") and other images... and my guess is that we could have puzzled for quite some time about the nature of change, clouds, sea, surface and what muddles what.
The two stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" allowed us to continue a discussion of the imagination.
John mentioned Baudelaire and "le Mauvais Vitrier" -- persecuted by a malevolent man for not having rose-colored glass... things seen are as seen -- but the function of seeing is an act by each individual... how do our attitudes affect our vision?
Judith mentioned a purple trombone in the store next to the Little Theatre... which seemed a suitable seque for the final poem by Kenneth Koch. Part insouciant O'Hara, part "stop the world I want to get off"... part love poem to the world and wonderful images that make a reader feel alive:
O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance!
It's the kind of poem one wants to read over -- in different ways, allowing each line, linebreak to sink in:
It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), "Let's go five or six blocks."
The questions are more like prompts to participate than phrases requiring answer:
Isn't the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren't my eyes bigger than love?
Isn't this history, and aren't we a couple of ruins?
and on it goes -- as if on skates sweeping us along -- to the end which is the opposite of pinned-down, predictable, explainable -- and the exclamation point allows room for mutated, sad... breezed, revivified
"unabdicated" -- which somehow implies a choice to abdicate which falls in our own court.
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!
Sea Surface Full Of Clouds by Wallace Stevens
2 stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" -- Wallace Stevens
In Love with You by Kenneth Koch
“Almost anything great that has survived the test of time has a riddle in it, a long arc between comprehension and understanding.” from interview with Ange Mlinko http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/06/17/poetry-must-still-dance-an-interview-with-ange-mlinko/
The first poem has plenty to puzzle about -- from the surprise of a mother giving a stranger her baby so she can spend an hour washing her hair and changing her clothes, to the question of whose "mother" is claimed by "my" and onward to the end line knowledge a baby knows: a small finger, funnier than the whole arm. What is layered in poem and metaphor of dress, ritual, etc. brings the reader back to a universal recognition of an alphabet coiled in baby curls, the cooing, mewling of "new, new, new" and so much to "chew", an ache associated with a nub of a dream, the proprietorship to protect innocence, the power of detail. Delightful, and yet, not transparent -- meanings layered in title, dress, dreams, not yet lived experiences to come.
By contrast, the 1923 poem by Wallace Stevens creates a symphonic painting, like a theme and variation.
John pointed out the 6/8 time of a barcarolle; we had fun with textures of umbrellas, chocolate, patterns, colors, sounds until Martin pointed out the disquieting feel of juxtapositions and negative vocabulary. Judith thought more of Raoul Dufy and his spring-like colors, as opposed to the hectic and confusing chaos of Art responding the World War I. Is it just an experiment? Is the music like the Elizabethan court musicians, who were in fact spying on the nobles for whom they performed.. Why the interpretation of the sea in French? If it is a virtuoso exercise,
it is more imaginative than contemporary ballet demonstrating correct movement. The sea IS imagination...
Judith pointed out "pistache" -- French, which could easily be mistaken for "pastiche"...
Richard explained from his sailing experience about jelly fish on the deck ("breakfast jelly yellow streaked the deck") and other images... and my guess is that we could have puzzled for quite some time about the nature of change, clouds, sea, surface and what muddles what.
The two stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" allowed us to continue a discussion of the imagination.
John mentioned Baudelaire and "le Mauvais Vitrier" -- persecuted by a malevolent man for not having rose-colored glass... things seen are as seen -- but the function of seeing is an act by each individual... how do our attitudes affect our vision?
Judith mentioned a purple trombone in the store next to the Little Theatre... which seemed a suitable seque for the final poem by Kenneth Koch. Part insouciant O'Hara, part "stop the world I want to get off"... part love poem to the world and wonderful images that make a reader feel alive:
O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance!
It's the kind of poem one wants to read over -- in different ways, allowing each line, linebreak to sink in:
It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), "Let's go five or six blocks."
The questions are more like prompts to participate than phrases requiring answer:
Isn't the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren't my eyes bigger than love?
Isn't this history, and aren't we a couple of ruins?
and on it goes -- as if on skates sweeping us along -- to the end which is the opposite of pinned-down, predictable, explainable -- and the exclamation point allows room for mutated, sad... breezed, revivified
"unabdicated" -- which somehow implies a choice to abdicate which falls in our own court.
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!
poems for September 23
To Earthward -- Robert Frost
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes by X J Kennedy
The World Is in Pencil by Todd Boss
The Pattern by Robert Creeley
My Personal Tornado by Jeffrey Harrison
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/poetry-isnt-as-useless-as-a-lot-of-poets-say-it-is/279539/?utm_source=Poetry+Sept+18%2C+2013
I'm not sure the above article does justice to poetry in the closing line -- the question really is not what is the "use" of an individual poem, which borders on the aesthetics and emotional needs that direct our choices.
I will miss the discussion of poems for September 23.
The first one by Robert Frost, was a favorite of Seamus Heaney -- and I think one of mine, which got me thinking about other favorites like Roethke's villanelle. I needed a bit of humor for balance and stumbled on X.J. Kennedy in a book of "old men poems". A bit of linguistic wit, is always welcome in my book, hence, Todd Boss and Robert Creeley's poems -- and back to emotion -- what other's go through, felt with empathy, to reduce a sense that things out of control, tragedy, etc. Jeffrey Harrison reminds us, this is part of the human condition, and our own experience of it is merely a minor reflection.
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes by X J Kennedy
The World Is in Pencil by Todd Boss
The Pattern by Robert Creeley
My Personal Tornado by Jeffrey Harrison
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/poetry-isnt-as-useless-as-a-lot-of-poets-say-it-is/279539/?utm_source=Poetry+Sept+18%2C+2013
I'm not sure the above article does justice to poetry in the closing line -- the question really is not what is the "use" of an individual poem, which borders on the aesthetics and emotional needs that direct our choices.
I will miss the discussion of poems for September 23.
The first one by Robert Frost, was a favorite of Seamus Heaney -- and I think one of mine, which got me thinking about other favorites like Roethke's villanelle. I needed a bit of humor for balance and stumbled on X.J. Kennedy in a book of "old men poems". A bit of linguistic wit, is always welcome in my book, hence, Todd Boss and Robert Creeley's poems -- and back to emotion -- what other's go through, felt with empathy, to reduce a sense that things out of control, tragedy, etc. Jeffrey Harrison reminds us, this is part of the human condition, and our own experience of it is merely a minor reflection.
Friday, September 13, 2013
a little addendum to Sept. 9
Judith shared this, in reference to the Kite.
Spring and Fall
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Poems for September 16
I enjoyed the commentary about Heaney's poem "The Gutteral Muse" –Sept. 9 issue of New Yorker: p.55 (originally published by New Yorker, June 25, 1979 http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2013/09/06/seamus-heaney-the-guttural-
Of course, we do not do justice in a brief hour, discussing 5-6 poems—
and I agree with the commentary’s point that we are better for musing, re-reading, sleeping on poems, noting what we notice, hear, and the directions in which poems take us. I look forward to discussing. Martin will share
information about Architrave Press and Personal by Michael Bazzett. http://architravepress.storenvy.com/products/1338191-personal-by-michael-bazzett
From the Republic of Conscience by Seamus Heaney
To the Creature of the Creation – James Wright
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same by Robert Frost
Cuchulain Comforted – W.B. Yeats
Personal by Michael Bazzett
Poems for Aug. 26
Optimism by Jane Hirshfield
Taken from Harold Bloom, "Till I end my Song-- a Gathering of Last Poems"
Dirge* by James Shirley (1596-1666) (this is one of Robert Frost’s favorite poems.)
This Living Hand – John Keats (1795-1821)
Crossing the Bar* -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
I was not there to lead the discussion, but not surprisingly given the spirit "O Pen", I was told as satisfying as ever.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Poems for September 9
In tribute to Seamus Heaney.
"The Given Note", read at Seamus Heaney’s Funeral, September 2, 2013:
Passing – by Kwame Dawes, first of four poems written in tribute of Seamus Heaney, published in the WSJ.
The 4th one by Dawes is “after A Kite for Aibhín”. We will discuss the poem that inspired it,
"L'Aquilone" by Giovanni Pascoli, which Heaney translated, as well as Heaney's poem inspired by it:
A Kite for Aibhín
Knocks on the door by Maram Al-Massri (a very short poem appearing in "Poetry Not Written for Children that
Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy," by Lemony Snicket.
"Digging", by Heaney.
What is necessary to understand a poem? We discussed at length the different aspect
of “understanding” – how biographical information enhances meaning; how understanding what goes into a poem like “A Kite for Aibhin” based on Heaney’s translation of “Aquilone, a poem allows layers of meaning which the poems by themselves could not offer. A poem allows us several readings – line by line,
line as what is spooled out from title, gathered to linger in a final line that perhaps
already invites a departure to some new land. We read aloud “The Republic of Conscience” which I have slated for next week, and also “Picking Blackberries”
in addition to the discussion.
What a fitting tribute to Seamus Heaney to read aloud “The Given Note”. Singular,
unique, specific note, linked to the Irish islands where only Gaelic is spoken.
A hint of Shakespeare’s Tempest, and concurrent universes, a hint of an orchestra, where an oboe gives the A, or magic. The play on air, note, bow, the evocation of a musical spirit level communicating “this air” – drawn from “out of the night”, from “nowhere”,
The power of his gift – not of gab in the first definition of glib talk, but gift of
I was reading his “nobel prize acceptance speech, which has another idea of “air”.
“And yet the platform here feels more like a space station than a stepping stone, so that is why, for once in my life, I am permitting myself the luxury of walking on air.
I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible. I credit it immediately because of a line I wrote fairly recently instructing myself (and whoever else might be listening) to “walk on air against your better judgement”. But I credit it ultimately because poetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the water in that scullery bucket fifty years ago. ”
He quotes as well Archibald MacLeish, “... ‘A poem should be equal to/not true.’ As a defiant statement of poetry's gift for telling truth but telling it slant, this is both cogent and corrective. Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself. We want the surprise to be transitive like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm. ”
So it felt reading his poems, that we were in the presence of music, clear and inspiring,
with a wisdom.
In the poem, “Passing” written in tribute to Heaney by Kwame Dawes, I could not find the source of the Heaney epigraph: The day he died, the day he didn’t need
To catch the horse since the horse had come to him
Where he sat beside a path -- Seamus Heaney
Poetry allows us to talk about death, as a universal, and yet glean the particulars of a culture, and how they shine a light on understanding. We felt Dawes was close to some of Emily Dickinson’s writing about death, and discussed at length the word “violent” –
as it pertains not to those who have died, but to us who remain, living.
to quote the context, “But death, sudden and violent, and by this/
I mean the halting of animation, the suspense/
that becomes the dying person’s last/
expression; to see that break in time/
is to kill something in us, again, each time.
In discussing both Heaney’s translation of “Aquilone” and his own poem, “A Kite for Aibhan”, we discussed at length the word “windfall” and the change of register in the translation:
“You who were lucky to have seen the fallen/
Only in the windfall of a kite.
It is as if the kite-flying were already coupled with the emotion of a young Heaney
at boarding school, learning about the violent death of his 4 year old brother in an accident, and the emotion of living in times of war...
For his little grand-daughter, the ending line flies with a sense of elation, freedom,
and yet also this sense of fate, of what falls, depending on how the wind blows...
“The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.”
**
Heaney’s final words, “Do not fear” (Noli Timere) address his conviction that a poet’s role is to write about our fears, identify, describe, as accurately as possible, not,
to quote Michael Enright, necessarily to assuage them, but so that we know what we are dealing with. CBC News Posted: Sep 6, 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/09/06/seamus-heaney-michael-enright-essay.html
“Our poets act as the counter to our fears. Our poets don't change the world, but instead change the way we look at it. They provide a glimmer of something better.”
"The Given Note", read at Seamus Heaney’s Funeral, September 2, 2013:
Passing – by Kwame Dawes, first of four poems written in tribute of Seamus Heaney, published in the WSJ.
The 4th one by Dawes is “after A Kite for Aibhín”. We will discuss the poem that inspired it,
"L'Aquilone" by Giovanni Pascoli, which Heaney translated, as well as Heaney's poem inspired by it:
A Kite for Aibhín
Knocks on the door by Maram Al-Massri (a very short poem appearing in "Poetry Not Written for Children that
Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy," by Lemony Snicket.
"Digging", by Heaney.
What is necessary to understand a poem? We discussed at length the different aspect
of “understanding” – how biographical information enhances meaning; how understanding what goes into a poem like “A Kite for Aibhin” based on Heaney’s translation of “Aquilone, a poem allows layers of meaning which the poems by themselves could not offer. A poem allows us several readings – line by line,
line as what is spooled out from title, gathered to linger in a final line that perhaps
already invites a departure to some new land. We read aloud “The Republic of Conscience” which I have slated for next week, and also “Picking Blackberries”
in addition to the discussion.
What a fitting tribute to Seamus Heaney to read aloud “The Given Note”. Singular,
unique, specific note, linked to the Irish islands where only Gaelic is spoken.
A hint of Shakespeare’s Tempest, and concurrent universes, a hint of an orchestra, where an oboe gives the A, or magic. The play on air, note, bow, the evocation of a musical spirit level communicating “this air” – drawn from “out of the night”, from “nowhere”,
The power of his gift – not of gab in the first definition of glib talk, but gift of
I was reading his “nobel prize acceptance speech, which has another idea of “air”.
“And yet the platform here feels more like a space station than a stepping stone, so that is why, for once in my life, I am permitting myself the luxury of walking on air.
I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible. I credit it immediately because of a line I wrote fairly recently instructing myself (and whoever else might be listening) to “walk on air against your better judgement”. But I credit it ultimately because poetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the water in that scullery bucket fifty years ago. ”
He quotes as well Archibald MacLeish, “... ‘A poem should be equal to/not true.’ As a defiant statement of poetry's gift for telling truth but telling it slant, this is both cogent and corrective. Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself. We want the surprise to be transitive like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm. ”
So it felt reading his poems, that we were in the presence of music, clear and inspiring,
with a wisdom.
In the poem, “Passing” written in tribute to Heaney by Kwame Dawes, I could not find the source of the Heaney epigraph: The day he died, the day he didn’t need
To catch the horse since the horse had come to him
Where he sat beside a path -- Seamus Heaney
Poetry allows us to talk about death, as a universal, and yet glean the particulars of a culture, and how they shine a light on understanding. We felt Dawes was close to some of Emily Dickinson’s writing about death, and discussed at length the word “violent” –
as it pertains not to those who have died, but to us who remain, living.
to quote the context, “But death, sudden and violent, and by this/
I mean the halting of animation, the suspense/
that becomes the dying person’s last/
expression; to see that break in time/
is to kill something in us, again, each time.
In discussing both Heaney’s translation of “Aquilone” and his own poem, “A Kite for Aibhan”, we discussed at length the word “windfall” and the change of register in the translation:
“You who were lucky to have seen the fallen/
Only in the windfall of a kite.
It is as if the kite-flying were already coupled with the emotion of a young Heaney
at boarding school, learning about the violent death of his 4 year old brother in an accident, and the emotion of living in times of war...
For his little grand-daughter, the ending line flies with a sense of elation, freedom,
and yet also this sense of fate, of what falls, depending on how the wind blows...
“The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.”
**
Heaney’s final words, “Do not fear” (Noli Timere) address his conviction that a poet’s role is to write about our fears, identify, describe, as accurately as possible, not,
to quote Michael Enright, necessarily to assuage them, but so that we know what we are dealing with. CBC News Posted: Sep 6, 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/09/06/seamus-heaney-michael-enright-essay.html
“Our poets act as the counter to our fears. Our poets don't change the world, but instead change the way we look at it. They provide a glimmer of something better.”
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