A good poem for me, acts like Luis Alberto Urrea’s books: he says they are “ ways to toss a love note over the fence.” In this case, snapshots of the everyday, playing tennis with art...
Days of Future Dwell by Samuel Amadon (contemporary poet, lives/works in Houston)
String Quartet by Carl Dennis
Abstract Expressionism -- by Tony Hoagland
Homeland Security – by Patrick Cotter
Of the Divine as Absence and Single Letter by Idra Novey
Each one of the poems addressed in some form the viewer/reader's experience in front of a work of art -- whether it be a poem, music, a painting. Week after week, our discussions allow 18-25 "live" participants to share how a poem touches them, drawing on a variety of work and life experiences including retired teacher, social worker, psychologist, environmentalist, accountant, musician, artist, and many more.
Days of Future Dwell:
What does the title "associate" ? Days of Future is not usually followed by the biblical, prayer-tone of "Dwell" -- and how does this poet use the quatrains to his advantage,
and repeating "ell" sound.
David suggested that we read it twice, in a row, to hear the words spoken by different people.
One person was reminded of refrigerator art...Martin commended the poem for reproducing the way the mind stumbles over things...David appreciated how random detail turned metaphorical...
and the more we discussed, the more layers appeared to what ostensibly is a story of selling a house in which one used to dwell, but which will only linger to what is "tied to its bell". Could be cowbells, so one doesn't lose them; bells as warning -- or doorbells... or the sounds that fill a house, the voices that identify the people who live there.
In the first stanza, "windowed, countered,/ surfaced" act both as adjectives and multiple-meanings of verbs -- perhaps like an offer/counter offer; what's put on the table; seen/passed through the window, and all that is revealed when suddenly the physical shell will change hands.
For Marcie, it addressed unreadinesss that’s going to happen anyway which started a discussion about our individual smallness in face of life. That reminds me of ee cummings
and his Impressions VII from Tulips and Chimneys where he breaks down in-
fin-
i
tes-
i
mal-
ly
into a long column with two small i's.
**
Carl Dennis starts out Quartet with this line: "Art and life, I wouldn't want to confuse them." And then proceeds to compare listening to a quartet with a conversation. We all immediately recognized the flow -- or the person who has to play the "solo" part, the cello playing (Don thinks Pachelbel's canon) the same plodding line over and over. Favorite line:"voices of the quartet/In resisting the plots time hatches to make them unequal,
He returns to the crux of the matter here with a five line stanza question: "Would I be moved if I thought the music/Belonged to a world remote from this one,/If it didn't seem instead to be making the point/That conversation like this is available/At moments sufficiently free and self-forgetful?
We are moved when we make connection -- enriched when art enables us to do so.
**
On the same subject, Tony Hoagland's poem, Abstract Expressionism, gave rise to peals of laughter as we recognized ourselves in various personalities in front of a painting:
the amateur, naively going with associations/suggestions he tries to imagine as existing, the academic, the painterly painter. But really, standing in front of abstract expressionism is like standing in front of our own lives... paying attention to what is evoked in us.
Also from the Cortland Review is Patrick Cotter's poem which also has a dog. Unlike Hoagland's dog who has missed the boat, yet was there before it, Cotter's dog can "morse his message" which brings the speaker to wonder about how we decode messages -- whether in raindrops or barks. "If there are rules to this game/ I don't know what they are"
It is refreshing to laugh -- to have fresh and delightful ways of thinking about communication, art, how we are. The poem which had no artifice at all came at the end.
Idra Novey paints a perfect picture, as Marcie put it, of "hopeful expression of hopelessness." Re-read the title, "Of the Divine as Absence and Single Letter" and more appears as mystery. A suggestion, a hint, a real-ness in what is not.
Indeed, the details are real, oppositions of Holiday Inn and green; a beautiful flower called Joe Pye weed and peeling plaster; In the third stanza, the O sounds appear, a small tick of D on wind (hidden perhaps), owl, silo sliding to sticking, the doubled O in sorrow.
I’m listening to G now
but mean the owl, a wind playing the silo,
a sticking sorrow,
which then leaps to the actual snore of the visitor... and almost a prayer:
"make me kinder "-- and the double negative of "I’m not far from unfathoming it all."
Just as we cannot say the name of God, Yahweh, cannot fathom and cannot unfathom, if such a thing could be-- but there lies the confirmation of the mystery.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
commentary on March 18: mystical writing
commentary on poems for March 18.
I love the synchronicity of hearing a Cornelius Eady sing, (see the link to his group “Rough Magic” http://www.reverbnation.com/corneliuseady/song/16559714-last-stop-ny-studio-version?1336410755 ) and then look up his poem on the poet walk and find that it resonates with the first poem presented by Rumi. “Love” says Eady... no matter the circumstances,
especially since things you think “weren’t supposed to occur/have happened,(anyway). Eady then finds the ease of breathing, like Rumi asking God to absorb him, his words, leaving only the silence of union...
What is it about mystic writing that moves us? “The quintessential somewhere; The mystical nowhere: The enigmatic anywhere ; My gift to you - the key to everywhere.
Place becomes a play of light and shadow where the mortal will find itself lost while the soul knows the way. Whether it is St. John of the Cross contemplating “The Dark Night of the Soul”, Wang Wei or Hayden Carruth meditating in twilight, or dreamlike state, the reader is invited to put on a new pair of eyes. Poems cast our words, our stories, what we choose, such as smiling, in the Carruth poem, for the simple reason we can (and how does that mean to him? or to you as reader?). If we agree with Weng Wei, then we too “watch the flow of clear water,/ dream of sitting on the uncarved rock (Tao)/
casting a line on the endless stream.(Tao).
Paul Muldoon has a different approach: unlike Rumi, Weng Wei, and Carruth whose measured, deliberate slow pace matches the softness of the scene, he seems to unwind ballads. In “Tell” it could be a rhymed story of a boy combining William Tell and Cowboys and Indians. What is the sound of an apple splitting above your head in such a childhood memory? I love that as readers we could think of 1916 and the troubles, think of father/son, the stakes of William Tell, and all that can be associated with the unknown.
In the “Mirror” his poem translates a story http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25580591?uid=3739832&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102026948817
by Michael Davitt (1846-1906), Irish hero for tenant protection from absentee landlords. but it would well be re-told by the Irish “Bob Dylan”, Michael Davitt who founded in 1970 the Irish-language literary journal Innti. (More than a poetry magazine, the Innti 'movement', akin to that of the Beats in the United States, revitalised poetry in the Irish language with its emphasis on contemporary concerns and sharp vernacular wit. By staging public readings across Ireland and literally bringing poetry back to the streets, a sense of excitement was generated in the Seventies and Eighties poetry scene which resembled that of the San Francisco renaissance during the previous two decades.)
But I digress. Consult http://www.complete-review.com/authors/muldoonp.htm to find out more about Muldoon. There you will read “gamesman, then, is another name for poet in Paul Muldoon's practice."
However it is, the three part story, which starts out at a wake, goes into the reason for the father’s death, and ends with the son putting the mirror in position, brought out much discussion. The “cold Paradox” of someone dead – “he was no longer my father, but I was his son” – what living is – what the next world is – how the mirror swallows one,
allows ghosts, transcendence from one world to the next – in a rather haunting “St. John of the Cross” tone. I think of Seamus Heaney and “The Spirit Level”. Which brings us to the poem, “The Frog” where the speaker is in the same “spirit level”...
The final poem This much I know.
In “Hay” Muldoon starts off with “This much I know”—and then remarks his observation of the hay, the raw itching hands, the light, and the “one” when one bursts,
can be both one of the hay accordions, (although for a fraction of a second, “one” seems to refer to a universal “you”) something takes flight/
from those hot and heavy box-pleats. This much, at least,/
I know.
And what is it that takes flight – and what is it then, we know? And does that alter,
like circumstances over which we have no control, anything? Keep breathing; love.
I love the synchronicity of hearing a Cornelius Eady sing, (see the link to his group “Rough Magic” http://www.reverbnation.com/corneliuseady/song/16559714-last-stop-ny-studio-version?1336410755 ) and then look up his poem on the poet walk and find that it resonates with the first poem presented by Rumi. “Love” says Eady... no matter the circumstances,
especially since things you think “weren’t supposed to occur/have happened,(anyway). Eady then finds the ease of breathing, like Rumi asking God to absorb him, his words, leaving only the silence of union...
What is it about mystic writing that moves us? “The quintessential somewhere; The mystical nowhere: The enigmatic anywhere ; My gift to you - the key to everywhere.
Place becomes a play of light and shadow where the mortal will find itself lost while the soul knows the way. Whether it is St. John of the Cross contemplating “The Dark Night of the Soul”, Wang Wei or Hayden Carruth meditating in twilight, or dreamlike state, the reader is invited to put on a new pair of eyes. Poems cast our words, our stories, what we choose, such as smiling, in the Carruth poem, for the simple reason we can (and how does that mean to him? or to you as reader?). If we agree with Weng Wei, then we too “watch the flow of clear water,/ dream of sitting on the uncarved rock (Tao)/
casting a line on the endless stream.(Tao).
Paul Muldoon has a different approach: unlike Rumi, Weng Wei, and Carruth whose measured, deliberate slow pace matches the softness of the scene, he seems to unwind ballads. In “Tell” it could be a rhymed story of a boy combining William Tell and Cowboys and Indians. What is the sound of an apple splitting above your head in such a childhood memory? I love that as readers we could think of 1916 and the troubles, think of father/son, the stakes of William Tell, and all that can be associated with the unknown.
In the “Mirror” his poem translates a story http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25580591?uid=3739832&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102026948817
by Michael Davitt (1846-1906), Irish hero for tenant protection from absentee landlords. but it would well be re-told by the Irish “Bob Dylan”, Michael Davitt who founded in 1970 the Irish-language literary journal Innti. (More than a poetry magazine, the Innti 'movement', akin to that of the Beats in the United States, revitalised poetry in the Irish language with its emphasis on contemporary concerns and sharp vernacular wit. By staging public readings across Ireland and literally bringing poetry back to the streets, a sense of excitement was generated in the Seventies and Eighties poetry scene which resembled that of the San Francisco renaissance during the previous two decades.)
But I digress. Consult http://www.complete-review.com/authors/muldoonp.htm to find out more about Muldoon. There you will read “gamesman, then, is another name for poet in Paul Muldoon's practice."
However it is, the three part story, which starts out at a wake, goes into the reason for the father’s death, and ends with the son putting the mirror in position, brought out much discussion. The “cold Paradox” of someone dead – “he was no longer my father, but I was his son” – what living is – what the next world is – how the mirror swallows one,
allows ghosts, transcendence from one world to the next – in a rather haunting “St. John of the Cross” tone. I think of Seamus Heaney and “The Spirit Level”. Which brings us to the poem, “The Frog” where the speaker is in the same “spirit level”...
The final poem This much I know.
In “Hay” Muldoon starts off with “This much I know”—and then remarks his observation of the hay, the raw itching hands, the light, and the “one” when one bursts,
can be both one of the hay accordions, (although for a fraction of a second, “one” seems to refer to a universal “you”) something takes flight/
from those hot and heavy box-pleats. This much, at least,/
I know.
And what is it that takes flight – and what is it then, we know? And does that alter,
like circumstances over which we have no control, anything? Keep breathing; love.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
poems for March 18
Sometimes I forget completely by Rumi, (1207 –1273)transl. by Coleman Barks
Twilight Comes by Hayden Carruth (1921-2008)
Green Water-Stream by Wang Wei (8th Century Chinese Poet) for more poems by him: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.htm
4 poems by Paul Muldoon: 1951-- A Brief Biography of the Poet: http://www.paulmuldoon.net/biography.php4)
Tell, The Mirror, The Frog, Hay
Extra:
Poet Cornelius Eady (b. 1954 and raised in Rochester) is not only a fine poet, but part of a group, Rough Magic and writes the lyrics/music: http://www.reverbnation.com/corneliuseady/song/16559714-last-stop-ny-studio-version?1336410755 You can stream the poems and all downloads are free.
13th down is "Sam Patch w/ Emma Alabaster & Concetta Abbate.."
The Muldoon poems were shared from the Seattle library group -- he also has a group: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-muldoon
First up is a link to the Wayside Shrines, Paul Muldoon's band, where you can listen to "It's Never Too Late for Rock 'N' Roll" and other songs with lyrics by Paul Muldoon. http://waysideshrines.org/
Twilight Comes by Hayden Carruth (1921-2008)
Green Water-Stream by Wang Wei (8th Century Chinese Poet) for more poems by him: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.htm
4 poems by Paul Muldoon: 1951-- A Brief Biography of the Poet: http://www.paulmuldoon.net/biography.php4)
Tell, The Mirror, The Frog, Hay
Extra:
Poet Cornelius Eady (b. 1954 and raised in Rochester) is not only a fine poet, but part of a group, Rough Magic and writes the lyrics/music: http://www.reverbnation.com/corneliuseady/song/16559714-last-stop-ny-studio-version?1336410755 You can stream the poems and all downloads are free.
13th down is "Sam Patch w/ Emma Alabaster & Concetta Abbate.."
The Muldoon poems were shared from the Seattle library group -- he also has a group: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-muldoon
First up is a link to the Wayside Shrines, Paul Muldoon's band, where you can listen to "It's Never Too Late for Rock 'N' Roll" and other songs with lyrics by Paul Muldoon. http://waysideshrines.org/
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Poems for March 11
Poems for March 11
Last week, we witnessed how knowing something about the poem/poet, changes the poem. This week, I thought I’d share a few more poems like that. Do not feel obligated to read the references until you’ve had a chance to enjoy the poem –!
Fuel -- R.S. Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000)
On the Farm by R.S. Thomas
http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com/2010/05/r-s-thomas-and-welsh.html
Zhuang Zhou, influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE
# 260 -- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Ode to My Suit – Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973)
Forgetfulness—Straight Up (hommage to any CRS (Can’t Remember Stuff)
Although we're not sure how to pronounce the names in Welsh in the first poem, we know
two brothers are "no good". No pronouncement about the third: only an open "What shall I say" followed by a whistling in the hedges. The feel is "as though" winter would never leave, and the trees deformed. Just like a painter choosing his colors, this creates a creepy foreshadowing, leading to the final stanza about the girl. Again, we do not know what is meant by "Beauty under some spell of the beast." The images are sharp, piercing, vivid just like the final sentence in a book the girl's face reveals like a lantern: you can hear a shriek "God is love" which feels anything but what you want to associate with the word.
The second poem, only two stanzas compare w/ The Gift which ends encouraging us to "drink from the pool given you." Here, it is machines who laugh up their sleeves. A lively discussion ensued about how we
are out of touch with ourselves because of machines. John summed it up saying, "the car is an elaborate wheelchair for a psychic invalid". We discussed "alloy" as strengthening of material... or desire... Don (I believe) mentioned de Toqueville’s letters about America. Ex. regarding all the indians drunk, after getting payment from the US government for what they traded. "Indians bring in furs and trade for the things which will be their undoing." Are we not doing the same with selling our souls to machines -- whether upgrades of internet, or abuse of Gutenberg's moveable type and printing press.
Every tool is potentially dangerous and it behooves us to examine and identify where the sharp edges are.
For the Man of Tao, we compared two translations -- the version on internet was shorter and had wording which did not reflect the same understanding of "Tao" as the version printed from Housden's anthology "Risking Everything". "The man in whom Tao/Acts without impediment" illustrates the paradox of involvement when absorbed in a task and resultant disappearance of self. This is very different than "The man of Tao acts without impediment". It is not about the man, rather about the Tao. We agreed that Merton's deletion of “he” line 2; his break after being, actions, and use of quotations around “kind” and “gentle” were to stress that the point is not to name and judge something as "kind" but to show it – as you ARE doing it... John brought up the point that this may have been an oral story, and that we are dealing with a culture that prints in ideograms... and further made us laugh when pushing the parallel that going to church does not make you a Christian by extension could mean going into a garage makes you a car.
Emily Dickinson's delightful "I'm Nobody, who are you" was refreshing. The "admiring Bog" now a days, Don offered, is perhaps a blog. We spoke about JD Salinger refusing interviews and how in our culture it is hard to stand up for the view that it is not a negative thing to want privacy. Marcie brought up her AP English teacher from 1966 who gave an example of someone very comfortable with herself and sharing the poem which was successful as the class respected her and could thus trust her to guide a discussion about the
problem of being somebody. There is such a delightful Asian feel to this poem– suggestive...humorous.
I diverted the discussion away from Emily's personal life (perhaps inspired by the energy of the poem which feels like spring peepers ready to multiply) and somehow David brought up Hyla Brook,
ghost of sleighbells in the ghost of snow... and John quoted
The Hours of Sleep:
Nature takes 5
Custom 7
Laziness 9
Wickedness 11
What fun, to imagine being nobodies together –
For the next poem, "Ode to my Suit", I used several different translations and tried to read a composite.. fabulous poem and wonderful way of thinking beyond how we "dress our part". Our skin as suit – what else we are... humanity as material goods.
Richard Feynman: walk w/ father. When you know the word for Nightingale is Rossignol in French, xyz in German, Russian, Turk, etc. when you know all that, you know nothing about Nightingale...
read outloud: Owl by Ellen Bryant Voigt -- which is organized into Stanzas, yet hard to imagine from the suspended lines with no punctuations.
forgetfulness... oversights. mental bad habits... brought up a reference to
Robert Darnton: 18th c. France.
The Great Cat Massacre... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Cat_Massacre
Terrific discussion, which was just that. No agenda, nothing to prove as the poems helped us shed a little light here and there on what it is to be human.
Last week, we witnessed how knowing something about the poem/poet, changes the poem. This week, I thought I’d share a few more poems like that. Do not feel obligated to read the references until you’ve had a chance to enjoy the poem –!
Fuel -- R.S. Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000)
On the Farm by R.S. Thomas
http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com/2010/05/r-s-thomas-and-welsh.html
Zhuang Zhou, influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE
# 260 -- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Ode to My Suit – Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973)
Forgetfulness—Straight Up (hommage to any CRS (Can’t Remember Stuff)
Although we're not sure how to pronounce the names in Welsh in the first poem, we know
two brothers are "no good". No pronouncement about the third: only an open "What shall I say" followed by a whistling in the hedges. The feel is "as though" winter would never leave, and the trees deformed. Just like a painter choosing his colors, this creates a creepy foreshadowing, leading to the final stanza about the girl. Again, we do not know what is meant by "Beauty under some spell of the beast." The images are sharp, piercing, vivid just like the final sentence in a book the girl's face reveals like a lantern: you can hear a shriek "God is love" which feels anything but what you want to associate with the word.
The second poem, only two stanzas compare w/ The Gift which ends encouraging us to "drink from the pool given you." Here, it is machines who laugh up their sleeves. A lively discussion ensued about how we
are out of touch with ourselves because of machines. John summed it up saying, "the car is an elaborate wheelchair for a psychic invalid". We discussed "alloy" as strengthening of material... or desire... Don (I believe) mentioned de Toqueville’s letters about America. Ex. regarding all the indians drunk, after getting payment from the US government for what they traded. "Indians bring in furs and trade for the things which will be their undoing." Are we not doing the same with selling our souls to machines -- whether upgrades of internet, or abuse of Gutenberg's moveable type and printing press.
Every tool is potentially dangerous and it behooves us to examine and identify where the sharp edges are.
For the Man of Tao, we compared two translations -- the version on internet was shorter and had wording which did not reflect the same understanding of "Tao" as the version printed from Housden's anthology "Risking Everything". "The man in whom Tao/Acts without impediment" illustrates the paradox of involvement when absorbed in a task and resultant disappearance of self. This is very different than "The man of Tao acts without impediment". It is not about the man, rather about the Tao. We agreed that Merton's deletion of “he” line 2; his break after being, actions, and use of quotations around “kind” and “gentle” were to stress that the point is not to name and judge something as "kind" but to show it – as you ARE doing it... John brought up the point that this may have been an oral story, and that we are dealing with a culture that prints in ideograms... and further made us laugh when pushing the parallel that going to church does not make you a Christian by extension could mean going into a garage makes you a car.
Emily Dickinson's delightful "I'm Nobody, who are you" was refreshing. The "admiring Bog" now a days, Don offered, is perhaps a blog. We spoke about JD Salinger refusing interviews and how in our culture it is hard to stand up for the view that it is not a negative thing to want privacy. Marcie brought up her AP English teacher from 1966 who gave an example of someone very comfortable with herself and sharing the poem which was successful as the class respected her and could thus trust her to guide a discussion about the
problem of being somebody. There is such a delightful Asian feel to this poem– suggestive...humorous.
I diverted the discussion away from Emily's personal life (perhaps inspired by the energy of the poem which feels like spring peepers ready to multiply) and somehow David brought up Hyla Brook,
ghost of sleighbells in the ghost of snow... and John quoted
The Hours of Sleep:
Nature takes 5
Custom 7
Laziness 9
Wickedness 11
What fun, to imagine being nobodies together –
For the next poem, "Ode to my Suit", I used several different translations and tried to read a composite.. fabulous poem and wonderful way of thinking beyond how we "dress our part". Our skin as suit – what else we are... humanity as material goods.
Richard Feynman: walk w/ father. When you know the word for Nightingale is Rossignol in French, xyz in German, Russian, Turk, etc. when you know all that, you know nothing about Nightingale...
read outloud: Owl by Ellen Bryant Voigt -- which is organized into Stanzas, yet hard to imagine from the suspended lines with no punctuations.
forgetfulness... oversights. mental bad habits... brought up a reference to
Robert Darnton: 18th c. France.
The Great Cat Massacre... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Cat_Massacre
Terrific discussion, which was just that. No agenda, nothing to prove as the poems helped us shed a little light here and there on what it is to be human.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
March 4 discussion
O pen discussion: March 4, 2013
Poems for March 4
Streetlamps by Brenda Shaughnessy
Hearth by Brenda Shaughnessy
Honda Pavarotti by Tony Hoagland
The Cellist by Galway Kinnel
The Same Inside by Anna Swir
You never know how our discussions will start... and I already am suffering from CRS which Michael kindly explained means (Can’t Remember Stuff (or shit) with a case in point being the “word.a.day” which David brought up. It was: gelasin: noun: A dimple in the cheek that appears when someone smiles.
And you never know how such a detail will serendipitously fit as if perfectly planned. Today’s word of the day: Sprezzatura. What I aim for when playing piano... Doing (or giving the appearance of doing) something effortlessly; effortless grace; nonchalance.)
My new goal is to mention the birthdates and important places to the poets picked each week. It makes a difference to know Anna Swir is born in 1909 and lived in Poland.
Sometimes knowing a biographical fact is important – for instance, if the poet is writing about grief and references to doctors arriving too late, but does not talk about a difficult birth, cerebral palsy, this information adds a lens which changes out perception.
I picked two very different poems by Brenda Shaughnessy b. 1970, both of which appeared in Gwarlingo last week. They both used couplets, but to quite different effect: the first, with clever enjambments, which stand out in short stanzas, eye rhyme, rhyme and slant rhyme, made us laugh. The second, strongly emotional had a sober and mysterious narrative .
Martin mentioned how he thought “Streetlamps” was a very serious poem, and looked up the author, only to find out she often used humor, which changed the poem completely. Her couplets accentuate the possibilities of paradox and the humor of double negatives, a road being “unplowed” as opposed to a field, the repetition of a quartet of “so” with parallel negative foils, the blending of cliché, “primacy of eggs”, only to arrive at a vocative address: “O streetlamp,/
wallflower clairvoyant,’ you are so futuristically/ old-fashioned, do not allow us to pause, reflect, but rather click along rapidly, yet, demand we slow down, playing serious against funny. Is wallflower or clairvoyant adjective or noun, and after leaping on from light to address “now and later” and the ping-pong of opposites, where “half” turns into a verb to erase the other half, and light, only able to be light in the dark... indeed, makes this reader feel breathlessly insane. The final line, “The only snows are dark snows.” brings us back to the plowed road – what it is we try to “clear”, but also, what snow, white as it is, also wraps things, covers up.
In “Hearth” there is no mistaking the opening as dramatic.
“Love comes from ferocious love
or a ferocious lack of love, child”
one does not joke with mothers, love or lack. The contradictions in the couplets this time drive the poem with urgency: The final sentence brings us home – but this is not to be still – there is an urgency -- and ferocious and lack return in the final sentence: You’ll lack nothing,/ child, and I will never let you go.
Reading Tony Hoagland’s Honda Pavarotti , we discussed opera... how sometimes knowing what is being sung, like understanding some background to a poem, increases enjoyment. Although some opera can be understood no matter what, Jim mentioned hearing a Czech opera in Budapest, translated into Hungarian, and yet could understand 85%. We also discussed the use of “Honda” in the title as well in Hoagland’s latest book, “Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty”. From the experience of driving, listening to Pavarotti, who is a singer who moves even the most misanthropic of opera shunners, a visceral identification with the production of the singing, comes the idea of squandering a life. No place ... “is good enough for this, this thing made out of experience/but to which experience will never measure up.” Note that this is both a dark AND soaring fact – that it pushes us to renounce OR fall in love with the world.
Contradiction remains the theme in “The Cellist” by Galway Kinnell, although many of the class had great suggestions about how he could tighten the effect – perhaps tell us why the speaker of the poem went backstage and what the relationship was, and take out the entire physical description of the girl’s private parts. Martin brought up a painting by Balthus called “The Guitar Lesson” (google Balthus on wiki to see it) which echoes a sense of instrument=woman – but we wondered if the poem is really about that.
What touched most of us was “the dreary in us” – what we have given, received, and cannot balance in a 12 lines sentence including “and for fear I wasn't worthy,
and all I poured out for reasons I don't understand yet.”
The ancient screaming, the cat, the birthing, etc. perhaps are to enhance fear, but most everyone found the pushing of the metaphor was “over the top”.
Anna Swir’s “The Same Inside” is a brilliant poem, contrasting the spiritual and physical beggar, the need for trust, relationship, hearth. Such simple strokes: Beggar, woman going to a love fest; reptilian brain like a dog; money; and an epiphany: “I could not part from her./After all, one needs/someone who is close. This is not the cerebral “love they neighbor as thyself” but a moment of transcendence, where conversing, touching another, feeling their needs, translating them to you own, exposes the artificial trysts for what they are – which are no longer needed.
I ended by reading Tony Hoagland’s “The Loneliest Job in the World.”
We left, feeling we all were better accountants of the heart – having shared hearty laughs, seen in the ordinary things of our lives new insights.
Poems for March 4
Streetlamps by Brenda Shaughnessy
Hearth by Brenda Shaughnessy
Honda Pavarotti by Tony Hoagland
The Cellist by Galway Kinnel
The Same Inside by Anna Swir
You never know how our discussions will start... and I already am suffering from CRS which Michael kindly explained means (Can’t Remember Stuff (or shit) with a case in point being the “word.a.day” which David brought up. It was: gelasin: noun: A dimple in the cheek that appears when someone smiles.
And you never know how such a detail will serendipitously fit as if perfectly planned. Today’s word of the day: Sprezzatura. What I aim for when playing piano... Doing (or giving the appearance of doing) something effortlessly; effortless grace; nonchalance.)
My new goal is to mention the birthdates and important places to the poets picked each week. It makes a difference to know Anna Swir is born in 1909 and lived in Poland.
Sometimes knowing a biographical fact is important – for instance, if the poet is writing about grief and references to doctors arriving too late, but does not talk about a difficult birth, cerebral palsy, this information adds a lens which changes out perception.
I picked two very different poems by Brenda Shaughnessy b. 1970, both of which appeared in Gwarlingo last week. They both used couplets, but to quite different effect: the first, with clever enjambments, which stand out in short stanzas, eye rhyme, rhyme and slant rhyme, made us laugh. The second, strongly emotional had a sober and mysterious narrative .
Martin mentioned how he thought “Streetlamps” was a very serious poem, and looked up the author, only to find out she often used humor, which changed the poem completely. Her couplets accentuate the possibilities of paradox and the humor of double negatives, a road being “unplowed” as opposed to a field, the repetition of a quartet of “so” with parallel negative foils, the blending of cliché, “primacy of eggs”, only to arrive at a vocative address: “O streetlamp,/
wallflower clairvoyant,’ you are so futuristically/ old-fashioned, do not allow us to pause, reflect, but rather click along rapidly, yet, demand we slow down, playing serious against funny. Is wallflower or clairvoyant adjective or noun, and after leaping on from light to address “now and later” and the ping-pong of opposites, where “half” turns into a verb to erase the other half, and light, only able to be light in the dark... indeed, makes this reader feel breathlessly insane. The final line, “The only snows are dark snows.” brings us back to the plowed road – what it is we try to “clear”, but also, what snow, white as it is, also wraps things, covers up.
In “Hearth” there is no mistaking the opening as dramatic.
“Love comes from ferocious love
or a ferocious lack of love, child”
one does not joke with mothers, love or lack. The contradictions in the couplets this time drive the poem with urgency: The final sentence brings us home – but this is not to be still – there is an urgency -- and ferocious and lack return in the final sentence: You’ll lack nothing,/ child, and I will never let you go.
Reading Tony Hoagland’s Honda Pavarotti , we discussed opera... how sometimes knowing what is being sung, like understanding some background to a poem, increases enjoyment. Although some opera can be understood no matter what, Jim mentioned hearing a Czech opera in Budapest, translated into Hungarian, and yet could understand 85%. We also discussed the use of “Honda” in the title as well in Hoagland’s latest book, “Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty”. From the experience of driving, listening to Pavarotti, who is a singer who moves even the most misanthropic of opera shunners, a visceral identification with the production of the singing, comes the idea of squandering a life. No place ... “is good enough for this, this thing made out of experience/but to which experience will never measure up.” Note that this is both a dark AND soaring fact – that it pushes us to renounce OR fall in love with the world.
Contradiction remains the theme in “The Cellist” by Galway Kinnell, although many of the class had great suggestions about how he could tighten the effect – perhaps tell us why the speaker of the poem went backstage and what the relationship was, and take out the entire physical description of the girl’s private parts. Martin brought up a painting by Balthus called “The Guitar Lesson” (google Balthus on wiki to see it) which echoes a sense of instrument=woman – but we wondered if the poem is really about that.
What touched most of us was “the dreary in us” – what we have given, received, and cannot balance in a 12 lines sentence including “and for fear I wasn't worthy,
and all I poured out for reasons I don't understand yet.”
The ancient screaming, the cat, the birthing, etc. perhaps are to enhance fear, but most everyone found the pushing of the metaphor was “over the top”.
Anna Swir’s “The Same Inside” is a brilliant poem, contrasting the spiritual and physical beggar, the need for trust, relationship, hearth. Such simple strokes: Beggar, woman going to a love fest; reptilian brain like a dog; money; and an epiphany: “I could not part from her./After all, one needs/someone who is close. This is not the cerebral “love they neighbor as thyself” but a moment of transcendence, where conversing, touching another, feeling their needs, translating them to you own, exposes the artificial trysts for what they are – which are no longer needed.
I ended by reading Tony Hoagland’s “The Loneliest Job in the World.”
We left, feeling we all were better accountants of the heart – having shared hearty laughs, seen in the ordinary things of our lives new insights.
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