Here is the line-up:
Kathy will introduce :
Ecclesiastes 11:1 by Richard Wilbur
David will introduce
If Music Be the Food of Love
from A Verticle Mile by Richard Wakefield (David wrote the introduction)
Jim will introduce
On the Bank by by Arseny Tarkovsky
Judith will present
By all things planetary, sweet, I swear by Gwendolyn Brooks and
although not as clever as Nemerov’s parody of Eliot’s Wasteland w/ notes, (On the Threshold of His Greatness) Henry Reed’s “Chard Whitlow,” a delightful parody of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. She wrote tonight: "I am practicing Chard Whitlow in as close to Dylan Thomas as Ol’ Tom as I can muster/mutter. It really takes a man’s etiolated attenuated strangulated St Louis cum Dry Salvages bleat…and I can’t do the police in different voices, but I toil on.”
You might enjoy reading simply “quotes” from the Quartets here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2886568-four-quartets
and a quick “brush up” about the Quartets here: http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section7.rhtml
“Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.”
February Evening in New York by Denise Levertov
Thursday, February 20, 2014
O Pen: Feb. 17 (see also Feb. 13 and Feb. 24)
Hard on the heels of Valentine’s day, but also many tributes to Maxine Kumin who passed away on February 6, the selection below gathers recent poems posted on Writers Almanac, Verse Daily, the February issue of Poetry. You might enjoy reading http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/maxine-kumin-1925-2014/ which pays tribute to Kumin. In the introduction, to the 1988 issue she edited, she ends by saying, "Here, then, are the things I really want for myself. May my hungers be yours.”
In the spirit of Kumin’s words, I am fascinated by and curious about the poems below: the “how” behind the “what” other writers choose to notice, and note. I look forward to your comments.
Poems for Feb. 17:
After Mowing: Poems introduced by an epigraph by John Gardner. “When you look back there’s lots of bales in the field, but ahead it’s all still to mow.”
Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief by Maxine Kumin (posted on Writer’s Almanac 2/7/2014)
What's in my journal -- William Stafford
Now you See it, Now you Don't -- Valerie Bandura (Verse Daily)
Whethering -- A.E. Stallings
Sonnet 135 Shakespeare
Sonnagram by K. Silem Mohammad
**
Poems for Feb. 20
Spring is like a perhaps hand... by E.E. Cummings
The Mayor's Guide to Reelection by Jeffrey Morgan
Chorus of the Mothers-Griot by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
The Mayor's Guide to Reelection by Jeffrey Morgan
First Snow by Mary Oliver
The Same Cold by Stephen Dunn
also sent on Lincoln's Birthday:
Lincoln's Birthday (Feb. 12) the poem by David Shumate posted on Writers' Almanac
If it weren't for the photographs, you might think Aeschylus or
Euripides had made him up. Or that he was one of those biblical
fellows tormented to the brink of what a soul can bear. But there
he stands. Long black coat. Tall hat. Half a beard. Droopy eyes. Ears
large enough to serve several men. Like the offspring of a midwife
and a coroner. A tree impersonating a man. Alongside him, his
generals seem daunted. Anxious for the day they too will grow
into men. Then there's that odd mix of joy and sorrow etched
across his face. As when a joke hits a little too close to home. Given
all that's gone on—Gettysburg, Antietam, both Bull Runs, four
long years of war, more than half a million dead, a wife moaning
on the balconies, a child in the grave—Given all that ... why hasn't
his hair turned pure white?
(Judith found the "offspring of a midwife and a coroner" is a clumsy way to embrace birth and death, and offensive to these professions.)
and tribute to Anne Sexton by Maxine Kumin: How It Is
First stanza:
Shall I say how it is in your clothes?
A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.
The dog at the center of my life recognizes
you've come to visit, he's ecstatic.
In the left pocket, a hole.
In the right, a parking ticket
delivered up last August on Bay State Road.
In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,
a flinging from the pods of the soul.
My skin presses your old outline.
It is hot and dry inside.
Poems for February 13 + 17: scattered thoughts
The Fist -- Derek Walcott
Apricots by Jennifer Grotz
What’s in my Journal –by William Stafford
Now You See It Now You Don’t by Valerie Bandura
Whethering by A. E. Stallings
Uh Huh: Hi, Hula Tooth by K. Silem Mohammad*
Sleepers Awake by John Ashbery
Poetry: February issue opens with three previously unpublished poems by the late Larry Levis, who writes of the “small confetti on which our history is being written, / smaller & smaller, less clear every moment,” in “Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine.” History resurfaces in this month’s issue with A.E. Stallings’s “The Companions of Odysseus in Hades,” Julia Shipley’s “The Archaeologists,” *K. Silem Mohammad’s anagram versions of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City,” on the evacuation of Vietnam.
Valentine's day is always a good time to look for poems that address love. Walcott gives us a physical grip on passionate and addictive love. Grotz presents the contrary of passion with choices... like a review of a line of suitors. From there, to choices of what we record, how a journal invites an ars poetica, as life story. More choices, in the "Now you See it" and Whethering -- which makes of the conditional hinge "whether" a noun or gerund...and just what do we expect from a sonnet broken into the level of the letter? The fun of the Ashbery, contrasting sleeping authors and commentaries on the works they wrote in the first stanza echoes in a series of proverbs and caveats.
February 17: O Pen
As above but not the Walcott or Grotz or Ashbery.
Added Shakespeare 135 to foil the K. Silem Mohammad
and in tribute to Maxine Kumin, "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief."
This poem and the Stallings, are "perfect" poems -- images, metaphors, beautifully in place.
I find it fascinating to discuss the same poems in two different groups. Although in a smaller group, there is the advantage for each person to share perspectives, in the larger group, there is a bigger pool of experiences. I never know which poems will elicit associations or how people will bring their own tragedies and triumphs to the work. In "O Pen" in the "Now you See It" poem, the discussion included commentary and judgment on the father, whereas the Rundel group stayed with the narrative, the heartbreak of how to handle mental illness, and the layered meaning of the title. For the Stallings, Judith in "O Pen" saw clearly a scene of an abortion; the Rundel group picked up on the mirroring of the rain,
of a memory of loss.
For the Mohammad "sonogram" John suggested this supertitle: Eat every carat and pea on your plate
Sent to O Pen Monday, Feb. 17, 2014:
Below, a TED talk that brings a spirit of gratitude to all the potential given to us each day. I certainly am grateful for our discussions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=prO85LDlvEA&feature=youtu.be
Thank you Bobby for bringing in your story of hosting Maxine Kumin. To follow up the first poem today, I add Maxine’s words from “The Emily Project”
(2000)
"It occurred to me reading that poem that often we say the poet has one song and sings it over and over. Well, I think it's certainly true that poets build on their own obsessions, and as I was reading about that dream of the origins of the baby, I remembered this earlier poem. This is from Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, which I wrote as a poem for my mother on her eighty-fourth birthday and it too . . . I like to call this my sex misinformation poem.” MK
BIRTHDAY POEM
I am born at home /the last of four children. /The doctor brings me as promised /in his snap-jawed black leather satchel.
He takes me out in sections/ fastens limbs to torso /torso to neck stem/ pries Mama's navel open /and inserts me, head first.
Chin back, I swim upward/ up the alimentary canal/ bypassing mouth and nose holes/ and knock at the top /of her head to be let out /wherefore her little bald spot.
Today my mother is eighty-two/ splendidly braceleted and wigged. /She had to go four times to the well /to get me.
If you continue to scroll forwards and back— you will see all 10 poems by her: Bobby mentioned her favorite was “The Envelope”, so the link will take you there.
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/titanic/kumin5.html
Apricots by Jennifer Grotz
What’s in my Journal –by William Stafford
Now You See It Now You Don’t by Valerie Bandura
Whethering by A. E. Stallings
Uh Huh: Hi, Hula Tooth by K. Silem Mohammad*
Sleepers Awake by John Ashbery
Poetry: February issue opens with three previously unpublished poems by the late Larry Levis, who writes of the “small confetti on which our history is being written, / smaller & smaller, less clear every moment,” in “Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine.” History resurfaces in this month’s issue with A.E. Stallings’s “The Companions of Odysseus in Hades,” Julia Shipley’s “The Archaeologists,” *K. Silem Mohammad’s anagram versions of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City,” on the evacuation of Vietnam.
Valentine's day is always a good time to look for poems that address love. Walcott gives us a physical grip on passionate and addictive love. Grotz presents the contrary of passion with choices... like a review of a line of suitors. From there, to choices of what we record, how a journal invites an ars poetica, as life story. More choices, in the "Now you See it" and Whethering -- which makes of the conditional hinge "whether" a noun or gerund...and just what do we expect from a sonnet broken into the level of the letter? The fun of the Ashbery, contrasting sleeping authors and commentaries on the works they wrote in the first stanza echoes in a series of proverbs and caveats.
February 17: O Pen
As above but not the Walcott or Grotz or Ashbery.
Added Shakespeare 135 to foil the K. Silem Mohammad
and in tribute to Maxine Kumin, "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief."
This poem and the Stallings, are "perfect" poems -- images, metaphors, beautifully in place.
I find it fascinating to discuss the same poems in two different groups. Although in a smaller group, there is the advantage for each person to share perspectives, in the larger group, there is a bigger pool of experiences. I never know which poems will elicit associations or how people will bring their own tragedies and triumphs to the work. In "O Pen" in the "Now you See It" poem, the discussion included commentary and judgment on the father, whereas the Rundel group stayed with the narrative, the heartbreak of how to handle mental illness, and the layered meaning of the title. For the Stallings, Judith in "O Pen" saw clearly a scene of an abortion; the Rundel group picked up on the mirroring of the rain,
of a memory of loss.
For the Mohammad "sonogram" John suggested this supertitle: Eat every carat and pea on your plate
Sent to O Pen Monday, Feb. 17, 2014:
Below, a TED talk that brings a spirit of gratitude to all the potential given to us each day. I certainly am grateful for our discussions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=prO85LDlvEA&feature=youtu.be
Thank you Bobby for bringing in your story of hosting Maxine Kumin. To follow up the first poem today, I add Maxine’s words from “The Emily Project”
(2000)
"It occurred to me reading that poem that often we say the poet has one song and sings it over and over. Well, I think it's certainly true that poets build on their own obsessions, and as I was reading about that dream of the origins of the baby, I remembered this earlier poem. This is from Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, which I wrote as a poem for my mother on her eighty-fourth birthday and it too . . . I like to call this my sex misinformation poem.” MK
BIRTHDAY POEM
I am born at home /the last of four children. /The doctor brings me as promised /in his snap-jawed black leather satchel.
He takes me out in sections/ fastens limbs to torso /torso to neck stem/ pries Mama's navel open /and inserts me, head first.
Chin back, I swim upward/ up the alimentary canal/ bypassing mouth and nose holes/ and knock at the top /of her head to be let out /wherefore her little bald spot.
Today my mother is eighty-two/ splendidly braceleted and wigged. /She had to go four times to the well /to get me.
If you continue to scroll forwards and back— you will see all 10 poems by her: Bobby mentioned her favorite was “The Envelope”, so the link will take you there.
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/titanic/kumin5.html
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Poems for February 6
Valentine for Ernst Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye
Love after Love -- Derek Walcott
Love Poem According to Quantum Theory by Richard Blanco
Writing about Love – by Richard Wakefield
The Passionate Freudian to His Love – by Dorothy Parker
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love -- by Christopher Marlowe
The title of the first poem is perhaps part pun, referring to the man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine and was serious. What makes beauty? Just because "the world" passes judgment, does not make something ugly. I love that a Valentine is given to this man who has the courage to reinvent himself
and that this valentine is for poets who have the courage to reinvent whatever it is that life gives us.
The poem calls into question what a valentine seems to be, or could be, a generous sharing, not based on what we desire so much, as a chance to express what we might say in a valentine we might not say aloud.
Love after love: This poem also starts out with authority, to speak of deep levels beyond what we see mirrored (of ourselves) in others. The feeling tone is one both of yearning for a self that has loved you, and that of a sermon which tells you how to peel away the unnecessary so you can indeed feast on your life.
I love poems that keep growing after several readings -- the Blanco and Wakefield play with idea and form that suggest novel ways to "mine" love. The last two poems are more exercises in cleverness, or making fun of traditions. Is it necessary to understand quantum theory, announced in Blanco's title, where four of the seven stanzas contain "according to theory there is another"? As this "other" morphs,from an abstract reality to the one who writes "forever" each time the word "never" is written-- a hope that someone in this universe will continue to write to capture the paradox where "embraced/unembraced" yin/yang themselves into words so hard to capture.
Wakefield likewise, visually presents us with a moving river, where even if the spine of love and referred "love" seems to be the same, the experience is like stepping into the current, where what was once, even if the same place, can only echo some hidden harmony.
I love that poems can provide a counterpart to Hallmarked Happiness for wishful greetings for Valentine's Day...
Love after Love -- Derek Walcott
Love Poem According to Quantum Theory by Richard Blanco
Writing about Love – by Richard Wakefield
The Passionate Freudian to His Love – by Dorothy Parker
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love -- by Christopher Marlowe
The title of the first poem is perhaps part pun, referring to the man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine and was serious. What makes beauty? Just because "the world" passes judgment, does not make something ugly. I love that a Valentine is given to this man who has the courage to reinvent himself
and that this valentine is for poets who have the courage to reinvent whatever it is that life gives us.
The poem calls into question what a valentine seems to be, or could be, a generous sharing, not based on what we desire so much, as a chance to express what we might say in a valentine we might not say aloud.
Love after love: This poem also starts out with authority, to speak of deep levels beyond what we see mirrored (of ourselves) in others. The feeling tone is one both of yearning for a self that has loved you, and that of a sermon which tells you how to peel away the unnecessary so you can indeed feast on your life.
I love poems that keep growing after several readings -- the Blanco and Wakefield play with idea and form that suggest novel ways to "mine" love. The last two poems are more exercises in cleverness, or making fun of traditions. Is it necessary to understand quantum theory, announced in Blanco's title, where four of the seven stanzas contain "according to theory there is another"? As this "other" morphs,from an abstract reality to the one who writes "forever" each time the word "never" is written-- a hope that someone in this universe will continue to write to capture the paradox where "embraced/unembraced" yin/yang themselves into words so hard to capture.
Wakefield likewise, visually presents us with a moving river, where even if the spine of love and referred "love" seems to be the same, the experience is like stepping into the current, where what was once, even if the same place, can only echo some hidden harmony.
I love that poems can provide a counterpart to Hallmarked Happiness for wishful greetings for Valentine's Day...
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
February 3
I Changed My Clothes with a Beggar Once – Frank Gaspar
The Emperor of Ice Cream -- Wallace Stevens
The Term – William Carlos Williams
What He Thought by Heather McHugh
Everyone’s Life Needs Rain by Matthew Lippman
I have picked 5 poems that give a range of suggestions for the question “what is poetry”. This week, I want us to focus on “sound” and the “sound of sense” as well as paying attention to images and other poetic devises. The first and last two are quite wordy looking, so as we read them out loud on Monday, think about what sounds make your ears perk up, trigger emotion or engage you in some manner. I look forward to our discussion!
**
Comments:
I quote from an interview of Frank Gaspar and Ellen Bass (Jan/Feb. 2014 APR): Praise and Despair are the rising of two wings that beat together. we rattle around inside something – layers of ourselves...
poem as a tango – dead language and mind making its own logic – psychic “hotspots” we bend to, and then have to bend the poem. Where’s the better poem hiding in this poem?
There was a lively discussion about this first prose poem, which seemed to fuse not only a sense of macro (distant and vast universe) and micro (world under feet)but a blend of registers. For example,
God is complete freedom within his own bounds. (oracular, Sacred subject.)
You can think about that for a while. (conversational aside, which puts us in our human place.)
That "blunders" repeats as singular "blunder"; better is repeated with the strong verbs, "dash" and "shatter" regarding the foolishness of fusing the stars with Clare's feet. A very complex meditation on non-attachment to loveliness, but not as scratchy as a trying on someone else's hair shirt.
It turns out the The Emperor of Ice Cream is one of David's favorite poems, and he did a wonderful dramatic reading of it! Read as a scene from an Irish wake, gives rise to Irish humor. Example from Maura: What's difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake? One less live drunk.
The more you read it, the more the details "cleave" like the concupiscent curds... how a "scream" echoes in the ice cream, the roar in the emperor. How many ways can you read: "Let be be finale of seem."?
("let" as a command with a biblic sound of sense; a vernacular, "leave it alone" (let "be" be); Let "be" be finale; "be" as the end of seem. let "now" be as what is etc.)
The commands, from taking the funeral cloth from the cheap wooden dresser to how to cover the face without worrying about the horny feet, blend linguistic authority with a silliness that allows the reader to relax our vigilance over word-world relationship on which both sense and sound of sense depend...
In the Jan/Feb issue of American Poetry Review, Joy Ladin refers to this in her fine article,
Sense, Non-Sense and Sillness. Other considerations she mentions:
1. Linebreaks ensure that sense is regularly interrupted by the white wordless space beyond the RH margin.
2. When sense becomes the sound of sense, words are used not to mean, but to engage our meaning-making habits.
The title, repeated as end line in both stanzas, with the additional word "only" sounds as if it should w make sense, but reality doesn’t correspond.
We started out the discussion of the William Carlos Williams by letting the weight of the word "The Term" call up different associations: end, short-term insurance; man has an ending vs. what rolls or is blown in the wind.. pregnancy, prison... label as in terms of the deal... condition)
"Simile does justice to a mind in motion." (I wrote down from somewhere...) and here,a brilliant example of the power of likening an inanimate object with no agency, to a human who may well think s/he has some say in how life is lived. The rumpled piece of paper has the "apparent bulk/Of a man)and "UNLIKE" a man, after being crushed by a car, it keeps going.
Among the comments: the poem reminded some of a movie and wondering how we would read it if we didn't know movies... Some sensed a wistfulness, as we can’t be like the paper. The parallel of
Pinocchio and real boy came to mind. Paper tributes; or a sense of wanting to root for the paper – how that gladdens us...or our relief that the paper continues after being crushed. Although the poem is not placed in city or country; streetlight or daylight, it was interesting how different people provided different settings, time of day. Less specific works open up to large audience, inviting the reader to bring his/her own experience.
The next poem by Heather McHugh, we had discussed a few years back. Emily brought it up last week, reminded by the Collins poem mentioning "monad". Giordano Bruno (born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548) reproduced, the Monad of monads, or the God-universe. The poem is a story within a story. blending a conference of poets with Bruno's belief based on science. That it is the one who seemed least poetic who had the final word, challenges us to dig beyond surface judgments, easy words.
The final poem is a clever "rumination" with a wonderful use of repetition -- as for the role of rain -- there is room for the reader to interpret several layers of "oh my, oh my, oh my."
The Emperor of Ice Cream -- Wallace Stevens
The Term – William Carlos Williams
What He Thought by Heather McHugh
Everyone’s Life Needs Rain by Matthew Lippman
I have picked 5 poems that give a range of suggestions for the question “what is poetry”. This week, I want us to focus on “sound” and the “sound of sense” as well as paying attention to images and other poetic devises. The first and last two are quite wordy looking, so as we read them out loud on Monday, think about what sounds make your ears perk up, trigger emotion or engage you in some manner. I look forward to our discussion!
**
Comments:
I quote from an interview of Frank Gaspar and Ellen Bass (Jan/Feb. 2014 APR): Praise and Despair are the rising of two wings that beat together. we rattle around inside something – layers of ourselves...
poem as a tango – dead language and mind making its own logic – psychic “hotspots” we bend to, and then have to bend the poem. Where’s the better poem hiding in this poem?
There was a lively discussion about this first prose poem, which seemed to fuse not only a sense of macro (distant and vast universe) and micro (world under feet)but a blend of registers. For example,
God is complete freedom within his own bounds. (oracular, Sacred subject.)
You can think about that for a while. (conversational aside, which puts us in our human place.)
That "blunders" repeats as singular "blunder"; better is repeated with the strong verbs, "dash" and "shatter" regarding the foolishness of fusing the stars with Clare's feet. A very complex meditation on non-attachment to loveliness, but not as scratchy as a trying on someone else's hair shirt.
It turns out the The Emperor of Ice Cream is one of David's favorite poems, and he did a wonderful dramatic reading of it! Read as a scene from an Irish wake, gives rise to Irish humor. Example from Maura: What's difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake? One less live drunk.
The more you read it, the more the details "cleave" like the concupiscent curds... how a "scream" echoes in the ice cream, the roar in the emperor. How many ways can you read: "Let be be finale of seem."?
("let" as a command with a biblic sound of sense; a vernacular, "leave it alone" (let "be" be); Let "be" be finale; "be" as the end of seem. let "now" be as what is etc.)
The commands, from taking the funeral cloth from the cheap wooden dresser to how to cover the face without worrying about the horny feet, blend linguistic authority with a silliness that allows the reader to relax our vigilance over word-world relationship on which both sense and sound of sense depend...
In the Jan/Feb issue of American Poetry Review, Joy Ladin refers to this in her fine article,
Sense, Non-Sense and Sillness. Other considerations she mentions:
1. Linebreaks ensure that sense is regularly interrupted by the white wordless space beyond the RH margin.
2. When sense becomes the sound of sense, words are used not to mean, but to engage our meaning-making habits.
The title, repeated as end line in both stanzas, with the additional word "only" sounds as if it should w make sense, but reality doesn’t correspond.
We started out the discussion of the William Carlos Williams by letting the weight of the word "The Term" call up different associations: end, short-term insurance; man has an ending vs. what rolls or is blown in the wind.. pregnancy, prison... label as in terms of the deal... condition)
"Simile does justice to a mind in motion." (I wrote down from somewhere...) and here,a brilliant example of the power of likening an inanimate object with no agency, to a human who may well think s/he has some say in how life is lived. The rumpled piece of paper has the "apparent bulk/Of a man)and "UNLIKE" a man, after being crushed by a car, it keeps going.
Among the comments: the poem reminded some of a movie and wondering how we would read it if we didn't know movies... Some sensed a wistfulness, as we can’t be like the paper. The parallel of
Pinocchio and real boy came to mind. Paper tributes; or a sense of wanting to root for the paper – how that gladdens us...or our relief that the paper continues after being crushed. Although the poem is not placed in city or country; streetlight or daylight, it was interesting how different people provided different settings, time of day. Less specific works open up to large audience, inviting the reader to bring his/her own experience.
The next poem by Heather McHugh, we had discussed a few years back. Emily brought it up last week, reminded by the Collins poem mentioning "monad". Giordano Bruno (born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548) reproduced, the Monad of monads, or the God-universe. The poem is a story within a story. blending a conference of poets with Bruno's belief based on science. That it is the one who seemed least poetic who had the final word, challenges us to dig beyond surface judgments, easy words.
The final poem is a clever "rumination" with a wonderful use of repetition -- as for the role of rain -- there is room for the reader to interpret several layers of "oh my, oh my, oh my."
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