Poems for April 14
I'll be back for this one-- but sending in March, so people have the poems...
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby (suggestion from Judith)
Introduction to the March issue of Poetry: (see notes below) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/247300
from Tablets by Dunya Mikhail -- the entire set here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
14, 15, 16, 21
Tim Seibles in the same issue has 12 pages in a poem called “Mosaic”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
A few poems.
11 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Starting a discussion session with Naomi Shihab Nye is always a pleasure. In this pick, she announces the subject in the title, "change". What doesn't change? What changes around what you think doesn't change? I love the progression of the poem: One person picks train tracks, another notes with a tinge of sadness how even they lose shininess, the ties split, and if there's no train, that changes the track. Even the "every Tuesday" routine with the strong verbs of cracking chicken necks, is juxtaposed with the widow in the tilted house who spices her soup with cinnamon. The reader travels through details so real, so effortlessly recorded, at this point, why not ask the widow what doesn't change? The shortest line in the poem "Stars explode" introduces these images:
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.
The final stanza takes us to the train whistle, without mention of doppler effect but staged in this haunting way:
The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
You can guess that I want you to read the poem in the original.
The ending poem captures a moment of being 11 years old in a trademark Ferlinghetti easy-going style l creating with beautifully orchestrated flowing lines.
Judith's contribution of City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby gave a ashcan portrait of Manhattan. We learned from her that he was considered greatest critic of jazz. (Where were you when the page was blank?) Although the alliteration seems a bit pedestrian as well as the rhyme (John), David commented on how the syntax moves through the lines...
In general, how hard do we have to work to get to an enjoyment level? This poem required more work for not as much pleasure.
GENERAL
How is Poetry of witness is better than the news? And what news stays news? Jeffrey Brown's article in this issue gives a wide range of examples. How can we allow war after reading such as lines as these: "Now the earth/grew stained with bright blood as men fell in death... so all fought on, a line of living flame" (Iliad, transl. by Robert Fitzgerald and Alice Oswald, "The first to die was Protesilaus/a focused man who hurried to darkness." p. 569 of the March issue of Poetry)
The penultimate essay by Slavoj Zizek calls on the idea of poetry as language in a torture house (citing Lacan) as he looks at Yugoslavia. He first mentions
Plato and the danger of poets as manipulators leading people away from the rational angles of truth... Next, Hegel's mention of the silent, ceaseless "weaving of the spirit": "the underground work of changing the ideological coordinates, mostly invisible to the public eye, which then suddenly explodes, taking everyone by surprise.
How do the "Dichter und Denker" (poets and thinkers) become "Richter und Henker" (judges and executioners?
I only chose a few stanzas from Mikhail and Seibles -- both long poems, presenting as fragments, the first as "Tablets", the second as "Mosaic". How do the titles prepare the mind? Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing... Mosaic -- again, pieces, but do we have all of them, and what part of what story is told? I particularly like the moment when Seibles enters the fragment "Insert your story here".
My hope is that people will read both poems in their entirety... and discuss the "parts" stand out? What are the commonalities, what lessons move us to remember?
**
I was so moved by the Mikhail and Seibles' poems, I penned this for the May issue of Poet Talk:
Tablets by Dunya Mikhail http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
and Mosaic by Tim Seibles http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
Published in Poetry, March 2014 pp. 525-531 and . 546-559
Usually, I shy away from long poems, not just because of the rush-rush-instant-response-mode fostered in our society, or feeling pressed for time, but because in general, I prefer navigating through poetry plump with pith, sassy with surprise and compressing multiple delights to discover. I picked a few excerpts of two long poems, Tablets and Mosaic to discuss in my weekly group, to see how people would respond. It was marvelous to see how in 30 minutes, we not only enjoyed the fragments picked, but were eager to spend time reading both works in their entirety.
The question arises, what makes a long poem enjoyable? What balance of meaning and poetic pleasure derived (sound, image, spacing, line, etc.) convinces the reader that the effort of staying with a poem over 5-12 pages or more is worth the effort?
I think of epic poetry performed aloud, and contemporary poetic experiments which span many pages which I usually avoid and wonder what was it about these two poems which
was so engaging in spite of pages of length.
Sometimes, knowing the background of the poet helps, or the background of the poem,
but even without this, even without more than a passing glance at the title, I first noted these two stanzas from Mikhail, an Iraqi now living in the US.
14
The shadows
the prisoners left
on the wall
surrounded the jailer
and cast light
on his loneliness.
15
Homeland, I am not your mother,
so why do you weep in my lap like this
every time
something hurts you?
This use of inverting the usual powerlessness of the captive and ignored emotional condition of the jailor adds a dagger to a universal feeling. The poem is in translation, so it is hard to know how it “sings”, but the translator has done a good job in line breaks which create hesitancy even with the longer lines. Some stanzas are more gripping than others, but at the end, I had the sense of having read something important worth reading again.
To quote Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader
“When will there be another society that produces poets in Mikhail’s tradition? If you want to understand how disastrously an ancient culture has been affected by its recent history, this poem will tell you more than any film clips, news stories or books about Middle Eastern battles. Sometimes verse becomes the only language adequate to express the struggles of evolution or the depredations of human conflict.”
for more praises of Mikhail’s work: http://www.dunyamikhail.com
Linking a long poem to a title and holding the title in mind, also is an effective tool for reading. Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing...
In Seibles’ poem Mosaic, the title harkens to tiles or pieces. Do we have all of them, and what part of what story do they tell? How is the reader included?
If you think of the sections of the poem as tiles in a large mosaic, this “tile” in the Seibles poem is the one line stanza which invites the reader to participate:
-- / --
Insert your life here.
-- / --
The stanza before speaks of seeing The Game in pieces— /the rules inside me/ like bad wiring… The stanza after asks, Did you mean to be this way?/Did you mean to become/something you didn’t mean?
What would the poem be like if the reader shifted the pieces of the mosaic? In what part of the poem would you “Insert your life ”? Would it change the message, the impact? How does the “who we are in the times we live in” constantly shift?
The curious epigraph is attributed to “Florence Church”, about whom google won’t tell anything but information about the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Thus,
Mosaic sets a tone of entrapment:
I’m a ‘kickin’ but not high
I’m a’flapping’ but I can’t fly
The stanzas are ordered periodically by a straight line or -- / -- . The eye follows how the words/meanings seek space, for instance :
Myself runs
into my other self: Over here!
My self whispers — Freedom
over here!
He uses punction “< and >” but the interpretation is difficult to know. For instance:
... a house of hunger, personal
but not personal: the way moonlight calls
for you and not for you. What
I want> I guess < I want.
...
Suppose nobody knows
what’s
inside you.
But you, yourself,
find it pretty clear:
anxiety adding up, leveling off,
doubling > some comfort in people
you think you
understand/frustration,
fatigue, a secret.
(the slash works to bar understanding, or put up a fence against which three things lean: (frustration, fatigue, a secret.)
Seibles evaluates our culture, but indirectly, using biography, reflection (metaphors for eyes, sight, what is seen, visible) and existential questions. He includes details that concern the environment, race, religion, money, power and the culture which binds us, yet cuts as lives are “turned on the spit”. Yet, even with such a mammoth undertaking, the more you read, re-read this long poem, piece by piece, the better the larger whole.
We ended up discussing both poems, eager to read them in their entirety. Rather like the psychology of sharing a good book with a friend, who otherwise might not pay attention to it, having 16 people respond to what parts stand out, what ideas are triggered, what phrasing becomes a springboard for emotion, made us all eager to re-read them both in their entirety.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
poems for April 7
Poems for April 7
I'll be away for moderating this one too...
Favorites posted by Poetry +
Spellbound by Emily Bronte
Love is Enough by William Morris (Elaine's pick)
The Gift by Li-Young Lee (an old favorite)
Mother Goose Self-Help by K. A. Hays
Sky Burial by Ron Koertge (suggestion from Don to discuss prose vs. poetry)
III from Tristan by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYORkpArYxc
Enjoy all the links to the poets on the sidebars as well!
From the clip "First poem/poet you fell in love with": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJgiW_JmeU
Spellbound by Emily Bronte – but Ed Hirsch thought it was by his grandfather.
Mother goose...
Dylan Thomas
The Highway Man, by Alfred Noyes: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171940
Gertrude Stein, a Rose is a rose...
Asbery: Flowchart http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/2239/ifrom-i-flow-chart-john-ashbery
**
My first poem was probably John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242552
or Walter de la Mare, ‘Some One ‘ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/some-one/
The rhythms and sounds captivated me.
I'll be away for moderating this one too...
Favorites posted by Poetry +
Spellbound by Emily Bronte
Love is Enough by William Morris (Elaine's pick)
The Gift by Li-Young Lee (an old favorite)
Mother Goose Self-Help by K. A. Hays
Sky Burial by Ron Koertge (suggestion from Don to discuss prose vs. poetry)
III from Tristan by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYORkpArYxc
Enjoy all the links to the poets on the sidebars as well!
From the clip "First poem/poet you fell in love with": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJgiW_JmeU
Spellbound by Emily Bronte – but Ed Hirsch thought it was by his grandfather.
Mother goose...
Dylan Thomas
The Highway Man, by Alfred Noyes: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171940
Gertrude Stein, a Rose is a rose...
Asbery: Flowchart http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/2239/ifrom-i-flow-chart-john-ashbery
**
My first poem was probably John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242552
or Walter de la Mare, ‘Some One ‘ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/some-one/
The rhythms and sounds captivated me.
O Pen Poems for March 31
Elaine O. will share her favorite by Loren Eisley, A Hider’s World”
These poems were discussed in "Poems for Lunch"
For these two see discussion March 13:
Speakers of Wintu-Nomlak, by Scott Coffel
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
For these: see discussion March 6
he Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
One other thought on the Mueller poem:
Of the 7 things to invent in this charge to “Invent something new” why does she use old myths and references ? Can we re-invent our lives, our Heros with 1,000 faces? (Adam and Eve, Christ, Ariadne, Ulysses, David and Goliath, Lot’s Wife , etc.)
Summary:
Gallagher's short 12 line poem (The Barnacle and the Whale) gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
**
Just a few thoughts. What I love about poetry, is the reading aloud, the way the poem triggers so many different things — and in our discussion, how we find universals that link us all.
These poems were discussed in "Poems for Lunch"
For these two see discussion March 13:
Speakers of Wintu-Nomlak, by Scott Coffel
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
For these: see discussion March 6
he Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
One other thought on the Mueller poem:
Of the 7 things to invent in this charge to “Invent something new” why does she use old myths and references ? Can we re-invent our lives, our Heros with 1,000 faces? (Adam and Eve, Christ, Ariadne, Ulysses, David and Goliath, Lot’s Wife , etc.)
Summary:
Gallagher's short 12 line poem (The Barnacle and the Whale) gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
**
Just a few thoughts. What I love about poetry, is the reading aloud, the way the poem triggers so many different things — and in our discussion, how we find universals that link us all.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Poems for Lunch March 27
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh (see comments from March 10)
Searching by Billy Collins
Cities in the Sky -- by Mary Jo Salter
Monody to the Sound of Zithers by Kay Boyle
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
Looking beyond tercets... quatrains, cinquains...
I won't be there to moderate but put some notes in the margin for Carol...
books, memory, to thought clouds, fear of loss, and an elegy which speaks of desire.
Knowing the group, good connections will be made. I’ve made a few notes in the margin to spark a few comments (or not).
For reading — it might be interesting for people to contrast the first two poems in tercets, the Kay Boyle poem in quatrains…
What keys us to “turning pages” — what kind of pages — what do we seek, and how do we deal with loss?
The Mary Jo Salter poem with clouds taking shape, to thought clouds has a very different affect than the more formal “monody” which technically is an elegy, and yet if you didn’t know, might not guess. How do both poems surprise ?
For discussion: I put this footnote under Wondrous:
This poem appeared in August 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine www.thesunmagazine.org.
The poem acts not only as elegy, but a reminder of the interconnectedness of memory. Why would E.B. White cry as he tried to record the words “she died alone”? Who can forget the selfless bravery of Charlotte, or this poem which so beautifully “does the math” of grief. Note the enjambed stanzas, the repetitions both of words and sounds which help tighten the emotion. Note how “ridiculous” with its patter of 4 syllables contrasts with the title, repeated twice, for both Charlotte “spun out of the silk thread of invention” and the mother.
Compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching: how does the form help each poem?
What makes both of the poems "accessible" -- which one moves you more?
compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching:how does the form help each poem?
How does the Anna K reference work, as opposed to the children’s story read by the mother (for the 5th time.) Both poems embrace life/death/transformation:
Anna K becomes “her” – becomes Snowflake and the poem ends addressing “you” – -- a different sort of metamorphosis than the life cycle of a spider, preparing her egg sack. Wondrous as title, weaves into the poem as opposed to the title, "Searching" which ends with the speaker turning pages looking for a "you" who may be as fictitious as Anna K, as ephemeral as a snowflake in Spring. What is it we look for when we read? How does that affect the reading?
With the Cities of Clouds, a different weaving and transforming occurs. One point of interest to me for a longer poem is how length can be dismissed if one feels engaged with the poem. How does Salter keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat? Where do you see these lines repeated but with specifics?
“Nowhere
somewhere changing to something.”
The weaving of "clouds" and "thoughts" (French, "Chateaux en Espagne" or castles in the air) goes along seamlessly until the wham on the final stanza.
Did the final stanza catch you off guard? Who is the house guest? Why ask such a question “idly”. How does that contrast with the real here and now: don’t die. The irony of “only 8:00am” as if that would mean business as usual. Where and when do we attach “business as usual” to circumstances? What other fallacies do we have in our “thought clouds” and actual thinking.
I picked Kay Boyle's 1922 poem, to contrast with the more free-form of both the Salter and Naomi Shihab-Nye poems.
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, μονῳδία could simply refer to lyric poetry sung by a single performer, rather than by a chorus.)
In music, monody has two meanings: 1) it is sometimes used as a synonym for monophony, a single solo line, in opposition to homophony and polyphony; and 2) in music history, it is a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment.
Boyle is clear about what she wants, but perhaps the form distracts us from the bluntness of "don't die, it's only 8 o'clock."
I love the masterful way that Nye can juxtapose the concrete detail with a sweepingly large universal: e.g. "Every Tuesday on Morales Street"; with "stars explode"
How does she develop her title? Lead us to explore it with her? What is it that cannot be named?
Searching by Billy Collins
Cities in the Sky -- by Mary Jo Salter
Monody to the Sound of Zithers by Kay Boyle
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
Looking beyond tercets... quatrains, cinquains...
I won't be there to moderate but put some notes in the margin for Carol...
books, memory, to thought clouds, fear of loss, and an elegy which speaks of desire.
Knowing the group, good connections will be made. I’ve made a few notes in the margin to spark a few comments (or not).
For reading — it might be interesting for people to contrast the first two poems in tercets, the Kay Boyle poem in quatrains…
What keys us to “turning pages” — what kind of pages — what do we seek, and how do we deal with loss?
The Mary Jo Salter poem with clouds taking shape, to thought clouds has a very different affect than the more formal “monody” which technically is an elegy, and yet if you didn’t know, might not guess. How do both poems surprise ?
For discussion: I put this footnote under Wondrous:
This poem appeared in August 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine www.thesunmagazine.org.
The poem acts not only as elegy, but a reminder of the interconnectedness of memory. Why would E.B. White cry as he tried to record the words “she died alone”? Who can forget the selfless bravery of Charlotte, or this poem which so beautifully “does the math” of grief. Note the enjambed stanzas, the repetitions both of words and sounds which help tighten the emotion. Note how “ridiculous” with its patter of 4 syllables contrasts with the title, repeated twice, for both Charlotte “spun out of the silk thread of invention” and the mother.
Compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching: how does the form help each poem?
What makes both of the poems "accessible" -- which one moves you more?
compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching:how does the form help each poem?
How does the Anna K reference work, as opposed to the children’s story read by the mother (for the 5th time.) Both poems embrace life/death/transformation:
Anna K becomes “her” – becomes Snowflake and the poem ends addressing “you” – -- a different sort of metamorphosis than the life cycle of a spider, preparing her egg sack. Wondrous as title, weaves into the poem as opposed to the title, "Searching" which ends with the speaker turning pages looking for a "you" who may be as fictitious as Anna K, as ephemeral as a snowflake in Spring. What is it we look for when we read? How does that affect the reading?
With the Cities of Clouds, a different weaving and transforming occurs. One point of interest to me for a longer poem is how length can be dismissed if one feels engaged with the poem. How does Salter keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat? Where do you see these lines repeated but with specifics?
“Nowhere
somewhere changing to something.”
The weaving of "clouds" and "thoughts" (French, "Chateaux en Espagne" or castles in the air) goes along seamlessly until the wham on the final stanza.
Did the final stanza catch you off guard? Who is the house guest? Why ask such a question “idly”. How does that contrast with the real here and now: don’t die. The irony of “only 8:00am” as if that would mean business as usual. Where and when do we attach “business as usual” to circumstances? What other fallacies do we have in our “thought clouds” and actual thinking.
I picked Kay Boyle's 1922 poem, to contrast with the more free-form of both the Salter and Naomi Shihab-Nye poems.
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, μονῳδία could simply refer to lyric poetry sung by a single performer, rather than by a chorus.)
In music, monody has two meanings: 1) it is sometimes used as a synonym for monophony, a single solo line, in opposition to homophony and polyphony; and 2) in music history, it is a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment.
Boyle is clear about what she wants, but perhaps the form distracts us from the bluntness of "don't die, it's only 8 o'clock."
I love the masterful way that Nye can juxtapose the concrete detail with a sweepingly large universal: e.g. "Every Tuesday on Morales Street"; with "stars explode"
How does she develop her title? Lead us to explore it with her? What is it that cannot be named?
O Pen : Poems for March 24
Every Day We Are Dancers by Mitch Roberson
(see March 13 + 20)
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
+ Parody
From Orient Point -- Marilyn Hacker
Era for Recovery by Lo Kwa Mei-en
We had a most "chuckling" discussion -- especially starting with the Roberson-- nine years old — does it feel fresh? Up-to-date? How does it stand up to the test of time?
How are we dancers in all aspects of our life -- from prosaic, to crossing a street with a mirror -- and how we mirror each other...
followed by re-imagining 4 chestnuts, with graphics, and two parodies.
For the Shakespeare... the group went much deeper than the graph provided...
and John brought up: I am but summer to your heart... Edna St. Vincent Millay: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21693
No matter the season, no matter the comparison, is Shakespeare giving us just another Ars Poetica -- without him, no poem, without the poem, no souvenir of "thee"...no poem who is a different "thee"... Memories of lyrics, “Believe me with all these endearing charms...” and "Maybe I should have told you..." (You are always on my mind... Nelson...) and the saying, "I love you not for who are, but for who I am when I am with you."
After admiring the color wheel of the analytics for Williams' poem, the group went in two directions: 1) Is this poem a joke? and disappointment-- the sort of poem that might discourage people from reading poetry. vs:
2) exquisite image... Kathy recalled Neruda's Book of questions. "Is there anything sadder than a locomotive in the rain."
Bobby brought up the joyful, unexplainable quality of children’s painting...
Haiku. Zen Koan.
Even those who didn't like it at first, felt it captured something, helped us focus on something that isn't said, but only intimated, on which an unknowable "so much depends on" waits.
For Dylan Thomas -- the system of having one person for each repeating line occluded the continuity within each tercet. We remarked how only the final stanza was an imperative and hearing Thomas read it (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377)
will convince you that it is not said as an imperative.
With Bishop's Villanelle, "disaster" is repeated, but not the entire line.
It is better read stanza by stanza. We had a long discussion about how to understand
(Write it!) with multiple valid directions, such as the urge to memorialize, or perhaps the urgency, the desperation, the pain of the loss so hard to put on paper, the poet's insistent voice speaking to herself. How do we wear the skin of another?
Marilyn Hacker's parody of it was fun... but after getting beyond the facile slipperiness of sounds, the advice is sound in such lines as these:
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her
to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept.
In other words, we cannot presume, assume anything about another.
"...Don't trust her
past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend."
What is it we must muster to live?
The final poem, we attempted to read as three sentences... which helped a little bit, the overwhelmingness of a single block and also to be able to look at long and short sentences and patterns. It might be the sort of poem that would turn someone away from poetry. However, John had the genial idea of reading it as a monologue which worked quite brilliantly.
What a group -- what a discussion. We could have kept going even after an hour and a half.
(see March 13 + 20)
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
+ Parody
From Orient Point -- Marilyn Hacker
Era for Recovery by Lo Kwa Mei-en
We had a most "chuckling" discussion -- especially starting with the Roberson-- nine years old — does it feel fresh? Up-to-date? How does it stand up to the test of time?
How are we dancers in all aspects of our life -- from prosaic, to crossing a street with a mirror -- and how we mirror each other...
followed by re-imagining 4 chestnuts, with graphics, and two parodies.
For the Shakespeare... the group went much deeper than the graph provided...
and John brought up: I am but summer to your heart... Edna St. Vincent Millay: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21693
No matter the season, no matter the comparison, is Shakespeare giving us just another Ars Poetica -- without him, no poem, without the poem, no souvenir of "thee"...no poem who is a different "thee"... Memories of lyrics, “Believe me with all these endearing charms...” and "Maybe I should have told you..." (You are always on my mind... Nelson...) and the saying, "I love you not for who are, but for who I am when I am with you."
After admiring the color wheel of the analytics for Williams' poem, the group went in two directions: 1) Is this poem a joke? and disappointment-- the sort of poem that might discourage people from reading poetry. vs:
2) exquisite image... Kathy recalled Neruda's Book of questions. "Is there anything sadder than a locomotive in the rain."
Bobby brought up the joyful, unexplainable quality of children’s painting...
Haiku. Zen Koan.
Even those who didn't like it at first, felt it captured something, helped us focus on something that isn't said, but only intimated, on which an unknowable "so much depends on" waits.
For Dylan Thomas -- the system of having one person for each repeating line occluded the continuity within each tercet. We remarked how only the final stanza was an imperative and hearing Thomas read it (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377)
will convince you that it is not said as an imperative.
With Bishop's Villanelle, "disaster" is repeated, but not the entire line.
It is better read stanza by stanza. We had a long discussion about how to understand
(Write it!) with multiple valid directions, such as the urge to memorialize, or perhaps the urgency, the desperation, the pain of the loss so hard to put on paper, the poet's insistent voice speaking to herself. How do we wear the skin of another?
Marilyn Hacker's parody of it was fun... but after getting beyond the facile slipperiness of sounds, the advice is sound in such lines as these:
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her
to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept.
In other words, we cannot presume, assume anything about another.
"...Don't trust her
past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend."
What is it we must muster to live?
The final poem, we attempted to read as three sentences... which helped a little bit, the overwhelmingness of a single block and also to be able to look at long and short sentences and patterns. It might be the sort of poem that would turn someone away from poetry. However, John had the genial idea of reading it as a monologue which worked quite brilliantly.
What a group -- what a discussion. We could have kept going even after an hour and a half.
March 20
Paper Nautilus, by Marianne Moore
The Dance, by William Carlos Williams
With My Fish Drum, Yusef Komunakaa
Alexander Fu Musing, by Stanley Moss
Heaven by George Herbert
Hell by Stanley Moss
Some old, some new -- looking at the Poetic Analysis of Bishop's villanelle,
and her admiration for her mentor, Marianne Moore... the inspiration of Herbert's Heaven echoing on "Hell" by Stanley Moss, and in between, the "round" inspired by Breughel, and contemporary voice adopting the sounds of "shish & tap
of fish skin on waters of a lost road."
Writing up the discussion almost a week later, I know the brief snippets below cannot begin to recreate the fun we had reading aloud such diverse poems enjoying how title, form, sound, suggestion provided a feast of details to share.
We started off the discussion with "One Art"by Elizabeth Bishop -- the rich rhyming, the repetitions of losing, lose, lost, and how the graph captures the relationship of things lost with the difficulty... But more interesting in this Villanelle is the tone, both for the two exclamation points, but also for the words in parentheses.
**
comparing the use of form with Marianne Moore's Paper Nautilus, which has a floating sea-pull to it. The sounds, the odd line breaks (scarcely // eats... bitten// by a crab.... close-///laid Ionic chiton*-folds)the quiet way in which the 2nd and 5th line share end rhyme. The opening (incomplete) questions bring us to wonder about the Nautilus -- part of the family of Chitons*, which also happens to be one of the choices for feminine apparel* The delicacy of diction, intricacy of repetitions, (ram's horn-cradled; wasp-nest flaws... ) Hopes in the first stanza (authorities of the outside world) contrast with "perishable/souvenir of hope" of the natural world-- the wonder described only to end up with an image of love as small arms around folds/lines in the shell -- akin to the wonder of trust.
The ekphrastic poem, "The Dance", is somewhat like the imagist Wheelbarrow poem, but here Williams creates a marvelous symphony of sound to complete the image of a festival and dancing, rounds of sound...
Back to tercets with Kommunakaa, the oriental look of ampersands,(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Etymology
for more on the name and formation of Roman ET). A dream-like feeling -- a sense of displaced persons combined with caravans of old... a blend of Africa, Persia, caravans of history caught in an on-going dance, passed culture to culture.
(I write the line "shish & tap/of fish skin on waters of a lost road" again, so drawn am I to its exotic sounds, as if listening to Scheherezade).
Stanley Moss, also taken from the American Poetry Review March/April issue, has an amusing little poem referencing Alexander Fu, the Martial Arts Film star of the 70's... but who is "you-know-who"... and will it ever be possible for him to create his own lines-- and how do we relate to that?
The fun of contrasting Heaven by George Herbert (with Echo) and Hell (inspired by it) by Stanley Moss provided a discussion of idealization, and cynicism. We felt the Moss poem less successful with the echo, as repeat does not allow dialogue/development, but rather a mocking. Herbert brings back Light, Joy, Leisure.
It reminds me of Wendell Berry's quote: "Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts."
*(Structurally, the most elemental dress type is the chiton, which is constructed in several ways. The most commonly represented is accomplished by stitching two rectangular pieces of fabric together along either sideseam, from top to bottom, forming a cylinder with its top edge and hem unstitched. The top edges are then sewn, pinned, or buttoned together at two or more points to form shoulder seams, with reserve openings for the head and arms.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Poems for March 17
In honor of St. Patricks... Seamus Heaney, a little Irish poetry...
Song of Amergin (Robert Graves Translation)
March by Patrick Kavanagh
The Song of Wandering Aengus – W.B. Yeats
The Otter by Seamus Heaney
The Skunk by Seamus Heaney
Molly Bawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pifd0f5LzZgversion by Dubliners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfQA9sFCVYY
version by Chieftains w/ great Irish bagpipes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOpY0wQdJ5w&feature=kp
**
Monday's discussion included Judith's suggestion to share Lady Gregory : The Grief of a Girl’s Heart... and a poem by the Earl of Desmond (see p. 219 in Irish Literature)and a lively piece memorized by heart,and much background about Graves' White Goddess. Bobbi kindly shared background on Irish Suibhe (fairies) and Yeats (and his pining after Maude Gonne (and her five refusals), Martin lent his Jungian expertise about the pursuit of the feminine. Don filled us in on some of the ethics problems of Aquinas (which death by trolley to choose, etc.) and so much more.
Many did not know how funny Seamus Heaney could be, particularly in "The Skunk" and its delightful turn at the end. (I quoted this anecdote about "Had I Not Been Awake at Emory on March 2nd, 2013". The poem, from his final collection, Human Chain, recalls the aftermath of the stroke he suffered in 2006. A fierce wind hits the house “unexpectedly” and “dangerously” but jolts him into life:
“And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, / Alive and ticking like an electric fence: / Had I not been awake I would have missed it”.
I am no expert on 12th century Irish poetry, the book of Leinster, or Celtic languages but enjoy pondering the differences in translation. "Does Gaelic use articles as in English" is a good question that came up. The power of anaphor "I am" speaking as God seems stronger without an article put in front of the nouns. Why in R.A.S. MacAllister's translation is it "I am Wind on Sea... Ocean-wave, Roar of sea, Bull of Seven Fights, vulture on Cliff, etc. but I am A mountain in A Man, A word of skill, THE point of a weapon...
(Note: The transformation of Tuan mac Cairill (to survive the flood and invasions to be the oldest man in Ireland) are: deer, eagle, salmon: implied cosmological significance: eagle (sky); deer (land); salmon sea; boar (otherworld.)
The second, contemporary poem by Patrick Kavanagh gives a flavor to March, and the season of Lent. Many of us wrinkled our brows at "A hell/fantasy/ meadows damned/to eternal April" (an Easter/resurrection connotation?). How is the syntax working? I love the compound nouns -- 'ghost-wind' and 'throat-rattle' to my ear are kennings (A figurative, usually compound expression used in place of a name or noun, especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry; for example, 'storm of swords' is a kenning for battle)-- or if not Kennings, then a marvelously strong and unusual blend. "Hell-fantasy" for example, seems to point to a greater meaning than two juxtaposed nouns
thrown in a compound.
I love this:
"In the wind vacancies (also a kenning?)
Saint Thomas Aquinas"...
Certainly, the scholasticism of Aquinas is part of the Catholic tradition... and how does one make decisions (Don brought up his Ethics the death by trolley argument, Elaine, drones and collateral damage)but perhaps like "wind vacancies", such argument is (to quote Judith) 'useless and pedantic'...
For the Yeats, we enjoyed the language -- and uncanny images such as stars as moth-light flickering. The discussion rambled over mythology, unrequited love, magic, searching for the feminine, the sweetness of pain, "delusional nostalgia" (etymology of place + pain) or some form of grace... For three stanzas to generate such an abundance of response, speaks to the "wandering", threaded time over and again by "and"... We examined how the poem straddles accessible/obscure.
For "the Otter", I admire the opening line -- not one that floats from the pen, but one which reflects much thought, writing, revision, I would think. "You" is yet unnamed,
and clearly powerful, (for me, an image of "rings of bright water" unsettling the surface). Maura shared her memory of her swimming daughter, the holding after a meet.
The line, "Thank God for the slow loadening" stopped us all in our tracks... the O, as longest vowel, with an embracing form, Omega-union..."Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment," moves us to universals, as well as personal reflections.
How different this "real" woman from the illusory one Yeats portrays.
Heaney himself described his essays as "testimonies to the fact that poets themselves are finders and keepers, that their vocation is to look after art and life by being discoverers and custodians of the unlooked for."
The delight of "Skunk" -- Mary's share of her fondness for their special perfume... the images of funeral garb and "broaching" the wife -- (we did discuss all variants of the verb... I go for the slow turning over, warming up of a ghost)and the "slender I"
coming back to him, in a comical gesture, which does not undo the work-up of memory, but rather brings a vibrant humor.
We ended with a snippet of the Chieftains and the slow dirge of Molly Bawn --
the "shooting of his dear" has at least 88 variants (and 19 fragments)--
the lilt of the lyrics, the repetitions (setting of the sun; mistook her as a swan (some say fawn) oh what have I done? reinforce the tragedy of the accident.
I am grateful for the chance to share in dabbling ever so briefly into an enormous subject... As ever, comments are welcome!
Song of Amergin (Robert Graves Translation)
March by Patrick Kavanagh
The Song of Wandering Aengus – W.B. Yeats
The Otter by Seamus Heaney
The Skunk by Seamus Heaney
Molly Bawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pifd0f5LzZgversion by Dubliners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfQA9sFCVYY
version by Chieftains w/ great Irish bagpipes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOpY0wQdJ5w&feature=kp
**
Monday's discussion included Judith's suggestion to share Lady Gregory : The Grief of a Girl’s Heart... and a poem by the Earl of Desmond (see p. 219 in Irish Literature)and a lively piece memorized by heart,and much background about Graves' White Goddess. Bobbi kindly shared background on Irish Suibhe (fairies) and Yeats (and his pining after Maude Gonne (and her five refusals), Martin lent his Jungian expertise about the pursuit of the feminine. Don filled us in on some of the ethics problems of Aquinas (which death by trolley to choose, etc.) and so much more.
Many did not know how funny Seamus Heaney could be, particularly in "The Skunk" and its delightful turn at the end. (I quoted this anecdote about "Had I Not Been Awake at Emory on March 2nd, 2013". The poem, from his final collection, Human Chain, recalls the aftermath of the stroke he suffered in 2006. A fierce wind hits the house “unexpectedly” and “dangerously” but jolts him into life:
“And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, / Alive and ticking like an electric fence: / Had I not been awake I would have missed it”.
I am no expert on 12th century Irish poetry, the book of Leinster, or Celtic languages but enjoy pondering the differences in translation. "Does Gaelic use articles as in English" is a good question that came up. The power of anaphor "I am" speaking as God seems stronger without an article put in front of the nouns. Why in R.A.S. MacAllister's translation is it "I am Wind on Sea... Ocean-wave, Roar of sea, Bull of Seven Fights, vulture on Cliff, etc. but I am A mountain in A Man, A word of skill, THE point of a weapon...
(Note: The transformation of Tuan mac Cairill (to survive the flood and invasions to be the oldest man in Ireland) are: deer, eagle, salmon: implied cosmological significance: eagle (sky); deer (land); salmon sea; boar (otherworld.)
The second, contemporary poem by Patrick Kavanagh gives a flavor to March, and the season of Lent. Many of us wrinkled our brows at "A hell/fantasy/ meadows damned/to eternal April" (an Easter/resurrection connotation?). How is the syntax working? I love the compound nouns -- 'ghost-wind' and 'throat-rattle' to my ear are kennings (A figurative, usually compound expression used in place of a name or noun, especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry; for example, 'storm of swords' is a kenning for battle)-- or if not Kennings, then a marvelously strong and unusual blend. "Hell-fantasy" for example, seems to point to a greater meaning than two juxtaposed nouns
thrown in a compound.
I love this:
"In the wind vacancies (also a kenning?)
Saint Thomas Aquinas"...
Certainly, the scholasticism of Aquinas is part of the Catholic tradition... and how does one make decisions (Don brought up his Ethics the death by trolley argument, Elaine, drones and collateral damage)but perhaps like "wind vacancies", such argument is (to quote Judith) 'useless and pedantic'...
For the Yeats, we enjoyed the language -- and uncanny images such as stars as moth-light flickering. The discussion rambled over mythology, unrequited love, magic, searching for the feminine, the sweetness of pain, "delusional nostalgia" (etymology of place + pain) or some form of grace... For three stanzas to generate such an abundance of response, speaks to the "wandering", threaded time over and again by "and"... We examined how the poem straddles accessible/obscure.
For "the Otter", I admire the opening line -- not one that floats from the pen, but one which reflects much thought, writing, revision, I would think. "You" is yet unnamed,
and clearly powerful, (for me, an image of "rings of bright water" unsettling the surface). Maura shared her memory of her swimming daughter, the holding after a meet.
The line, "Thank God for the slow loadening" stopped us all in our tracks... the O, as longest vowel, with an embracing form, Omega-union..."Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment," moves us to universals, as well as personal reflections.
How different this "real" woman from the illusory one Yeats portrays.
Heaney himself described his essays as "testimonies to the fact that poets themselves are finders and keepers, that their vocation is to look after art and life by being discoverers and custodians of the unlooked for."
The delight of "Skunk" -- Mary's share of her fondness for their special perfume... the images of funeral garb and "broaching" the wife -- (we did discuss all variants of the verb... I go for the slow turning over, warming up of a ghost)and the "slender I"
coming back to him, in a comical gesture, which does not undo the work-up of memory, but rather brings a vibrant humor.
We ended with a snippet of the Chieftains and the slow dirge of Molly Bawn --
the "shooting of his dear" has at least 88 variants (and 19 fragments)--
the lilt of the lyrics, the repetitions (setting of the sun; mistook her as a swan (some say fawn) oh what have I done? reinforce the tragedy of the accident.
I am grateful for the chance to share in dabbling ever so briefly into an enormous subject... As ever, comments are welcome!
Monday, March 17, 2014
Poems for March 13
Speakers of Wintu-Nomlak, by Scott Coffel
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
City of Orgies, Walt Whitman
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Why do some poems become famous? Who uses what criteria to select a "prize-winning" poem? How subconsciously do we use a culture's opinion on what we consider valuable?
What is a memorable poem to you?
Using Ali Shapiro's delightful graphs for the Shakespeare and Williams, how does such a visual component enhance understanding? How do they compare to the first two poems, which received first place in a renowned poetry contest?
How does Whitman's style prepare the way for much of contemporary poetry?
These are questions which ask for more than an hour's discussion. On March 13,(Poems for Lunch) we enjoyed scraping the surface of them -- and on Monday 3/24, and 3/31 (O Pen) we will look again at some of them.
I like what W.S. Merwin says, "Poetry is like making a joke-- if you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing."
The first two poems come from the Boston Review, the first the winner of their 2013 poetry prize. The title alerts us to a voyage in a world most of us don't know --who speaks Wintu-Nomlak -- and after the poem's last words, "false friends", the poem invites us to work again through the free-flow of puns and leaps that do not rely on meaning or logical sequence. How does the first person, arriving in stanza 3 work in the array of satirical surprises?
For the sonnet, one thought is that the speaker of the poem is referring to past traditions (compromised by changes in the environment, spawned by human desire with detrimental effect) which no longer will be available to his son and future generations.
How do details of language “supper to supposition” and “Kodiak instance” ,“airfoil of the present” strike you?
We had quite the time with Whitman's "City of Orgies" where the words "incongruous", "rhapsodic" and difficult syntax were the first to come to mind. What Whitman witnesses, what goes beyond his self-centered exuberance, is this (undefined, but clearly suggested!) love in the full "isness" of a moment. Perhaps as readers, we blink, as if in blinding sunlight, imagining what Whitman witnesses, feeling these lines: "But where is what I started for, so long ago/and why is it yet unfound?".
(taken from an essay by Jeffrey Brown in the March issue of Poetry, p. 569, discussing poetry of witness and "news")
Ali Shapiro's grids and circles point to a different way of conceiving "isness" --
For the Shakespeare sonnet: time/fairness graph the importance of the "you", we would want to preserve in words; for the William Carlos Williams, the intersections of circumstance. I quoted Dylan Thomas and his all-inclusive idea about poetry:
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world that your bliss and suffering is forever and shared and forever all your own.
For his villanelle, we felt the battle of the son, the urgency of his feelings raging.
Reading the lines so one person pronounces those that end with "ight" the other the sandwiched line; then re-reading so two people alternate the final line, brings out some of the beauty of the form.
We will continue with the Bishop on 3/20.
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
City of Orgies, Walt Whitman
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Why do some poems become famous? Who uses what criteria to select a "prize-winning" poem? How subconsciously do we use a culture's opinion on what we consider valuable?
What is a memorable poem to you?
Using Ali Shapiro's delightful graphs for the Shakespeare and Williams, how does such a visual component enhance understanding? How do they compare to the first two poems, which received first place in a renowned poetry contest?
How does Whitman's style prepare the way for much of contemporary poetry?
These are questions which ask for more than an hour's discussion. On March 13,(Poems for Lunch) we enjoyed scraping the surface of them -- and on Monday 3/24, and 3/31 (O Pen) we will look again at some of them.
I like what W.S. Merwin says, "Poetry is like making a joke-- if you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing."
The first two poems come from the Boston Review, the first the winner of their 2013 poetry prize. The title alerts us to a voyage in a world most of us don't know --who speaks Wintu-Nomlak -- and after the poem's last words, "false friends", the poem invites us to work again through the free-flow of puns and leaps that do not rely on meaning or logical sequence. How does the first person, arriving in stanza 3 work in the array of satirical surprises?
For the sonnet, one thought is that the speaker of the poem is referring to past traditions (compromised by changes in the environment, spawned by human desire with detrimental effect) which no longer will be available to his son and future generations.
How do details of language “supper to supposition” and “Kodiak instance” ,“airfoil of the present” strike you?
We had quite the time with Whitman's "City of Orgies" where the words "incongruous", "rhapsodic" and difficult syntax were the first to come to mind. What Whitman witnesses, what goes beyond his self-centered exuberance, is this (undefined, but clearly suggested!) love in the full "isness" of a moment. Perhaps as readers, we blink, as if in blinding sunlight, imagining what Whitman witnesses, feeling these lines: "But where is what I started for, so long ago/and why is it yet unfound?".
(taken from an essay by Jeffrey Brown in the March issue of Poetry, p. 569, discussing poetry of witness and "news")
Ali Shapiro's grids and circles point to a different way of conceiving "isness" --
For the Shakespeare sonnet: time/fairness graph the importance of the "you", we would want to preserve in words; for the William Carlos Williams, the intersections of circumstance. I quoted Dylan Thomas and his all-inclusive idea about poetry:
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world that your bliss and suffering is forever and shared and forever all your own.
For his villanelle, we felt the battle of the son, the urgency of his feelings raging.
Reading the lines so one person pronounces those that end with "ight" the other the sandwiched line; then re-reading so two people alternate the final line, brings out some of the beauty of the form.
We will continue with the Bishop on 3/20.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Poems for March 10
Anecdote of the Jar -- Wallace Stevens
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh
Father's Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson
After Filing for Divorce by Chelsea Rathburn
When There Were Ghosts by Alberto Ríos
Last week, the Stevens poem came up in the context of Marianne Moore's poem, "The Grave", and a look at our human impulse to make order. Here, we are "jarred" so to speak, out of the tendency to understand the world as revolving around us, into a world revolving around the jar -- not on a shelf, or store, but in the "slovenly wilderness" of Tennessee. This round, gray, bare jar, treated with a double negative,
(It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee)
feels like an urn for cremated ashes, an artifact for the non-living. My question to the group was how many read the poem, and understood a series of words, but had a hard time getting the message. For many,
such a poem remains an abstraction with more puzzlement. The preponderance of "err" as sound contained in "round" perhaps is the sonic illustration of the metaphor of human order-making in the context of the chaos of the natural world. As always, helpful to have many minds at work bringing in different experiences.
The contrast with Freligh's poem “Wondrous” gave relief as we recalled what makes us cry. The thread to the memory of reading, especially E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, the parable of sacrifice and what death is all about. Wondrous indeed the ease with which Freligh “spins” the linings of meaning — elegy of mother, tribute to White, and to our humanity, the way someone will say "I'm OK", but you know from the rasp and catch of the voice it’s not quite… The crafting is brilliant: mimetic stanza breaks, "leaving the highway" to the spider leaving life; the repetitions; (repeat of wondrous to contrast with self-judging "ridiculous" when the author tries 17 times to record "she died alone") the "sad math" and exponential subtraction multiples, to underline how grief does not happen in one blow.
Carson poem takes a father's sweater worn by a daughter to arrive at the metaphor of aging akin to riding backwards in a train... but allowing the reader in to relate both to watching a man "go mad inside his (secret) laws." A long discussion about "moon bone", made me look it up, and find it is a cut of bone.
Don mentioned the diminishment paring down from the sky is almost peering, and Judith recalled the long death of her brother, who had wanted a steak, and someone asked him "where shall I get it", and the reply was a store in a place the brother had lived 50 years before. The long shadows, the journey, the obedient but confused child create an eerie tension, as the reader too, wears the cardigan of those we love, now gone, but still with us.
The Kooser pick for American Life in poetry, alerts us to the power of a sonnet, with a title that feels most "un-sonnet-like". Those who have experienced divorce could relate to the comparison with the clean-up the morning after a party, but the poem touched the experience of rupture as well -- the paperwork could also be related to work, leaving one set of circumstances and the "who one used to be". Lovely use of crossed rhyme, juxtaposition of strong adjectives like "accusing cup" the sun "assaulting" the window and "throbbing" head and regret with the "someone" who also trailed and ground in the party food.
The Rios poem reminded some of us of Urrea's book, "Into the North" and a discussion of "smoking", as well as a discussion of the lovely imagery of the projection of a movie, the "unrolling" of a story allowing us to identify with it. Would it be a poem to pull out to recite by heart? Perhaps not, but the image is apt and prods us to think back on our own childhood, how we project and perceive ourselves.
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh
Father's Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson
After Filing for Divorce by Chelsea Rathburn
When There Were Ghosts by Alberto Ríos
Last week, the Stevens poem came up in the context of Marianne Moore's poem, "The Grave", and a look at our human impulse to make order. Here, we are "jarred" so to speak, out of the tendency to understand the world as revolving around us, into a world revolving around the jar -- not on a shelf, or store, but in the "slovenly wilderness" of Tennessee. This round, gray, bare jar, treated with a double negative,
(It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee)
feels like an urn for cremated ashes, an artifact for the non-living. My question to the group was how many read the poem, and understood a series of words, but had a hard time getting the message. For many,
such a poem remains an abstraction with more puzzlement. The preponderance of "err" as sound contained in "round" perhaps is the sonic illustration of the metaphor of human order-making in the context of the chaos of the natural world. As always, helpful to have many minds at work bringing in different experiences.
The contrast with Freligh's poem “Wondrous” gave relief as we recalled what makes us cry. The thread to the memory of reading, especially E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, the parable of sacrifice and what death is all about. Wondrous indeed the ease with which Freligh “spins” the linings of meaning — elegy of mother, tribute to White, and to our humanity, the way someone will say "I'm OK", but you know from the rasp and catch of the voice it’s not quite… The crafting is brilliant: mimetic stanza breaks, "leaving the highway" to the spider leaving life; the repetitions; (repeat of wondrous to contrast with self-judging "ridiculous" when the author tries 17 times to record "she died alone") the "sad math" and exponential subtraction multiples, to underline how grief does not happen in one blow.
Carson poem takes a father's sweater worn by a daughter to arrive at the metaphor of aging akin to riding backwards in a train... but allowing the reader in to relate both to watching a man "go mad inside his (secret) laws." A long discussion about "moon bone", made me look it up, and find it is a cut of bone.
Don mentioned the diminishment paring down from the sky is almost peering, and Judith recalled the long death of her brother, who had wanted a steak, and someone asked him "where shall I get it", and the reply was a store in a place the brother had lived 50 years before. The long shadows, the journey, the obedient but confused child create an eerie tension, as the reader too, wears the cardigan of those we love, now gone, but still with us.
The Kooser pick for American Life in poetry, alerts us to the power of a sonnet, with a title that feels most "un-sonnet-like". Those who have experienced divorce could relate to the comparison with the clean-up the morning after a party, but the poem touched the experience of rupture as well -- the paperwork could also be related to work, leaving one set of circumstances and the "who one used to be". Lovely use of crossed rhyme, juxtaposition of strong adjectives like "accusing cup" the sun "assaulting" the window and "throbbing" head and regret with the "someone" who also trailed and ground in the party food.
The Rios poem reminded some of us of Urrea's book, "Into the North" and a discussion of "smoking", as well as a discussion of the lovely imagery of the projection of a movie, the "unrolling" of a story allowing us to identify with it. Would it be a poem to pull out to recite by heart? Perhaps not, but the image is apt and prods us to think back on our own childhood, how we project and perceive ourselves.
Poems for March 6
Choices by Tess Gallagher
The Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
Thoroughly enjoyable discussion with many chuckles!
Gallagher's short 12 line poem gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The lovely parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
The Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
Thoroughly enjoyable discussion with many chuckles!
Gallagher's short 12 line poem gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The lovely parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Poems for March 3
Silence by Billy Collins
Two, Three ---by Rae Armantrout (Kathy)
The Terraced Valley -- by Robert Graves (Judith)
A Graveyard by Marianne Moore
Don mentioned that the Collins poem reminded him of Szymborska’s poem “Reciprocity” which proceeds like catalogue from a single idea explore something like silence... beyond the usual clichés such as “golden”. Note how silence is not repeated twice in the third stanza, how people are equated to petals through the link of silence, the before the accident and after the punishment; near/far; light/dark; the inside and outside linked (broken by the pen), and the regret for the purity of silence in and of itself.
The next three poems were chosen because of their difficulty and wanting a group to respond.
Armantrout brought in by Kathy,who also brought in Al Filreis' link, makes you wonder from the start with the title. Why two, and what is two, and why three, and why from two? Certainly there is much in the poem to go from thinking about singular as "one" but "unique", symbiosis, to Trinity... The discussion included Alan Watts: Christianity and Symbolism... molecules and rods...what is connected and non-connected; Writing as Rescue; the difference between pity (no understanding of the other) and empathy.
We discussed at length what happens in couples and a third element; the role of the echo -- and Echo,
an what is is we try to say in words. What happens when the only thing that responds is the lack of response? What if we did synchronize our speeches-- what would that give?
Perhaps the clue is in the final two stanzas. Three lines to two with a sense of some 3rd ghost.
"Is it the beginning or end
of real love
when we pity a person
because, in him,
we see ourselves?"
Please comment!
Judith brought in "The Terraced Valley" because she had a hard time memorizing it.
oppositions such as unnecessary sun/necessary earth; unnecessary sky without something necessary to counter-balance. A rhyming pattern ABBA, CC
AABA, BB CC
CDCDCD EE FF
mimics embracing, a coupling of likes; an odd-man out and a wreathing of unlikes only to fall to two new couples. What to make of the opening:
"For more than sunshine warmed the skin
Of the round world that was turned outside-in.
that morphs as well to
inside-in and outside-out and the opening
Jan brought up aboriginal song lines – each person 2 lines to memorize. The poet seems reconciled --
yet I believe it is Judith who quoted, " the poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence...
losing himself in his poetic imagination... and in loving..." perhaps that is what happens here.
I turned myself inside out for you... I am beside myself... outside of myself...
Please comment!
The Marianne Moore poem puzzled me -- what is the image of Sea as graveyard she wants us to understand?
There is acoherent idea but syntax is not easy like the sea which overwhelms our order-making impulses.
Moore seems to deal with perception -- the 2nd line
"taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have it to yourself—"
but the line opened a discussion until we agreed that "taking" was the sense of "allowing", not absconding with.
Discussion:
We had quite the time discussing the firs -- witnesses? masts? whether they distracted or created an important dimension to the poem.
Wallace Stevens came up : The placement of the jar in Tennesee... sea-surface full of clouds... order at Key west.
Sea as chaos, nullifying to look at. (desert... outside garden...)and yet that is what composes most of our planet..
Jan offered a narrative of a man about to commit suicide.
Please comment.
These scattered notes are for me, so I can recall the great joy of gathering a group to share our understanding of words which call up our experience, understandings. There is a great vital current of connection that nurtures us. Perhaps at this point in my life, I don't care as much about the "meaning" as the idea of a community of people who care to spend time listening to each other. It's akin to the needle sidling from groove to groove on the old records, to work the magic of so many instruments gathered, invisible to our eye, but creating a vision of a whole we cannot create by ourselves.
Two, Three ---by Rae Armantrout (Kathy)
The Terraced Valley -- by Robert Graves (Judith)
A Graveyard by Marianne Moore
Don mentioned that the Collins poem reminded him of Szymborska’s poem “Reciprocity” which proceeds like catalogue from a single idea explore something like silence... beyond the usual clichés such as “golden”. Note how silence is not repeated twice in the third stanza, how people are equated to petals through the link of silence, the before the accident and after the punishment; near/far; light/dark; the inside and outside linked (broken by the pen), and the regret for the purity of silence in and of itself.
The next three poems were chosen because of their difficulty and wanting a group to respond.
Armantrout brought in by Kathy,who also brought in Al Filreis' link, makes you wonder from the start with the title. Why two, and what is two, and why three, and why from two? Certainly there is much in the poem to go from thinking about singular as "one" but "unique", symbiosis, to Trinity... The discussion included Alan Watts: Christianity and Symbolism... molecules and rods...what is connected and non-connected; Writing as Rescue; the difference between pity (no understanding of the other) and empathy.
We discussed at length what happens in couples and a third element; the role of the echo -- and Echo,
an what is is we try to say in words. What happens when the only thing that responds is the lack of response? What if we did synchronize our speeches-- what would that give?
Perhaps the clue is in the final two stanzas. Three lines to two with a sense of some 3rd ghost.
"Is it the beginning or end
of real love
when we pity a person
because, in him,
we see ourselves?"
Please comment!
Judith brought in "The Terraced Valley" because she had a hard time memorizing it.
oppositions such as unnecessary sun/necessary earth; unnecessary sky without something necessary to counter-balance. A rhyming pattern ABBA, CC
AABA, BB CC
CDCDCD EE FF
mimics embracing, a coupling of likes; an odd-man out and a wreathing of unlikes only to fall to two new couples. What to make of the opening:
"For more than sunshine warmed the skin
Of the round world that was turned outside-in.
that morphs as well to
inside-in and outside-out and the opening
Jan brought up aboriginal song lines – each person 2 lines to memorize. The poet seems reconciled --
yet I believe it is Judith who quoted, " the poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence...
losing himself in his poetic imagination... and in loving..." perhaps that is what happens here.
I turned myself inside out for you... I am beside myself... outside of myself...
Please comment!
The Marianne Moore poem puzzled me -- what is the image of Sea as graveyard she wants us to understand?
There is acoherent idea but syntax is not easy like the sea which overwhelms our order-making impulses.
Moore seems to deal with perception -- the 2nd line
"taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have it to yourself—"
but the line opened a discussion until we agreed that "taking" was the sense of "allowing", not absconding with.
Discussion:
We had quite the time discussing the firs -- witnesses? masts? whether they distracted or created an important dimension to the poem.
Wallace Stevens came up : The placement of the jar in Tennesee... sea-surface full of clouds... order at Key west.
Sea as chaos, nullifying to look at. (desert... outside garden...)and yet that is what composes most of our planet..
Jan offered a narrative of a man about to commit suicide.
Please comment.
These scattered notes are for me, so I can recall the great joy of gathering a group to share our understanding of words which call up our experience, understandings. There is a great vital current of connection that nurtures us. Perhaps at this point in my life, I don't care as much about the "meaning" as the idea of a community of people who care to spend time listening to each other. It's akin to the needle sidling from groove to groove on the old records, to work the magic of so many instruments gathered, invisible to our eye, but creating a vision of a whole we cannot create by ourselves.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Poems for Lunch -- February 27
We will start with the two we didn't have time for:
Oliver, First Snow
Dunn, The Same Cold
**
also planned:
New Year's by Dana Gioia
Petrarch by Richard Wakefield (the costs of our realism)
The Shape of the Year by Richard Wakefield
Bottled Water by Kim Dower
Gratitude to Old Teachers by Robert Bly
We discussed the two “snow poems” — the lyric, more philosophical Oliver(with
her delicate 3-syllable “rhetoric” and “oracular”) vs. the more realistic
“dead-battery-dawn” Dunn.
If you don’t know David Whyte, Jim
brought him up w/ Mary Oliver, as he started a fan club and uses her
poetry in his many essays. Here's his website: http://www.davidwhyte.com/biography.html.
It seems a little trite to say”
We shape our self to fit this world/
and by the world are shaped again” and yet it goes beyond platitude.
"New Year’s" — without completing what object it possesses is a clever title
— just as “The same cold” leaves us guessing in the Dunn poem… We spoke
about title, expectations, how paying attention to the title after the
first read can be a good tool.
We examined the intricate form of Wakefield’s Petrarach (identical
embraced rhyme for the first two (quatrained) sentences (air/ight) and
repeating rhyme triples (wise/bone/he// eyes, alone, see) with an old
fashioned tone — how would the sonnet be different if “free form” or
without these elements to discuss the costs of our realism? The Shape of
the Year, likewise, seems gimmicky, based on artifice, yet the familiarity
of the the length of days echoed in the length of the lines of rhymed
couplets works.
Bottled water is just fun… good use of brand names and endless sentences
wrapped through the line breaks. Questions embraced, the way we cloud
issues, and can end with an ironic poke at our earnestness!
The Bly has a simplicity in the balanced duo of what lies on the surface,
the metamorphosis of youth, the flow of life, possibility,
The “oneness” of the Oliver more credible to me, here.
Oliver, First Snow
Dunn, The Same Cold
**
also planned:
New Year's by Dana Gioia
Petrarch by Richard Wakefield (the costs of our realism)
The Shape of the Year by Richard Wakefield
Bottled Water by Kim Dower
Gratitude to Old Teachers by Robert Bly
We discussed the two “snow poems” — the lyric, more philosophical Oliver(with
her delicate 3-syllable “rhetoric” and “oracular”) vs. the more realistic
“dead-battery-dawn” Dunn.
If you don’t know David Whyte, Jim
brought him up w/ Mary Oliver, as he started a fan club and uses her
poetry in his many essays. Here's his website: http://www.davidwhyte.com/biography.html.
It seems a little trite to say”
We shape our self to fit this world/
and by the world are shaped again” and yet it goes beyond platitude.
"New Year’s" — without completing what object it possesses is a clever title
— just as “The same cold” leaves us guessing in the Dunn poem… We spoke
about title, expectations, how paying attention to the title after the
first read can be a good tool.
We examined the intricate form of Wakefield’s Petrarach (identical
embraced rhyme for the first two (quatrained) sentences (air/ight) and
repeating rhyme triples (wise/bone/he// eyes, alone, see) with an old
fashioned tone — how would the sonnet be different if “free form” or
without these elements to discuss the costs of our realism? The Shape of
the Year, likewise, seems gimmicky, based on artifice, yet the familiarity
of the the length of days echoed in the length of the lines of rhymed
couplets works.
Bottled water is just fun… good use of brand names and endless sentences
wrapped through the line breaks. Questions embraced, the way we cloud
issues, and can end with an ironic poke at our earnestness!
The Bly has a simplicity in the balanced duo of what lies on the surface,
the metamorphosis of youth, the flow of life, possibility,
The “oneness” of the Oliver more credible to me, here.
February 24
Poems for February 24:
Spring is like a perhaps hand by E.E. Cummings
New Year's by Dana Gioia
Chorus of the Mothers-Griot by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
First Snow by Mary Oliver
The Same Cold by Stephen Dunn
What poems entice you? How does manner, message, sound affect you? What makes a poem individually and universally memorable? pleasurable?
Here is my pick: Note how the parentheses are arranged, the capitalization of Nowhere and Hand in the Cummings. For reading aloud, have one person read what's in parentheses, and the other what's not.
What arises?
How many meanings do you associate with "hand"? (clock, God, farmhand, on one hand, and the other, over and under hand, etc.) How does the "perhaps hand" in line 1 feel different from the 1st and 2nd lines of the 3rd stanza: perhaps/Hand in a window...
What effect do the singing repetitions of the gerunds create? arranging/changing/placing/moving/breaking?
What surprises? What do you feel about the uncertainty of Spring? How does Cummings capture this?
For the "Chorus" have three voices for each column, with a 4th voice to read the middle single line
(amnesiac wood)
(sailing knot to knot)
(jealous sharks)
(on the battlefield)
(in God's name)
Then, read across with one voice, and the middle column with a second voice.
We found in the Rundel group that reading the poem this way allowed for a mosaic of all that could not be said, where every bracketed phrase is part of a story, brought to life by the Griot. Chorus as voices all together; chorus as Greek chorus to empower, explain, support, comment on a story. Discussion on this poem revolved around code-speak, examining the placements and repetitions, imagining the "i" in "i say". One could research Phillis Wheatley, first black woman poet (1753-1784) and Lucille Clifton, two more female speakers who "remember stories of their stolen kin."
For "First Snow" read line by line and again up to an exclamation point/period to contrast how the eye/ear and syntax work.
For "The Same Cold" since it is one long stanza, where, if you were in charge of the poem, would you put a stanza break if any? How would that change the effect ?
In the Rundel group we had fun comparing these two poems -- the lyric and the gritty -- the light-footed "rhetorical and oracular" of Mary Oliver and Dunn's dead-battery dawn.
Spring is like a perhaps hand by E.E. Cummings
New Year's by Dana Gioia
Chorus of the Mothers-Griot by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
First Snow by Mary Oliver
The Same Cold by Stephen Dunn
What poems entice you? How does manner, message, sound affect you? What makes a poem individually and universally memorable? pleasurable?
Here is my pick: Note how the parentheses are arranged, the capitalization of Nowhere and Hand in the Cummings. For reading aloud, have one person read what's in parentheses, and the other what's not.
What arises?
How many meanings do you associate with "hand"? (clock, God, farmhand, on one hand, and the other, over and under hand, etc.) How does the "perhaps hand" in line 1 feel different from the 1st and 2nd lines of the 3rd stanza: perhaps/Hand in a window...
What effect do the singing repetitions of the gerunds create? arranging/changing/placing/moving/breaking?
What surprises? What do you feel about the uncertainty of Spring? How does Cummings capture this?
For the "Chorus" have three voices for each column, with a 4th voice to read the middle single line
(amnesiac wood)
(sailing knot to knot)
(jealous sharks)
(on the battlefield)
(in God's name)
Then, read across with one voice, and the middle column with a second voice.
We found in the Rundel group that reading the poem this way allowed for a mosaic of all that could not be said, where every bracketed phrase is part of a story, brought to life by the Griot. Chorus as voices all together; chorus as Greek chorus to empower, explain, support, comment on a story. Discussion on this poem revolved around code-speak, examining the placements and repetitions, imagining the "i" in "i say". One could research Phillis Wheatley, first black woman poet (1753-1784) and Lucille Clifton, two more female speakers who "remember stories of their stolen kin."
For "First Snow" read line by line and again up to an exclamation point/period to contrast how the eye/ear and syntax work.
For "The Same Cold" since it is one long stanza, where, if you were in charge of the poem, would you put a stanza break if any? How would that change the effect ?
In the Rundel group we had fun comparing these two poems -- the lyric and the gritty -- the light-footed "rhetorical and oracular" of Mary Oliver and Dunn's dead-battery dawn.
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