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Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"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.