Poems for Lunch May 29

To my Mother by Mahmoud Darwish
For Once Then Something by Robert Frost
Affirmative Action Babies by Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Map by Wislawa Szymborska
Choices by Nikki Giovanni
Twigs by Taha Muhammad Ali

Depending on which translation of the Darwish poem you use, the reference to "mother" takes on a yearning for homeland (Palestine) as opposed to the physical birth-mother.
Jim felt both poems sought approval by "the mother". The more literal translation gives a sense of great love and supplication:

Because I’ve lost my strength to stand
بدون صلاة نهارك
Without the prayer of your day
هَرِمْتُ، فردّي نجوم الطفولة
I’ve grown old… return the stars of childhood
حتى أُشارك
So I can share
صغار العصافير
with the sparrow chicks
درب الرجوع ..
The way back


I appreciate the many comments and insights of our group! Especially for the Frost poem, where logic and emotion reflect each other in the well, water. How to read,
For once (and see the divide of the 15 line poem, "Once... ) the pause after then,
something, which refers back to "a something white"... our discussion revolved around the play of time, the different ways to understand repetitions. What is the "sound of sense" in this poem -- how does it help lead the reader through ambiguity?

We didn't spend long on the Affirmative Action Babies-- picked up on the sarcastic tone,general bitterness and tried to imagine where the poem takes place -- perhaps Mexico, the south west... a metaphorical Ellis Island...

How much more refreshing to read the Szymborska, which teases us, yet giving us depth in which to consider how we trade reality for a map, given adverbs such as "kindly blue" and "great-heartedly/good-naturedly spread" a counter-world without access to"vicious truth". What do we record? remember? Maps are temporary records (I mentioned the map which clicks through 1,000 years of history and the shifting boundaries which reflect rise and fall of power) and indeed, the who we are where we are on them indicated by tiny black pinpricks, of very tiny consequence indeed.

We ended on Giovanni's poem, discussing the conscious/unconscious, and poetry as a way for us to survive, maintaining feeling... One of Maya Angelou's quotes
came to mind --
People will forget what you said/People will forget what you did/
But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Thus concludes a wonderful season of sharing poetry -- to resume September 4th.

Poems for May 19

I will be taking a break from O Pen and Poems for Lunch over the summer,
back in August for O Pen, and in September for Poems for Lunch at Rundel.
Do mark your calendars: Sunday, October 5, at 2 pm, I will be giving a powerpoint talk, "When Painting Speaks and Poetry Paints" using some of my Ekphrastic Poetry.

I share these poems for our last meeting before I return in August:

Images: 1490, Bosch; 2012 Nikon
In Mother's Kitchen
Girl with Gingerale
Visiting the Magritte Museum
Plane and Boy
Gathering

**
for discussion:
One Hand in the Fig Basket by Catherine Blauvelt (winner of Boston Review Discovery" Poetry Contest. May 01, 2013
Revenge by Taha Muhammad Ali,
translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin

Each poet comes with his baggage of culture, experience, his personality and style, his choices of words and sounds to create a spoken tapestry to share a glimpse of what it is to be alive and human. And in our group, each of us responds with our baggage of culture, experience, personality and style to these choices in different ways, sharing what each poem gives to us. And is that not the greatest gift that draws us to feel amazement?

I first heard Taha Muhammad Ali and Peter Cole in Seattle in 2007 when we were there on sabbatical. He, like Naomi Shihab Nye, who I had meet in 2005, and met also in Seattle that year, gave me courage to believe in the power of poetry and to work for my MFA at Pacific University. If we could all take the time to see each other, imagine the peace of understanding.

**
The comments:
sincerity in every word-- and yet associations abounded:
Kipling's story, "Dayspring mishandled" (http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_dayspring1.htm) which tells of rivalry of two men
and why the one who worked so hard for revenge refused at the end to reveal his scheme.

The more we addressed the complexity of revenge, tied to our human need for connection, the more we fell into specifics: how we punish with prison, how with programs such as "Pathways to Peace" they still fail to save the youth who will follow the same path of those who respond to their anger with violence.
We spoke of the spirit of the Middle East, the gentle aspects of the Arab culture, and the various attempts by prophets (Navi) to bring peace... yet another modern version of Gabriel speaking to Mohammad...

I shared the poem "Twig" for yet another inspiring poem by Taha Muhammad Ali-- I believe his last sentence:
"After we die,
and the weary heart
has lowered its final eyelid
on all that we’ve done,
and on all that we’ve longed for,
and all that we’ve dreamt of,
all we’ve desired
or felt,
hate will be
the first thing
to turn to dust
within us."

Poems for Lunch May 15 + 22

to finish up from May 8: /Rain Song, by Mattawa (see May 12)

The Pregnancy of Words by Bob Hicok
from the sequence The Word and the World by Gregory Orr “There’s a Japanese term...”
They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sonnet 135 by William Shakespeare
For the Anniversary of My Death by W. S. Merwin

for May 22
Hard Life with Memory Wisława Szymborska, (see May 12)
Mirror by Sylvia Plath (see May 12)
Autobiography by John Skoyles
Triolet with Pachyderm by Hayley Leithauser
Northern Motive by Philip Levine

I will not be there to comment on the Skoyles, Leithauser and Levine May 22.

The first question I posed after we slid through the Hicok poem, sentence by sentence, was how the poem left you feeling. It took a bit of work for some to slide through the homonyms, the double possibility of pronouncing "live" as verb and adjective; "read" as present or past tense, the backwards spellings. The sound and play is very strong, but it was only after discussing how the poem provides a commentary on words, that Nancy, new to the group, pinned an aggressive tone, with a sense of raping, especially getting to the anal egg. Is the poem purposely arrogant, or pretending to shrug off
responsibility as we "tinker and smash", and ignore that we have no clue to our nature as a disaster. Finally, the crux of the poem reminds us that words need a "u" an audience to hear them, discuss them.

For the Word and the World, a very different approach to word, and use of a foreign language. Sabi, which if from the Japanese Wabi-Sabi meaning transience and imperfection, would be the loneliness of things. In the final stanza he does not repeat "the heart doesn't change" -- but repeats the loneliness of things.
Poets as connectors, poems as needing "midwifery"-- a bit of gestation as we read them line by line, and discuss.
Because "newfangled" came from the Wyatt, we look at the Wyatt poem which addresses love, the fickleness of those who give it. We find it is no dream, and yet, it feels
dreamlike "through gentleness into a strange fashion of forsaking".
And from Wyatt, to whom the Ballad of Will is uncertainly attributed, why not Shakespeare's sonnet where "will" is not only desire, but filled with bawdy puns and definitions of "will" and Will as male and female sex organs, lust, obstinacy, and the name of William.

We ended on Merwin's poem, "For the Anniversary of my Death".

Such an unusual title -- to celebrate something which has not yet happened.
What is beloved is yet to be discovered. How do the stanzas bow to each other?
Role of "And" -- the suspension of each line. We addressed the second stanza as a way of summarizing Merwin's biography, but also the distraction of "and the love of one woman/and the shamelessness of men which could take a biblic turn.
coupled with the other two "And"s, one with the final line; one in the first stanza
"And the silence will set out."

We did note the 3 days (time between death and resurrection) and wren. The Celtic symbolism would suggest that since both male and female birds take part in raising the young, they represent a fresh, innovative angle... and since they don't rest on their laurels, they further suggest that progress is made each day.

And so,with the wren in mind, we bowed, with humility, deference, to the unknown, to the one thing that is true to all, yet not yet clear and may (in the sense of perhaps might) never be known.

O Pen -- May 12

Hard Life with Memory Wisława Szymborska
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
Benton’s Persephone by Robert Wrigley
Star in the Throat, Fire in the Cupboard by Catie Rosemurgy
Rain Song by Khaled Mattawa
Mother Goose Self-Help by K. A. Hays (see May 1)


Sometimes a poem is so good, just the conceit is enough to carry it, as in Szymborska's "Hard Life" where Memory is personified as "she". I'm not sure if in Polish there is the same gender-rich duality of French with "le memoire" being a written account and "la memoire" being the physical working of memory. One person did speculate about how the poem would change if Szymborska had made Memory "he".
With her inimitable wit, we are taken for a romp through human behavior with someone we care about-- how they can demand all our attention, remind us of details we'd prefer to ignore, and how we build our defenses, sticking to a story or version of ourselves we'd like to think as true. It's interesting how empathy works into the final stanza, where after revenge, memory comforts, and we are reminded, when memory goes, so do we.

Plath's mirror gives another reflection on how we deal with ourselves. What happens when the poet is speaking as mirror? The first five lines proclaim truthfulness.
unmisted -- and homonymic "unmissed" comes to mind. What is missing in this truthfulness? And then arrives the meditation, looking at a wall. How many ways can we understand "opposite wall"?

I think of Apollinaire's calligramme which makes a mirror frame about him -- “In this mirror I am enclosed alive and true like one imagines angels and not like the reflections (in this mirror…

The second stanza reflects the first, another "she". The diction churns: "Searching my reaches for what she really is". Ambiguity augments.
"Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon." -- perhaps romantic associations, but candles and moon are liars because they do not reveal the whole truth -- and the moon only shows one side, and even then, only parts of it as the sun changes what reflects.

How do you understand:
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
(The back of "she"? the back of the person looking in the mirror? seeing as in guiding her back?)

And how do you respond to the "reward" for this ?
"She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands."

Keep reading... and the complexity increases, as if to bring the water of the lake to drown the young girl, to keep alive that terrible fish of the old woman.

Wrigley's poem without looking at Benton's painting still can evoke a lush, sensual imagery that retells a contemporary version of Persephone -- but fixed, as if in paint, where the "curse of desire" is never satiated. Brilliant examples of rich diction, craft of this myth and painting that explore desire.
FORM:
Setting: first two words. Autumn, Harvest
Sounds: “sh” in sheaves; last stanza: the air would cleave;
Personnification: Knees of oak; gnarly, knobby, quivering;
Passive woman: double negative; “made for his mouth”
Enjambments: heighten tension and yearning.
Rhetoric: balances familiar and formal speech
Juxtaposition of Beauty/Sin: mismatched donkey and horse in the painting;
verb tenses: present/subjunctive/conditional; possibilities that are not actualized
Bank: as bank of River Styx and storage place (bank) of desire.

There's much more -- so do explore!

**
Star in the Throat: like an ekphrastic poem with its painting-- does an explanation
of a poem help us understand it better? Here, we remained confused.
The diction is rich as are the images but one senses a layering that resembles this line which opens the final stanza.

"I believe the stories got wet and began to bleed together."
The final line lingers deep to resonate --

I’d like the water to douse the match that’s growing out of the bones
of my hand.

What is it the light shows? burns?
I return to the other haunting line at the beginning:

My mother, bless her, is a speck of color in the flush of a great cheek.
I’ve come to ask you to consider praying for that giant child.

**
Rain Song -- a different way to deal with "losing it" --
note the epigram "After Al Sayyah" -- after the storm.
Just as shorelines change, so do we, as we live our lives.
Rain song, "dialogue of souls", and the radio coming back to pay devotion to "the lifter of harm from those who despair"

The poem starts with the radio blaring and a woman -- but we don't know time or place, and only know she hates clouds. To leap from her question, "where is the sea now" to "Where is it from here, to
What is its name, intensifies the ambiguity as a 7 yr old boy is introduced. It -- as the sea? as the radio? the song? the name of what?

I'd like to read all the poems in the volume, "Zodiac of Echoes" -- the role of chance -- and what "the throb of stars in reachable depths" can mean, other than (perhaps) a reflection of stars in the water.
"Grief bordering happiness" -- could be what the 7 year old iteration, of the writer of the poem, or his more recent self -- but what stays is a melding of storms,
physical, emotional, and symbolic, -- and this sense of amazement that approaches the majestic and sacred of "lifter of harm" which pulls us up.

Poetry in the Garden -- May 10

Poetry in the Garden – May 10 – Rochester Public Library

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, from
Leaves of Grass

What was the first favorite poem (or who was the first favorite poet) you remember?
In Poetry in the Garden day, bring your lunch and come to enjoy a range of poetry.

The original word for garden, spread into Persian literature as pairadaeza (walled-around) to other cultures: paradeisos in Ancient Greek; paradisus in Latin, and onto variations on paradise. Come enjoy the magic of the “walls enclosing spiritual and leisurely meetings with others in the lovely garden accessible through the Bausch and Lomb Library across the Street from Rundel.

p. 137 Untitled –Ibn al-Utri
Just Like A Departer by Mustafa Köz
Rumi: 2219 Man gholam-e qamaram
Market Forces Runon by Tony Krantz
p. 248 Verses for Everyday Use -- Fadhil al-Azzawi
Silence by Billy Collins
Jane Hirshfield, "For What Binds Us"
For Once Then Something by Robert Frost
To My Mother By Mahmoud Darwish
Selections from "The Essential Rumi"
Affirmative Action Babies by Amaud Jamaul Johnson
In Just Spring -- E E Cummings
Maps-- Wislawa Szymborska
Wondrous -- by Sarah Freligh
Hafiz: It Felt Love
Choices by Nikki Giovanni

The Diwan of Abu Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi (B. 915, died 965. in Kufa, Iraq) 892.71 M992d translated and introduction by Arthur Wormhoudt
Diwan means “book” or book of poetry and was spread by Bedouins: Form: last word of second half of the couplet maintains a rhyming sound throughout the poem (which could be 40 or more couplets). The two halves of the couplet appeared as two colums parallel to each other to suggest the duality of reader and writer, listener and speaker or other forms of dialogue.



**
It was a perfect May day -- with a Dachschund parade in Washington Park, Lilac Festival,
and the day before Mother's Day -- azaleas in bloom, the honeyed scent of the yellow blooms on the holly, buds swelling to attest to SPRING!

The idea was to bridge Western and Eastern thought with a quote from Whitman and one from Rumi -- what does "self" mean to both these giants-- both within their time period but also, how do we interpret their words today? Of course, we do not speak Persian, Arabic -- but neither do we speak the English Whitman would have used.

Failing to fetch me... keep encouraged --
to whom is Whitman speaking here?
Rumi speaks by analogy of human being as reed, cutting openings to make it a flute,
"wailing a tender agony of parting" from the Beloved.

How is praise important -- how do we praise and what, and for what reason?
The first poem by Milosz takes us back to Art and Dutch Masters.
the first word of the poem "we" moves through a judgement about our current art,
which shuns realism for abstraction to Line 15, where the speaker moves to I... Details, experience.

"All this is here eternally, just because, once it was.

We read the few poems from Al-Mutanabbi St. listed above in full from the anthology compiled by Beau Beausoleil;

For the Mustafa Köz:
What strikes me about a difficult-to-understand poem in translation, is to reflect on the nature of our English language which relies on prepositions and positions in the syntax. The poem "Just Like a Departer" by a Turkish poet who questions the "me" and "I" hinges on a word we don't have.

I asked my Turkish friend about it. She sees "departer" as leaving one mortal form, like a closed shell- but also leaving all else inside the shell where there are many ideas hidden.. like doom, death, you cannot fight with what is written "on your forehead"- as well as his intended wordplay of the going/ coming dichotomy as related to "birth and death" but still as a broader idea..

She reads this repetitive phrase as a sign of Mustafa Köz asking for a world of people who are more open and sincere, just like himself. He's saying something like come on! We will all die. I am one of the candidates. I will also depart. Just like you will.. What's this nonsense?
**
So to understand "departer" and "break away from the blockhouses" we need a little Sufi insight.

She found a different translation of the last stanza whose second line changes from
" cut the ribbon of my heart for you”
to
"who could name any poem that begins with 'going is good'.

So no "cut the ribbon of my hard" in terms of sacrifice, and Sufi practice does not use confession. She says this: "The mood of the poem is "come and take me, I am ready to die now"... The "you" is ambiguous. Who is you? Love is dense but simple-looking stuff with ambiguities. "The public rejoice" sounds to me like two things: one, the surface qualities of the worldy pleasures. second, the happiness that comes from rejoicing with the idea of "deriving happiness from fearlessness".. What is the root of all fears? Death.. So if you don't fear from anything, you don't fear death. you accept it. What better reason not to rejoice?

Last Stanza:
Me who thinks he is the poet called Mustafa Köz
Who could name any poem that begins with 'going is good'
public rejoices and sparklers
I came amongst you, just like a departer

Complex and rich… and shows the need to understand the background of the poet…

We did not read ALL the poems, but touched on Muslim/sufi advice "say nothing" to Buddhist perspective of how we are bound to earth, to each other, to all that surrounds us, by love. We ended with Billy Collins'meditation on silence,
and how words cannot match the presence it embraces; Cornelius Eady's poem, "Gratitude"; chuckled at Alison Deming's witty "Mosquitos". The last poem, by Dick Allen left us pondering his question of how to keep together child wonder/adult skills. We left,having unlocked doors, ready to "swing on their hinges..."

Poems for May 8

poems discussed in April at O Pen:
Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova by Yusef Komunyakaa
Losing It by Margaret Gibson
This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things by Robert Hedin

It is a privilege to discuss the same poem with different groups. I added comments to April 21.

New: Homework by Alan Ginsberg.
Mother Goose Self-Help by K.A. Hays (Verse Daily: 3/24)
Rain Song: Khaled Mattawa

The Ginsberg is a brilliant poem -- using the timeless subject of how societies behave juxtaposed with his personal view of clean-up. The strong verbs expand the laundry metaphor and become commands to the reader to wash, scrub, flush, drain, cleanse, rinse, squeeze, dry out.
It is good to discuss what happened in the 50's to Iran, as well as unthinking practices that have injured the earth.
Each word is important and carries many associations:

Ivory: a white and mildly scented bar soap, that became famous for its pure content and for floating in water and could clean anything.
A little nursery rhyme: rub-a-dub dub, 3 men in a tub. Here Ginsberg uses this familiar phrase for scrub.
Bluing works by adding a tint of blue dye to clothing in order to make dingy items appear whiter. Note the pun.
Tattle Tail: usually spelled tattle tale (rhymes with battle/rattle / pail or grail). Here the sense of an animal “tail” perhaps of a rattle snake who will strike.
The word aeon /ˈiːɒn/, also spelled eon, originally means "life" or "being", though it then tended to mean "age", "forever" or "for eternity".

The poem has as epigraph: "homage Kenneth Koch". Alan Ginsberg + Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) were good friends. Part of the “Beat Generation”, Ginsberg strives for a lively, spontaneous, style relying on vowel sounds and witty phrasing and is opposed to “False Poetry” – that is, any writing that is self-centered.
Note the date of “Homework”: (1980) Work to do at home... as a country, as an individual to research... is the subject as true in 2014 as then? What timeless subjects is he addressing? Discuss the title. (work prepared for school, work at home, and research.

**
Thanks to Elizabeth, we had quite a romp after the meeting with the references behind Mother Goose Self-Help. (discussed with O Pen on 5/12) She reminds us that there is actually good advice hidden in these lines. Perhaps a favorite part is the single line after forgetting the "mother songs", the bowl cracked, whole, shining, sinking.
"It gets a little sad here." The tone is upbeat -- and the last word is song, following "crooked". A fun poem that deftly serves our folk wisdom. Perhaps we don't realize how deeply we are influenced by what we learn in childhood.

Another epigraph was left out with Mattawa's "Rain Song".
"After Al Sayyah" -- a storm reference.

The fact that it is called rain SONG, and yet is from a collection called "Zodiac of Echoes", reminds me of the cyclic nature of nature and changes in topography. The poem mentions storm as a source of flood, but also drought -- where is the sea now?
In the ancient world, it is interesting to see how shorelines change.

The poem starts with a radio and a woman (who hated clouds) then switches to another question asked by a 7 year old boy. The radio returns with what sounds like a prayer
and a superimposed memory of anguish which is not spelled out. The juxtapositions are subtle such as the "lifter of harm" which returns at the end of the poem; the metaphorical storms of men, credit/debt; how we are sheltered from harm, whether it be the "slash of lightning" or the "groaning sky" or the storms "we made" --
the we allowing father/son, or human beings in general.

What makes us despair -- lose hope? What is grief, bordering happiness that allows us to go beyond despair?
A storm is filled with amazement that can rekindle our faith perhaps...a witness of Divine power beyond despair...

May 4

Poems for lunch May 1 included:
The Pig - Anonymous
Bumper crop – by Bob Hicok
First Morel by Amy Fleury
Lilacs by Amy Lowell

See May 1 for discussions.
new:

Earthly Meditations by Robert Wrigley
The New Song by W.S. Merwin



I have been fond of Wrigley's "In the Bank of Beautiful Sins" for some time,
and wrote quite a bit about Benton's Persephone, which is found on the cover of this small collection of poems. Earthly Meditations contains the Wrigley's lush language
used in "Benton's Persephone" -- just speak out loud:
lawn lumpish with goldfinches,
hunched in their fluffs, fattened by seed,
alight in the wind-bared peduncular forest.
Little bells, they loop and dive, bend
the delicate birch branches down.

From lumps to bells... with peduncular giving a slight sniff of fungi,
a bit of brain-fold, as well as a cluster of flowers.

Repetitions and sounds:
Notice the bland, Darwinian sand: bone wrack
and the following stanza: (after the sudden jerk of confessing he killed a frog when 12 years old)

Bland, hum-drum, quotidian guilt—
which introduces a series of u-sounds and this marvelous conclusion.

... Tomorrow's
a shovelful, the spit of the cosmos, one day
the baby's breath is no longer a rose.

For the Merwin poem -- it is one of the marvels of his writing where each line suspends in space, without punctuation, independent, yet bound to the poem
with the title "The New Song" closing the poem as the last three words.
It is only this moment of the poem, reading "there is no time yet it grows less" and how once we thought otherwise, lulled in the first stanza by time, and grounded in the second stanza by sensory experience.
I love how he can hold these contradictions.

Poems for May 1

First Morel
Lilacs by Amy Lowell
Poetry – Marianne Moore
Complaint by James Longenbach
Bumper crop – by Bob Hicok
The Cats by Ann Iverson
The murder of two men by a kid wearing yellow kid gloves by Kenneth Patchen

I love May Day! The first month of May -- maypole dancing -- the celebration,
as the French say, of "fais ce qui the plaît" referring to the weather, after April's uncertain mood changes. What better poem than Amy Fleury's Morel, where in 12 short lines, a sketch of the "honeycombed" cap comes to life in two sentences. Word choice and diction work beautifully here: wood rot; wrinkling; duff and homely damps;and the curious word "caul" which she expands in definition connected to "seer" -- but with the qualification of "meagre".
Small, bashful... A humble prophecy bringing news from "below" and "coming plenty".
Now that I've used almost every word in the poem -- a look at how she "stages" it will complete the satisfaction of experiencing a jewel of a poem.

By contrast, Lilacs is a long poem with a short refrain, many anaphors, a few allusions, such as to Whitman's "lilacs in doorways", the oriental background, ending with the poets's voice well grounded in New England. The repetition and language lull us musically into a mood of reverie, with the image of one flower connecting us to different times and places. No one felt the length cumbersome.

Longenbach's "Complaint" is part of the Poets Walk in front of the MAG where the final stanza is carved into a granite band. Statements about animals wound into 4 quatrains morph to a comparison with a highwaymen, and peddler and that final line "rowing against the current". I'm hoping to find out more about the title
and if it related to the last two lines. The discussion: “paddock" brought to mind horses; (confined on land) "rowing against the current" a more abstract metaphor for the meditation on the bench going against established order.
(as in all the comments about the nature of things seen in animals.)
We admired the segue from whale to drowning man to highwaymen stanzas 4-5 — the long sentence spread for 2 1/2 quatrains with a stanza break (gasp of air) before knowing from whom it is stolen.
To quote James Longenbach who kindly filled me in: Trust the Poem not the poet -- but I do find his answer compelling:

"A "complaint" is an ancient poetic genre (like an elegy or whatever) and I suppose I'm using the title kind of ironically; the speaker doesn't really have all that much to complain about--he's just kind of irritable, cranky, forlorne, bored, running through useless (but quirkily interesting) information in his head; and certainly when the speaker finally reveals where he is, at the end, the suggestions are (as you say) of enclosure and resistance. I suppose that, finally, to me, the poem exists to inhabit somewhat slyly a particular tone--world-weary, bemused; my hope is that a reader might find it just very slightly amusing, especially given its relationship to the verrrrry serious genre to which its title alludes . . ."

Bumper Crop was so endearingly wonderful, I think we all want to be the CEO of the next 10 minutes, and make a decree that every human being should read it!

Cats also provided warm chuckles, identifying ourselves in the safety of the metaphor. What do we find glory in... how do we protect our moods, the pleasure we find in being, and find ourselves remarkable?

I am using the Kenneth Patchen poem now in power points on poetry (at Mercy and for China) to show the fun of title; of intonation; the importance of gesture.

Only two words (without title) and you could have a dog-training session; a jazz singer preparing yet teasing, waiting for the band to start -- or her lyrics... how we "buy" time... But then the title -- murder vs. the soft yellow kid gloves! Isn't yellow associated with cowardice?
two men, two mentions of kid... the new generation killing (softly) the older generation? How would a bass player and a reader perform this?

I love that there are no answers, and how the questions stir up delight in being alive.

Poems for April 28

different version of Losing It by Margaret Gibson

Poem by Mustafa Köz : (Turkish poet)"As you know how to look,"
Do Not Trust Them by Mustafa Köz, translated by Mesut Senol
The World Seems -- by Gregory Orr
In My Long Night by Charles Simic
Questionnaire by Wendell Berry
East February by John Ashbery

The same discussion about the Margaret Gibson poem ensued -- a way for those who had missed April 21st to hear Martin's view that the speaker of the poem was wearing two simultaneous selves, although this version is tighter, shorter.

With poems in translation it is always curious to me how some "untranslatable qualities" will point to something inherent in the culture. For instance, the Mustafa Köz poems had a palpable sense of Koran, Sufi infusion and arabic metaphor. What do we trust in terms of what society, religion, even our dreams inform us to believe? What metaphor might we be missing with "true ruby and iron"? What political shifting might be in this line: "what excuse can the land have if the roads were surrounded"-- or is it a geographic reference to shorelines, rivers other boundaries?
The poem's stanzas shrink from five lines, to three, to two, to one, as we see the process of writing down is also to tear down whatever you believe.

"Do Not Trust Them" provides a perfect segue to Orr's poem, whose title, "The World Seems" provokes multiple possibilities to inform our understanding of meaning. How do you complete "The world seems"... an adjective, series of adjectives, a verb? How does the first line completion "palpable and dense
The world seems, vs. the world is... the homophonic "seems/seams where one stitches something real, the other points to abstraction. The discussion kept returning to "naming" as a way of recognizing our universal need for love and a means to understanding, and connecting. Bridging the world through words is a complex procedure, and plenty has been written about "sound of sense", disposition of words on the page, use of the senses. English is strong at communicating, with a rich vocabulary that is highly evocative. Orr's poem positions us as "namers" poised in a world of things, landscapes, connected to an inner, higher source. I return to the idea of "bless" in old French, where the verb blesser means wound, which opens us up for benediction and healing. The idea of joy as desperate, two intense words which pull against each other as ecstasy and despair. I love the idea of the hope of joy, exiting as word into the world. Perhaps also, I/thou, and the limitation of labeling, is akin to needing to write down/tear up.

The Simic poem reminded us of the Dark Night of the Soul. Leaving the old country and churches, yet like a spider, veiling the vaults with webs, dangling above the altar... Marcie brought up the story of Irene for the Grandmother stanza: Her death was described this way: (Irene... after falling asleep upon our Lord) It furthered the chuckle we already had of the grandmother looking pleased to be done with /
burying other people. Crow... often the satirical bird for priests and allusion to the lure of Gold
far removed from the treasury of the heart.

We admired the mastery of Wendell Berry's poem --the cleverness of "questionnaire" which asks a question but then orders you to include prescribed details in your answer. imperative. Three times he says “please” with the imperatives. Is it the same tone each time? He builds up starting with something one can list (poisons) to abstractions, such as “evil” and ethical/society-related reminders (sacrifices), ecology and then the bottom line of a child’s life and the future. The imperatives underscore the impact of each small decision we make.

The Asbury was a wonderfully random series of overheard conversations, as logical as talking about months as directions.

For Gregory Orr: In a review of Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved from the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ted Genoways writes: “Sure, the trappings of modern life appear at the edges of these poems, but their focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time. It’s an experience usually reserved for reading the ancients, and clearly that was partly Orr’s inspiration.

Poems for April 21

April is the Cruelest month? (see TS Eliot: The Wasteland)http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
Ted Kooser says no! His pick shows what April can be like with the Eliot swept aside.
This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things by Robert Hedin

Flirtation by Rita Dove
Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova by Yusef Komunyakaa
Losing It by Margaret Gibson (with reference to Bishop, "One Art"

Until 1751 in England and Wales (and all British dominions) the new year started on 25 March – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days (the change to 1 January took place in 1600 in Scotland) and see news clippings about celebrations of New Years in April in SE Asia. This weeks poems have to do with Beginnings, endings and possibilities in between.


I love this group -- how a retired professor will give a new take on TS Eliot, how a former dancer who carries an encyclopedia of quotes around in her head will come up with a quote from A.A. Milne's "Now We Are Six" such as :
And so in the end he did nothing at all
just basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl,
I think it's disgraceful the way he behaved
He did nothing but basking until he was saved.

as we discussed "This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things" by Robert Hedin, indeed a delightful poem which made some of us think of EE Cummings. A little everyday 2014 but each detail made extraordinary, such as mention of a shopping mall where you can walk by "bright stables/Of mowers, juxtaposed with the choice "just lie/Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,/And wait for the day lilies/To open. (which in April won't be soon.)
The positive attitude takes a turn at the end: The sun is barely/
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate _
Bands of light over the lawns.

"immaculate" rather disrupts the meter -- but miracles are never an orderly thing.

The poem by Rita Dove (from Poetry,1982) certainly elicited a lot of discussion, summed up this way: "flirtation is a good title for a poem where specific things are alluded to... shakes us, then puts us into larger experience-- and yet we are parsing this poem like a bunch of lawyers... "
What would Rita have to say!

What a contrast with the recent poem by Komunaayaka. Knowing a bit of his background might influence his attraction to the time period of Ahkmatova and what she had to go through. However, what interests me is to look for universals that lie in a poem like this inspired by "a line" from a different time period, by a woman in a quite different place, do that makes us glad to have read it. The crux lies in the juxtaposition of wealth on "Millionaire street" where people wait in bread lines. Here Komunyaaka asks: Did the two poets learn it took more
to sing & reflect the burning icy stars
of poetry where privilege & squalor
lived beneath the same ornate ceiling?

He answers the question... saying how their tears bring them to laughter over pages of snow-blindness, anger "almost keeping them warm" as if to remind us of the possible flowers that come through the cracks in our own contemporary, American version of privilege & squalor.

Since we found two versions of the Margaret Gibson poem, we decided to view the second version next week.
It is shorter, more direct, does not contain as many references for instance to Elizabeth Bishop's famous
One Art. It reminded us of Freligh's "Wondrous" where loss makes artists of us as we weave new patterns into life. The recognition of "losing it" as caregiver, allows us all a level of vulnerability that we ttoo, are losing it, will lose life as we think we know it, which makes room for compassion for both Elizabeth, the speaker of the poem, and her alzheimer-striken husband.


** by contrast, a few weeks later, the Rundel group discussed the Komunyakaa, the Hedin and Gibson. It is a privilege to discuss the same poem with different groups.
For the Komunyakaa, we spoke of Akhamatova's modernist lens, and why we are drawn to struggle. The discussion veered somewhat into politics, idealism, corruption.
New thoughts: The Line, could refer to one of her poems -- or perhaps reference to the bread line, experienced by Anna. Field of Mars (war) after mention of a palace built for a lover, echoes in the "two minds" where snow falls. At the end, snow-blindness could be the tears blinding the eyes in the dual reaction to absurdity.
The dualities abound -- hot/cold images as well as privilege and squalor, tear/laughter; burning icy stars.

For the Hedin: We focussed on the tone, and the ambiguous way to understand "1,000 things. The onomatopoeia of "rocking like a lazy metronome" allows us to slow down and observe -- meditate on all the coulds of obligation and desire to admire, transforming something quite ordinary into something extraordinary.

The Gibson poem was received just as Martin had understood it-- a poem about one person, who is losing it, talking to herself. Of course the "you" could be someone else too, but it is even more frightening to think of a "we" which is a disassociated single person, holding onto herself for dear life. What is OK (is a giraffe OK -- a good luck charm, a memory of childhood that keeps you feeling real?)
I shared the link to the elegiac issue to Kurt Brown that appeared in the Boston Review and this beautiful poem his wife, Laure-Anne Bosselaer found in his "unfinished" poems.

That kiss I failed to give you.
How can you forgive me?
The kiss I would have spent on you is still
There, within me. It will probably die there.
But it will be the last of me to die.
for Laure-Anne
http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/14/spring/bosselaar.php