To Spareness -- Jane Hirshberg
The Sentence -- Ana Akhmatova***
Moon by Frederick Smock;
Theory of Memory by Louise Glück;
Dreamwood by Adrienne Rich
Song in Winter by Marianne Boruch
Song Again, in Spring
**
see discussion on November 17 (summarized by Kimberley) of the Hirschberg and Akhmatova.
Hirsjhfield's definition of spareness by defining the opposite, in a full round of views
honors Spareness as if to praise it.
I brought up the French épargner: to spare also means to save. Hirshfield's words invite opposite meanings like that, for spareness.
For the Ahkmatova, the discussion revolved around how to understand a fragment of a translation.
What survival skills-- how to live, if you kill memory, imagine brilliant day/deserted house?
The Smock seemed childlike -- first stanza engaging, but the next two arrive like adult sledgehammers.
So, in case you didn't get it: We're the illusion the moon is looking at. There's no magic, no discovery.
The Glück comes from her new book, "Faithful and Virtuous Night" which just received an award.
Prose like this is not as compelling to me as poems. If the future will erase the present... or vice-verse, what is the difference of understanding dream/hypothesis vs. what we think is?
I picked Dreamwood because one of my friends used the opening lines as epigraph for his chapbook and I find them intriguing. We noted "late report" was not "last report" -- late as in tardy, as in dead. -- material and dream.
Compared to the short prose passage, there was substance in images: typing, map, wooden stand...
The Boruch poems also border dream/reality. Doom is or it isn't.
Shape seeking..
this "we", this "our " and "us" thing...
a play on part -- as a share of something -- part coward...
something divided...
strange meditations.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Poems for November 17 (report from Kimberley Ferrance) _ Nov. 24
Preliminaries:
1. Judith: Although she could not be here for our Nov. 3 discussion including Grass Fingers by Angelina Weld Grimke, she will share an 1868 letter from Angelina to her newly discovered nephews...
2. Although we discussed somewhat that beauty of this poem, read aloud, here is the audio version: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/first-song followed by the written version
Poems: (see discussion November 5 at Rundel)
First Song by Galway Kinnell
The Cellist by Galway Kinnell
Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
**
To Spareness by Jane Hirshfield
The Sentence by Anna Ahkmatova
Each one of these poems demand a quiet space to allow the words to resonate beyond the sounds they make.
Kimberley reports: Our minds ran away with us a little with the sexual inuendos in the Cello poem. The First Song evoked appreciation for simple things and how sometimes you may find the beauty in something that others wouldn't have thought to. The Sow went as expected, Emily expressed her love of all animals and cherished the sow. Everyone was wondering if there was a story behind the Saint Francis and sow connection outside of him being patron saint of animals. Jane Hirshfield wowed many people, especially all the detail and examples of spareness she includes. As a group we recalled that we all always love her work and never came across a poem of hers we didn't like. The Sentence was looked at after a handful of people had gone since it was 1:15ish. Also, it felt like a fragment and that it needed some context. We compared two translations of the second stanza and marveled at what a difference the translator can make. I had recalled that this was part of a longer piece but never can pull things out of my brain when I need to. So I refreshed my memory at home and shared.
*** from Kimberley:
For explanation purposes, I think it best to start from the micro-perspective and put the piece in context with the macro, therefore anyone can explore as far as they wish. My main source for this information is The Complete Poems of ANNA AKHMATOVA: Updated & Expanded Edition; 1994; Translations by Judith Hemschemeyer and Editing by Roberta Reeder. (forgive me, I forget my APA citing format)
The Sentence is seven (VII) of a fifteen part poetry & prose cycle entitled REQUIEM. This part is dated June 22, 1939, which is the actual day Anna’s son, Lev Gumilyov, was sentenced to a labor camp in Leningrad. Therefore, the title is literal. Of course we can all then explicate that the “stone word” is a metaphor for the verdict passed down. (or not, who am I to interpret for you)
Lev Gumilyov came from the union of Anna and Nikolay Gumilyov, Anna’s first husband. They met in 1903 when she was only 14, then married in 1910. By the time of The Sentence, Nikolay had already been imprisoned for taking part in a counter-revolutionary plot and executed in 1921.
REQUIEM is described as “a tribute to the ordeal of the victims of the Terror and women who waited in the prison lines hoping to get word of them,” and is “based on her (Anna’s) own experience in Leningrad.”
This is all in the time of Stalin and his “purge” that took place in Russia. There was a ban on publication of Anna’s work from 1925-1940. She began writing REQUIEM in 1935, but was afraid to actually write it down. She recited the verses to trustworthy friends so that they could be passed along, memorized and later reassembled.
REQUIEM wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1989.
ref. AKHMATOVA as a “pen name”: carries more weight than that. Her father insisted she change her name when she was just a teenager and had begun writing poetry. He did not want his name to be associated with the trade of a poet. The name comes from a maternal ancestor.
**
Poems for November 24
Eaven Boland
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet by Eavan Boland
The Lost Art of Handwriting by Eavan Boland
The Lost Land by Eavan Boland
The Journey by Eavan Boland
In “The Journey,” you write that “somewhere a poet is wasting / his sweet uncluttered metres on the obvious // emblem instead of the real thing.” What is that “real thing” poets should write about, but don’t?
Well, in that case, an antibiotic. Literally. The poems begins with a riff about that: that there’s never “been a poem to an antibiotic.” It’s at the heart of this fairly long dream-poem. “The Journey” is essentially a poem about child mortality; our own infant daughter had recovered from a dangerous meningitis around that time. But it’s also about the fact that such subjects are extraordinarily absent from poetry. So the poem begins and continues with an argument about the way ornamental language can protect a poet from reality. It’s something I think crops up from time to time, the old debate about what agency language has in a poem: whether it merely decorates the subject or reveals it. And that’s the larger theme of “The Journey.” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/180235
Loss:the common denominator:
We discussed at length this line: "An art is lost when it no longer knows
How to teach a sorrow to speak,"
signs for sounds... her words there to imagine the voice...
Thank you all who were present for the thoughtful discussion of the poems yesterday. How great to have a group share so many layers: "How does poetry arise from a life experience…” a summary of Irish history, knowledge such as the translation of Dublin as “Black Pool”; info on the importance of the Boland name; and how to understand the loss, role of language if mute before sorrow and what that means. As promised in my note, I read the poem below.
As we approach Thanksgiving, indeed, one of the wonderful gifts for which I give thanks is this group of remarkable people who gather to discuss poems each week.
I am grateful to each of you for what you bring. Thank you!
With heartfuls of good wishes,
Kitty
AN ELEGY FOR MY MOTHER IN WHICH SHE SCARCELY APPEARS
by Eavan Boland
1. Judith: Although she could not be here for our Nov. 3 discussion including Grass Fingers by Angelina Weld Grimke, she will share an 1868 letter from Angelina to her newly discovered nephews...
2. Although we discussed somewhat that beauty of this poem, read aloud, here is the audio version: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/first-song followed by the written version
Poems: (see discussion November 5 at Rundel)
First Song by Galway Kinnell
The Cellist by Galway Kinnell
Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
**
To Spareness by Jane Hirshfield
The Sentence by Anna Ahkmatova
Each one of these poems demand a quiet space to allow the words to resonate beyond the sounds they make.
Kimberley reports: Our minds ran away with us a little with the sexual inuendos in the Cello poem. The First Song evoked appreciation for simple things and how sometimes you may find the beauty in something that others wouldn't have thought to. The Sow went as expected, Emily expressed her love of all animals and cherished the sow. Everyone was wondering if there was a story behind the Saint Francis and sow connection outside of him being patron saint of animals. Jane Hirshfield wowed many people, especially all the detail and examples of spareness she includes. As a group we recalled that we all always love her work and never came across a poem of hers we didn't like. The Sentence was looked at after a handful of people had gone since it was 1:15ish. Also, it felt like a fragment and that it needed some context. We compared two translations of the second stanza and marveled at what a difference the translator can make. I had recalled that this was part of a longer piece but never can pull things out of my brain when I need to. So I refreshed my memory at home and shared.
*** from Kimberley:
For explanation purposes, I think it best to start from the micro-perspective and put the piece in context with the macro, therefore anyone can explore as far as they wish. My main source for this information is The Complete Poems of ANNA AKHMATOVA: Updated & Expanded Edition; 1994; Translations by Judith Hemschemeyer and Editing by Roberta Reeder. (forgive me, I forget my APA citing format)
The Sentence is seven (VII) of a fifteen part poetry & prose cycle entitled REQUIEM. This part is dated June 22, 1939, which is the actual day Anna’s son, Lev Gumilyov, was sentenced to a labor camp in Leningrad. Therefore, the title is literal. Of course we can all then explicate that the “stone word” is a metaphor for the verdict passed down. (or not, who am I to interpret for you)
Lev Gumilyov came from the union of Anna and Nikolay Gumilyov, Anna’s first husband. They met in 1903 when she was only 14, then married in 1910. By the time of The Sentence, Nikolay had already been imprisoned for taking part in a counter-revolutionary plot and executed in 1921.
REQUIEM is described as “a tribute to the ordeal of the victims of the Terror and women who waited in the prison lines hoping to get word of them,” and is “based on her (Anna’s) own experience in Leningrad.”
This is all in the time of Stalin and his “purge” that took place in Russia. There was a ban on publication of Anna’s work from 1925-1940. She began writing REQUIEM in 1935, but was afraid to actually write it down. She recited the verses to trustworthy friends so that they could be passed along, memorized and later reassembled.
REQUIEM wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1989.
ref. AKHMATOVA as a “pen name”: carries more weight than that. Her father insisted she change her name when she was just a teenager and had begun writing poetry. He did not want his name to be associated with the trade of a poet. The name comes from a maternal ancestor.
**
Poems for November 24
Eaven Boland
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet by Eavan Boland
The Lost Art of Handwriting by Eavan Boland
The Lost Land by Eavan Boland
The Journey by Eavan Boland
In “The Journey,” you write that “somewhere a poet is wasting / his sweet uncluttered metres on the obvious // emblem instead of the real thing.” What is that “real thing” poets should write about, but don’t?
Well, in that case, an antibiotic. Literally. The poems begins with a riff about that: that there’s never “been a poem to an antibiotic.” It’s at the heart of this fairly long dream-poem. “The Journey” is essentially a poem about child mortality; our own infant daughter had recovered from a dangerous meningitis around that time. But it’s also about the fact that such subjects are extraordinarily absent from poetry. So the poem begins and continues with an argument about the way ornamental language can protect a poet from reality. It’s something I think crops up from time to time, the old debate about what agency language has in a poem: whether it merely decorates the subject or reveals it. And that’s the larger theme of “The Journey.” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/180235
Loss:the common denominator:
We discussed at length this line: "An art is lost when it no longer knows
How to teach a sorrow to speak,"
signs for sounds... her words there to imagine the voice...
Thank you all who were present for the thoughtful discussion of the poems yesterday. How great to have a group share so many layers: "How does poetry arise from a life experience…” a summary of Irish history, knowledge such as the translation of Dublin as “Black Pool”; info on the importance of the Boland name; and how to understand the loss, role of language if mute before sorrow and what that means. As promised in my note, I read the poem below.
As we approach Thanksgiving, indeed, one of the wonderful gifts for which I give thanks is this group of remarkable people who gather to discuss poems each week.
I am grateful to each of you for what you bring. Thank you!
With heartfuls of good wishes,
Kitty
AN ELEGY FOR MY MOTHER IN WHICH SHE SCARCELY APPEARS
by Eavan Boland
Poems for November 10
See below for a tribute to Galway Kinnell.
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/collection/galway-kinnell-tribute?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Academy+of+American+Poets+Newsletter+November+4&utm_content=Academy+of+American+Poets+Newsletter+November+4+CID_d3daefe0d54ca9d59f237863263f1800&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=special%20tribute%20collection
Wait – by Galway Kinnell
Suitcase by James Longenbach
On Beauty by James Longenbach
Exquisite Candidate by Denise Duhamel
Neverland - by Galway Kinnell
**
The first poem
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/collection/galway-kinnell-tribute?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Academy+of+American+Poets+Newsletter+November+4&utm_content=Academy+of+American+Poets+Newsletter+November+4+CID_d3daefe0d54ca9d59f237863263f1800&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=special%20tribute%20collection
Wait – by Galway Kinnell
Suitcase by James Longenbach
On Beauty by James Longenbach
Exquisite Candidate by Denise Duhamel
Neverland - by Galway Kinnell
**
The first poem
Poems for lunch November 13
“ What troubles me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious in our world seem to be dying out. Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come. - Galway Kinnell
“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”— Galway Kinnell
Poems:
Wait – by Galway Kinnell
Suitcase by James Longenbach
On Beauty by James Longenbach
Exquisite Candidate by Denise Duhamel
Little Champion by Tony Hoagland
My question for Wait: what lines work for you? How?
Does the poem work without a story?
Wait, as noun, as verb, and even if pinned down in syntax, quivers according to tones -- commands,
desperate plea, gentle suggestion. If you pin a poem down to an aphorism such as "time heals all wounds" it loses in power, but here, there's a tinge of sadness, navigating past and future, repetitions -- "no one is tired enough" leads to another wait -- hair has become music of hair, pain, music of pain, and instead of seasons and gloves becoming lovely again, a music of looms weaving all our loves again...
a unique and singular time worth waiting for, only heard when exhausted. Death? or the idea that we cannot change until we are pushed to the limit? However one understands it, there is need, enormous emptiness carved out of our tiny beings, asking to be filled...
The Longenbach poem felt Kafka-esque by contrast -- mysterious or perhaps sinister as the suitcase allows us to imagine the excitement of leaving-- and then that curious contrast of packing a suitcase, like organizing choices,unlike building a fire, with necessary space for air. Why would the former be one of life's greatest pleasures? Perhaps the suitcase is a metaphor for a poem -- the packing, the writing.
On Beauty is almost surreal-- capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful-- telling a story of survival in gruesome war time.
The Duhamel a romp through satire.
People didn't warm up to the Hoagland. Not even a chuckle at "heteronormativity".
I asked what lends itself to a satisfaction level... The opening Kinnell poem allowed more universals, includes us as opposed to the thought of the butterfly, who gives solace to the speaker of the poem, who we regard as an outsider.
“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”— Galway Kinnell
Poems:
Wait – by Galway Kinnell
Suitcase by James Longenbach
On Beauty by James Longenbach
Exquisite Candidate by Denise Duhamel
Little Champion by Tony Hoagland
My question for Wait: what lines work for you? How?
Does the poem work without a story?
Wait, as noun, as verb, and even if pinned down in syntax, quivers according to tones -- commands,
desperate plea, gentle suggestion. If you pin a poem down to an aphorism such as "time heals all wounds" it loses in power, but here, there's a tinge of sadness, navigating past and future, repetitions -- "no one is tired enough" leads to another wait -- hair has become music of hair, pain, music of pain, and instead of seasons and gloves becoming lovely again, a music of looms weaving all our loves again...
a unique and singular time worth waiting for, only heard when exhausted. Death? or the idea that we cannot change until we are pushed to the limit? However one understands it, there is need, enormous emptiness carved out of our tiny beings, asking to be filled...
The Longenbach poem felt Kafka-esque by contrast -- mysterious or perhaps sinister as the suitcase allows us to imagine the excitement of leaving-- and then that curious contrast of packing a suitcase, like organizing choices,unlike building a fire, with necessary space for air. Why would the former be one of life's greatest pleasures? Perhaps the suitcase is a metaphor for a poem -- the packing, the writing.
On Beauty is almost surreal-- capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful-- telling a story of survival in gruesome war time.
The Duhamel a romp through satire.
People didn't warm up to the Hoagland. Not even a chuckle at "heteronormativity".
I asked what lends itself to a satisfaction level... The opening Kinnell poem allowed more universals, includes us as opposed to the thought of the butterfly, who gives solace to the speaker of the poem, who we regard as an outsider.
Friday, November 7, 2014
poems for November 5 Tribute to Galway Kinnell
First Song
The Cellist
Gravity
Another Night in Ruins
In choosing some Kinnell poems, to honor this beloved poet who just passed away, I stumbled on a site about his 70th birthday, with poets choosing poems to honor.
Another Night in Ruins -- Galway Kinnell
chosen by Anne Marie Macari for Kinnell’s 70th birthday party.
(a poem, in part, about poetry as life’s work.)
"Galway, you are amazing," said Yusef Komunyakaa before reading "Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond" in a deep, sonorous voice. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171396
"You make me feel less embarrassed to be human," explained Marie Howe, who chose to read "Freedom, New Hampshire." http://www.the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/02/friday-afternoon-poem_16.html
Robert Bly prefaced "The Bear" by calling Kinnell "a wonderful bear of a man."
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/bear
Doty explained that Kinnell's work showed him where the imagination could go, then read "It All Comes Back." http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2005-05-02#folio=070
Williams was blunt: "When I first heard Galway read, something in me said, 'Holy shit.'" He concluded with "The Porcupine," his southern accent gliding across the stanzas.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/kinnell/bear.htm
Sharon Olds launched straight into "Oatmeal," http://www.elovepoems.com/poem/oatmeal
which, like so many Kinnell poems, uses an experience rooted in physicality (eating) to discuss a mental experience (writing poetry). In this case, the lonely speaker decides to invite an imaginary companion to share his unappealing bowl of gloppy oatmeal—he chooses John Keats so that they might enliven the meal by discussing literature.
interview: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_kinnell.php
**
I choose these quotations at random, to give a flavor of his thinking:
“ What troubles me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious in our world seem to be dying out. Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come. - Galway Kinnell
“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”
― Galway Kinnell
And what a rich experience it is to be a Galway Kinnell recounting this.
poems for October 30
With Halloween ghosting the week, herewith faintly related seasonal poems.
For Open, suggestions included When the Night Winds Howl” from Ruddigore and we did
a group reading of MacBeth’s witchew chimint in on —
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
I also highly recommend this “dance with death” — if you don’t know The Green Table— an amazing ballet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZQsZUsytc
Poems for Lunch: October 30-- see also Oct. 27
“Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names.” — John Milton in 1634 from Comus, a mask
Early October Snow by Robert Haight
The Haunted Oak – Paul Lawrence Dunbar
All Souls' Day by Frances Bellerby (1909-1975) (discussed O Pen 10/27)
Theories of Time and Space Natasha Trethewey (discussed O Pen 10/27)
Haight: The writer's imagination unfolds, a sense of ghost... looking outside window and in mirror.
Dunbar: wonderful rhythm and drum beat which increases sense of inevitable.
For Open, suggestions included When the Night Winds Howl” from Ruddigore and we did
a group reading of MacBeth’s witchew chimint in on —
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
I also highly recommend this “dance with death” — if you don’t know The Green Table— an amazing ballet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZQsZUsytc
Poems for Lunch: October 30-- see also Oct. 27
“Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names.” — John Milton in 1634 from Comus, a mask
Early October Snow by Robert Haight
The Haunted Oak – Paul Lawrence Dunbar
All Souls' Day by Frances Bellerby (1909-1975) (discussed O Pen 10/27)
Theories of Time and Space Natasha Trethewey (discussed O Pen 10/27)
Haight: The writer's imagination unfolds, a sense of ghost... looking outside window and in mirror.
Dunbar: wonderful rhythm and drum beat which increases sense of inevitable.
poems for lunch Oct 27
The Vampire Conrad Aiken, 1899 – 1973
The Haunted Oak by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906)
All Souls' Day by Frances Bellerby (1909-1975)
Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey (b. 1966)
“Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names.”
— John Milton in 1634 from Comus, a mask
How is it that only part of a poem will start people? In this Halloween selection, these comments just about the Aiken:
Langston Hughes: Harlem Renaissance
what was before my eyes, but made me see it.
5 ladies to dance. Geoffrey Holder
http://www.express.co.uk/news/obituaries/521511/Obituary-Geoffrey-Holder-Actor-August-1-1930-October-5-2014-Aged-84
Carmin de Lavalade
The creation...
negative anima... la belle dame sans merci..
war goddess: Gamoragon...
war as ultimate temptress...
conjure up an enemy...
“All the Light we Cannot See”... WW2... We lost 2 million in the first war; they lost a million and a half there will not be another war.
What is war to you... what kind of job do you do in war... embrace war or not.
result the same: people still dead...
finding meaning in agression.
Green Table: Ballet.. Kurt Joose
0:59 / 1:56
The Green Table (Kurt Jooss)(Joffrey Ballet Chicago) DVD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZQsZUsytc
Vampire – what sucks and takes...
succubus
Aiken discovered his father who shot his mother and himself. age 11.
Short story: Secret Snow, Silent Snow
from Kathy: this 14 stanza poem gets more frightful as it goes on! http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/vampire
The Vampire Conrad Aiken,
**
The Bellerby is subtle, extremely sad... How is the craft disguised? Is there a hint of sentimentality, or intimacy?
The Trethewey start with a provocative title. Does it work?
I think it does, especially with the opening line, like a student responding to an academic lecture.
There is journey, what we might/might not remember and undertones of tomb as tome..
comments from group:
Embarkation of Cythera (Watteau – thin silks)Aphrodite
time waits for no photographer
random blank pages – what we might not remember... but also... that black prisoners not noted although white were...before Katrina -- 60 miles away from New Orleans
Ship Island split and washed out to sea.
Consider me a colored boy – Langston Hughes
Once nobody, now me.
Here is a case of knowing the context of the poem, which enhances it.
poems for lunch October 23
As 10/20:
Merwin : Still Life
Kooser: Two
Strand: The Hill
Stone: American Gothic
+ two UK poets represented in the October issue of Poetry:
Caleb Klaces : Moths
Amy Key: How Rare a Really Beautiful Hand Is Now, Since the Harp Has Gone Out of Fashion!
Poems for October 20
Still Life -- by W.S. Merwin
Two – by Ted Kooser
Testimony -- by Joseph Fasano
Curio a prose poem by Meghan Privitello
The Hill by Mark Strand
Very Far After e e cummings
American Gothic by John Stone
This morning, seeing the announcement of yet another writer passing, and then looking at my selection of poems, thinking of older poets Merwin and Strand, I’m reminded by the celebration of Cummings’ birthday on Writer’s Almanac 10/14, there is no better place than poetry to embrace the living/dying cycle. I’m hoping the Jon Stone response to American Gothic (same poet who wrote “3 for the Mona Lisa”*** we discussed last week) will help us at the end… With great affection to you all for all the wonderful sharing!
Still Life:
How do you read the title? As words imitating a painting... or Still (as in ongoing) Life, which the present participles seem to elaborate upon. Or the sense of "It's life, even with this going on".
Merlin's lines allow for simultaneously different meanings to work all at once.
Comments from the group: How little we know of nature, color spectrum of sun, accessible, but not always visible.
last line: unexpected... powerful... everything goes on... memory
old person/child..
present participles..
present tense claim of person...
we live in the now we cannot grasp gone before it (arrives)
fleetingness
said/silent...
nature...
continuum of time.
child... no demarcation
Two: beautifully crafted to demonstrate the value of "a bonded two-ness"-- how two men separate, then come back, but we learn they are a father/son only in the middle of the poem. The only 4-syllable word: interwoven. The only metaphor: their hands making a gate and yet the poem breathes, each sentence a frame.
Testimony:
images: moon /lantern...
enjambments (and separated piece...)
being along w/ oneself... seems to echo Merwin's poem.
Knowledge not given easily...after all is said and done, you have yourself...
pain of change...
The poet says he was thinking of Galway Kinnell’s reunion with the ‘wild darkness,’ and of Mark Strand’s wish to ‘lie down under the small fire / of winter stars.’ So I did. And the stillness that I heard there became this poem. Of course we’ve all tried to return somewhere and found it impossible, but sometimes that very impossibility can become its own song.”
Curio:
She’s having fun...but are we? is it cute... or annoying? Is there a worthwhile sentiment?
The Hill: Strand creates mystery...what do we, have we missed... yet reassures... "echoes this is the way I do it" as if to accept life as it is... (and sure, and if life isn't a terrible place, God Bless it...)
hill: aloneness of effort... life difficult... (he's missed lots of different transpiration -- but hasn't "missed the boat" one person joked). We loved the "So what" about the leaves rattling.
poetic feet...match how he steps along.
Judith snuck in the next one -- in the style of Cummings, but it is hers!
And since we enjoyed John Stone's "3 for the Mona Lisa" I had picked "American Gothic".
We could feel the personality of the couple... If you know where the poem will end up, it is a trick poem, but this isn't. Who would have thought she wondered about turning off the stove while posing -- and what a wonderful element to add to the tone... It took us back to Frost and the process of discovery--
one finds the image... like an ice cube on the stove riding on itself.
Auden: how can I know what I think until I see what I say...
Two – by Ted Kooser
Testimony -- by Joseph Fasano
Curio a prose poem by Meghan Privitello
The Hill by Mark Strand
Very Far After e e cummings
American Gothic by John Stone
This morning, seeing the announcement of yet another writer passing, and then looking at my selection of poems, thinking of older poets Merwin and Strand, I’m reminded by the celebration of Cummings’ birthday on Writer’s Almanac 10/14, there is no better place than poetry to embrace the living/dying cycle. I’m hoping the Jon Stone response to American Gothic (same poet who wrote “3 for the Mona Lisa”*** we discussed last week) will help us at the end… With great affection to you all for all the wonderful sharing!
Still Life:
How do you read the title? As words imitating a painting... or Still (as in ongoing) Life, which the present participles seem to elaborate upon. Or the sense of "It's life, even with this going on".
Merlin's lines allow for simultaneously different meanings to work all at once.
Comments from the group: How little we know of nature, color spectrum of sun, accessible, but not always visible.
last line: unexpected... powerful... everything goes on... memory
old person/child..
present participles..
present tense claim of person...
we live in the now we cannot grasp gone before it (arrives)
fleetingness
said/silent...
nature...
continuum of time.
child... no demarcation
Two: beautifully crafted to demonstrate the value of "a bonded two-ness"-- how two men separate, then come back, but we learn they are a father/son only in the middle of the poem. The only 4-syllable word: interwoven. The only metaphor: their hands making a gate and yet the poem breathes, each sentence a frame.
Testimony:
images: moon /lantern...
enjambments (and separated piece...)
being along w/ oneself... seems to echo Merwin's poem.
Knowledge not given easily...after all is said and done, you have yourself...
pain of change...
The poet says he was thinking of Galway Kinnell’s reunion with the ‘wild darkness,’ and of Mark Strand’s wish to ‘lie down under the small fire / of winter stars.’ So I did. And the stillness that I heard there became this poem. Of course we’ve all tried to return somewhere and found it impossible, but sometimes that very impossibility can become its own song.”
Curio:
She’s having fun...but are we? is it cute... or annoying? Is there a worthwhile sentiment?
The Hill: Strand creates mystery...what do we, have we missed... yet reassures... "echoes this is the way I do it" as if to accept life as it is... (and sure, and if life isn't a terrible place, God Bless it...)
hill: aloneness of effort... life difficult... (he's missed lots of different transpiration -- but hasn't "missed the boat" one person joked). We loved the "So what" about the leaves rattling.
poetic feet...match how he steps along.
Judith snuck in the next one -- in the style of Cummings, but it is hers!
And since we enjoyed John Stone's "3 for the Mona Lisa" I had picked "American Gothic".
We could feel the personality of the couple... If you know where the poem will end up, it is a trick poem, but this isn't. Who would have thought she wondered about turning off the stove while posing -- and what a wonderful element to add to the tone... It took us back to Frost and the process of discovery--
one finds the image... like an ice cube on the stove riding on itself.
Auden: how can I know what I think until I see what I say...
Poems for October 16
a few poems that appeared this week... some old, some new.
To the Happy Few by W.S. Merwin
Composition by John Ashbery
Preludes by T. S. Eliot (chosen by Poem a day, 9/26/2014)
The Emperor of Ice Cream – Wallace Stevens
two versions of Poems by Zen Master Dōgen (Stephen Berg)
Postcard to Herself -- Peter Sears
If Poetry is supreme fiction... what world does the poem create?
In the first poem, Merwin addresses a fictitious "happy few" who escape identification by some larger corporate or national body... in order to address the question of identity... who are you "without a word /of explanation/
and only yourself/as evidence--
as if the division is about the self (you without a word... only yourself) and others (explaining you as evidence).
In Ashbery's poem, the reader has a view of a day, as if portioned into tv, news, perhaps a memory or two...
I find the ending delightful. What is home? The fact that we can't define it, and the speaker of the poem tells us it is a nutty concept, (although not "rented depression"in the pure and troubled time of next month...)
and the play of intermittent "now and then" is broken into "now" / "then" -- and imagining them as lovers,
then as your lovers...
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely "home"
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about "now"
and "then," because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.
How different the TS Eliot...fragmented, depressingly so, free verse and yet a hint of form:
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
The Stevens strange juxtaposition of living and dead, another modernist poem tomes have been written about.
with little time left to discuss the "Versions of Poems by Zen Master Dōgen" or the fine Peter Sears poem,
which goes beyond modernism to look at self as a young American in Europe,
"So, ruffled, she went sluffing by the sea,
sealed in the pink envelope of herself."
and ending with a cryptic irony,
Soon she would be home,
she thought, with only herself to tell about.
To the Happy Few by W.S. Merwin
Composition by John Ashbery
Preludes by T. S. Eliot (chosen by Poem a day, 9/26/2014)
The Emperor of Ice Cream – Wallace Stevens
two versions of Poems by Zen Master Dōgen (Stephen Berg)
Postcard to Herself -- Peter Sears
If Poetry is supreme fiction... what world does the poem create?
In the first poem, Merwin addresses a fictitious "happy few" who escape identification by some larger corporate or national body... in order to address the question of identity... who are you "without a word /of explanation/
and only yourself/as evidence--
as if the division is about the self (you without a word... only yourself) and others (explaining you as evidence).
In Ashbery's poem, the reader has a view of a day, as if portioned into tv, news, perhaps a memory or two...
I find the ending delightful. What is home? The fact that we can't define it, and the speaker of the poem tells us it is a nutty concept, (although not "rented depression"in the pure and troubled time of next month...)
and the play of intermittent "now and then" is broken into "now" / "then" -- and imagining them as lovers,
then as your lovers...
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely "home"
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about "now"
and "then," because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.
How different the TS Eliot...fragmented, depressingly so, free verse and yet a hint of form:
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
The Stevens strange juxtaposition of living and dead, another modernist poem tomes have been written about.
with little time left to discuss the "Versions of Poems by Zen Master Dōgen" or the fine Peter Sears poem,
which goes beyond modernism to look at self as a young American in Europe,
"So, ruffled, she went sluffing by the sea,
sealed in the pink envelope of herself."
and ending with a cryptic irony,
Soon she would be home,
she thought, with only herself to tell about.
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