culled from the May volume of Poetry and May-June issue of American Poetry Review.
1)[Two men seen from the back, standing on a
brick roadway beneath a bridge] – Elizabeth Robinson (APR)
2) Hendrik Goltzius’s “Icarus” (1588) by Billy Collins (APR)
3) The General Law of Oblivion, by Thomas Lux (from his book, God Particles)
4) Dream Lens... an alternative way of looking at Proust and Madeleines
5) The Horse Poisoner by Thomas Lux (from May 2015, Poetry)
6) The Coming of Good Luck by Robert Herrick (Mentioned in Revell's article; also
Among School Children by W.B. Yeats -- although there is not enough time to share it this time.
7) Japanese Mask -- a cleave poem (to contrast with the 4 line Herrick).
I enjoy the issues of APR, and Poetry, if only to see how some aspect of contemporary poetry is handled and presented. The inner pages of Poetry contain poems by poets recently deceased...
in this case, Richard O. Moore, and his 1981 poem "On Coming to Nothing, and Tomas Tranströmer's "National Insecurity". Neither poem is given its title, for a reason I ignore, but wish I knew.
I enjoy Tranströmer, but to pin him as final page in an issue which contains commentary by Cathy Park Hong, "Against Witness", Donald Revell, "Scholium" and Mike Chaser "Lullaby Logics"
seems not so much a tribute as an expedient way to fit him into the issue.
I read the 33 pages of the Bidart and wonder if this a story that can only be told in a poem? The same with the Thomas Lux poem which puzzles more than intrigues. Is poetry to ask us to imagine a man riding a tomato and insulted as idiots if we cannot? (loosely translated André Breton). Perhaps indeed, art has responsibility to record disaster at the time... and I did look up about oil sands and the catastrophe offshore from Aberdeen with 167 people dead,
but why is Solie's "Bitumen" poetry? I keep reading, but nothing stops me to say,
read again -- this is important.
It's enough to wonder if I'm in the wrong business.
What is transparent compression? What is the role of the uncanny? (to feel buried alive, to feel robbed of one's eyes). Horror, fantasy of witness and the poem fights against oblivion...
how many testimonies tweeted, video'd, eyewitnessed does it take -- or is it the surplus that forms us to feel passive?
I feel hopeful with Donald Revell's opening sentence about allegory and quoting Herrick's
"The Coming of Good Luck" -- the pageantry of allegory and fact... "ek get effect men write in place lite;/th'entente is al, and nat the lettres space. (Troilus and Criseyde, by Chaucer).
I should look up again Ashbury: Soonest Mended... Jeun de Meuns, Thoreau, a little Blake...
join in the assignment to write 500 words on Yeats' "Among School Children" and I am reminded why I love to read... for to read closely is to love more closely --
And so I keep reading... and turn to the APR whose May-June issue deals with translation, such as Mira Rosenthal's article on why poets translate. I subscribe with Merwin that translating teaches you your own language, pushes your mind and heart and "way of hearing" to perspectives and associations you might otherwise never know. Three new poems by Billy Collins, one going back to Auden's Musée des Beaux-Arts, with yet another old master painting Icarus. Six new poems by Tony Hoagland, whose "No Thank You" tickled my metaphysical bone about wisdom and why we as human beings have difficulty applying it... conversation as a "subdivision of crazy possibilities" and other misunderstandings about trying. I was reminded to look up Twenty Poems that Could Save America from which I picked a selection (see May 18 + 21 entries).
May 26, 2015
**
Discussion: to be posted.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Poems for May 21
(discussed aty O Pen May 18)
Parsnips by Eleanor Stanford
“Song of Speaks-Fluently” (from Hoagland, 20 Little Poems that could save America)
(the 4 below slated to be discussed June 1 at O Pen)
Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
Musée des Beaux Art Revisited -- Billy Collins
Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser (from Hoagland, 20 Little Poems that could save America)
Memory by Lucille Clifton
Beauty, truth, old Masters... it's worth a trip to wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_des_Beaux_Arts_(poem)
to find out that Auden was in Brussels, visited the museum in 1938, and other Brueghels can be involved. First the conclusive statement about suffering, then the observation...
lines that intrigue in their variations. My favorite is the juxtaposition in the second stanza, 4th line, "important failure; the sun shone.
the personal with the what seems given of universal...
Vanity... and how little an individual matters...
The Collins revisits the poem, not the painting, translating "suffering" to "mental anguish"
and quickly leaves Brueghel for Bosch in the museum.
What insights does Collins draw? Do you agree that the trappings on the fish are what drive us to despair? How do you understand it?
How refreshing to revisit Icarus, with a totally different point of view.
He said... and suddenly we are in a love-story gone awry... and wish she had been the one to put on the wings, with our turn next.
The final poem, also in the "20 poems that could save America" by Lucille Clifton, repeats three times, "ask me" -- as if her narrative also will run counter to the glimpse of facts from the mother's point of view.
See June 1 for a fuller discussion.
How do we remember? What poems will we remember and why? What challenges do we face, and how can poetry help us face them?
Parsnips by Eleanor Stanford
“Song of Speaks-Fluently” (from Hoagland, 20 Little Poems that could save America)
(the 4 below slated to be discussed June 1 at O Pen)
Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
Musée des Beaux Art Revisited -- Billy Collins
Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser (from Hoagland, 20 Little Poems that could save America)
Memory by Lucille Clifton
Beauty, truth, old Masters... it's worth a trip to wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_des_Beaux_Arts_(poem)
to find out that Auden was in Brussels, visited the museum in 1938, and other Brueghels can be involved. First the conclusive statement about suffering, then the observation...
lines that intrigue in their variations. My favorite is the juxtaposition in the second stanza, 4th line, "important failure; the sun shone.
the personal with the what seems given of universal...
Vanity... and how little an individual matters...
The Collins revisits the poem, not the painting, translating "suffering" to "mental anguish"
and quickly leaves Brueghel for Bosch in the museum.
What insights does Collins draw? Do you agree that the trappings on the fish are what drive us to despair? How do you understand it?
How refreshing to revisit Icarus, with a totally different point of view.
He said... and suddenly we are in a love-story gone awry... and wish she had been the one to put on the wings, with our turn next.
The final poem, also in the "20 poems that could save America" by Lucille Clifton, repeats three times, "ask me" -- as if her narrative also will run counter to the glimpse of facts from the mother's point of view.
See June 1 for a fuller discussion.
How do we remember? What poems will we remember and why? What challenges do we face, and how can poetry help us face them?
poems for May 18
“20 poems That Could Save America”,(mentioned in the credits after his 6 fine new poems in the APR.
I picked 7 of the poems from the 20: To wit:
“Song of Speaks-Fluently”;
The Geraniums by Genevieve Taggard;
American Poetry by Louis Simpson;
+
Parsnips by Eleanor Stanford
For You -- by Maureen N. McLane (New Yorker, April 27, p. 48)
Once Later by W.S. Merwin (NYRB)
No Thank You - Tony Hoagland (APR, April –May 2015)
**
What makes a poem memorable? Is a poem like "Parsnips" also a poem that could "save America"?
How does a poem save -- and what does "save America" mean?
Poetry, in my book is beyond nationality, but rather observes human nature in a culture in a way that will serve the general public. For Parsnips, the "O" sounds have a peaceful, sonorous quality: sown, grow, narrow, know... to thread a narrative of life, a reminder that Light, whether metaphorical love, or sun, the parsimony of "little" which is enough, to pass on to the next generation.
Song of Speaks-Fluently, is a wonderful title. Is Speaks-Fluently a person, an idea of a thought? The song is an oral tradition, a passing on of givens: to carry, follow, hunt...
The "talk" which God has sent us - not the word, but the oral give and take...
I had this note next to the poem: “Here is the news, says the poem sympathetically: You too shall labor, and on Tuesday your enterprise shall not succeed, and on Wednesday you shall bend again to the labor before you. Now, this is a message well worth inclusion in the speech of any high school valedictorian in America. Instead of demanding favors of the universe, Speaks-Fluently tells us, we must cultivate the wisdom of the shrug and exercise the muscle of persistence. “You have to carry your own corn far. You have to hunt without profit.”
With its images of ancient farming and hunting, “Song of Speaks-Fluently” carries another quiet implication — that we readers, whatever our work, are connected to the oldest rhythms of human effort and human survival. The necessities and hazards of our lives have changed in appearance, but not in essence.”
from Tony Hoagland,
For Hoagland's comments about the Geraniums, I had this note:
Taggard’s poem, delivered in a reflective, tender, meditative voice, is about aesthetics. It asks an interesting question: Can a thing be simultaneously false and beautiful? Is the modern world, with its manifold illusions, nonetheless an environment in which the soul can find nourishment? What do we see and what do we habitually ignore? Can we train ourselves to appreciate any environment? Consider the loveliness of the humble fake flowers! To cultivate an ear for tone is, oddly enough, to cultivate one’s own perceptual alertness. In “The Geraniums,” irony and wonder (the “semi-clean” cafe and the “wonderful joy, really” of red) collaborate intricately in the speaker’s casually unfolding voice. To develop an ear for such delicate modulations is in fact a survival skill that can aid one for a lifetime. – from Tony Hoagland.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hoagland's "No Thank You"...
How to be human, how to be in a world...whether now, or in the 14th century... if wisdom is not scarce, what is it that keeps us from accessing it? and how to own up that searching is not an excuse. But what tone is the title? gentle rebuttal? sarcastic? turn the back absolutely?
The end is brilliant.
saying, Please preserve me
at least from the pretense
that I am searching.
I am lost by choice
and all the evidence suggests
I relish it.
I hope I will hear more about the discussion, as I was not there.
I picked 7 of the poems from the 20: To wit:
“Song of Speaks-Fluently”;
The Geraniums by Genevieve Taggard;
American Poetry by Louis Simpson;
+
Parsnips by Eleanor Stanford
For You -- by Maureen N. McLane (New Yorker, April 27, p. 48)
Once Later by W.S. Merwin (NYRB)
No Thank You - Tony Hoagland (APR, April –May 2015)
**
What makes a poem memorable? Is a poem like "Parsnips" also a poem that could "save America"?
How does a poem save -- and what does "save America" mean?
Poetry, in my book is beyond nationality, but rather observes human nature in a culture in a way that will serve the general public. For Parsnips, the "O" sounds have a peaceful, sonorous quality: sown, grow, narrow, know... to thread a narrative of life, a reminder that Light, whether metaphorical love, or sun, the parsimony of "little" which is enough, to pass on to the next generation.
Song of Speaks-Fluently, is a wonderful title. Is Speaks-Fluently a person, an idea of a thought? The song is an oral tradition, a passing on of givens: to carry, follow, hunt...
The "talk" which God has sent us - not the word, but the oral give and take...
I had this note next to the poem: “Here is the news, says the poem sympathetically: You too shall labor, and on Tuesday your enterprise shall not succeed, and on Wednesday you shall bend again to the labor before you. Now, this is a message well worth inclusion in the speech of any high school valedictorian in America. Instead of demanding favors of the universe, Speaks-Fluently tells us, we must cultivate the wisdom of the shrug and exercise the muscle of persistence. “You have to carry your own corn far. You have to hunt without profit.”
With its images of ancient farming and hunting, “Song of Speaks-Fluently” carries another quiet implication — that we readers, whatever our work, are connected to the oldest rhythms of human effort and human survival. The necessities and hazards of our lives have changed in appearance, but not in essence.”
from Tony Hoagland,
For Hoagland's comments about the Geraniums, I had this note:
Taggard’s poem, delivered in a reflective, tender, meditative voice, is about aesthetics. It asks an interesting question: Can a thing be simultaneously false and beautiful? Is the modern world, with its manifold illusions, nonetheless an environment in which the soul can find nourishment? What do we see and what do we habitually ignore? Can we train ourselves to appreciate any environment? Consider the loveliness of the humble fake flowers! To cultivate an ear for tone is, oddly enough, to cultivate one’s own perceptual alertness. In “The Geraniums,” irony and wonder (the “semi-clean” cafe and the “wonderful joy, really” of red) collaborate intricately in the speaker’s casually unfolding voice. To develop an ear for such delicate modulations is in fact a survival skill that can aid one for a lifetime. – from Tony Hoagland.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hoagland's "No Thank You"...
How to be human, how to be in a world...whether now, or in the 14th century... if wisdom is not scarce, what is it that keeps us from accessing it? and how to own up that searching is not an excuse. But what tone is the title? gentle rebuttal? sarcastic? turn the back absolutely?
The end is brilliant.
saying, Please preserve me
at least from the pretense
that I am searching.
I am lost by choice
and all the evidence suggests
I relish it.
I hope I will hear more about the discussion, as I was not there.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Poems for May 14 + Tranströmer
as in O Pen: See May 11
The Amen Stone by Yehudi Amichai
Dear Mr. Bukowski by Claudia Cornelison
The Lanyard by Billy Collins
To my favorite 17 year old High School Girl by Billy Collins
The Streets of Shanghai, by Tomas Transtromer
To continue with Billy Collins, I remember reading the Lanyard and chuckling at the wit, the perfect set up to honor parents, especially mothers. The conversational style, the brief repetitions of the child giving a lanyard, and finally the archaic truth, which depending on your mood will say something about instinctive needs for gifts, narcissism of children, unconditional love of mothers.
To my favorite 17-year-old High School Girl, again depending on your mood, you might appreciate the sarcasm behind the passive-agressive parental approach. Would this work as a small essay on why we expect more out of our children? Is there any tenderness? Any sense of knowing the people involved? It seems to be more a commentary on how parents handle/mock the onus on self-esteem... On Monday, the discussion revolved to how we don’t take humor seriously, and how the subject has nothing solemn to warrant anything but the hint that it would be great to have a child able at least to help around the house, without mentioning a deeper subtext of expectations. The double messages leave a sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps irritation, but in a hollow, surface manner. Collins is capable of addressing big subjects, but more comfortable, it would seem to adopt this flip irony.
Tranströmer is quite the opposite. As psychologist, a non-academic, his concern is neither wit, nor aesthetic satisfaction, but rather keen observations. The Streets of Shanghai starts with a white butterfly, with an metaphorical underpinning on the nature of truth. Depending on which translation, the wording will change slightly, but as in the poem, "Alone", there is an extra stanza in the version presented, which is some versions is deleted. How does it change the poem not to have this final line:
"We look almost happy out in the sun, while we are bleeding fatally/From wounds we don't know about."
Looking at the three exclamations, one in each of the stanzas is one approach:
1. "butterfly as a floating corner of truth!" A sense of revelation and excitement perhaps. Faith and streets in motion with an impact on setting our "silent planet going."
2. "Mind the labyrinths to left and right!" Amid the observations, the 8 different faces, the invisible one one doesn't talk about, the sense of Confucian principles, the laundry, the aliveness of the street, the "shoals of cyclists" there is a contrasting sense of the speaker as poised and unconnected: an old tree "with withered leaves that hang on and can't fall to the earth".
3. The crowds keep the motion going, the street now compared to a deck of a ferry... What is the cross--
Christian, a crossroads? I think not a Swedish flag, since the "us" includes everyone in the street.
Apparently, Tranströmer avoids trappings of religion, but there is a sense of deep connection to something spiritual. It is not abstract, some distant concept, disconnected or uncomfortable enough to be avoided, but rather, embraces the unknown that is part of our existence. But this third exclamation mark gives it a playful quality, a teasing quality that invites us to wonder "who it is" that creeps behind us, covers our eyes and whispers "Guess Who".
In the Robert Hass introduction to his selected poems, 1954-86, he says this: "Tomas Tranströmer's poems are thick with the feel of life lived in a specific place: the dark, overpowering Swedish winters, the long thaws and brief paradisal summers in the Stockholm archipelago. He conveys a sense of what it is like to be a private citizen in the second half of the twentieth century. His voice, spare and clear."
In the poem discussed Monday, The Dispersed Congregation, we spoke at length about Nicodemus, his role. The inner/outer, hidden/apparent... The Address, as the speech we expect to hear, the address we look for but don't find. Images such as slum, sewer, the church as the plaster bandage around the broken arm of faith... where we pass the begging bowl, the bells tolling under our feet, reveal the unkempt and dark part of us...
If religion must be reformed, so must civic life. Poems, brief as they are, can rattle the cages of “approved ideas,” even if only for a moment.
The Amen Stone by Yehudi Amichai
Dear Mr. Bukowski by Claudia Cornelison
The Lanyard by Billy Collins
To my favorite 17 year old High School Girl by Billy Collins
The Streets of Shanghai, by Tomas Transtromer
To continue with Billy Collins, I remember reading the Lanyard and chuckling at the wit, the perfect set up to honor parents, especially mothers. The conversational style, the brief repetitions of the child giving a lanyard, and finally the archaic truth, which depending on your mood will say something about instinctive needs for gifts, narcissism of children, unconditional love of mothers.
To my favorite 17-year-old High School Girl, again depending on your mood, you might appreciate the sarcasm behind the passive-agressive parental approach. Would this work as a small essay on why we expect more out of our children? Is there any tenderness? Any sense of knowing the people involved? It seems to be more a commentary on how parents handle/mock the onus on self-esteem... On Monday, the discussion revolved to how we don’t take humor seriously, and how the subject has nothing solemn to warrant anything but the hint that it would be great to have a child able at least to help around the house, without mentioning a deeper subtext of expectations. The double messages leave a sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps irritation, but in a hollow, surface manner. Collins is capable of addressing big subjects, but more comfortable, it would seem to adopt this flip irony.
Tranströmer is quite the opposite. As psychologist, a non-academic, his concern is neither wit, nor aesthetic satisfaction, but rather keen observations. The Streets of Shanghai starts with a white butterfly, with an metaphorical underpinning on the nature of truth. Depending on which translation, the wording will change slightly, but as in the poem, "Alone", there is an extra stanza in the version presented, which is some versions is deleted. How does it change the poem not to have this final line:
"We look almost happy out in the sun, while we are bleeding fatally/From wounds we don't know about."
Looking at the three exclamations, one in each of the stanzas is one approach:
1. "butterfly as a floating corner of truth!" A sense of revelation and excitement perhaps. Faith and streets in motion with an impact on setting our "silent planet going."
2. "Mind the labyrinths to left and right!" Amid the observations, the 8 different faces, the invisible one one doesn't talk about, the sense of Confucian principles, the laundry, the aliveness of the street, the "shoals of cyclists" there is a contrasting sense of the speaker as poised and unconnected: an old tree "with withered leaves that hang on and can't fall to the earth".
3. The crowds keep the motion going, the street now compared to a deck of a ferry... What is the cross--
Christian, a crossroads? I think not a Swedish flag, since the "us" includes everyone in the street.
Apparently, Tranströmer avoids trappings of religion, but there is a sense of deep connection to something spiritual. It is not abstract, some distant concept, disconnected or uncomfortable enough to be avoided, but rather, embraces the unknown that is part of our existence. But this third exclamation mark gives it a playful quality, a teasing quality that invites us to wonder "who it is" that creeps behind us, covers our eyes and whispers "Guess Who".
In the Robert Hass introduction to his selected poems, 1954-86, he says this: "Tomas Tranströmer's poems are thick with the feel of life lived in a specific place: the dark, overpowering Swedish winters, the long thaws and brief paradisal summers in the Stockholm archipelago. He conveys a sense of what it is like to be a private citizen in the second half of the twentieth century. His voice, spare and clear."
In the poem discussed Monday, The Dispersed Congregation, we spoke at length about Nicodemus, his role. The inner/outer, hidden/apparent... The Address, as the speech we expect to hear, the address we look for but don't find. Images such as slum, sewer, the church as the plaster bandage around the broken arm of faith... where we pass the begging bowl, the bells tolling under our feet, reveal the unkempt and dark part of us...
If religion must be reformed, so must civic life. Poems, brief as they are, can rattle the cages of “approved ideas,” even if only for a moment.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Poems for May 11
The Makers by Howard Nemerov
The Amen Stone by Yehudi Amichai
Dear Mr. Bukowski, by --Claudia Cornelison , one of the finalists for goodreads April ipoetry contest:
Cheerios By Billy Collins
To My Favorite Seventeen Year-Old High School Girl by Billy Collins
The Dispersed Congregation by Tomas Tranströmer
**
In the April issue of Poetry Magazine, the final poem is "I look to Theory Only When I realize That Someone Has Dedicated Their Entire Life to a Question I Have Only Fleetingly Considered.
And then a series of flat statements, that aren't necessarily theory ensue.
In the May issue of poetry, the theme seems to be the responsibility of art to record the disasters at the time, in Karen Solie's poem "Bitumen" and Frank Bidart's 32 page "4th Hour of the Night".
The quotation on the back of the May issue says, "When a poem becomes commemorative, it dies" and links to Cathy Park Hong's essay, "Against Witness".
**
What a contrast to Nemerov's tribute!
Judith had memorized "The Makers" by Nemerov, and mentioned what a struggle it was to commit to memory, and yet, because her brother had done so, and able to retain it, perhaps it was in his honor as well as to honor a poem honoring the "makers" or poets, sometimes also called fabricators. She demonstrated the importance of gesture, pauses, and how they helped her memorize.
This poem, in 3 stanzas of blank verse in iambic pentameter threads the memorable lines such as:
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
**
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
**
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes.
How different from the theoretical postulations in the April issue of Poetry!
As for commemorative... I think Nemerov proves Pathy Park Hong wrong. Paying tribute to the past, the origins of poets before the centuries wrote down rules to follow and break, Nemerov pays rightful tribute, in a very alive manner.
The Amen Stone: however you pronounce it, the "so be it" as it is translated, with an echo, as in the Muslim "Inch'Allah" of "God's will" presents us with mission of connecting experience with emotion.
Perhaps there is allusion of violence done, but the tone of the poem is peaceful, weighted by this stone saying "Amen". Who is "a sad good man"? That he exists, and acts in lovingkindness, translated in Hebrew as Chesed; in Christian terms as "misericordia"; in Buddhism as "mettã" points to an important universal. Like a slant invitation to be that sad, good person to gather the suffering of the world up, fragment by fragment. That the poem ends on "Child's Play" is a bit of a conundrum. Indeed, a child learns through play, to make sense of the world. Such a great task takes a child's innocence perhaps. Intriguing poem which illicit a lot of discussion, and a variety of opinions.
Dear Mr. Bukowski is a delightful critique on how to teach poetry. It draws on the power of such small words as "Of", "And", and "For" -- think of all the important declarations drawn up beginning sentences or constructions such as "of the people, by the people, for the people" -- and where does "and" fit in, and did Bukowski have the agency of "by" applied to someone? Knowing his style, of course his words are not "nice" and the ending slices deeper that the wall stained with word blood.
I found the Billy Collins poem equating age with cheerios quite amusing, and in fact googled my birth year with American food invented. I highly recommend.
What makes a "Billy Collins" poem -- usually enjoyable but raises the question about whether it could be a short essay vs. a poem? Is there a deeper meaning, a truth made accessible in a way no other form could impart? Perhaps the depth lies in the reminder not to take ourselves so seriously... But what happens after "enjoyable" wears off? See:
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brisk-walk-billy-collins-conversation
What makes Billy tick? Why are we attracted to it? Why do we ask, "is there more"?
Comments on the favorite 17 yr. old on May 14.
Tomas Tranströmer deserves as entire blog post by himself.
Friday, May 8, 2015
poems for May 4
Blessed Be The Truth-Tellers – by Martin Espada
Doha Thing Long Thought and Kind by Alice Fulton
The Shoots by Shane McCrae
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
Synchronicity by Pat Janus
Ode to Love by Jennifer Militello
As long as we are not alone-- by Israel Emiot, transl. by Leah Zazulyer
The classical adage of the 17th century that great art should honor truth and beauty and send a moral message does not exclude the view that literature exists to communicate significant experience, in a concentrated and organized fashion. In the case of the first poem, the foil of Jack the Truth Teller around a story of getting tonsils out and the lie of the ice cream, does not embrace "beauty" per se, but rather the figurative beauty of someone who is not afraid to call the shots as he sees them. Is Jack a Jesus, a tough guy, and does it matter, as we think what truth-telling means, and whether we too lie, line up good intentions to cover up the "bits of glass" in our snowballs. I love the cleverness of adopting the tone of Beatitudes, "Blessed be... for they shall..." in the title, only to jump to different observations contained in each stanza that bring a patchwork of vivid voices. as full of flavors as metaphorical ice cream can promise. The particularities of being twelve, the schoolyard banter, the bravado before the operation, countered with the blunt voice of Jack, the casual mention of Johnnie the ice cream man who allegedly sells heroin, the snow of 3 Kings Day, the truth of the tonsils and lie of the ice cream, and then the end: What does it mean that Truth-Tellers will have all the ice cream they want -- the hoped-for comfort, as imagined by the boy, or the real "Holy Guacamole" of choosing to expose ice cream for what it is?
The question always arises about what is temporary intrigue in a poem -- isn't a poem's job to look at the ordinary, the contemporary, allow us to contemplate it with a different, unhurried lens? Does Espada do this? Is it pleasing? Memorable? Not everyone thought so.
The next two poems had explanations by the poets. I think this helped both the poems, and one question to consider is how much we need to know about the poet, or the stew in which the poem is simmering, and how well does the poem stand by itself. The Thursday group came up with the idea that we had to work really hard at the poem, especially linking the broken lines, figuring out ways to link a gift as risk, guess, task, test. Is it two voices in schizophrenic dialogue, a study of aphorism -- "long thought and kind"
in the title, joining the repetition of "long thought and kind of.../clumsy. Why a gift? A lesson in the arbitrary nature of gifts? A warning not to depend on them? A reminder that spiritual wisdom needs you to dig for it?
The Monday group felt compassion for the poet/father writing Shoots. Here, the line-breaks supported the emotion. It puts the onus on the reader to connect his thought, especially without the help of punctuation. Months.... he.... months go...
possibly I might understand, but "months he ago" with no space is difficult. I love the idea of "a he ago"...
We certainly enjoyed Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness", reading it line by line, with a beautiful threading of sound and a depth of understanding revealed gently. What is required to understand it. How different from the idea of "the gift" . Before... repeated three times... it is only kindness... repeated three times.
It reminded me of Kahil Gibran's saying that Joy and Sorrow are part of the same cavern -- the more sorrow carves, the more room for joy. But there is a difference -- this is not a dualistic comparison of Joy and Sorrow, but kindness as a response that is learned by accepting and staying with sorrow.
For the Poem Synchronicity, Thursday's group thoroughly enjoyed it, and engaged in a discussion of confirmation, choosing a new name, exploration of faith and what willing to do, to become this "who I am".
The second line, "lost" can be verb, as in lost the battle; or adjective, as in a part of the self that strayed away, both of which fit. The two sentences thread down in a vertical string of succinct words.
Lovely example of effective simplicity. Monday's group was more focussed on discussing synchronicity, both as title, and what it means to be synchronous -- synchronize an old and new me. Some of the thoughts: someone comes into our lives... and you take on a role in their life you hadn’t previously played... that’s synchronicity; it enhances everything when we feel synchronicity. a sense of a choice everytime we make a friend or don’t because we feel in cahoots, or don't. A little bit of "When the student is ready, the teacher appears...
**
Monday's group didn't spend much time on the "Ode to Love" but certainly the final poem in translation gave rise to discussion. We will look forward to having the translator, Leah Zazulyer come June 16 to discuss it.
Doha Thing Long Thought and Kind by Alice Fulton
The Shoots by Shane McCrae
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
Synchronicity by Pat Janus
Ode to Love by Jennifer Militello
As long as we are not alone-- by Israel Emiot, transl. by Leah Zazulyer
The classical adage of the 17th century that great art should honor truth and beauty and send a moral message does not exclude the view that literature exists to communicate significant experience, in a concentrated and organized fashion. In the case of the first poem, the foil of Jack the Truth Teller around a story of getting tonsils out and the lie of the ice cream, does not embrace "beauty" per se, but rather the figurative beauty of someone who is not afraid to call the shots as he sees them. Is Jack a Jesus, a tough guy, and does it matter, as we think what truth-telling means, and whether we too lie, line up good intentions to cover up the "bits of glass" in our snowballs. I love the cleverness of adopting the tone of Beatitudes, "Blessed be... for they shall..." in the title, only to jump to different observations contained in each stanza that bring a patchwork of vivid voices. as full of flavors as metaphorical ice cream can promise. The particularities of being twelve, the schoolyard banter, the bravado before the operation, countered with the blunt voice of Jack, the casual mention of Johnnie the ice cream man who allegedly sells heroin, the snow of 3 Kings Day, the truth of the tonsils and lie of the ice cream, and then the end: What does it mean that Truth-Tellers will have all the ice cream they want -- the hoped-for comfort, as imagined by the boy, or the real "Holy Guacamole" of choosing to expose ice cream for what it is?
The question always arises about what is temporary intrigue in a poem -- isn't a poem's job to look at the ordinary, the contemporary, allow us to contemplate it with a different, unhurried lens? Does Espada do this? Is it pleasing? Memorable? Not everyone thought so.
The next two poems had explanations by the poets. I think this helped both the poems, and one question to consider is how much we need to know about the poet, or the stew in which the poem is simmering, and how well does the poem stand by itself. The Thursday group came up with the idea that we had to work really hard at the poem, especially linking the broken lines, figuring out ways to link a gift as risk, guess, task, test. Is it two voices in schizophrenic dialogue, a study of aphorism -- "long thought and kind"
in the title, joining the repetition of "long thought and kind of.../clumsy. Why a gift? A lesson in the arbitrary nature of gifts? A warning not to depend on them? A reminder that spiritual wisdom needs you to dig for it?
The Monday group felt compassion for the poet/father writing Shoots. Here, the line-breaks supported the emotion. It puts the onus on the reader to connect his thought, especially without the help of punctuation. Months.... he.... months go...
possibly I might understand, but "months he ago" with no space is difficult. I love the idea of "a he ago"...
We certainly enjoyed Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness", reading it line by line, with a beautiful threading of sound and a depth of understanding revealed gently. What is required to understand it. How different from the idea of "the gift" . Before... repeated three times... it is only kindness... repeated three times.
It reminded me of Kahil Gibran's saying that Joy and Sorrow are part of the same cavern -- the more sorrow carves, the more room for joy. But there is a difference -- this is not a dualistic comparison of Joy and Sorrow, but kindness as a response that is learned by accepting and staying with sorrow.
For the Poem Synchronicity, Thursday's group thoroughly enjoyed it, and engaged in a discussion of confirmation, choosing a new name, exploration of faith and what willing to do, to become this "who I am".
The second line, "lost" can be verb, as in lost the battle; or adjective, as in a part of the self that strayed away, both of which fit. The two sentences thread down in a vertical string of succinct words.
Lovely example of effective simplicity. Monday's group was more focussed on discussing synchronicity, both as title, and what it means to be synchronous -- synchronize an old and new me. Some of the thoughts: someone comes into our lives... and you take on a role in their life you hadn’t previously played... that’s synchronicity; it enhances everything when we feel synchronicity. a sense of a choice everytime we make a friend or don’t because we feel in cahoots, or don't. A little bit of "When the student is ready, the teacher appears...
**
Monday's group didn't spend much time on the "Ode to Love" but certainly the final poem in translation gave rise to discussion. We will look forward to having the translator, Leah Zazulyer come June 16 to discuss it.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
poems for April 27 AND April 30
Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish, 1892 – 1982
Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
Ars Poetica #100: I Believe by Elizabeth Alexander
Control by Rae Armantrout
Overturned by Cornelius Eady
What is poetry? As we conclude National Poetry month, this is a good question.
I just skimmed through the introduction and several of the poems in the 2014 "The Best American Poetry".
As Terrance Hayes remarks, it is important to separate "taste" from "best" and ponder poems from many angles. I've included some old timer's advice along with some contemporary works, so you can formulate your own opinion, not only on what poetry is, but what a satisfying poem is to you, and what discoveries this invites.
MacLeish: Why after reading this poem 40 years ago, does it come back to mind so easily, engage us with a pleasurable sense of delight? What makes something memorable? On first reading, perhaps your ear will enjoy the end rhyme,
mute/fruit; dumb/thumb;/ stone/grown; and your eye will note irregular lines. Perhaps on a second reading you will try out with two different tones of voice, the 4th couplet from the end:
a poem should be equal to:
not true.
Can a poem be equal to something else? Does the colon stop us, and the meaning guide us to think,
no, a poem cannot be equal to anything -- or is the "not true" the enjambed weight of the unpinnable
"not true". And how clever-- MacLeish has set up half the couplets as rhyming, half the couplets as not;
The old rule of "show, don't tell" couples with the sense of the unrhymed "A poem should not mean/but be."
But read the syntax in which it is couched: For love/the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- i.e. a poem includes images for abstract or universal things of importance.
A poem does much more by being, using rich diction, unusual images, like "night-entangled tree", things that are understood intuitively, emotionally, philosophically that elicit multiple associations: a globed fruit; sleeve-worn stone. But read the syntax in which it is couched: For love/the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- i.e. a poem includes images for abstract or universal things of importance.
On Thursday, Connie brought up the example of teaching her high school class symbols, and they didn't think symbols were of importance, just as poetry and symbolism were something unnecessary. She took the American flag hanging in the classroom, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. The students were appalled.
What's the problem? It's only a piece of cloth with some stars and stripes she said-- and promptly had them understand how symbols work. So it is with this delightful poem.
Marianne Moore: She would have been 26 in 1913, and eager to put into practice the new modernism of the Armory Show and the spirit of Ezra Pound who encouraged poets to break all rules to "make it new". In this poem she plays with rhythm, and repeats catchy series,such as first stanza:
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter. // or in the penultimate stanza, "Cow's milk, tiger's milk, soy milk, carrot juice".. She sprinkles rhyme, along with names of baseball greats, and the reader enters a game,
invited to join the "I" in the first stanza in answer to the question, "who's excited". We watch the "we"
of a team the battle of pitcher/catcheer... individual players (Each. it was he).
One person came up with the sense of time as pitcher: future; batter: present; past: catcher -- and the fact that in baseball catchers tend to be the best hitters, as they are observing each hitter, signaling to the pitcher how to craft the pitch.
There is a difference between enjoyable and memorable. This parody of poetry contains poetic elements, but seems to brush with the personal fun the poet is having in a way that is clever, but not as long-lasting as the MacLeish.
Elizabeth Alexander: The title is worth dwelling on. Why #100 for this Credo? As we read the poem,
it seems a simple amble, through an omnipresence of poetry, starting with the delicious word, "idiosyncratic" which has multiple definitions (self-indulgent, characteristic, peculiar, unique, etc.) and ending with the human voice, and a question put quite simply: "and are we not of interest to each other?" Poetry indeed, slows us down.
The final two poems, selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2014 "Best of American Poetry", a series founded in 1988, demonstrate the power of a poem to allow a thought to find form, sound-- language as Gary Snyder would say "that brings you in community with the other." Control? When I don't have any thoughts,/I want one!
It launches a discussion about a collection called "Best" --
David Lehman's forward acknowledges the impact of technology on poetry -- that a tweet, with the 140 word constraint, and the "be up to speed" brings the clock into the game... Byte-sized poetry as a benefit of ADD! He calls on the 1959 lecture in which CP Snow points out the chasm between humanists and scientists.
And also FR Leavis' response in 1962 filled with invective against Snow. But he was right about one thing: the poem on the page, art in the museum, concerto in the symphony provide a bulwark to culture as we traditionally knew it. Leon Weiseltier told the graduating class of Brandeis in May 2013 to be careful-- as the digital age reduces knowledge to the status of information, and the devices we carry like addicts in our hands disfigure our mental lives. "Let us not be so quick to jettison the monuments of untagging intellect.
In 1888 Walt Whitman read an article forecasting the demise of poetry in 50 years "owing to the special tendency to science and to its all-devouring force." (Whitman responded that he anticipated the contrary -- a firmer, broader new area will begin to exist.) In the 2011 issue of Ploughshares, is an article about the 3-story "Sentenced Museum" which resembles an inverted pyramid with the literature of self-reflection on the ground floor, the language of witness one flight up, and a host of "tangential parlors, wings and galleries."
In the back of the 2014 "best" each poet makes a comment about their poem. Lehman selects Dorianne Laux's: "Death permeates the poem, which wasn't apparent to me until I was asked to write this paragraph."
Eady (Rochester-born in 1954, MCC, Empire State College, who went on to win the 1985 Lamont poetry selection of the Academy of American Poets, has dabbled in works of musical theatre) doesn't comment on his poem.
Armantrout does: "'Control' begins with the experience of learning (or trying to learn) to meditate. The first stanza reproduces the instructor's advice that we should 'set obtrusive thoughts aside'. The 3rd, 5th, 8th stanzas develop my response to this experience while the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th stanzas present the obtrusive thoughts as fragments of the debris field of American media culture. For instance, I recently heard a politician say, "It takes an American to do really big things". He was talking about our space program, which, of course, is being systematically defunded.
Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
Ars Poetica #100: I Believe by Elizabeth Alexander
Control by Rae Armantrout
Overturned by Cornelius Eady
What is poetry? As we conclude National Poetry month, this is a good question.
I just skimmed through the introduction and several of the poems in the 2014 "The Best American Poetry".
As Terrance Hayes remarks, it is important to separate "taste" from "best" and ponder poems from many angles. I've included some old timer's advice along with some contemporary works, so you can formulate your own opinion, not only on what poetry is, but what a satisfying poem is to you, and what discoveries this invites.
MacLeish: Why after reading this poem 40 years ago, does it come back to mind so easily, engage us with a pleasurable sense of delight? What makes something memorable? On first reading, perhaps your ear will enjoy the end rhyme,
mute/fruit; dumb/thumb;/ stone/grown; and your eye will note irregular lines. Perhaps on a second reading you will try out with two different tones of voice, the 4th couplet from the end:
a poem should be equal to:
not true.
Can a poem be equal to something else? Does the colon stop us, and the meaning guide us to think,
no, a poem cannot be equal to anything -- or is the "not true" the enjambed weight of the unpinnable
"not true". And how clever-- MacLeish has set up half the couplets as rhyming, half the couplets as not;
The old rule of "show, don't tell" couples with the sense of the unrhymed "A poem should not mean/but be."
But read the syntax in which it is couched: For love/the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- i.e. a poem includes images for abstract or universal things of importance.
A poem does much more by being, using rich diction, unusual images, like "night-entangled tree", things that are understood intuitively, emotionally, philosophically that elicit multiple associations: a globed fruit; sleeve-worn stone. But read the syntax in which it is couched: For love/the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- i.e. a poem includes images for abstract or universal things of importance.
On Thursday, Connie brought up the example of teaching her high school class symbols, and they didn't think symbols were of importance, just as poetry and symbolism were something unnecessary. She took the American flag hanging in the classroom, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. The students were appalled.
What's the problem? It's only a piece of cloth with some stars and stripes she said-- and promptly had them understand how symbols work. So it is with this delightful poem.
Marianne Moore: She would have been 26 in 1913, and eager to put into practice the new modernism of the Armory Show and the spirit of Ezra Pound who encouraged poets to break all rules to "make it new". In this poem she plays with rhythm, and repeats catchy series,such as first stanza:
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter. // or in the penultimate stanza, "Cow's milk, tiger's milk, soy milk, carrot juice".. She sprinkles rhyme, along with names of baseball greats, and the reader enters a game,
invited to join the "I" in the first stanza in answer to the question, "who's excited". We watch the "we"
of a team the battle of pitcher/catcheer... individual players (Each. it was he).
One person came up with the sense of time as pitcher: future; batter: present; past: catcher -- and the fact that in baseball catchers tend to be the best hitters, as they are observing each hitter, signaling to the pitcher how to craft the pitch.
There is a difference between enjoyable and memorable. This parody of poetry contains poetic elements, but seems to brush with the personal fun the poet is having in a way that is clever, but not as long-lasting as the MacLeish.
Elizabeth Alexander: The title is worth dwelling on. Why #100 for this Credo? As we read the poem,
it seems a simple amble, through an omnipresence of poetry, starting with the delicious word, "idiosyncratic" which has multiple definitions (self-indulgent, characteristic, peculiar, unique, etc.) and ending with the human voice, and a question put quite simply: "and are we not of interest to each other?" Poetry indeed, slows us down.
The final two poems, selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2014 "Best of American Poetry", a series founded in 1988, demonstrate the power of a poem to allow a thought to find form, sound-- language as Gary Snyder would say "that brings you in community with the other." Control? When I don't have any thoughts,/I want one!
It launches a discussion about a collection called "Best" --
David Lehman's forward acknowledges the impact of technology on poetry -- that a tweet, with the 140 word constraint, and the "be up to speed" brings the clock into the game... Byte-sized poetry as a benefit of ADD! He calls on the 1959 lecture in which CP Snow points out the chasm between humanists and scientists.
And also FR Leavis' response in 1962 filled with invective against Snow. But he was right about one thing: the poem on the page, art in the museum, concerto in the symphony provide a bulwark to culture as we traditionally knew it. Leon Weiseltier told the graduating class of Brandeis in May 2013 to be careful-- as the digital age reduces knowledge to the status of information, and the devices we carry like addicts in our hands disfigure our mental lives. "Let us not be so quick to jettison the monuments of untagging intellect.
In 1888 Walt Whitman read an article forecasting the demise of poetry in 50 years "owing to the special tendency to science and to its all-devouring force." (Whitman responded that he anticipated the contrary -- a firmer, broader new area will begin to exist.) In the 2011 issue of Ploughshares, is an article about the 3-story "Sentenced Museum" which resembles an inverted pyramid with the literature of self-reflection on the ground floor, the language of witness one flight up, and a host of "tangential parlors, wings and galleries."
In the back of the 2014 "best" each poet makes a comment about their poem. Lehman selects Dorianne Laux's: "Death permeates the poem, which wasn't apparent to me until I was asked to write this paragraph."
Eady (Rochester-born in 1954, MCC, Empire State College, who went on to win the 1985 Lamont poetry selection of the Academy of American Poets, has dabbled in works of musical theatre) doesn't comment on his poem.
Armantrout does: "'Control' begins with the experience of learning (or trying to learn) to meditate. The first stanza reproduces the instructor's advice that we should 'set obtrusive thoughts aside'. The 3rd, 5th, 8th stanzas develop my response to this experience while the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th stanzas present the obtrusive thoughts as fragments of the debris field of American media culture. For instance, I recently heard a politician say, "It takes an American to do really big things". He was talking about our space program, which, of course, is being systematically defunded.
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