poems for Nov. 18

Sent in body of Email:
When Giving Is all we Have -- Alberto Rios
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from APR - Nov-Dec 2015
The Sun Got All Over Everything Gabrielle Calvocoressi
To the People of 2060 by Carl Dennis

from Poets.org:
Around Us by Marvin Bell
What Was Told, That Jalal al-Din Rumi, 1207 - 1273

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Liberty by Edward Thomas, 1878 - 1917
Going Away by Howard Nemerov

For Rundel: the first 5.

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A meaty series in which to contemplate light and dark as we inch towards winter solstice...

I am grateful for contemporary voices and the American Poetry Review who provides 6 issues a year for sampling them. With climate change increasingly on the radar, it is refreshing to see how many ways one can use "Sun" -- perhaps in the first poem, there's a bit of 16th century John Donne, who calls the sun unruly for different reasons than "making a mess of a day". The conceit of the sun, acting like something sticky that has spilled over everything starts as a visceral and sensual heat, that interferes with a girl's plan to grieve, which we find out at the end, is her mother.

When Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) coined the term metaphysical poets, he meant it as an insult: "Metaphysical poets" such as Cowley and Donne, he wrote, used their conceits to present "heterogenous ideas ... yoked by violence together"; "they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.
What would he have to say about the penultimate lines, the juxtaposition of "somewhere my mother was dying"/and someone was skinning a giraffe. Calvocoressi picks up on incongruity,
the "ridiculously" blue sky, the way some remember the sky on 9/11. The incongruity of forgetting a death entirely, along with forgetting about the global consequence of icebergs melting leaving polar bears without a place to stand. This is highly successful and moving.
In the same way, the colloquial tone, "so broke" (and the distraction of buying groceries she can't afford), the appointment with anguish, forgotten because of the sky... with the cracked yolk of sun all over it.

The conversation between sun and girl, the response of the sun pouring over the girls, the erotic instead of the yahrzeit candles, the pull of living against remembering the dead...
The poem affirms life by putting grief on the table...
Elaine shared her research on the poet, whose mother committed suicide when she was 13.

The sun scorches in a different way for the people writing to the people 45 years hence.
How much emotional juice, and how much narrative cleverness? I love the play in the 5th stanza, "as a problem we're free to pass on". Although not everyone agreed it was a successful poem, it did bring up anecdotes of how we used to plan for the future... and the necessity to continue to do so. But is the heart moved? One person brought up Hayden Carruth's poem: I could take:
I could take
two leaves
and give you one.
Would that not be
a kind of perfection?

But I prefer
one leaf
torn to give you half
showing

(after these years, simply)
love's complexity in an act,
the tearing and
the unique edges —
one leaf (one word) from the two
imperfections that match.

But that's a different goal and message.


Around us, by Marvin Bell seems also a poem addressed to the future, although there is no sense of urgency. The line breaks seemed arbitrary, just as "whatever good we did" sounds a little too facile. I'm not sure that if we keep pines, silvery stream, a smooth bed of pine needles, someone will necessary give a sound of thanks, although I do love the sound of of "a zipper or a snap"-- but it's too vague to think we have saved nature, done any good. One person offered that a practicing poet is a dancer" -- in this case dancing around nature, gliding through the twilight and hoping it will be there. How would you read "whatever good we did" -- equal weight on "good" and "did", "good- we -did", or a slur without emphasizing "did" at all?

The Rumi, regardless of what one says about translation, is a lovely psalm of praise for the Creator. The placement and lineation of "What was" gives a beautiful sense of oneness in a convincing wrap of mystery.

For the Thomas: the rhyme weaves between pattern and liberty from pattern, the moon, both white and dark... a meditative piece of poet and moon, capturing the darkness of war, the darkness of loss, the importance of not to be shackled by inaction.

The Nemerov is a metaphoric war,"Keeping our faces to the front, there is
A moment, after saying all farewells,
when we taste the dry and bitter dust
of everything that we have said and done
for many years, and our mouths are dumb,
and the easy tears will not do."
as he faces exile, forced to leave one position for another --

Poems for Nov 11-12

My Life Was the Size of My Life by Jane Hirschfield
Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky
I have not disappeared by Major Jackson
There's Nothing Like the Sun -- Edward Thomas
Small Philosophical Poem - by Anne Stevenson
Arrowhead by Tasha Cotter


We read through both the Hirschfeld and the Thomas, line by line. I love how certain poems invite such a slow procedure... voice after voice chimes in. In the case of the Hirschfeld, it underlines the phrasing, the recurring commas and periods, on each line until the 10th:
"It ate, it slept, it opened/
and closed its hands, its windows.
How might this spot in the poem prepare us for the unpunctuated, breathlessness:
we could not keep/
our hands off our clothes on
our tongues from

The tick-tock sameness of phrases, sentences has gone; the predictable s-v
disappears without a verb in the last three fragments. I find the conceit humorous --
as one would not ask, "what size life do you have", or "what kind of rooms feel "room-sized" to you? Imagine, each soul, the same soul-sized, traveling through the everydayness of traveling.
Why are length and depth different than "size". The poem invites me to ponder on what parameters determine my life-- how am I part of determining it, working with it, and then I remember hearing "I'm sick of my life" -- what makes us say that? It's not the same as "I'm sick of living"... perhaps it takes leaving, trying out someone else's life-- but finding nothing to add -- only the hunger of appetite... without spelling out desire.
Some labeled it dramatic... tautology... [(I had to look it up: (rhetoric), a self-reinforcing pretense of significant truth. Tautology (grammar), the use of redundant words. Tautology (logic), a universal truth in formal logic.]
Pleasing, playful, but serious, and even reassuring...


The Thomas also used commas, periods, two hyphens and one colon which gives a sense of "stop-start". It also allows a slower pacing, and accentuates the enjambment:
whistling what/
once swallows sang. But I have not forgot/
that there is nothing, too, like March's sun...
the rhyme is unusual
abab//cdeecffd gg hh i g-2 g-2 i

Note how he works the title, completing its phrase in three different ways:
There's nothing like the sun : 1) as the year dies; 2) that shines today; 3) till we are dead.

The negatives are also interesting: "Yet never shone the sun as fair as now" introduces the rich alliteration of sweet-last-left damsons... spangles of the morning's sort drop down... This is a beautiful moment of flex and compression, rhythmic variability. In David Rivard's article in APR, he notes how these lines have "something of the heightened perception of a haiku." and quotes John Ruskin's famous comment about painting: "composition is the arrangement of unequal things."

The starling, a well-known mimic also brings to my mind Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", flocking and attacking. replaces the "cheedeep" of the graceful, swallow, known for its aerial-courtship. To quote Rivard again, "Hearing it, you feel the truth of Pound's claim about space and time being stretched by an image."

"That there is nothing, too, like March's sun" -- the "too" falls in a strange way, followed by the listing of all the months, all with equal days, (unlike the child's rhyme to learn the unequal assortment of days)... how are they all different from November?… I return to the phrase, “Yet never shone the sun as fair as now”… That he is caught in this moment, instead of merely describing it, he makes the light of the sun that much more precious “as the year dies”. The premonition of death is clearly there; we know he will die in world war I in 1917 -- but how wonderful that he felt the warmth of the sun, heard the song, witnessed the sweet ripeness.
Moments like these are precious, and I feel grateful for those who share them.

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For Samurai song, the repeating anaphors, and juxtapositions (roof/audacity; care/order; temple/voice; tactic/strategy) verbs associated with nouns (eyes listened/ears thought/absence of thought/waiting; no enemy, body opposed work to create a portrait of the detached Samurai life. The one place where there is no "when":
"I have /no priest, my tongue is my choir. calls attention to the loneliness, the terse discipline, reliance on a strict internal discipline.

I find it an intriguing poem, but am left wondering why Pinsky wrote it, and what he wanted readers to find in it.

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For Major Jackson's poem, the anaphor, "I have not disappeared" works well, especially when it disappears in the 6th and 8th stanzas. These are the two places there is no "I". It is interesting that Poets.org lists the poem with a different title: "On Disappearing".
David offered, tongue in cheek Mark Twain's quip: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” But, here, one senses the weight of the Black American life, the "shrug of a life in a sacred language" (poetry). Yes, the poet shares with the reader how he goes into his depths and being... a mysterious journey, but many felt too long and wordy.

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Anne Stevenson's "Small Philosophical Poem" has nothing "small" about it -- as potent as any size glass of doubt! She is a clever daughter of a philosopher, and clearly enjoys playing with double meanings, and two well-placed "but".
It is tempting to go through line by line, and explain, here, I see this... here I understand that... how much should we be thinking about Jungian terms, or power plays of Dr. Animus, vs. his untitled wife, Anima; yin and yang at work... how do you read "there" when the plates lie
(do they negate truth, or simply placed) there and there -- "just where they should lie."
Who gives that conditional imperative? He eats his un...
In the version on the internet, it did read "pour his a small glass of doubt" -- but it makes more sense to read "pours him..." What is observation of him, (smacks and cracks) and what is conjecture (the world is pleasure of thought" passes into what might be. And that second "but" arrives, announcing Anima's hunger... she fills the room with love. And fear. And fear.
Twice. Brilliant and fun, and not at all self-evident.

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The final poem evokes American Indian tales... a slight difficulty in two places for the syntax. Arrowhead to understanding the word enemy? or Arrowhead (title) To understand (cut the gerund) the word enemy.
But what about the arrowhead? Instrument in hand (whose hand... ) Tiny monster -- is arrowhead also?
Strange little poem, perhaps with intentional "non-sequiturs"...


However, wonderful discussions!

Poems for November 5-6

The Exile by Michael Wasson
How the Milky Way was Made by Natalie Diaz (From American Poet, Fall/Winter 2015)
The Circus Animals’ Desertion by William Butler Yeats
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (mock medieval ballad... 6 feb. 1888)
Permanently by Kenneth Koch
Sop Préacháin [A Crow's Wisp] by Aifric Mac Aodha translated by David Wheatley

I am so glad to see American Indian voices in the Journal of the Academy of American Poets!
The Exile demonstrates the power of a poem to make this point: If you cut out the native tongue, you make a culture disappear. The crafting is intriguing, with the long open spaces,
a sprinkling of Indian words (with translation at the end of the poem) and choice of a footnote-sounding epigraph at the beginning (mention of the Chilocco Indian School, Oklahoma, 1922 and the words of the disciplinarian).
I find myself wanting to copy out the poem-- with notes. It MUST be read. If you haven't read it, get a copy of the Fall/Winter 2015 issue, Vol 49, and let's hope it appears in Poets.org.

To give you a flavor:
The words in the Indian tongue (not identified) translated in the first section:
just in sudden silence;
sound of bones and flesh;
sound of a mouth breaking;

And then the image of a season disappearing, layers into the cutting between a victim self and oppressor self in two languages in the second section:
"half an autumn
rusting the edge of winter that is

knifing between me & 'iin" (the pronoun "I" in this Indian language)

"you& 'iim 'ee" (the pronoun "you" with emphasis)

This is followed by a mini-drama, "boy/ have you forgotten us"
indeed it is NOT what the oppressors are saying --
but then, there is a subtle hope -- this is almost a century later, and the "choreography of bones" is followed a third section that starts
"mouth your birthplace"
with this sprinkling of words in the native tongue (at the heart; intimate word for mother;

The penultimate section -- "You are torn & you are what song fills... " the color of carved out tongue..." (again the ampersand used for the dual "duel" of English and Native American)

And finally, after "the unbreakable/taste of ash/blown among the stars

the "Milky Way", known as "the ghost's trail -- which shivers with embers able to keep alive memory of those who were persecuted, speaking a language that is "brightly echoed."

The final word in the Native American is "The Ghost's Trail/Milky Way" and these two lines:

"so, there had to be breathing

there had to be."

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A very different celebration of Native Indian traditions, is the poem by Natalie Diaz.
She makes the point that the incorporation of native language is more than a craft choice, (language, verb,) or some "naked" folk-art, referring to something ancient, primitive and dead.
When she performs poems, she is commended for a "good reading" -- as if she didn't "toil over her poems, but simply performed her nativeness".
"... poetry is a place to remember, a place to challenge the world, elegize our loved ones, a place to be hopeful and grateful, a space that simultaneously encompasses the past, present and future."

That being said, Her poem is more than a "creation myth" and indeed, the crafting is evident.
The short staccato bursts in the opening couplet; the sounds of the fish, "up there they glide, filled with stars... god-large, gold-green sides... galaxy road... hundred-thousand light year roads"; the moon-white belly, breast, sweet milk body, throat, thighs of the milky way,
how Coyote "unzipping the salmon's silken skins with his teeth"...
A blend of cosmic with overtones of politics of water, exuberance and desire, a feel of living endlessness...

The Yeats poem has a primal feel among its many layers, in spite of the end-rhyme.
Three parts; Parts I and III only one stanza. Part II three stanzas. Curious that the first line "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain"-- and the middle line of the last stanza
"old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut..." do not have end-rhymed counterparts--
and yet, "vain" is repeated 3 times in stanza 1 part 2; "old" is repeated five times--
the line before "Old iron", (Old Kettles, old bottles) old is replaced the third time by "broken", keeping the dark O.

Again, it is hard to resist the temptation of asking you to simply take out this poem --
note the repetitions, (how clever, how the sound of 3rd line of the first stanza, "broken man" is repeated in 4th line final stanza "broken can"); note how Stanza 2 + 4 are all end-rhymed; Stanza 3 has end-words "destroy" and "enough" that have no rhymed counterpart;
Such craft choices are not random.
I love the metaphor of "circus animals" -- the things caged and put on display -- but loses in his brain... the way one tries to recreate epics and preserve heroes... but what does a poet
do in climbing a ladder towards the sacred altar of "big P" Poetry?
Without the ladder, one returns to the essential emotions. Foul is a strong and unusual term but the counterweight to elevate it, lies in the heart (where all ladders start).
No more need for lofty epics, myths. Words don't save our epic heroes, and perhaps as Auden said in his elegy for Yeats, "poetry makes nothing happen". Yet Yeats also wrote "to the cracked tune that Chronos sings, words alone are certain good"... Perhaps here, we go back to the line about "Players and painted stage took all my love,/and not those things that they were emblems of". Start again... use those poet-tools... ground them in the heart. This is a meditation from an older, wiser Yeats on what all this (life, poetry) is about.


Jabberwocky... ah! The pleasure of the sounds of words! Frabjous can indeed be fabulous and joyous; Uffish, a bit uppity and offish, a fuming and furious match up in furious, but even without stretching "suitcase" words, one understands the epic story: The proud father welcoming home his son who has slain the monster... Paul gave us the story of the girls who wrote Lewis Carroll to have permission to use "Jabberwocky" as name of their newspaper -- especially appropriate as wocor has its roots offspring and jabber as – excited and voluble – much excited discussion -- although Carroll worded it more masterfully (see Websters). What I like best of all, is remembering how our senior High School class threaded the poem in our yearbook... and Elaine shared that her class had a newspaper called "The Bandersnatch"! Oh Calloh! Callay!

Permanently is a brilliant poem -- not just personifying parts of speech -- but using them to demonstrate relationship... with a pun on the only adverb used as title "permanently" --
nothing is... except the announcement of something that is... back to Yeats' rag and bone shop of the heart. The singularity of a kiss... helps untwist the contradiction of conjunctions which by nature should not be lonely, isolated as single words... and the shifting sense of nouns, flavored by adjectives... the power of the verb to drive sense...
back to the Indian poems about what lies in the root of our tongues and mouthed from the heart.

For Pittsford, we closed with a delightful reading in the Irish the poem by A. McGee
or so Paul said that's how you pronounce Aifric Mac Aodfha. This opened a parenthesis about
Gaelic script – how the Celts brought it from Baltic... development of the language. How silence improves lipstick...(I wrote that down -- but relationship?) and definition of a crow’s wisp... woman a man has dropped... some other crow will snatch up to add to its nest ... Africa is Poetry editor of the Stinging Fly...

The translation was witty in and of itself, but did not mirror the original in the last stanza
There’s no thanks, and no-thanks-but-frisky—
If that makes me Adam, then you must be ...

Perhaps that's why the poem in the Irish original had the final line in English
"No thanks, I’ve read the Bible."

We could have spent hours more discussing. For Rundel, we didn't discuss the first or last poem, which allowed a more thorough appreciation of the Koch.