Poems for February 24
1905 – by Marilyn Nelson + Portrait
On Friendship – Hegit Grossman (translated from the Hebrew, by Benjamin Balint)
The Heart Is a Foreign Country by Rangi McNeil
The Golden Hills of California by Susan Cohen
Near the End of a Day -- Anne Stevenson
Frond by Wendy Battin(from Poetry, March 1996)
Although some thought “Blue or Green” difficult to fathom, sometimes ideas come “out of the blue” — thanks to discussion. And what if every poem were some sort of Ars Poetica… ? What does a poem do? How does it do it?
Calling a poem by a year, opens up possibilities for parallel lives, in this case, two extraordinary men: Einstein and Carver. The writing is a pleasure-- oxymoron of "wild-haired/gentle eyed", the elevated register of "quotidian" for everyday, finger-smacking-licking sounds like the "preacher-pleasing mock-fried chicken" which says so much more than what was on the table, internal rhymes, imagery (platoon of skinny dogs) and the brilliant end which ties in Einstein with the locked glance of Carver -- indeed a whole century ahead filled with transformations, learned at the "velocity of light."
In the Rundel discussion, the 1905 Cotton convention came up, and the 1906 Atlanta Riots, and issues of race and history of lunchings, etc. What we remarked on the writing was how beautifully Nelson pads each sentence to say much more than one meaning.
2nd stanza next to last line: “free themselves” is not just about being a slave to coffee… ,
3rd stanza: “shoulder to shoulder” is not just about students/assistants in the cab, but working together, just like the internal rhyme of “braid/raised”, for through community connection, they could raise the standard and rise above slave conditions.
The glance meeting the eye is powerful — eye to eye, connecting — and the brilliant “velocity” (Einstein reference to speed of light) where light is more than the physics, but enlightenment!
The next poem has long lines, which slide into a recounting of a moment. Rules... and when not to follow them... Written in 2nd person, it is as if the woman narrator is talking to herself,
aware that a friend wouldn't come by for no reason. “On Friendship” announces an essay, and we were curious how it would be in the Hebrew original. There’s a sense of mystery — who are these people in this vignette couched in terms of conditional? Is Merhav a proper name or Arabic for “welcome”? The meditation paints a scenario of what will happen if you invite someone in if they call out to you, how precious that is. We loved the repetition at the end of “sublime” — rendering a simple, possible “quotidian” moment as something approaching sacred. The moral of the story that friendship is one of the most important things to honor. The common things, (pineapple juice, a little conversation) and the adjustments (the clean shirt, dealing with the children) support the offering.
The note to the McNeil poem sets a wry tone with a sense of humor. Why a tercet followed by a stanza of five lines? Perhaps like translating English/Danish, black/white, male/female
the heart is more than familiar, universal tendencies... just as words too have individual layers ... He chides himself, and acknowledges there is not guarantee -- the world "owes us nothing". And yet, how free is that -- equivalent to a specific parameter... "Wednesday".
The title reminds me of Pascal — “le coeur a les raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (the heart has reasons, reason cannot know) — rather like the contradiction of “familiar”(personal feeling) and “universal” (Reason). I love the juxtaposition of the world being an independent agent outside of us, and our business is to choose. "Call it:” The short, succinct sounds of a choice as opposed to the meandering and long first paragraph.
The next poem was a beautiful metaphor for what we consider to be the "fabled" "Golden State"...
and how light... repeated as first word of the first two sentences, becomes "it", at first sunlight, then fire... the sh sounds predominate -- burnishing torching, shingle, latch, ash, combustion, and the final word in poem, "crushing". All that gold, and burning. However, it's hard to see burning as crushing except in the sense that both transform, and produce some good after the damage is done.
The delicacy of the Anne Stevenson repetitions, which slow us down, allow a slow unfolding as one thing is confused for another, butterfly/leaf; feather/fur and the idea of a cyclic process, reassuring because of possibilities which metaphors give.
The “f” sounds float in the choices… butterfly,feather, but not in caterpillar and wheels of life, where the reassurance is the sense of discovery. The repeated words, “leaf”, “feather” — what falls, is discarded yet also part of living also will repeatedly fall.
The final poem captures the Zen spirit of "one-hand clapping" , and again, the subtle repeat of "Applause. Applause" as the final word which could not happen if a twin frond had not appeared !
The first stanza reads a bit like a riddle (How can there be a cherry without a stone), and it takes a bit of work to see that the frond has first cradled, then left the "globe of water". Who could discard a drop of water that can hold the sun as it rises?
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Thursday, February 18, 2016
poems for February 17-18
Calling Across by Linda Allardt
Wasn’t There? by Linda Allardt
This Stranger, My Husband by Freya Manfred,
The Poems I Have Not Written by John Brehm
Blue or Green by James Galvin
The Love-Hat Relationship Aaron Belz
A bridge, a question, the delight of the unexpected, knowing, naming, then realizing one knows nothing, and what was named has become strange, the glue of love, the fun of mocking the bombastic, or writing the “anti-ars-poetica” – all could be discussed at length, in this handful of poems. I think of it as a way of opening doors on conversations.
In "Calling Across" placement of the first line starting midway with the beginning of each stanza (after the first one) reinforces the idea of “broken”. The opening line in one complete sentence contrasts with the complexity of the final prolonged sentence. "Calling Across", the title, is repeated in the present tense of two people, who wave and "call across" what seems to be a river, not wide, but icy and deep. The “now” of the moment, is shaded by the bridge that used to be. Introducing two people on either side of the bridge mid-line, with the enjambment of “wind / snatches the words” sets a scene of loss to complement the missing span.
Who is you, mentioned 4 times? Who is I? It could be a friend, a lover, a spouse...two countries.
The sense of sorrow compounds. It is not just one bridge; it is many, and the route from one person to the other on either side is a “long way around”. And this is compounded by two more possibilities: If one arrives, the person one used to know may be a stranger. Worse, the “someone else entirely.../than I knew” is separated from the final three words “than I knew” by the vivid language that describes what once was, now “sunken snags and wreckage”, the river now wider than in the beginning.
How poignant the loss, knowing once the one was able to finish the other’s sentences, read their thoughts. to be so far apart. The break is not sudden.
Line seven, “you on your side, I on mine,” places two people on the same line, but clearly on opposite banks.
Line six, “We stand” / followed by “you” on the 7th line will echo the break after the 14th line (also started midline) “By the time I got there” to “you” on the 15th.
The sounds link the once-was bridge “square-cut stone bulks out of the banks” where the “k” speaks of strong blocks, turns to the “K” in the visible damage of sunken/wreckage.
The second poem is highly intriguing with the title as question. How will one pronounce it? The colloquial, “wasn’t there”, as if to confirm a suspicion to another, or a flat out question. People saw it as an exhortation to pay attention. We expect dark in winter,
but three times, light appears – a season of it; a pervasive sense of it; the “it” can extend to a mystic light beyond the physical light of sun-caught ice and tinsel. The poem is “not ruined by belaboring or explaining”. The question at the end sounds more like a confirmation than a question.
"This Stranger, my husband", picks up the fear of meeting that person on the other side of the bank... Stranger, as adjective and noun; first stanza, past; second stanza, present, with that delightful line of “some old friends won’t come to dinner”.
Third stanza, a sense of what is to come. What counts in the end – as we cannot control names and knowledge – but a chance to accept whatever is as it is, and that perhaps explains the “at last” – if we do, we have loved, finally and truly.
John Brehm’s mock lament is a lot of fun to read, with hyperbolic descriptions of possible poems, which of course, if laid end to end, do sound like the Dorothy Parker quote, “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised".
And what a perfect metaphor to stack them up like the Tower of Babel! -- unfinished and swaying in a thousand different tongues! The thread, “the poems I have not written” is inserted with deadpan wit, breaking hearts (of every woman who left me); compels other poets to ask of God why he lets them live; inspires trees to bow before him, and the wind itself, (after a slick verse of "flutelike lingerings, furious interrogations, passionate/reproofs") to pass over the unwritten poems by this poet... finally turns to the fact that poetry is an attempt to describe a life... So, an homage to poems, and living life like a good poem, and perhaps a chance to question why we haven’t written/lived those poems. As one person quipped, perhaps because we’re with the old friends who wouldn’t come to dinner in the other poem.
Blue or Green seems to be a marvellous anti-ars poetica. "Let me tell you what a poem is!" it seems to say, only to contradict each statement.
Perhaps it is the idea that in modernist times, we have gone from the classical rules that aim for perfection, and embrace the impossibility of contradictions and process which defies any ending. Where is the Green referred to in the title? Even the mention of the blue may well be a lie, since the blue eyes in the dark are something to be taken without proof.
The last line “comes out of the blue” to rescue the poem which up until then looks like an exercise in hyperbole, to turn the poem back to the poet. Right now, he has had enough
of branding paradoxical definitions of poems. What he believes, an alternative to a belief, which is not a fact, is not the question. Let me just have some fun. Without any need for fervor, prosyletizing,....
The love-hat relationship is a delightful exercise that has a clin d’oeil to the people who give such false compliments as “just love your hat”, but mean they are jealous, or mean they want you to recognize they are friendly, want your money, or are just thoughtlessly
judging you on appearances. Superficial. And complicated this verbal communication and relationship! Although he doesn’t ask “What is like a hat?”, the poem will get you thinking about hats, why we wear them, or how, and we judge others who do or don’t. What “interesting” thing will you find for the personality of the person whose hat you like? Let me know!
Wasn’t There? by Linda Allardt
This Stranger, My Husband by Freya Manfred,
The Poems I Have Not Written by John Brehm
Blue or Green by James Galvin
The Love-Hat Relationship Aaron Belz
A bridge, a question, the delight of the unexpected, knowing, naming, then realizing one knows nothing, and what was named has become strange, the glue of love, the fun of mocking the bombastic, or writing the “anti-ars-poetica” – all could be discussed at length, in this handful of poems. I think of it as a way of opening doors on conversations.
In "Calling Across" placement of the first line starting midway with the beginning of each stanza (after the first one) reinforces the idea of “broken”. The opening line in one complete sentence contrasts with the complexity of the final prolonged sentence. "Calling Across", the title, is repeated in the present tense of two people, who wave and "call across" what seems to be a river, not wide, but icy and deep. The “now” of the moment, is shaded by the bridge that used to be. Introducing two people on either side of the bridge mid-line, with the enjambment of “wind / snatches the words” sets a scene of loss to complement the missing span.
Who is you, mentioned 4 times? Who is I? It could be a friend, a lover, a spouse...two countries.
The sense of sorrow compounds. It is not just one bridge; it is many, and the route from one person to the other on either side is a “long way around”. And this is compounded by two more possibilities: If one arrives, the person one used to know may be a stranger. Worse, the “someone else entirely.../than I knew” is separated from the final three words “than I knew” by the vivid language that describes what once was, now “sunken snags and wreckage”, the river now wider than in the beginning.
How poignant the loss, knowing once the one was able to finish the other’s sentences, read their thoughts. to be so far apart. The break is not sudden.
Line seven, “you on your side, I on mine,” places two people on the same line, but clearly on opposite banks.
Line six, “We stand” / followed by “you” on the 7th line will echo the break after the 14th line (also started midline) “By the time I got there” to “you” on the 15th.
The sounds link the once-was bridge “square-cut stone bulks out of the banks” where the “k” speaks of strong blocks, turns to the “K” in the visible damage of sunken/wreckage.
The second poem is highly intriguing with the title as question. How will one pronounce it? The colloquial, “wasn’t there”, as if to confirm a suspicion to another, or a flat out question. People saw it as an exhortation to pay attention. We expect dark in winter,
but three times, light appears – a season of it; a pervasive sense of it; the “it” can extend to a mystic light beyond the physical light of sun-caught ice and tinsel. The poem is “not ruined by belaboring or explaining”. The question at the end sounds more like a confirmation than a question.
"This Stranger, my husband", picks up the fear of meeting that person on the other side of the bank... Stranger, as adjective and noun; first stanza, past; second stanza, present, with that delightful line of “some old friends won’t come to dinner”.
Third stanza, a sense of what is to come. What counts in the end – as we cannot control names and knowledge – but a chance to accept whatever is as it is, and that perhaps explains the “at last” – if we do, we have loved, finally and truly.
John Brehm’s mock lament is a lot of fun to read, with hyperbolic descriptions of possible poems, which of course, if laid end to end, do sound like the Dorothy Parker quote, “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised".
And what a perfect metaphor to stack them up like the Tower of Babel! -- unfinished and swaying in a thousand different tongues! The thread, “the poems I have not written” is inserted with deadpan wit, breaking hearts (of every woman who left me); compels other poets to ask of God why he lets them live; inspires trees to bow before him, and the wind itself, (after a slick verse of "flutelike lingerings, furious interrogations, passionate/reproofs") to pass over the unwritten poems by this poet... finally turns to the fact that poetry is an attempt to describe a life... So, an homage to poems, and living life like a good poem, and perhaps a chance to question why we haven’t written/lived those poems. As one person quipped, perhaps because we’re with the old friends who wouldn’t come to dinner in the other poem.
Blue or Green seems to be a marvellous anti-ars poetica. "Let me tell you what a poem is!" it seems to say, only to contradict each statement.
Perhaps it is the idea that in modernist times, we have gone from the classical rules that aim for perfection, and embrace the impossibility of contradictions and process which defies any ending. Where is the Green referred to in the title? Even the mention of the blue may well be a lie, since the blue eyes in the dark are something to be taken without proof.
The last line “comes out of the blue” to rescue the poem which up until then looks like an exercise in hyperbole, to turn the poem back to the poet. Right now, he has had enough
of branding paradoxical definitions of poems. What he believes, an alternative to a belief, which is not a fact, is not the question. Let me just have some fun. Without any need for fervor, prosyletizing,....
The love-hat relationship is a delightful exercise that has a clin d’oeil to the people who give such false compliments as “just love your hat”, but mean they are jealous, or mean they want you to recognize they are friendly, want your money, or are just thoughtlessly
judging you on appearances. Superficial. And complicated this verbal communication and relationship! Although he doesn’t ask “What is like a hat?”, the poem will get you thinking about hats, why we wear them, or how, and we judge others who do or don’t. What “interesting” thing will you find for the personality of the person whose hat you like? Let me know!
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Poems for Feb. 10-11
Playing His Heart Out by Sharon Chmielarz
January 31 by David Lehman
Your Days are Waiting by Dave Harrity
The Faithless Shadows... by Alexandr Blok
Alexandr Blok by David St. John,
Fresh Paint by Boris Pasternak
Cynthia MacDonald (untitled poem)
The Rundel group did not start out with the Chmielarz, but with "Lessons" by Vanessa Stauffer, discussed last week at Pittsford. (see Feb. 3) Indeed, both groups enjoyed this one. We looked at the "reverse nature of origami" picking up on the 2nd stanza mention of "a web of scars" which prepares the last stanza's "scraped shin".
"Playing his heart out" has much admirable craft, including line breaks and the contrast between the first stanza which sets the scene and ends with a period, as opposed to the waterfall of the event unfolding in the subsequent stanzas. Chartreuse living //
room is perfect for a gathering for a wake. The "k" sounds, the rhyming trapped/strapped/clapping/ leading up to the final line of the "black load on his heart" makes a perfect tension of the accordion, and the grief.
The scene felt alive, with the details such as the "afghans saving the sofas", the polka, and clapping, the K sound linking the imagery of location and character with physical red cliffs and cheeks.
Lehman's poem was described by Jim as a well-crafted cupcake one hopes comes from an endless box. Delightful scene again... and a small implied lesson -- don't judge an old man by the speed of his walk -- you don't know how the speaker of the poem knows, but he projects a young man into the thin old man swaddled in scarves. It comes as a refreshing surprise, as much as Vivaldi in a barber shop!
The Harrity was a more difficult poem, with a pull between certainty (certitude)and a baffling "clamor of hooves throbbing in purple morning light" that "narrows us --.
The intriguing title links well with the zen-like insistence on "this" -- the duty to be mindful before the days, waiting to be left behind, pass into sleep.
For the Russian poems, we struggled, and tried to honor the nuances between the lines of the translation. In the Blok, the heaviness of the old, the parallel stone steps of the church, and human steps, the play between dark and light, heaviness of the old, and perhaps the anticipation of the new, came through this appreciation of one poet for another. We are thinking an elegy. Why call shadows faithless? Is it that they shy away from the roll of church bell, the steps...
The David St. John poem sets a delightful scene as well -- meeting authorities on Blok and Pasternak. A small reference to the serendipity of finding a black cashmere overcoat (on the back rack of a Venice thrift store) might also be a Russian clin d'oeil to Gogol...
Mike, in the Rundel group which met on the blustery blizzard-y 2/11, mentioned he also had such a coat, but Gray, and the thrift store was on W. Henrietta... My one question was why he needed to put in "yet to anyone who saw me walking" -- perhaps for the veracity of his feeling of being the most lyrical shadow alive -- but it didn't quite work for me as the Lehman's old man.
Fresh Paint... well... is it a love poem? is You a person or something more abstract.
What whitens a yellowed world? What color is madness or lamp shade, and how is it that even this grows white?
There was a typo on the Cynthia MacDonald poem -- "no epiphany or apotheosis".
One suggestion of a read is to think of Angels, as in how many dance on the head of a pin, and we, as brimless, have no angelic halo -- and what we think of as "good" becomes a combination of angel and fallen angel. Does such "cleavage" make things more clear? Do "immaculate certainties" include the "immaculate conception"? Indeed, language is a paltry vehicle -- and she projects the hats and hosannas into the unfinished sentences: Hush, don't raise... (your hat? your voice? your hopes)
Keep it under your (hat, tongue, belt, ). Hats identify, protect, and provide metaphor for states of mind -- as in which hat are you wearing today. The quiet sound of "perhaps" is indeed a hush of of the unspoken and mysterious and ends the poem.
January 31 by David Lehman
Your Days are Waiting by Dave Harrity
The Faithless Shadows... by Alexandr Blok
Alexandr Blok by David St. John,
Fresh Paint by Boris Pasternak
Cynthia MacDonald (untitled poem)
The Rundel group did not start out with the Chmielarz, but with "Lessons" by Vanessa Stauffer, discussed last week at Pittsford. (see Feb. 3) Indeed, both groups enjoyed this one. We looked at the "reverse nature of origami" picking up on the 2nd stanza mention of "a web of scars" which prepares the last stanza's "scraped shin".
"Playing his heart out" has much admirable craft, including line breaks and the contrast between the first stanza which sets the scene and ends with a period, as opposed to the waterfall of the event unfolding in the subsequent stanzas. Chartreuse living //
room is perfect for a gathering for a wake. The "k" sounds, the rhyming trapped/strapped/clapping/ leading up to the final line of the "black load on his heart" makes a perfect tension of the accordion, and the grief.
The scene felt alive, with the details such as the "afghans saving the sofas", the polka, and clapping, the K sound linking the imagery of location and character with physical red cliffs and cheeks.
Lehman's poem was described by Jim as a well-crafted cupcake one hopes comes from an endless box. Delightful scene again... and a small implied lesson -- don't judge an old man by the speed of his walk -- you don't know how the speaker of the poem knows, but he projects a young man into the thin old man swaddled in scarves. It comes as a refreshing surprise, as much as Vivaldi in a barber shop!
The Harrity was a more difficult poem, with a pull between certainty (certitude)and a baffling "clamor of hooves throbbing in purple morning light" that "narrows us --.
The intriguing title links well with the zen-like insistence on "this" -- the duty to be mindful before the days, waiting to be left behind, pass into sleep.
For the Russian poems, we struggled, and tried to honor the nuances between the lines of the translation. In the Blok, the heaviness of the old, the parallel stone steps of the church, and human steps, the play between dark and light, heaviness of the old, and perhaps the anticipation of the new, came through this appreciation of one poet for another. We are thinking an elegy. Why call shadows faithless? Is it that they shy away from the roll of church bell, the steps...
The David St. John poem sets a delightful scene as well -- meeting authorities on Blok and Pasternak. A small reference to the serendipity of finding a black cashmere overcoat (on the back rack of a Venice thrift store) might also be a Russian clin d'oeil to Gogol...
Mike, in the Rundel group which met on the blustery blizzard-y 2/11, mentioned he also had such a coat, but Gray, and the thrift store was on W. Henrietta... My one question was why he needed to put in "yet to anyone who saw me walking" -- perhaps for the veracity of his feeling of being the most lyrical shadow alive -- but it didn't quite work for me as the Lehman's old man.
Fresh Paint... well... is it a love poem? is You a person or something more abstract.
What whitens a yellowed world? What color is madness or lamp shade, and how is it that even this grows white?
There was a typo on the Cynthia MacDonald poem -- "no epiphany or apotheosis".
One suggestion of a read is to think of Angels, as in how many dance on the head of a pin, and we, as brimless, have no angelic halo -- and what we think of as "good" becomes a combination of angel and fallen angel. Does such "cleavage" make things more clear? Do "immaculate certainties" include the "immaculate conception"? Indeed, language is a paltry vehicle -- and she projects the hats and hosannas into the unfinished sentences: Hush, don't raise... (your hat? your voice? your hopes)
Keep it under your (hat, tongue, belt, ). Hats identify, protect, and provide metaphor for states of mind -- as in which hat are you wearing today. The quiet sound of "perhaps" is indeed a hush of of the unspoken and mysterious and ends the poem.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Poems for February 3-4
Mud Season by Tess Taylor *
Lessons by Vanessa Stauffer ***
Magnifying Glass by Tim Sables *
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz *
Between the World and Me by Richard Wright
*discussed at Rundel 2/4
*** will be discussed at Rundel 2/11
We have discussed so many different approaches to poems... role of the title, role of line length (and breaks), images, and even how a poem will read differently because placed in a certain group of poems, which for big picture people allows categorizing commonalities one might not see. We experiment with how we read them -- stanza by stanza, line by line, sentence to sentence so the syntax plays against the line and listen to a group of 20 or so different voices all adding to the "voice" of the poem waiting to be woken by sound.
In this grouping, a moment looking at the garden tangle in winter (mud season), origami and memory, ants, and how we treat them, a meditation on the many layers of a self walking through life, and another "embedded memory" of narrator/persona stumbling on evidence of a lynching, and then being in the midst of one, one could argue there is an over-arching theme of "layering". However, the take-away point that came up is that poems come alive by what we bring to them, and by sharing them in a group, we see things we might not see reading them on our own.
The point is reinforced when I share the same poems with the Rundel group, much smaller, and more diverse, comes up with different angles. It reminds me of my teaching days, how even though the subject was slated as the same, the class composition changed the game plan. If you are part of one group or the other, I hope you will forgive me that I lump the comments-- and perhaps consider this blog yet another follow-up discussion.
Starting with Mud Season. For those gardeners, the very title evokes Spring, getting ready to plant, and the clean-up of all that wasn't completed before winter set in. Metaphorically, mud season
as loosening of dirt in snow-melt and rain, is a "loosening" stage, arriving in the last stanza at a sense of what lies outside of us, loosening in "wild unfrozen prattle"-- the r's and l's called liquids, are also a "foreign liquid tongue" -- seductive, and flowing, but clearly not tamed, or able to be pinned in words. More than one person picked up on the effect of the "un" words -- onstage, gunplay, unfrozen, the sense of the season undressing, and a visceral sense of lurking fertility. The rich texture of words, the substance added by adjectives, choice of strong verbs, add to a mood of sensory
vibrancy. The poem takes a turn exactly half-way through the poem, splitting the 4th couplet. From prodding things in the ground, the sky takes over with the starlings and rain. Wonderful mood capturing muddy March, a foothold in Winter, but so wild with anticipation of Spring.
The next poem Lessons, uses origami as a starting point, a “universal truth” followed by something witnessed woven into a personal reflection and the reader is invited to speculate on both with multiple ideas of what is implied by the choices at the end. In Origami, one of the first things you learn is the crane --a symbol of remembrance/ healing. Another lesson I remember learning is my grandfather's lesson on lying: he folded a piece of paper, showing that when you unfold it the line is still there. This demonstrate the power of words,
which once said, leave their trace, even if you want to retract or correct them. Stauffer picks up on this with a memory -- we don't know why the girl is going under the fence, and maybe the speaker of the poem does, but the fact that no details are given point to the fact that the point is not the story of the girl, but the fashioning of memory. The girl "folds herself under the fence" -- but what memory will she keep of the why -- and what curious choices:
"locked out, or being made//
to break herself in".
Is "Lessons" a good title? The opening line gives the first lesson: "To crease a sheet of paper is to change/ its memory," The other lessons? the unspoken lessons of a school, the consequence the girl will face, the observation of the speaker of the poem about her own memory, and the poem itself, offering to us, a lesson, upon which to reflect on our own lives.
Magnifying Glass, one of the "eco poems" in January 2016 issue of Poetry is a long,largely monosyllabic, skinny poem-- with two "spots" where an extra space appears.
It begins with "No one" -- which could be followed by "no one + noun would..." but is that true that no one would pass judgment on someone stepping on an ant? Note the verb is "burn your name" -- and suddenly my mind whirs with childhood memories: step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back... jump-rope jingles like "Susie,susie, higher, higher, or you'll set your pants on fire. Again, marvelous use of adjectives: careful antennae (vs.our careless footsteps, not mentioned), our "shoe" next to "six legs/almost rowing/it along".
Read the poem -- examine the line breaks, the layers of meaning.
Who/ line break, stanza break... would be upset...
The questions: Do they / dream / anything? No / one should -- line break, stanza break.
How many/books have they/read?--- that/brain a virtual /speck.
The overlaps are legion. The we vs. them. Do they dream... is different from "do they dream anything." the space for a speck after brain, like the unmarked mark on your soul
if you / mash one...
Is a bug really a "nearly/less than/little thing: at most/ ?
Who would -- now the conditional joins the subject, but the next line, out of context could be someone telling you "curse your life"...
Bless the adjective handsome, next to brittle, for the description of head.
Whose? Both ant and human?
People were drawn to confess killing bugs, ants, shake fists at carelessness and lack of curiosity! What is magnified here? Just as in the passage in the Merchant of Venice, "does he too not bleed..." -- what is your attitude to the other. Cited also was
E.E. Cummings' poem of the poisoned mouse: https://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2007/08/07/me-up-at-does-by-e-e-cummings/
and E.O. Wilson.
The next poem, we read line by line, and I asked what words/images pulled at each person.
"scavenger angels"; the heart of the poem mid way "How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses" (with oxymoron...) the turn at "Yet I turn, I turn...
every stone precious to me... "nimbus-clouded voice...
The poem gathers momentum to the message "Live in the layers, not on the litter"...
a poem written by Kunitz in his 70's and a reminder indeed, we have many lives... and that "you" is a moving target -- as well as our memory of who we are. "God will not ask you why you weren’t Moses... but why you weren’t you." A sense of reincarnation.
Coupled with the ballets "The Swan" perhaps the slow unfolding of the swan up to its death is a fitting aural and visual accompaniment.
The final poem, "Between the World and Me"by Richard Wright, like the Origami poem, recounts a lynching, but then, the speaker of the poem experiences it as it happens to him. The song, "Strange Fruit", made famous by Billie Holiday, was mentioned.
Bernie sent me this link: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit -- which refers to the song as "a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a 1930 photograph of a lynching of two Indiana African-American men." The article explains that Abel Metropol, a white Jew originally write a poem called "Bitter Fruit" later setting it to music. Carmen further paraphrases:
Like most of Meeropol's life and work, "Strange Fruit" was unabashedly political in its ambition. After two failed attempts in Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill
(in 1919-22 and in 1934-36), copies of the song were circulated to 96 senators "accompanied by a letter urging passage of the bill so that treatment of minorities
at home would not diminish American influence abroad."
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.
Carmin noticed in the lyrics there two words that are changed depending on the singer. "Some use "sweet and fresh" and others "clean and fresh" after scent of magnolias. .... last line "here is a strange and bitter cry" - others - "here is a strange and bitter crop". The original poem used "sweet and fresh" and "bitter crop" -(which rhymes with drop). Rather unimportant data in light of the revolutionary message".
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