What should poets and poetry readers be thinking about or doing in these thirty days? Enclosed is a link to The American Academy of Poets with suggestions for activities, including a list of poems for “Poem in your pocket day, April 21. In it is also compiled a list from their poster (to be completed with lines and links) of their “Floregium of Poems”.
For April 27-8
For the poem, "There is no name yet" by Dorothy Lasky, I am reminded of Wordsworth's "Ode --
It is very long… so I attach as a link for your personal reflections…
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
You might enjoy this interview with Rios : http://kbaq.org/content/az-poet-laureate-alberto-rios : It is rather long, but he goes into how words resonate— how each line should be “the best line”and — his idea of “cleramancy” — how with few words, one can cast a spell…"We take a few words from the dictionary… and it’s like looking at the stars, except they are words”. . At the end, I include 3 of his “short poems”. His poem we discussed,
“ When Giving is all we have" he calls a poem of “ public purpose” and he relies on the epigraph to condense the poem into a few words. Rios, river, and his gifting to his son, a sensibility… an understanding about something which has no word, but the words help us get there. I loved the analogy about color — one has yellow, one has blue — green cannot happen without the two together. Thank you all!
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Our Library has this saying on the front façade.
"The Shadows are behind you when you walk into the light"
One poet friend brought up the question of "authenticity or façade" in poetry...
This interview by Alberto Rios, reminded me of "mondegreens", the fun of singing Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods" to Fernando's Hideaway... and poems of public purpose, and calling on the cleramancy when words resonate to create what gets us to feel what has no word...
Looking over possibilities... Jo Carson... Robert Hayden (transformative qualities in literature); T.S. Eliot, The Comet, the Owl and the Galaxy... thanks to Astronomical picture a day...
Michael Cunningham, whose work,"The Hours" is translated, "ils vecurent heureux"
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American Poets : April-Summer 2016
Role of poet... to explore language, reflect cultural music back to itself, to keep the unusual though alive... (Brenda Hillman) We will discuss her poem, "Species prepare to exist after money" in May/
I borrowed the word "cerements" from the interview with Rosanna Warren... "read poems as poems, not as cerements of Robert Penn.
Citing Catullus's translation of Sappho, "poetry finally is a family matter involving the strains of birth, love, power, death and inheritance."
Music as landscape : organizing principle, threaded with biography.
Marvelous article about Wallace Stevens and his legacy.. "Contemporary American Poetry and the Echo of Stevens"... The poem as costume, as disguise, dialogue... enactment.
The Man on the Dump...
The Glass of Water
"We cannot love the world as it is,
because the world, as it is, is impossible to love.
We have only to lust for it --
to lust for each other in it --
and somehow to make that suffice."
Terrance Hayes: Snow for Wallace Stevens... + references..
"Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right."
"The way up and the way down are one." Heraclitus...
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