One of the responses to Bob Dylan’s Nobel nomination was, “why not Warsan Shire”. Her performance, like Dylan’s, reminds us that poetry is not just for the page, but to be voiced, gesticulated.
I played the excerpt for Rundel on Thursday, Oct. 27, and sent it to O Pen as well.
Born in 1988, Kenya, Ms. Shire has grown up in London. In 2014, she was nominated London's Young Poet Laureate. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/warsan-shire
"To many readers, Ms. Shire’s clear voice in the online cacophony felt transformative."
Beyoncé (in a voice-over in the film, lines derived from Ms. Shire’s poem.
the unbearable weight of staying - (the end of the relationship).
https://warsanshire.bandcamp.com/track/the-unbearable-weight-of-staying-the-end-of-the-relationship
the unbearable weight of staying (1:34) (transcript below)
EUREKA
How different a smooth sound of a voice, try to follow one person's rhythms.
I will be talking Nov. 10 about Eureka and why it matters. It reflects discovery, and a borderline sense of joy one wants to rush out to share with someone.
Listening to someone's story doesn't produce "Eureka"... but talking with others about a poem or story will.
**
Here is a clip from Warsan... released February 14, 2012
"I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know, is no one I know has it,
My father’s arms around my mother’s neck, fruit too ripe to eat a door half way open when your name is just a hand I can never hold everything I have ever believed in becomes magic.
I think of lovers as trees … growing to and from one another searching for the same light my mother’s laughter in a dark room a photograph graying under my porch (?)
this is all I know how to do
carry lust around until I begin to resemble every bad memory every terrible fear any nightmare anyone has ever had
I ask , did you ever love me.
You say of course of course so quickly that you sound like someone else I ask you are you made of steel? are you made of iron?
You cry on the phone. My stomach hurts.
I let you leave. I need someone who knows how to stay."
**
Another short phrase of hers was perfect in expression shared with me by Carmin:
"I had to leave.
I felt lonely when he held
me"
Carmin mentioned how it might be interesting to read and discuss some of Bob Dylan's lyrics later in the coming year. She printed 5 pages from the Guardian, Thursday 13 October 2016 titled,
Are these the lyrics that won Bob Dylan a Novel prize? by Richard Williams and Alexis Petridis.
I put him in my Shakespeare talk yesterday with one picture next to these lyrics:
The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say
I should refuse you
The cracked bells
and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it’s not that way
I wasn’t born to lose you . . .
I want you, I want you .
— with the question -
Will we be listening to him 400 years from now? Would you take him with you on a desert island?
What experiences and discussions produce a sense of "Eureka"? Which stories pave the way for you to
the moment when "aha" seems to lift invisible but yet perceived impressions of veils?
Monday, October 31, 2016
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Rundel Write up Oct. 13 with original of Neruda poem.
Blackberries, with all the adjectives, ripe p’s and b’s punctuating
Blackberries, and the crossed arrangement of black art + blackberry-making; black language + blackberry-eating!
The doubling and opposing,then melding contradictions of Li-Young Lee’s story; melding of past/present; the pauses
And discoveries. I shared the fact that in Chinese, one doesn’t use just one word for instance for Moon (Yue) but
Yu Liang, which literally means bright moon — not that that MEANS the moon is bright. So a subtle doubling,
Reflected as well in the mother’s referral to persimmon as containing a sun; and the cardinal singing the sun, the sun.
It mimics the confusion of persimmons and precision; the persimmon experience at home and school; the actual persimmon and brush and ink drawing of it; How some things never leave a person; sight/insight… all revolving around the multiple memories of
Persimmons.
I hope you all giggled at the rhyme… how would you rhyme:
I’ll take vanilla.... said the ...
chocolate...
etc.
the the surprise at the end.
For the Frost, this was the only poem in North of Boston that was not written in Blank Verse. Anapestic Tetrameter, or the galloping rhythm (think Night before Christmas) is handled in a natural way, creating a real sense of place, and peopled with real characters. The exaggeration
at the end makes a fitting image for wet blueberries... and the desire for them, old Loren still holding his secret and straight face.
The final poem was difficult. Here is the original Spanish.
How good a job did Dennis Maloney do in translating it?
Tal vez ésta es la casa en que viví
cuando yo no existí ni había tierra,
cuando todo era luna o piedra o sombra,
cuando la luz inmóvil no nacía.
Tal vez entonces esta piedra era
mi casa, mis ventanas o mis ojos.
Me recuerda esta rosa de granito
algo que me habitaba o que habité,
cueva o cabeza cósmica de sueños,
copa o castillo o nave o nacimiento.
Toco el tenaz esfuerzo de la roca,
su baluarte golpeado en la salmuera,
y sé que aquí quedaron grietas mías,
arrugadas sustancias que subieron
desde profundidades hasta mi alma,
y piedra fui, piedra seré, por eso
toco esta piedra y para mí no ha muerto:
es lo que fui, lo que seré reposo
de tu combate tan largo como el tiempo.
How do we understand the Earth houses us,
and how we house something?
Ask a few English speakers what they think of the poem.
Then ask a few Spanish speakers.
Tell me what you find out.
**
I shared the mystery of penning words to paintings with a writing exercise:
Blackberries, and the crossed arrangement of black art + blackberry-making; black language + blackberry-eating!
The doubling and opposing,then melding contradictions of Li-Young Lee’s story; melding of past/present; the pauses
And discoveries. I shared the fact that in Chinese, one doesn’t use just one word for instance for Moon (Yue) but
Yu Liang, which literally means bright moon — not that that MEANS the moon is bright. So a subtle doubling,
Reflected as well in the mother’s referral to persimmon as containing a sun; and the cardinal singing the sun, the sun.
It mimics the confusion of persimmons and precision; the persimmon experience at home and school; the actual persimmon and brush and ink drawing of it; How some things never leave a person; sight/insight… all revolving around the multiple memories of
Persimmons.
I hope you all giggled at the rhyme… how would you rhyme:
I’ll take vanilla.... said the ...
chocolate...
etc.
the the surprise at the end.
For the Frost, this was the only poem in North of Boston that was not written in Blank Verse. Anapestic Tetrameter, or the galloping rhythm (think Night before Christmas) is handled in a natural way, creating a real sense of place, and peopled with real characters. The exaggeration
at the end makes a fitting image for wet blueberries... and the desire for them, old Loren still holding his secret and straight face.
The final poem was difficult. Here is the original Spanish.
How good a job did Dennis Maloney do in translating it?
Tal vez ésta es la casa en que viví
cuando yo no existí ni había tierra,
cuando todo era luna o piedra o sombra,
cuando la luz inmóvil no nacía.
Tal vez entonces esta piedra era
mi casa, mis ventanas o mis ojos.
Me recuerda esta rosa de granito
algo que me habitaba o que habité,
cueva o cabeza cósmica de sueños,
copa o castillo o nave o nacimiento.
Toco el tenaz esfuerzo de la roca,
su baluarte golpeado en la salmuera,
y sé que aquí quedaron grietas mías,
arrugadas sustancias que subieron
desde profundidades hasta mi alma,
y piedra fui, piedra seré, por eso
toco esta piedra y para mí no ha muerto:
es lo que fui, lo que seré reposo
de tu combate tan largo como el tiempo.
How do we understand the Earth houses us,
and how we house something?
Ask a few English speakers what they think of the poem.
Then ask a few Spanish speakers.
Tell me what you find out.
**
I shared the mystery of penning words to paintings with a writing exercise:
Friday, October 7, 2016
Rundel Oct. 13
see poems from Oct. 5
Blackberry Eating -- by Galway Kinnel
Persimmons – by Li-Young Lee
Blueberries by Robert Frost
+ House by Pablo Neruda
from list from Library Program Oct. 6 below:
the poet Galway Kinnell liked to use words that he said had “mouth feel.”
How does this line-up "taste" to you?
What makes a fine poem, a funny poem, an illuminating poem?
What poems do you recall as “glittering gems” filled with surprise and delight?
The first three all have fruit… Note: What looks to be a long poem in page-length, gallops along when spoken outloud.
I am hoping we will have time for the last two which were part of the program yesterday, and contrast sharply.
For those who couldn’t make the Poetrymusic: Colleen O’Brien and Chris Lee performed the following poems. I am curious how you felt the music and poetry with images worked for you.
1. House by Pablo Neruda :
HOUSE
Perhaps this is the house I lived in
when neither I nor earth existed,
when all was moon or stone or darkness,
when still light was unborn.
Perhaps then this stone was
my house, my windows or my eyes.
This rose of granite reminds me
of something that dwelled in me or I in it,
a cave, or cosmic head of dreams,
cup or castle, ship or birth.
I touch the stubborn spirit of rock,
its rampart pounds in the brine,
and my flaws remain here,
wrinkled essence that rose
from the depths to my soul,
and stone I was, stone I will be. Because of this
I touch this stone, and for me it hasn’t died:
it’s what I was, what I will be, resting
from a struggle long as time.
—translation by Dennis Maloney
2. Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac: On the Road
3. 4 poems by Emily Dickinson: starting with : A Light Exists in Spring
ending with Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
4. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
5. Daffodils by William Wordsworth: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/daffodils
6. Sonnet 28 by Elizabeth Browning: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/43740
7. Wave by Gary Snyder: http://www.primalmates.com/track/636730/wave?feature_id=120822 the actual performance!
8. Autumn by Toshiyuku no Fijiwara: https://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/post/1121466377/when-autumn-came-my-eyes-clearly-could-not-see
the words on the screen and sung in performance were different:
To my eyes it is not clear
that autumn has come
but the chill whisper
of the invisible wind
startles me to awareness.
9. Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare
10. Where everything’s music by Rumi: http://www.flutopedia.com/lit_rumi.htm
Blackberry Eating -- by Galway Kinnel
Persimmons – by Li-Young Lee
Blueberries by Robert Frost
+ House by Pablo Neruda
from list from Library Program Oct. 6 below:
the poet Galway Kinnell liked to use words that he said had “mouth feel.”
How does this line-up "taste" to you?
What makes a fine poem, a funny poem, an illuminating poem?
What poems do you recall as “glittering gems” filled with surprise and delight?
The first three all have fruit… Note: What looks to be a long poem in page-length, gallops along when spoken outloud.
I am hoping we will have time for the last two which were part of the program yesterday, and contrast sharply.
For those who couldn’t make the Poetrymusic: Colleen O’Brien and Chris Lee performed the following poems. I am curious how you felt the music and poetry with images worked for you.
1. House by Pablo Neruda :
HOUSE
Perhaps this is the house I lived in
when neither I nor earth existed,
when all was moon or stone or darkness,
when still light was unborn.
Perhaps then this stone was
my house, my windows or my eyes.
This rose of granite reminds me
of something that dwelled in me or I in it,
a cave, or cosmic head of dreams,
cup or castle, ship or birth.
I touch the stubborn spirit of rock,
its rampart pounds in the brine,
and my flaws remain here,
wrinkled essence that rose
from the depths to my soul,
and stone I was, stone I will be. Because of this
I touch this stone, and for me it hasn’t died:
it’s what I was, what I will be, resting
from a struggle long as time.
—translation by Dennis Maloney
2. Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac: On the Road
3. 4 poems by Emily Dickinson: starting with : A Light Exists in Spring
ending with Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
4. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
5. Daffodils by William Wordsworth: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/daffodils
6. Sonnet 28 by Elizabeth Browning: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/43740
7. Wave by Gary Snyder: http://www.primalmates.com/track/636730/wave?feature_id=120822 the actual performance!
8. Autumn by Toshiyuku no Fijiwara: https://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/post/1121466377/when-autumn-came-my-eyes-clearly-could-not-see
the words on the screen and sung in performance were different:
To my eyes it is not clear
that autumn has come
but the chill whisper
of the invisible wind
startles me to awareness.
9. Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare
10. Where everything’s music by Rumi: http://www.flutopedia.com/lit_rumi.htm
poems for October 5 (Rundel will be Oct. 13)
the poet Galway Kinnell liked to use words that he said had “mouth feel.”
How does this line-up "taste" to you?
Blackberry Eating -- by Galway Kinnel
Persimmons – by Li-Young Lee
Ice Cream Stop by Shel Silverstein
Blueberries by Robert Frost
What makes a fine poem, a funny poem, an illuminating poem?
What poems do you recall as “glittering gems” filled with surprise and delight?
It's funny how the selection this week reminded so many of the fun of children's poetry...
The sounds and rhymes of Dr. Seuss, for instance, "And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street",
the anapestic tetrameter of "Blueberries" the only poem in "North of Boston" that Frost didn't write in blank verse (think "Night before Christmas" and the galloping of the midnight ride of Paul Revere)...
Such a fun time with these 4 poems! It brought Judith to recite her poem about butter,
and "How the helpmate of Bluebeard Made free with a door" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-the-helpmate-of-blue-beard-made-free-with-a-door/.
John shared Dr. Seuss, "And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street" which we read at the end.
But to discuss:
Billy Collins criticized the use of adjectives, and if Galway Kinnel had listened to him,
Blackberry Eating would be a poem without juice... these are "the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries", the stalks are "prickly" and black returns again as "black art" and "black language"
which is also "icy" -- sharp, perhaps clear, perhaps slippery as
ripe turns to "ripest" and squinched expands to a "many-lettered, one-syllabled" verb of "squinch"
as the last word is "late September" which was pegging the season in the first line. The one "s" adjective commonly attributed to fruit that is missing, is "sweet". No Hallmark sugar in this poem!
Indeed, mouth feel is operative... and so many blackberry memories came up, I would say, even if
one didn't have the experience of eating and picking them, the experience was offered to us,
as one of the "musts" of living...
Persimmons is quite a different poem, but the "Chinese Apple" of this fruit, works as thread,
where between the pauses, he is discovering things. And yet, even though there is a risk of diminished "continuity" on the second read, there is a narrative we discover of the speaker of the poem,
his childhood, maturity, reflections on aging of his father; how the initial confusion of "persimmon" and "precision" is echoed by the confusion of "fight" and "fright" and opposition of his mother's view of the fruit (sensual) and that of the teacher's (unripe and authoritarian with no knowledge of the inner possibility to come). How when we arrive at the old age of the blind father, it is persimmons, the ones the mother describes as containing suns, representing the old Chinese culture,
where brushes are made of wolf-tail, and the practice of painting can be done without need of physical sight, the importance of the fruit become the " song, a ghost" the father yearns for, given by his son,
"swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love."
The poem continues, as time goes on, and the son realizes the importance -- even though words may have been forgotten, his father's eyesight gone, language a slippage linking two cultures, "Some things never leave a person". Read the poem, you will find more layers.
Comments from the group: comparing Persimmon/precision to the one ball and cue ball in pool;
the poem as silent and beautiful as a foreign film where images create the story with few words....the words are the sand which makes the pearl... melting together... how memory is often like that, our memories melded with feelings...
Shel Silverstein's poem brought up the element of fun... and that poetry for children doesn't need to exclude humor, or adults!
For the Robert Frost, for a poem that looked like it would last for pages, it literally galloped by, filled with anecdotal portraiture with an overshadowing of haves vs. have-nots and juxtaposition of pleasure
of berry picking with survival.
Other comments: Frost believed the "village gossip mill... the perfect way to get a slice of people’s feelings... get to know the community" as gossip is a way of trading values...
New England rural speak... pacing.
Chewink, by the way, bird species also known as the rufous-sided towhee. See towhee. Eastern, or rufous-sided, towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus). Frost compares the Lorens to birds, which allows yet more connotations...
How does this line-up "taste" to you?
Blackberry Eating -- by Galway Kinnel
Persimmons – by Li-Young Lee
Ice Cream Stop by Shel Silverstein
Blueberries by Robert Frost
What makes a fine poem, a funny poem, an illuminating poem?
What poems do you recall as “glittering gems” filled with surprise and delight?
It's funny how the selection this week reminded so many of the fun of children's poetry...
The sounds and rhymes of Dr. Seuss, for instance, "And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street",
the anapestic tetrameter of "Blueberries" the only poem in "North of Boston" that Frost didn't write in blank verse (think "Night before Christmas" and the galloping of the midnight ride of Paul Revere)...
Such a fun time with these 4 poems! It brought Judith to recite her poem about butter,
and "How the helpmate of Bluebeard Made free with a door" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-the-helpmate-of-blue-beard-made-free-with-a-door/.
John shared Dr. Seuss, "And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street" which we read at the end.
But to discuss:
Billy Collins criticized the use of adjectives, and if Galway Kinnel had listened to him,
Blackberry Eating would be a poem without juice... these are "the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries", the stalks are "prickly" and black returns again as "black art" and "black language"
which is also "icy" -- sharp, perhaps clear, perhaps slippery as
ripe turns to "ripest" and squinched expands to a "many-lettered, one-syllabled" verb of "squinch"
as the last word is "late September" which was pegging the season in the first line. The one "s" adjective commonly attributed to fruit that is missing, is "sweet". No Hallmark sugar in this poem!
Indeed, mouth feel is operative... and so many blackberry memories came up, I would say, even if
one didn't have the experience of eating and picking them, the experience was offered to us,
as one of the "musts" of living...
Persimmons is quite a different poem, but the "Chinese Apple" of this fruit, works as thread,
where between the pauses, he is discovering things. And yet, even though there is a risk of diminished "continuity" on the second read, there is a narrative we discover of the speaker of the poem,
his childhood, maturity, reflections on aging of his father; how the initial confusion of "persimmon" and "precision" is echoed by the confusion of "fight" and "fright" and opposition of his mother's view of the fruit (sensual) and that of the teacher's (unripe and authoritarian with no knowledge of the inner possibility to come). How when we arrive at the old age of the blind father, it is persimmons, the ones the mother describes as containing suns, representing the old Chinese culture,
where brushes are made of wolf-tail, and the practice of painting can be done without need of physical sight, the importance of the fruit become the " song, a ghost" the father yearns for, given by his son,
"swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love."
The poem continues, as time goes on, and the son realizes the importance -- even though words may have been forgotten, his father's eyesight gone, language a slippage linking two cultures, "Some things never leave a person". Read the poem, you will find more layers.
Comments from the group: comparing Persimmon/precision to the one ball and cue ball in pool;
the poem as silent and beautiful as a foreign film where images create the story with few words....the words are the sand which makes the pearl... melting together... how memory is often like that, our memories melded with feelings...
Shel Silverstein's poem brought up the element of fun... and that poetry for children doesn't need to exclude humor, or adults!
For the Robert Frost, for a poem that looked like it would last for pages, it literally galloped by, filled with anecdotal portraiture with an overshadowing of haves vs. have-nots and juxtaposition of pleasure
of berry picking with survival.
Other comments: Frost believed the "village gossip mill... the perfect way to get a slice of people’s feelings... get to know the community" as gossip is a way of trading values...
New England rural speak... pacing.
Chewink, by the way, bird species also known as the rufous-sided towhee. See towhee. Eastern, or rufous-sided, towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus). Frost compares the Lorens to birds, which allows yet more connotations...
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Poems for October 12 / some of which for Rundel October 20
Bavarian Gentians by D. H. Lawrence (1929)
Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare*
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn*
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte*
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin *
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier
Sonnet 137 by William Shakespeare
*Discussed at Rundel October 20. a few more comments below.
What is meditation, and what is poem? How does time influence the way words work?
Who was "I" in 1929 or in Shakespeare's time? What specifics please the universal ear?
Bavarian Gentians:
A little background:
Autumnal : Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”. Gentians + death. believe in the blood wiser than the flesh... Gentian... bitter taste and yet medicinal qualities...
Discussion:
The opening line: "Not every man has gentians in his house" could be interpreted as "not everyone knows how to be truly alive in the flesh /beauty like flowers..."... and we discussed the Jungian slant of the unconscious and how not everyone ready to explore it... It is difficult to explore the dark. (someone mentioned, "with bit and briddle for intellect... vs. passion. ).
Laurentian: loves to talk about way we are full of opposites. flower as voice of underworld in this world... darkness inside us... Thinking about his own his dying...
Sonnet 60:
First Quatrain: waves end on a pebbled shore; Second Quatrain: life crawls to maturity, light suffers crookèd eclipse; 3rd Quatrain nature scythed down finally the couplet: addressing the enemy time with the one thing wave, life, nature cannot do: only worth can survive, to be praised by verse .
There are reversed initial feet: (not the usual iambic pentameter): Like as
So do, Crawls to, Crookèd, Time doth, Feeds on, Praising... which according to Helen Vendler in her magnificent book, draws attention to the hastening of the waves, the attacks by eclipses and by time only to return to the iambic in the couplet... and nothing stands. The final beat: shall stand is an unshakeable confirmation of the strength of verse Stand is twice accentuated by the stress.
The idea of exchange -- past/present, and constant flux appears in the language...
luscious language:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth sensuality
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, delicicious and delicate...
Thy -- both individual addressed in sonnet and incorporates all of us.
Sonnet 73, same idea, but more intimate.
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn..
A terrifically fun poem -- performance. This / not this. BUT.
I asked... would you memorize this? Judith no. no mouth feel.
would it be possible...? It would be as difficult as the poem points out
difficulties about being honest...The long, sentences imitate the real in life which happens in the back and forth.
humor as we identify ourselves.
Comparing Shakespeare ((richness of language) to Dunn (richness of concept/idea)... we return again to what is poetry... how we deal with uncertainty.
Toi Derricotte:
John said it had a hypnotic effect on him and reminded him of Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan.
13 ways of looking at... a blackbird, or "i" and the I's story.
Intricate, beautifully intimated... G-d and T-i and the idea of I as part of God, i
as the particular...
David quoted Richard Eberhardt. "If I could only live at a pitch of madness. immaculate ego.vs. one w/ world self-consciousness... ( confession of a psychotic...)
Somewhat confessional... the story of being Afro-American as well as the personal story perhaps?
operation of id / ego/superego...
toi – (you)in French, sounds like toy in English -- only language which capitalizes “I”.
Writing vs. I – the being that is not expressed...
The Merwin: comes from his new book: At first, it seemed like meditation to me...
but reading it line by line one can sense the thoughtful calm he creates and transmits.
Kathy gave a fine review and referred to his poem "The Laughing Child"... in his mother's memory... as infant, laughing, at nothing, so hard it jostles his carriage... which changes his mother..."
"The writing is limpid poetically tuned to autumn tones, some repetitions of t and u but nothing pyrotechnic.
Often Merwin says things we know but in just the way to make you look at them afresh, as in his poem “The Wings of Daylight”.
… There is a lot of remembering in the poems, persisting, believing in a good world going on beyond him and after him. "A national-treasure-level talent for hope:"
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier: we read, but it was a full docket, so we didn't discuss.
Sonnet 137: I asked David why he said this was not one of Shakespeare's better sonnets.
As a response to Maier's poem, "Blind fool love... The eyes "know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is take the worst to be."
but we concurred, the sonnet has too much intellect not enough heart...
(not everyone has gentians in his house...)
**
SONNET 60 by William Shakespeare
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin
I love having two groups... both of whom bring different takes. See above
The Rundel group heard Sonnet 60 set to music and performed by Chris Lee, Colleen O’Brien
from Poetrymusic on Thursday October 6. The duo illustrated in song, vibraphone and pizzacato cello,
the musical textures of Shakespeare’s meditative spin on time.
The hard /k/ sound... like... contend... crawls... crown'd. crooked, resound in the first two stanzas.
the 8th line "And Time"
returns on the 9th line, "Time doth" and luscious f-v sounds in the 3rd quatrain.
The Dunn poem was lots of fun, and we noted the verbal conventions... How do we deal with uncertainty?
The long sentences imitate real life with the back and forth.
The group was less intrigued with the Toi Derricotte... but picked up on the importance of the "who I am" spider-man effect.
Merwin: Longest line : "I remember what are called the old days and there is..."
Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare*
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn*
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte*
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin *
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier
Sonnet 137 by William Shakespeare
*Discussed at Rundel October 20. a few more comments below.
What is meditation, and what is poem? How does time influence the way words work?
Who was "I" in 1929 or in Shakespeare's time? What specifics please the universal ear?
Bavarian Gentians:
A little background:
Autumnal : Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”. Gentians + death. believe in the blood wiser than the flesh... Gentian... bitter taste and yet medicinal qualities...
Discussion:
The opening line: "Not every man has gentians in his house" could be interpreted as "not everyone knows how to be truly alive in the flesh /beauty like flowers..."... and we discussed the Jungian slant of the unconscious and how not everyone ready to explore it... It is difficult to explore the dark. (someone mentioned, "with bit and briddle for intellect... vs. passion. ).
Laurentian: loves to talk about way we are full of opposites. flower as voice of underworld in this world... darkness inside us... Thinking about his own his dying...
Sonnet 60:
First Quatrain: waves end on a pebbled shore; Second Quatrain: life crawls to maturity, light suffers crookèd eclipse; 3rd Quatrain nature scythed down finally the couplet: addressing the enemy time with the one thing wave, life, nature cannot do: only worth can survive, to be praised by verse .
There are reversed initial feet: (not the usual iambic pentameter): Like as
So do, Crawls to, Crookèd, Time doth, Feeds on, Praising... which according to Helen Vendler in her magnificent book, draws attention to the hastening of the waves, the attacks by eclipses and by time only to return to the iambic in the couplet... and nothing stands. The final beat: shall stand is an unshakeable confirmation of the strength of verse Stand is twice accentuated by the stress.
The idea of exchange -- past/present, and constant flux appears in the language...
luscious language:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth sensuality
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, delicicious and delicate...
Thy -- both individual addressed in sonnet and incorporates all of us.
Sonnet 73, same idea, but more intimate.
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn..
A terrifically fun poem -- performance. This / not this. BUT.
I asked... would you memorize this? Judith no. no mouth feel.
would it be possible...? It would be as difficult as the poem points out
difficulties about being honest...The long, sentences imitate the real in life which happens in the back and forth.
humor as we identify ourselves.
Comparing Shakespeare ((richness of language) to Dunn (richness of concept/idea)... we return again to what is poetry... how we deal with uncertainty.
Toi Derricotte:
John said it had a hypnotic effect on him and reminded him of Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan.
13 ways of looking at... a blackbird, or "i" and the I's story.
Intricate, beautifully intimated... G-d and T-i and the idea of I as part of God, i
as the particular...
David quoted Richard Eberhardt. "If I could only live at a pitch of madness. immaculate ego.vs. one w/ world self-consciousness... ( confession of a psychotic...)
Somewhat confessional... the story of being Afro-American as well as the personal story perhaps?
operation of id / ego/superego...
toi – (you)in French, sounds like toy in English -- only language which capitalizes “I”.
Writing vs. I – the being that is not expressed...
The Merwin: comes from his new book: At first, it seemed like meditation to me...
but reading it line by line one can sense the thoughtful calm he creates and transmits.
Kathy gave a fine review and referred to his poem "The Laughing Child"... in his mother's memory... as infant, laughing, at nothing, so hard it jostles his carriage... which changes his mother..."
"The writing is limpid poetically tuned to autumn tones, some repetitions of t and u but nothing pyrotechnic.
Often Merwin says things we know but in just the way to make you look at them afresh, as in his poem “The Wings of Daylight”.
… There is a lot of remembering in the poems, persisting, believing in a good world going on beyond him and after him. "A national-treasure-level talent for hope:"
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier: we read, but it was a full docket, so we didn't discuss.
Sonnet 137: I asked David why he said this was not one of Shakespeare's better sonnets.
As a response to Maier's poem, "Blind fool love... The eyes "know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is take the worst to be."
but we concurred, the sonnet has too much intellect not enough heart...
(not everyone has gentians in his house...)
**
SONNET 60 by William Shakespeare
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin
I love having two groups... both of whom bring different takes. See above
The Rundel group heard Sonnet 60 set to music and performed by Chris Lee, Colleen O’Brien
from Poetrymusic on Thursday October 6. The duo illustrated in song, vibraphone and pizzacato cello,
the musical textures of Shakespeare’s meditative spin on time.
The hard /k/ sound... like... contend... crawls... crown'd. crooked, resound in the first two stanzas.
the 8th line "And Time"
returns on the 9th line, "Time doth" and luscious f-v sounds in the 3rd quatrain.
The Dunn poem was lots of fun, and we noted the verbal conventions... How do we deal with uncertainty?
The long sentences imitate real life with the back and forth.
The group was less intrigued with the Toi Derricotte... but picked up on the importance of the "who I am" spider-man effect.
Merwin: Longest line : "I remember what are called the old days and there is..."
no o pen October 19
but these poems to share with Bernie.
A Time to Talk -- Robert Frost**
The President Has Never Said the Word 'Black' by Morgan Parker**
It Means Shadows by Pablo Neruda
Be Glad your Nose is on Your Face — Prelutsky
Life is fine by Langston Hughes**
First ten to sign up:
David Emily
Don Rich
Carmen Jan
Elaine Olson Bernie + his friend Michelle
Paul
**Discussed at Rundel, October 27
I love Frost's easy-going rhyme and colloquial rhythms which don't hit you on the head.
Sure, "road/hoed", walk/talk; around/ground what is it / friendly visit, tall/wall.
a,b,c, a,d,b c e, e, d
10 lines, and at exactly the half-way point, the pattern is broken, partly resumed (b,c,)
the hoe and wall rhyming, sharing as their functions do, farmland references.
The title, repeats, couched in the negative "no, not that there is"... and yet, that very title
wins out -- just as there is a time to sow, a time to reap... there's a time to talk... even if one
does so ploddingly, hoe stuck in a clod work-side up.
David sent a PS to the discussion of the idea of "hoe" as general tool for fertility...
how, thrusting it in blade-end up makes it not only easier to find, but more easily ready to use.
A Hoe is also in "A Time of Cloudburst"... the stone wall... here, a place for a friendly time to talk... as in Ecclesiastes, where everything has a season... as opposed to Mending Wall, where a neighbor can't manage.
Both groups enjoyed the President Has Never Said the Word "Black", where the title seems to run into the first stanza. Each couplet contains a different thought... What's broken? Insinuations of brass knuckles, breaking open pocketbooks and teeth with and brass tacks...
Twice the colloquial use of "like"... In Stanza 3, "bleep-hand side" an amusing way to indicate silence; Stanza 4, the omission of "black" and spoken in black and poor style; Stanza 5, lofty language and omission of black between "fellow / Americans". Stanza 6. Great divide between President and us. Is "us" part of the US? The play nobodies as moveable / and "feasts". Television, color vision, and visions -- no black and white...
Color... the absence of which is black... as is the unspoken, the void in which you find that last image of starving chameleon.
For Rundel, Life is Fine followed, which was highly effective.
People were reminded of Langston Hughes poem, "I too sing America" which ends on the line,
"I am America"
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun...
or explode.
The crafting of the poem is compelling... The almosts, and repeats... the survival from belief that "for living' I was born... though you may hear me holler (which he did in the cold, and the thought of the suicidal jump). The cry so strong.
**
The Prelutsky was a perfect antidote for the Neruda.
Jack Prelutsky was the first poet laureate of children’s literature...who says
doggerell is the twinkie of poetry... Imagine -- no nose on your face -- no eskimo kisses...
How different from Neruda. Of course, in translation, you miss the sounds...I did give 3 of the Spanish words in the opening stanza.
omen, presagio
helplessness desamparo
stars of death estrellas de la muerte
The group had a sense of a slow receding sense of self...
but at peace with the idea... last 2 stanzas.
his work... will bear witness... and stimulate the same conscience...
What is “it”... ?
Tantalizing poem... just out of reach and yet one senses its importance...
image of desolation... hoping to find permanence in impermanence.
A Time to Talk -- Robert Frost**
The President Has Never Said the Word 'Black' by Morgan Parker**
It Means Shadows by Pablo Neruda
Be Glad your Nose is on Your Face — Prelutsky
Life is fine by Langston Hughes**
First ten to sign up:
David Emily
Don Rich
Carmen Jan
Elaine Olson Bernie + his friend Michelle
Paul
**Discussed at Rundel, October 27
I love Frost's easy-going rhyme and colloquial rhythms which don't hit you on the head.
Sure, "road/hoed", walk/talk; around/ground what is it / friendly visit, tall/wall.
a,b,c, a,d,b c e, e, d
10 lines, and at exactly the half-way point, the pattern is broken, partly resumed (b,c,)
the hoe and wall rhyming, sharing as their functions do, farmland references.
The title, repeats, couched in the negative "no, not that there is"... and yet, that very title
wins out -- just as there is a time to sow, a time to reap... there's a time to talk... even if one
does so ploddingly, hoe stuck in a clod work-side up.
David sent a PS to the discussion of the idea of "hoe" as general tool for fertility...
how, thrusting it in blade-end up makes it not only easier to find, but more easily ready to use.
A Hoe is also in "A Time of Cloudburst"... the stone wall... here, a place for a friendly time to talk... as in Ecclesiastes, where everything has a season... as opposed to Mending Wall, where a neighbor can't manage.
Both groups enjoyed the President Has Never Said the Word "Black", where the title seems to run into the first stanza. Each couplet contains a different thought... What's broken? Insinuations of brass knuckles, breaking open pocketbooks and teeth with and brass tacks...
Twice the colloquial use of "like"... In Stanza 3, "bleep-hand side" an amusing way to indicate silence; Stanza 4, the omission of "black" and spoken in black and poor style; Stanza 5, lofty language and omission of black between "fellow / Americans". Stanza 6. Great divide between President and us. Is "us" part of the US? The play nobodies as moveable / and "feasts". Television, color vision, and visions -- no black and white...
Color... the absence of which is black... as is the unspoken, the void in which you find that last image of starving chameleon.
For Rundel, Life is Fine followed, which was highly effective.
People were reminded of Langston Hughes poem, "I too sing America" which ends on the line,
"I am America"
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun...
or explode.
The crafting of the poem is compelling... The almosts, and repeats... the survival from belief that "for living' I was born... though you may hear me holler (which he did in the cold, and the thought of the suicidal jump). The cry so strong.
**
The Prelutsky was a perfect antidote for the Neruda.
Jack Prelutsky was the first poet laureate of children’s literature...who says
doggerell is the twinkie of poetry... Imagine -- no nose on your face -- no eskimo kisses...
How different from Neruda. Of course, in translation, you miss the sounds...I did give 3 of the Spanish words in the opening stanza.
omen, presagio
helplessness desamparo
stars of death estrellas de la muerte
The group had a sense of a slow receding sense of self...
but at peace with the idea... last 2 stanzas.
his work... will bear witness... and stimulate the same conscience...
What is “it”... ?
Tantalizing poem... just out of reach and yet one senses its importance...
image of desolation... hoping to find permanence in impermanence.
Poems for October 12
Bavarian Gentians by D. H. Lawrence (1929)
Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare*
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn*
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte*
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin *
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier
Sonnet 137 by William Shakespeare
*Discussed at Rundel October 20.
What is meditation, and what is poem? How does time influence the way words work?
Who was "I" in 1929 or in Shakespeare's time? What specifics please the universal ear?
Bavarian Gentians:
A little background:
Autumnal : Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”. Gentians + death. believe in the blood wiser than the flesh... Gentian... bitter taste and yet medicinal qualities...
Discussion:
The opening line: "Not every man has gentians in his house" could be interpreted as "not everyone knows how to be truly alive in the flesh /beauty like flowers..."... and we discussed the Jungian slant of the unconscious and how not everyone ready to explore it... It is difficult to explore the dark. (someone mentioned, "with bit and briddle for intellect... vs. passion. ).
Laurentian: loves to talk about way we are full of opposites. flower as voice of underworld in this world... darkness inside us... Thinking about his own his dying...
Sonnet 60:
First Quatrain: waves end on a pebbled shore; Second Quatrain: life crawls to maturity, light suffers crookèd eclipse; 3rd Quatrain nature scythed down finally the couplet: addressing the enemy time with the one thing wave, life, nature cannot do: only worth can survive, to be praised by verse .
There are reversed initial feet: (not the usual iambic pentameter): Like as
So do, Crawls to, Crookèd, Time doth, Feeds on, Praising... which according to Helen Vendler in her magnificent book, draws attention to the hastening of the waves, the attacks by eclipses and by time only to return to the iambic in the couplet... and nothing stands. The final beat: shall stand is an unshakeable confirmation of the strength of verse Stand is twice accentuated by the stress.
The idea of exchange -- past/present, and constant flux appears in the language...
luscious language:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth sensuality
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, delicicious and delicate...
Thy -- both individual addressed in sonnet and incorporates all of us.
Sonnet 73, same idea, but more intimate.
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn..
A terrifically fun poem -- performance. This / not this. BUT.
I asked... would you memorize this? Judith no. no mouth feel.
would it be possible...? It would be as difficult as the poem points out
difficulties about being honest...The long, sentences imitate the real in life which happens in the back and forth.
humor as we identify ourselves.
Comparing Shakespeare ((richness of language) to Dunn (richness of concept/idea)... we return again to what is poetry... how we deal with uncertainty.
Toi Derricotte:
John said it had a hypnotic effect on him and reminded him of Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan.
13 ways of looking at... a blackbird, or "i" and the I's story.
Intricate, beautifully intimated... G-d and T-i and the idea of I as part of God, i
as the particular...
David quoted Richard Eberhardt. "If I could only live at a pitch of madness. immaculate ego.vs. one w/ world self-consciousness... ( confession of a psychotic...)
Somewhat confessional... the story of being Afro-American as well as the personal story perhaps?
operation of id / ego/superego...
toi – (you)in French, sounds like toy in English -- only language which capitalizes “I”.
Writing vs. I – the being that is not expressed...
The Merwin: comes from his new book: At first, it seemed like meditation to me...
but reading it line by line one can sense the thoughtful calm he creates and transmits.
Kathy gave a fine review and referred to his poem "The Laughing Child"... in his mother's memory... as infant, laughing, at nothing, so hard it jostles his carriage... which changes his mother..."
"The writing is limpid poetically tuned to autumn tones, some repetitions of t and u but nothing pyrotechnic.
Often Merwin says things we know but in just the way to make you look at them afresh, as in his poem “The Wings of Daylight”.
… There is a lot of remembering in the poems, persisting, believing in a good world going on beyond him and after him. "A national-treasure-level talent for hope:"
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier: we read, but it was a full docket, so we didn't discuss.
Sonnet 137: I asked David why he said this was not one of Shakespeare's better sonnets.
As a response to Maier's poem, "Blind fool love... The eyes "know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is take the worst to be."
but we concurred, the sonnet has too much intellect not enough heart...
(not everyone has gentians in his house...)
Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare*
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn*
Speculations about “I” – Toi Derricotte*
Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning by W.S. Merwin *
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier
Sonnet 137 by William Shakespeare
*Discussed at Rundel October 20.
What is meditation, and what is poem? How does time influence the way words work?
Who was "I" in 1929 or in Shakespeare's time? What specifics please the universal ear?
Bavarian Gentians:
A little background:
Autumnal : Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”. Gentians + death. believe in the blood wiser than the flesh... Gentian... bitter taste and yet medicinal qualities...
Discussion:
The opening line: "Not every man has gentians in his house" could be interpreted as "not everyone knows how to be truly alive in the flesh /beauty like flowers..."... and we discussed the Jungian slant of the unconscious and how not everyone ready to explore it... It is difficult to explore the dark. (someone mentioned, "with bit and briddle for intellect... vs. passion. ).
Laurentian: loves to talk about way we are full of opposites. flower as voice of underworld in this world... darkness inside us... Thinking about his own his dying...
Sonnet 60:
First Quatrain: waves end on a pebbled shore; Second Quatrain: life crawls to maturity, light suffers crookèd eclipse; 3rd Quatrain nature scythed down finally the couplet: addressing the enemy time with the one thing wave, life, nature cannot do: only worth can survive, to be praised by verse .
There are reversed initial feet: (not the usual iambic pentameter): Like as
So do, Crawls to, Crookèd, Time doth, Feeds on, Praising... which according to Helen Vendler in her magnificent book, draws attention to the hastening of the waves, the attacks by eclipses and by time only to return to the iambic in the couplet... and nothing stands. The final beat: shall stand is an unshakeable confirmation of the strength of verse Stand is twice accentuated by the stress.
The idea of exchange -- past/present, and constant flux appears in the language...
luscious language:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth sensuality
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, delicicious and delicate...
Thy -- both individual addressed in sonnet and incorporates all of us.
Sonnet 73, same idea, but more intimate.
Propositions Related Poem by Stephen Dunn..
A terrifically fun poem -- performance. This / not this. BUT.
I asked... would you memorize this? Judith no. no mouth feel.
would it be possible...? It would be as difficult as the poem points out
difficulties about being honest...The long, sentences imitate the real in life which happens in the back and forth.
humor as we identify ourselves.
Comparing Shakespeare ((richness of language) to Dunn (richness of concept/idea)... we return again to what is poetry... how we deal with uncertainty.
Toi Derricotte:
John said it had a hypnotic effect on him and reminded him of Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan.
13 ways of looking at... a blackbird, or "i" and the I's story.
Intricate, beautifully intimated... G-d and T-i and the idea of I as part of God, i
as the particular...
David quoted Richard Eberhardt. "If I could only live at a pitch of madness. immaculate ego.vs. one w/ world self-consciousness... ( confession of a psychotic...)
Somewhat confessional... the story of being Afro-American as well as the personal story perhaps?
operation of id / ego/superego...
toi – (you)in French, sounds like toy in English -- only language which capitalizes “I”.
Writing vs. I – the being that is not expressed...
The Merwin: comes from his new book: At first, it seemed like meditation to me...
but reading it line by line one can sense the thoughtful calm he creates and transmits.
Kathy gave a fine review and referred to his poem "The Laughing Child"... in his mother's memory... as infant, laughing, at nothing, so hard it jostles his carriage... which changes his mother..."
"The writing is limpid poetically tuned to autumn tones, some repetitions of t and u but nothing pyrotechnic.
Often Merwin says things we know but in just the way to make you look at them afresh, as in his poem “The Wings of Daylight”.
… There is a lot of remembering in the poems, persisting, believing in a good world going on beyond him and after him. "A national-treasure-level talent for hope:"
Love at First Sight by Jennifer Maier: we read, but it was a full docket, so we didn't discuss.
Sonnet 137: I asked David why he said this was not one of Shakespeare's better sonnets.
As a response to Maier's poem, "Blind fool love... The eyes "know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is take the worst to be."
but we concurred, the sonnet has too much intellect not enough heart...
(not everyone has gentians in his house...)
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