Next week’s selection has a bit of many things. A soothing poem posted in response to the elections; Lyrics of Leonard Cohen, a Villanelle written a few years ago using his lyrics, a little reprieve from Billy Collins, and a sample from a fine writer I just discovered in APR. Enjoy —
Line up:
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Going Home by Leonard Cohen
Listen to the Hummingbird by Leonard Cohen
To Leonard Cohen -- A Villanelle – by Barbara Braverman
Steer your way, Leonard Cohen
1960 by Billy Collins
what the window said to the black boy by Clint Smith
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Leonard Cohen. In tribute, I share the links to the lyrics of songs mentioned in the David Remnick article in the New Yorker:
“Bird on the Wire http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/birdonthewire.html
“Suzanne” http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/suzanne.html
“The Stranger” http://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-the-stranger-song-lyrics
The Famous Blue Raincoat https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%E2%80%9CFamous+Blue+Raincoat+%2B+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
For Clint Smith you can read his other poems in American Poetry Review (APR Nov/Dec 2016) published.. All very compelling.
“Something you should know”
“The Boy and His Ball”
“what the fire hydrant said to the black boy”
“what the window said to the black boy”
“On Observing My Home After the Storm”t
You might enjoy exploring his latest book: Counting Descent. https://aombookshop.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?userType=MLB&tabID=BOOKS&key=BTKEY=0018862670&nextPage=similar&parentNum=13237&similarNext=booksDetails&zoneID=BD72
https://www.ted.com/speakers/clint_smith
Clint Smith: How to raise a black son in America is one of the TED talks.
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The first poem :
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
The refrain, "but I keep this from my children" works quite effectively to consider truth, what to share with children, and how to reconcile a world that may offer them the 50% terrible... Of course children do not necessarily have to know that life is short, or how an adult shortens it. But the tongue in cheek becomes more serious when she repeats mid-way, "Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you..." The long line makes it hard to balance the more positive 50% one wants to sell as "real-tor". How to you sell the world is perhaps not the question so much as "what would make the world sellable". She asked first the question, whether it could be beautiful, but ends with an moral imperative--
you COULD make it beautiful. Are you? Re-read the sentence putting an accent on "You", the the verb, "make" the the ultimate goal, "beautiful."
I love that Rundel Library has inscriptions on the outer walls: http://www.libraryweb.org/rochimag/architecture/SpecificBuildings/Rundel/Inscriptions.htm
ERECTED ANNO DOMINI MCMXXXIV FOR THE USE AND ENJOYMENT OF ALL PEOPLE. MORTON W. RUNDEL
SO CHERISHED THE FINE THINGS OF LIFE THAT HE WAS INSPIRED TO SHARE THEM BY HIS GRACIOUS BEQUEST
TO THE CITY OF ROCHESTER WHERE HE LONG MADE HIS HOME.
~KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY ILLUMINE THE WORLD~
He made it beautiful.
Leonard Cohen's going home allows us to think not just about life on stage, adopting a suit/costume/role
but to think about how we are who we are. David brought up St. Paul, Corinthians... see through glass darkly...
Enigma of the public persona and the intimate private self, as if Leonard/I go back between a
deep reality speaking all the time... and the voice which says you are missing the mark.
Hummingbird captures the same idea -- don't listen to me -- but the bigger voice of God.
The Pittsford group got into a long discussion about the impact of lyrics taken alone without music; what makes some songs work so well, others not; We enjoyed the Villanelle – by Barbara Braverman, which brings up another problem of form vs. meaning. Yes, clever use of lines (given new context) from different songs, but as thread
on which to hang the meaning, it wasn't enough for many.
The muse/girl/infuse... long and short vowels, with a variation of plurals on the second rhyme didn't seem to support an underlying meaning. Two enjambments actually felt off-putting instead of multiplying the layers:
"Cracks in everything let light infuse
your songs...
A wondrous feeling begins to suffuse
my dreams- ..."
but how is this an offer one can't refuse?
Rondel did read "Steer Your Way" and glad for it. Here the end-rhyme works in an additive way: rot/bought/God or not/probably forgot/ he will be shot/gradually forgot...
1960 by Billy Collins is a fun poem but not without poking fun at couples, at people who don't listen, the possibility in our age of recording that an anonymous man, can become part of someone's listening, (which brought up the "canned laughter" phenomenon... ) I wouldn't say empathy oozes out at the end, but there's an edge of sympathy.
We ended with a discussion of "what the window said to the black boy" by Clint Smith, and I read aloud as well the "What the Fire Hydrant Said to the Black Boy" as well. The perspective is perfect... the metaphor right on--
glass shatters... but that's not the end of the story, much as the boy is labeled as "broken material" from the start...
The last two sentences leave us with a feeling of hope: Each individual counts. Together, no one is invisible.
to show how many of you there are
that none of you are the same
that the more shards there are
the more ways there are
to refract this light
that envelops us each day.
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