Poems for October 26 + two discussed Oct. 27

Beginning by James Wright
Goods by Wendell Berry
Big Bend Park says No
to All Walls -- by Naomi Shihab Nye
The Anti-Grief by Marianne Boruch
Lines Written Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey by Billy Collins**
The Kite by Joyce Carol Oates**

The last two were also discussed at Rundel on October 27.

From Wordsworth's LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY
"The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses"

**
Beginning by James Wright:
Note how the moon drops the feathers INTO not ONTO the field.
How the short sentences per line ask us to stop. How "now" hangs as one word on a line followed by a period. His beginning seems to start when he perceives the wheat, leaning back to "its own darkness". The mood is reverent, tentative, ethereal and holds us... gently.

Goods.
Merlin increases his syntactical units and alliterative green growth... gayety... good which made some think of Andrew Marvell's "Green thoughts and green shade".
Maura shared her picture of a Percheron ... one does indeed shudder at the size... and we discussed
"shudder" as a response to being deeply moved by awe as well as by horror or fear.
Intimations. Thanks to the human heart... thoughts that lie too deep for tears... Wordsworth

Naomi Shihab Nye: Big Bend Park says No
to All Walls
The title is laid out this way on two lines... with a brilliant result of a poem in the voice of Big Bend not just to express personal concerns of the park, but also an address "To All Walls".

One senses a strong persona in this highly political poem which allows the power of landscape to speak. Big Bend, and eternity... vs. man's clocks (Big Ben without the D) and rules saying who is to govern, get along, etc. What kind of "big bend thinking" do we do, or not? Big Bend as place, river... witness of time. A sense of psalm 23, and although written in 2011, feels freshly penned. The javelina, some mentioned for those who might not have looked it up, is a wild pig...

The comment on The Anti-Grief by Marianne Boruch -- She speaks of the little things that matter... what to cry over...
On the page, many found this poem irritating... but aloud it comes alive. I love this passage
"Alarm and Should Have, two roads
he would not cross, and Consequence
a street over, he ignored completely. Always
an eye out for the great
small peculiar."

an eye out... both in sense of knocked out, (ignored) and looking out -- again both for the "great"
and the "great small peculiar".

Lines Written Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey by Billy Collins.
As one participant said "he cocks a snook at everything..."
Collins having fun on our culture’s view of time...
poking fun at poets and their dismay, " the kind that issues from poems
the way water issues forth from hoses,
the way the match always gives its little speech on fire."

Wordsworth's poem was one of the first to experiment with looking at an important historical place, but instead of calling on the history, brings his own experience of what he sees the river... and how this makes a difference in how he perceives what is happening to him. No mention of King Henry, as the scene is to tell how the poet has changed.

According to David, Collins is making fun of a genre.

The dialogue continues with Joyce Carol Oates in her poem, The Kite
(For Billy Collins). The form of the poem, in the shape of a Kite, and echoes of familiar lines...
something there is (but does not say "doesn't like...a wall"), but instead takes the tack of
in the American
soul that soars with
kites that soar!
The wording is tricky as she proceeds "Something there is not/in the American soul"
but a paraphrase is not possible. There is a sly layering of simultaneous opposites,
soaring repeated until the kite's tail encounters TV antenna, (tuttingly aliterated)
the kite
in a
heap

Fun to read, re-read. Although published in 2003, I feel it is an accurate view of 2016.