The Oxymoron Sisters by Tom Lux
Snowflakes by Jennifer Grotz
Sundials by Jennifer Grotz
In the Congaree by Samuel Amadon
Cattail History by Noah Warren
They Accuse Me of Not Talking by Hayden Carruth
The Birth of Superstition by Lynn Pedersen
Thomas Lux describes contemporary American poetry as “Burgeoning, chaotic, many, many good poets, a growing cultural profile, a healthy, squawking, boisterous, fractious, inclusive, tradition and (true) innovation marrying or colliding.”
Simultaneous with this, I think of the podcast I heard about "fact-checking poetry"...
how fact does matter, with or without intent of the poet...
Oxymorons... One astute reader quoted Lux as saying: "“I like to make the reader laugh and then steal that laugh right out of his throat."
tragedy right next to humor...
He achieves this with his poem -- replete with wonderful sounds.
Acetylene to snowflakes, and a composite hodgepodge of denticulate dandelion and patter of t's
felt a bit affected. Sundials then measured with the feel that these two poems told rather than showed,
with a preference for Sundials which created visual images of roundness.
The poem commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant also left us a bit cold. Why this?
By then, the group was ill-disposed to workshop Warren's poem.
They Accuse Me of Not Talking is a curious title and we enjoyed delving into the poem. North/South...
"To which love can you speak
the words that mean dying and going insane
and the relentless futility of the real?"
Here we gather faithfully week after week... and at this point I felt I had gathered poems which didn't do justice to the group -- but could resurrect a sense of order with these lines.
What do poems do? If we only read poems, would that be enough to confront the futility of the real?
Ending with a poem addressing the birth of superstition... the lack of certitude, understanding, fact...
Logic is my son’s kite, good so long as you have
wind, string,
something heavier than hope
to tether you.
It felt like a discussion of kites in the wind... different people offering their logic...
not needing hope to be heavy, but simply enjoying the challenge of tethering meaning as we could
in a convivial group.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Poems for December 21
Poem for the New Year by Devin Johnston
Home Town by William Stafford
The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop
I am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem by Gregory Corso
The Bee Carol by Carol Ann Duffy
As we draw close to Christmas and the end of the year, what statistics do you keep?
What memories of your home town? What accidents and mistakes have produced turns in the path of your life you might not have predicted? What do you wait for? How do you respond to Greg Corso's poem, feed the cluster of shivering bees?
For the first poem: The group commented on the density; regular rhythm; irregular stanza length ... One person commented that
he looks back on the old year, no plans for the new. Then again, it behooves us to reckon with the old before plunging into the new. Dorothy Thompson: first journalist tossed out of Germany. Sinclair Lewis: It can’t happen here...
We are living in a time where we need to look carefully at what has happened...
The 2nd stanza reference to Tao te Ching or book of changes helps stabilize "each dawn a color wheel
to gauge the shifting moods". There is also a shift in tone -- almost humorous if you don't know the Eastern sages.
"each day brings more
and more of less
less and still less
with no end to nothing
and nothing left undone"
From there to the third stanza, where emptiness filled with sound -- of silence, of trucks, planes, the wording is arranged so that simultaneous readings layer together in a shrinking sense of loneliness.
Even here in Bellefontaine
along a winding street
silence brings an interval
holds the less and less
of yet more distant sound
trucks along the interstate
a plane behind the clouds.
One reading: silence brings... holds... trucks along--it
becomes a geometry behind clouds.
We are familiar with "the less and less of yet more distant sound"; trucks and planes can be vehicles producing sound.
The mood is foreboding... a sense of "has been" as if visiting a cemetery.
**The William Stafford poem paints a home town "Norman Rockwell" style -- which is not to say without odd angles,
such as the "bombshell" library. It reads as a prayer for bestowal of goodness.. Peace ON... not "Peace be with..."
Stafford, a conscientious objector – wrote this as a young 28 year old in WW 2...
We admired the line-up of adjectives : safe/comforting/impersonal immensity
continuous/ hidden/ efficient (Sewer system)
Sharp/ amazed/ steadfast regard on the judging ones of the citizenry...
those nosy/incredible/delicious neighbors
I love the "moon-gilding" of "regular breaths of old memories"...
the old whispers, old attempts, old beauties, ever new.
Then ending with the little town, haze-blessed/sun-friended
under the "world champion sky" -- as if to remind us we all live under it.
It brought up the song, "Your State Name's here".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX9p50MIexs
**
The Bishop poem, inspired by a typo, allows the artist to juxtapose Man with this hybrid, imaginary creature
who observes him. Perhaps autobiographical. One person commented that it sounds a little drunk.
Surreal...and so lonely... The struggle to reach what may well destroy, like the moth drawn to candle flame.
Moon, only a reflection of the sun's light... just as words and poems are only reflection of reality...
Moon, as realm of imagination, vs. Sun as realm of reason...
Indeed, one waits... and applauds Ferlinghetti's marvelous use of anaphor and refrain... awaiting a "rebirth of wonder"...
The power of such a refrain multiplies as each stanza leads up to it in a different way, "rounding a different corner."
Comments: Imagine Trump voters this way... they too are yearning and wishing and needing. The absurdity of what is waited for...
Wonder reborn with every child, but harder to maintain... as one gets older... wonder is at risk of being callused.
Re-birth of wonder – that’s the answer... but will it ever be possible for a collective?
How different from the Corso poem -- where "Writ" could be noun, or vernacular verb.
The disparity between what could be -- like a sense of wonder... and what is...
This line goes straight to my heart.
"Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness"
God, death, and hard, hard, hard.
Beautifully read by this teen for Poetry Out Loud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2cE1Xh4KkE
The Bee Carol with its soothing music brought us out: Same rhythm as Rosetti sung to "I heard the bells on Christmas day".
The golden jar of honey, to feed the bees, to allow them to continue. Be mindful of their shivering cluster.
**
It is getting harder and harder to summarize and capture all the various commentaries each week.
I hope that people read these poems, imagining our large and multi-faceted group, the richness of the reading aloud, the sharing of craft noticed, associations triggered.
poems for Dec. 14-15
Dust of Snow by Robert Frost
Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Red Brocade Naomi Shihab Nye
The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Fiction by Howard Nemerov
Jerusalem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Poem for the New Year by Devin Johnston
The first poem is only one sentence, divided into two parts the groups quickly grasped as external cause/internal effect. Some were definitely of the “a crow is a crow is a crow” and some tried for crow as depression. David felt compelled to write this:
"Here was this little poem, lovely and mysterious, refusing to explain what it claimed, a bit haiku-like but more complex for its layering of time and its Frostian qualification: what that bird did "Saved some part of a day I had rued." The earlier feeling was changed by this small event--though not altogether, it seems.
Simple as it is, this little poem reminds me of what's I like about rhyme, the mystery of words so alike in sound but so different in meaning and even part of speech? A good rhyme is akin to a good pun. Here it's ordinary rhymes --crow/snow (noun/noun) and me/tree (pronoun/noun)--leading to a more interesting one-- mood and rued. Who even uses that verb? But mostly I love the way that Frost gives rich meaning to a mere fact in the story. Just as in "A Time to Talk" that hoe set to stand upright in the soft ground becomes a kind of effigy and place-holder for the poet taking a break from his labors, so here, in an even subtler way, all those slight and slender motions--the shifting of the bird's weight on the branch (whether alighting or taking off or just shifting position), the movement of the branch that dislodges the powdery snow, the snow's drift downward, the feel and sight of this delicate snowfall on the speaker ("on me")--together create a beautiful analog for an inner change, a change not even of idea but just of mood. It's another, deeper kind of rhyming. This series of actions, some named, others implied, and none described in detail, dramatizes the poem's very claim that the event that began outside the speaker continued inside him. Meanwhile, the event's delicate beauty befits the small but crucial nature of the inner change. The herb rue has a bitter taste, which says something of the feeling it's named for. Anything, however small,rescued from that feeling is a saving indeed. And how was that done? By the sheer beauty of this action, by the speaker's good luck in being where he was, and by his greater good fortune of having the capacity to receive this accidental gift."
The Longfellow sonnet starts with a universal, and winds up with the idea of fairy tales finding us... The group sensed the poem coming from a dark place... perhaps written after the death of his wife, who burned to death... See "Cross of Snow" -- remembering his wife 18 years after her death... like the mountain bearing a cross of snow... Holidays... and what is sacred,
we keep close in our heart. The tight rhyming abba / abba/cde/cde, the slant rhyme of holidays and unclouded; three times white, for sail (fairy tale); cloud (more f's of floats, fades to echo "full," "feeling overflows""flames");
and for the whitest lily. Laced with l's "holiest, holidays, silence" join the f + l combinations; and sweep along to swallows; gleam; sail, land, lovely landscape.
Both the Red Brocade and Jerusalem allow us to consider the Arab culture and rules of hospitality. Imagine if we took time
to understand each stranger! Imagine if we did not hide behind "busy", did not have to pretend we have a purpose in the world.
We did pick up on the use of the past verb tense "The Arabs used to say," and also, "That’s the armor everyone put on/to pretend they had a purpose/in the world. Is this to contrast with the rest of the poem... the "Let's go back to that" -- the "No, I was not planning to be busy"... I love how poetry asks us to pause, reflect, probe. The poem's title
Red Brocade, returns with the mention of a red brocade pillow, rice, pine nuts, and ends with mint, something to be "snipped together".
Ella Wheeler Wilcox's most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. Her rhyming couplets are not hackneyed. Using the word burden with its double meaning as musical refrain... and weight, repeated emotions of being human provided a delightful surprise.
Nemerov, Poet Laureate and brother of Diane Arbus, also provides us with surprises. What is reality in a poem called "fiction"?
The elevator metaphor brought up many stories and memories of the first elevators... I love that he "planed" us into 2-D,
... carried us "up." Who are we in 3-D life? How will we "rise and fall" -- are we ready when our number comes up?
The final poem "Jerusalem" is helped by knowing that it means "City of Peace". The epigraph by Tommie Olafsson
addresses inner and outer peace:
“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
We discussed the word "riddle" -- as in whatever is at hand, shot through with hints to be unraveled.
"... the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Pears looks like "tears" which could be noun or sound like the verb. The explanation is that the boy grew wings--
that only come from understanding he was not the target. What vulnerable spots do we each have? How do we explain their riddle? Why not have an olive tree (symbol of peace) become the son slain in war... Without saying, "Love can do such miracles..." the reader might conclude this. The "monumentally" associated with our slowness to understand, is swiftly
followed by soldiers stalking a pharmacy... The last line, "Everything happens next." has also a riddle-like quality--
all we have done, has effect on the next. Everything is all-inclusive and inescapable.
The poems chosen gave us all rise for lively discussion, mirrors with which to look at ourselves, share our reflections.
Not one laid out "truth" in a way one could summarize; all laid out details which point to it, the way good poems do.
Everyone tells me how grateful they are for these weekly discussions-- indeed! I am a lucky one to have such a group.
Thank you all who attend who might read this.
Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Red Brocade Naomi Shihab Nye
The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Fiction by Howard Nemerov
Jerusalem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Poem for the New Year by Devin Johnston
The first poem is only one sentence, divided into two parts the groups quickly grasped as external cause/internal effect. Some were definitely of the “a crow is a crow is a crow” and some tried for crow as depression. David felt compelled to write this:
"Here was this little poem, lovely and mysterious, refusing to explain what it claimed, a bit haiku-like but more complex for its layering of time and its Frostian qualification: what that bird did "Saved some part of a day I had rued." The earlier feeling was changed by this small event--though not altogether, it seems.
Simple as it is, this little poem reminds me of what's I like about rhyme, the mystery of words so alike in sound but so different in meaning and even part of speech? A good rhyme is akin to a good pun. Here it's ordinary rhymes --crow/snow (noun/noun) and me/tree (pronoun/noun)--leading to a more interesting one-- mood and rued. Who even uses that verb? But mostly I love the way that Frost gives rich meaning to a mere fact in the story. Just as in "A Time to Talk" that hoe set to stand upright in the soft ground becomes a kind of effigy and place-holder for the poet taking a break from his labors, so here, in an even subtler way, all those slight and slender motions--the shifting of the bird's weight on the branch (whether alighting or taking off or just shifting position), the movement of the branch that dislodges the powdery snow, the snow's drift downward, the feel and sight of this delicate snowfall on the speaker ("on me")--together create a beautiful analog for an inner change, a change not even of idea but just of mood. It's another, deeper kind of rhyming. This series of actions, some named, others implied, and none described in detail, dramatizes the poem's very claim that the event that began outside the speaker continued inside him. Meanwhile, the event's delicate beauty befits the small but crucial nature of the inner change. The herb rue has a bitter taste, which says something of the feeling it's named for. Anything, however small,rescued from that feeling is a saving indeed. And how was that done? By the sheer beauty of this action, by the speaker's good luck in being where he was, and by his greater good fortune of having the capacity to receive this accidental gift."
The Longfellow sonnet starts with a universal, and winds up with the idea of fairy tales finding us... The group sensed the poem coming from a dark place... perhaps written after the death of his wife, who burned to death... See "Cross of Snow" -- remembering his wife 18 years after her death... like the mountain bearing a cross of snow... Holidays... and what is sacred,
we keep close in our heart. The tight rhyming abba / abba/cde/cde, the slant rhyme of holidays and unclouded; three times white, for sail (fairy tale); cloud (more f's of floats, fades to echo "full," "feeling overflows""flames");
and for the whitest lily. Laced with l's "holiest, holidays, silence" join the f + l combinations; and sweep along to swallows; gleam; sail, land, lovely landscape.
Both the Red Brocade and Jerusalem allow us to consider the Arab culture and rules of hospitality. Imagine if we took time
to understand each stranger! Imagine if we did not hide behind "busy", did not have to pretend we have a purpose in the world.
We did pick up on the use of the past verb tense "The Arabs used to say," and also, "That’s the armor everyone put on/to pretend they had a purpose/in the world. Is this to contrast with the rest of the poem... the "Let's go back to that" -- the "No, I was not planning to be busy"... I love how poetry asks us to pause, reflect, probe. The poem's title
Red Brocade, returns with the mention of a red brocade pillow, rice, pine nuts, and ends with mint, something to be "snipped together".
Ella Wheeler Wilcox's most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. Her rhyming couplets are not hackneyed. Using the word burden with its double meaning as musical refrain... and weight, repeated emotions of being human provided a delightful surprise.
Nemerov, Poet Laureate and brother of Diane Arbus, also provides us with surprises. What is reality in a poem called "fiction"?
The elevator metaphor brought up many stories and memories of the first elevators... I love that he "planed" us into 2-D,
... carried us "up." Who are we in 3-D life? How will we "rise and fall" -- are we ready when our number comes up?
The final poem "Jerusalem" is helped by knowing that it means "City of Peace". The epigraph by Tommie Olafsson
addresses inner and outer peace:
“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
We discussed the word "riddle" -- as in whatever is at hand, shot through with hints to be unraveled.
"... the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Pears looks like "tears" which could be noun or sound like the verb. The explanation is that the boy grew wings--
that only come from understanding he was not the target. What vulnerable spots do we each have? How do we explain their riddle? Why not have an olive tree (symbol of peace) become the son slain in war... Without saying, "Love can do such miracles..." the reader might conclude this. The "monumentally" associated with our slowness to understand, is swiftly
followed by soldiers stalking a pharmacy... The last line, "Everything happens next." has also a riddle-like quality--
all we have done, has effect on the next. Everything is all-inclusive and inescapable.
The poems chosen gave us all rise for lively discussion, mirrors with which to look at ourselves, share our reflections.
Not one laid out "truth" in a way one could summarize; all laid out details which point to it, the way good poems do.
Everyone tells me how grateful they are for these weekly discussions-- indeed! I am a lucky one to have such a group.
Thank you all who attend who might read this.
December 7-8
Birdhouse by Tony Hoagland
I am In Need of Music by Elizabeth Bishop
Flock by J.R. Tappenden
Rupi Kaur -- poem with drawing
Learning to Float -- by J.R. Tappenden
Wildfire Moon (Summer, L.A. 2016) by Carol Muske-Dukes
Thinking About Basho by Bacha K. Sharp
The first poem, published in The Sun magazine, October 2016 has a range of possible tones from assertive to apologetic, mildly sarcastic yet with a delightful opening question about that 20 foot extension ladder, which transforms at the end of the poem into the measurement of time-- the 20 foot distance between this predator which we know will have the final word.
The poem could have been written as prose, however, the stanzas allow a sense of poetic carpentry, addressing a birdhouse as abode that progresses from domicile to a residence with a private entrance, a mysterious piece of "real estate" to chateau with an amusing color scheme, (painted blue with orange spots on it). This is no birdhouse, but a peek at how memory works, how we hope that something we have built in our lifetime will last and remind people of who we are.
Some thought it a love poem, others a simple parallel between a place for flying thoughts to land, (implication, become memorable) with two of the enjambed stanza breaks (made with my hands// on a specific afternoon; I took the trouble// to hang that little domicile...)matching the metaphorical third (You might say that memory itself//is a piece of real estate,).
Hoagland contrasts the relationship of outer world, the observable mother bird, the baby birds whose open mouths present "a ferocious pink bouquet" with the inner more mysterious workings of what shelters memory; the specific, individual particulars of the tree on which a birdhouse will be hung; the timing, vs. the generalized "some kind of wire strapping", if I am not here for "some" reason...
Both groups thoroughly enjoyed the romp of reading and discussing this poem.
For the Bishop Sonnet, offered by Elaine R. as one of her favorites, both groups enjoyed the alliterative sounds, the
slow rhythm... Judith remarked on the Millet and Eleanor Wylie influence. The Octet contrasts the trembling/quivering
with the yearning for the the lulling magic of melody which appears in the first line of the sestet. Something about "butter-tainted lips" I find rather off-putting, which the 3-syllable "melody" in the DEF / DEF pattern of the sestet rescues,
with the sibilance of "subaqueous stillness of the sea". Comments included: this is an Ars Poetica... asking for inspiration... devotional... otherworldly... baptism by music...
Flock is a one-sentence column of words that establishes a simile between starlings and smoke, as what allows us to distinguish currents in the air, what is/in it. What is pleasing is the shift to the abstract idea of allegiance, which smoke, unlike the
starlings, cannot hold. Comments : density of what is earth-bound; smoke is inanimate... but starlings not.
fire... of life itself...
something up in the air...
meditation...
air the mind: starling smoke our thoughts...
The poem with the drawing shows a woman's back, her head, with the hair like wisps of smoke. The words:
Our Backs
tell stories
no book
has the spine
to carry
Enigmatic and pleasing... one learns a lot from a back!
We had discussed the Jen Tappenden poem, "Learning to Float" on Nov. 9, however, it fit nicely with the grouping so we discussed it again. As an aside, what I love about these library groups, is that there is never a set attendance, so the 20-odd people present allow multiple discussions to maintain a sense of freshness.
In the December discussion, we commented on the mouth sound, and how the poem's layout addresses surface... below surface...
the lines flow like water.. the image of ribbons, yarn, skeins, reeds weaving contrast with the trees and vines. The brilliant line break, "memory holds// our mentors" -- as if to point out the contrary, in the constant "re-learning", unlearning, in a shifting world.
https://jrtappenden.com/about
The next poem by Carol Muske-Dukes is personal reflection on specific event: the wildfires in L.A. mirrored by blood moon, the revolving star of the red light on a police car, childlike drawings that look finger-painted. "She" as pronoun operates
for artist, first capturing what the sun sees:
The horizon brazen as
the great fool’s gold
jet landing on sparkler
wheels. She catches it.
The poem acts as a tribute to art as the way of capturing, rendering an experience as unique and unrepeatable.
The final poem, "Thinking about Basho" is exactly that. He is definitely a wonderful Haiku master to think about...
But is it enough, just because we revere Basho... to quote him to pin down wandering thoughts?
I would be curious what the APR editors thought of if.
I am In Need of Music by Elizabeth Bishop
Flock by J.R. Tappenden
Rupi Kaur -- poem with drawing
Learning to Float -- by J.R. Tappenden
Wildfire Moon (Summer, L.A. 2016) by Carol Muske-Dukes
Thinking About Basho by Bacha K. Sharp
The first poem, published in The Sun magazine, October 2016 has a range of possible tones from assertive to apologetic, mildly sarcastic yet with a delightful opening question about that 20 foot extension ladder, which transforms at the end of the poem into the measurement of time-- the 20 foot distance between this predator which we know will have the final word.
The poem could have been written as prose, however, the stanzas allow a sense of poetic carpentry, addressing a birdhouse as abode that progresses from domicile to a residence with a private entrance, a mysterious piece of "real estate" to chateau with an amusing color scheme, (painted blue with orange spots on it). This is no birdhouse, but a peek at how memory works, how we hope that something we have built in our lifetime will last and remind people of who we are.
Some thought it a love poem, others a simple parallel between a place for flying thoughts to land, (implication, become memorable) with two of the enjambed stanza breaks (made with my hands// on a specific afternoon; I took the trouble// to hang that little domicile...)matching the metaphorical third (You might say that memory itself//is a piece of real estate,).
Hoagland contrasts the relationship of outer world, the observable mother bird, the baby birds whose open mouths present "a ferocious pink bouquet" with the inner more mysterious workings of what shelters memory; the specific, individual particulars of the tree on which a birdhouse will be hung; the timing, vs. the generalized "some kind of wire strapping", if I am not here for "some" reason...
Both groups thoroughly enjoyed the romp of reading and discussing this poem.
For the Bishop Sonnet, offered by Elaine R. as one of her favorites, both groups enjoyed the alliterative sounds, the
slow rhythm... Judith remarked on the Millet and Eleanor Wylie influence. The Octet contrasts the trembling/quivering
with the yearning for the the lulling magic of melody which appears in the first line of the sestet. Something about "butter-tainted lips" I find rather off-putting, which the 3-syllable "melody" in the DEF / DEF pattern of the sestet rescues,
with the sibilance of "subaqueous stillness of the sea". Comments included: this is an Ars Poetica... asking for inspiration... devotional... otherworldly... baptism by music...
Flock is a one-sentence column of words that establishes a simile between starlings and smoke, as what allows us to distinguish currents in the air, what is/in it. What is pleasing is the shift to the abstract idea of allegiance, which smoke, unlike the
starlings, cannot hold. Comments : density of what is earth-bound; smoke is inanimate... but starlings not.
fire... of life itself...
something up in the air...
meditation...
air the mind: starling smoke our thoughts...
The poem with the drawing shows a woman's back, her head, with the hair like wisps of smoke. The words:
Our Backs
tell stories
no book
has the spine
to carry
Enigmatic and pleasing... one learns a lot from a back!
We had discussed the Jen Tappenden poem, "Learning to Float" on Nov. 9, however, it fit nicely with the grouping so we discussed it again. As an aside, what I love about these library groups, is that there is never a set attendance, so the 20-odd people present allow multiple discussions to maintain a sense of freshness.
In the December discussion, we commented on the mouth sound, and how the poem's layout addresses surface... below surface...
the lines flow like water.. the image of ribbons, yarn, skeins, reeds weaving contrast with the trees and vines. The brilliant line break, "memory holds// our mentors" -- as if to point out the contrary, in the constant "re-learning", unlearning, in a shifting world.
https://jrtappenden.com/about
The next poem by Carol Muske-Dukes is personal reflection on specific event: the wildfires in L.A. mirrored by blood moon, the revolving star of the red light on a police car, childlike drawings that look finger-painted. "She" as pronoun operates
for artist, first capturing what the sun sees:
The horizon brazen as
the great fool’s gold
jet landing on sparkler
wheels. She catches it.
The poem acts as a tribute to art as the way of capturing, rendering an experience as unique and unrepeatable.
The final poem, "Thinking about Basho" is exactly that. He is definitely a wonderful Haiku master to think about...
But is it enough, just because we revere Basho... to quote him to pin down wandering thoughts?
I would be curious what the APR editors thought of if.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Poems for November 30/December 1
Sent out w/ email:
However you celebrate Thanksgiving, may it be a time for gratitude. I will look forward to our meeting a week from tomorrow. Since we are not meeting this week, I share with you a podcast link from the Poetry Foundation: “Poetry in the Aftermath”. 0https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audio/detail/91385?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Poetryfoundationorg%20Newsletter&utm_content=Poetryfoundationorg%20Newsletter+CID_f321d2a7115bc08d1a068fc66e2e8e9b&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Poetry%20in%20the%20Aftermath
If you listen to it, You will hear also a poem by Fanny Howe. Although it is not available to “nab” this one is: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/loneliness-
I found all of it interesting, but wanted to share something a little more upbeat for discussion, hence the first Whitman poem. Although it is a share picked by Carolyn Forché from podcast this poem calls for courage; a time to pay attention and choose ways to be daily and continually attentive.
Her other poem pick: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/91413
from We Lived Happily During the War BY ILYA KAMINSKY
Long, too long America BY WALT WHITMAN
How wonderful by Irving Feldman
Amphibians by Joseph O. Legaspi
November by Maggie Dietz
Poem by Muriel Rukeyser
The Leaving by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye
7 poems is a lot to discuss in a short amount of time... but given Thanksgiving, we are missing a week.
I also sent to the Pittsford bunch the podcast link from the Poetry Foundation where I found the Whitman,
chosen by poet Carolyn Forché. Her other poem pick: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/91413
from We Lived Happily During the War BY ILYA KAMINSKY
podcast link from the Poetry Foundation: “Poetry in the Aftermath”. 0https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audio/detail/91385?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Poetryfoundationorg%20Newsletter&utm_content=Poetryfoundationorg%20Newsletter+CID_f321d2a7115bc08d1a068fc66e2e8e9b&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Poetry%20in%20the%20Aftermath
If you listen to it, You will hear also a poem by Fanny Howe. Although it is not available to “nab” this one is: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/loneliness-
The Whitman poem calls for courage; a time to pay attention and choose ways to be daily and continually attentive.
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Discussion:
Whitman: It is worth reading and re-reading this part of Leaves of Grass. How does it fit into the whole? This snippet reminds us that we are full of opposites... makes us wonder who we are as "en-masse" -- what has changed since the time of slave-holders and abolitionists in our country? How do we learn, conceive of the next step? A timely snippet.
"How Wonderful" plays with sound, repetitions, contradictions as if in a Buddhist dream scratching the dreamer to irritation... Literate light to light litter of falling words is brilliant.
It feels like an agreeable spoof on us, reading the poem as if at a large Thanksgiving dinner
whirling with conversations explaining, agreeing, disagreeing, but how wonderful -- or is it,
that here we all -- and to hang on to how you can "quietly be yourself"...
Amphibians -- as immigrants and cleverly and thoughtfully portrayed...
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the toughening of the passage.. the shell-less eggs as metaphor... amphibian as being on "both" sides and morphing from one culture to another, adapting.
November: Fun and cleverly set up with slant rhymes and end-rhymes a/b/a
do/moon as sandwich bread for cries which sets up the next tercet:
trees/bees setting up the next tercet with "foliage"
forage/gorge
etc.
I love the last tercet's opening: "The days throw up a closed sign around four...
but she takes it to a universal -- this isn't just about daylight savings... or mindfulness of the moment, but about the part of us that wants something, and realizing now's not the time. And did we even notice the fool's good we could have wanted? Are we ever "dazzled enough" ?
For Rundel, we'll discuss the Rukeyser and Kelly next week.
For Naomi Shihab Nye: a lovely sense of history, geography and an onion...
as one of the small forgotten tears worth shedding
We don’t cry unless we cut into something...
onion as metaphor.
onion is a newspaper.
Onion as lesson on how to add to the stew, yet be silent.
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