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.


**
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...
\
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.