I hope you all have enjoyed the holidays and are filled with good spirits for the start of another year! The Hardy poem was written on December 31, 1899… A little old, a little new.. and a note of timelessness from the nature of art…
Father Time and Baby New Year by Michael Meyerhofer
Father Time and Baby New Year by Michael Meyerhofer
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Winter Night by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(discussed O Pen, Dec. 27)
If I Could Tell You by W.H. Auden
Holy Pictures by Finvola Drury
blessing of the boats (at St. Mary's) – Lucille Clifton
** passage from selected prose of Robert Frost, pp. 105-7: Letter of March 25, 1935. "Speaking of ages, you will often hear it said that the age of the world we live in is particularly bad. I am impatient of such talk. … We have no way of knowing that this age is one of the worst in the world's history. All ages of the world are bad… a great deal worse anyway than Heaven. If they weren't the world might just as well be Heaven at once and have it over with. One can safely say after from six to thirty thousand years of experience that the evident design is a situation here in which it will always be equally hard to save your soul.**
We had a small group after our two-week hiatus: Kathy, Mike, Lori and eventually Jim.
The Meyerhofer poem was enjoyed for the juxtapositions, fresh language, but unlike the discussion
in O Pen two weeks ago, which commented positively on the humor, as a "New Year Poem" the Oasis group found it darker... in fact, it set the stage for a bleak sense of "new year" picked up by
Hardy and Auden.
Tangled bine-stems, strings of broken lyres... a century's corpse in the ancient
pulse of germ and birth.... does feel quite "fervourless"... and the messenger of joy
and blessed hope, so "frail, gaunt, small"-- rather the feel of America as we start
a second year of Trump.
Winter has indeed struck hard this week with an arctic blast... and even the Edna St. Vincent Millay
which juxtaposes the day of hard work, the warmth of the fire as place of recovery,
in the company of others, spinning stores, leaves a somber tone of "end of the year reflection"...
what is life all about?
Auden's reply, "If I could tell you, I would let you know", is scarcely reassuring. Time shakes its finger at us,
and communication seems stymied.
His villanelle does not end on the more optimistic suggestion that roses be allowed
to grow as they will... but rather on the fate of war, which perhaps seems to "run away",
as a hypothesis which time would be sure to remind you, will happen again-- crushing
any hope with "I told you so" -- and a sense of the inevitable fate of human beings,
where struggle reveals as Frost says, "all ages are bad". We did summarize his sonnet--
looking at the questions in the sestet...
We had a small group after our two-week hiatus: Kathy, Mike, Lori and eventually Jim.
The Meyerhofer poem was enjoyed for the juxtapositions, fresh language, but unlike the discussion
in O Pen two weeks ago, which commented positively on the humor, as a "New Year Poem" the Oasis group found it darker... in fact, it set the stage for a bleak sense of "new year" picked up by
Hardy and Auden.
Tangled bine-stems, strings of broken lyres... a century's corpse in the ancient
pulse of germ and birth.... does feel quite "fervourless"... and the messenger of joy
and blessed hope, so "frail, gaunt, small"-- rather the feel of America as we start
a second year of Trump.
Winter has indeed struck hard this week with an arctic blast... and even the Edna St. Vincent Millay
which juxtaposes the day of hard work, the warmth of the fire as place of recovery,
in the company of others, spinning stores, leaves a somber tone of "end of the year reflection"...
what is life all about?
Auden's reply, "If I could tell you, I would let you know", is scarcely reassuring. Time shakes its finger at us,
and communication seems stymied.
His villanelle does not end on the more optimistic suggestion that roses be allowed
to grow as they will... but rather on the fate of war, which perhaps seems to "run away",
as a hypothesis which time would be sure to remind you, will happen again-- crushing
any hope with "I told you so" -- and a sense of the inevitable fate of human beings,
where struggle reveals as Frost says, "all ages are bad". We did summarize his sonnet--
looking at the questions in the sestet...
David from O Pen says this: DS: In the octave Frost jokes about
the most unsettling things, as if the jokes might neutralize what is so
unsettling.
The poet’s tendentious questions in the sestet play with us by pretending
that the unusual particulars—the actors in this drama all being white—indicate
something fated, a “steering” more than a blundering set of choices and
outcomes. But I believe that the only
intended design here is the poet’s and it’s a teasing one. He plays with his
readers’ tendency to imagine a deity behind nature. But if this death-scene
represents a deliberate design, the intentions of this designer are dark and
appalling.
**
See O Pen for the discussion of the Fin Drury and Clifton...
Terri offered this understanding of the Drury by email since she couldn't be there.
"To me, it's a moment poem. It is obviously something that has happened many times, this finding of the church cards which are supposed to be kept in one's wallet to bring luck or have a blessing always with you and yet he finds them on the sidewalk, trampled. I find a similar feeling to his when he at least does not find them in his mail box, like the religious tracts people always find hidden away in stores or left on benches. Those are left meant to be found but the ones he picks up are meant to be kept and have some how been lost or escaped. He contrasts that with his paper which he has signed up for and will not do so again as it arrives dusty and dirty. These things, produced a poem although he complains of them both. I thought it was a just a fun moment, the exact thing that happens to me and then I put into a poem some times."
Terri offered this understanding of the Drury by email since she couldn't be there.
"To me, it's a moment poem. It is obviously something that has happened many times, this finding of the church cards which are supposed to be kept in one's wallet to bring luck or have a blessing always with you and yet he finds them on the sidewalk, trampled. I find a similar feeling to his when he at least does not find them in his mail box, like the religious tracts people always find hidden away in stores or left on benches. Those are left meant to be found but the ones he picks up are meant to be kept and have some how been lost or escaped. He contrasts that with his paper which he has signed up for and will not do so again as it arrives dusty and dirty. These things, produced a poem although he complains of them both. I thought it was a just a fun moment, the exact thing that happens to me and then I put into a poem some times."
We looked up "Joel Clay Brauchi" --mentioned in "Holy Pictures and found an article from 1986 about a missing 8 year old,
indeed, from Smyrna, TN. We were stumped by the ending.
The Irish blessing effect didn't happen, although I had each person read the blessing of the boats.
It's amazing to me, how different the discussions are of the same poem... partly make up of the group, partly
the selection, which in this case perhaps could point to a different medley of poems, and timing
of the discussion.
