The Repression by C.K. Williams
Ghosts by Kiki Petrosino
Ghosts by Anne Sexton
Declaration by Tracy K.
Smith
Dance Piece by Ben Belitt ( homage
to Martha Graham; from Wilderness Stair (New York: Grove Press, 1955). the epigram is from Burnt Norton, from the Four
Quartets. For more about this place: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/t-s-eliots-burnt-norton
Burnt Norton—T.S. Eliot
**
To whom does Neruda speak? One idea is to speak to all that does not let him rest.
5 things: Love and 4 seasons, although he trades in Spring for looking in Mathilde's eyes.
Seasons are everything-- echo everything there is in life. I amnot sure of the tense in the line
"My heart went on forever"... but one feels almost as a ghost speaking.
What makes us want to be? The repetition "I do not want to be if..." It happens that I am...
and I'm going on. And the sense of "nearly nothing, and almost/everything" comes again,
"it will be inside me/that grains will grow..." that even once buried, although he doesn't say so, he goes on living -- this true love of life... the silence to let go of one life to continue on...
Such a reassuring poem... I see my 95 year old father this way... he indeed has lived "so much"
it would be a forcible act to forget him... his rich life before dementia, the hanging on for the past 10 years which allows me to review the many stages of who he is, his dignity, his tenacity in hanging on to life-- with gratitude -- yes... he would definitely feel like that "well on whose water/night leaves its stars/to go on alone across the fields.
The Repression has an interesting title -- as if hooked to the shorter lines (nouns, noun phrases), which almost make a poem in and of themselves... The longer lines embrace reflections... the shorter ones, more sure about
what attitude to take... one sentence (without a period)... We all got a chuckle out of the impatience of youth... -- the marvelous pile-up of adjectives...
undreamed-of (conclusions)... to many of the /even-then-preposterous, self-evolved...(almost mortifications) inflicted on myself in "starting-out days, improvement days, days when the idea alone of "psychic peace...
but see -- I am quoting the poem... the brilliant understatement makes is so witty... ending two lines later on "inconceivable capitulation" !
We compared the two poems entitled Ghosts. Some wondered if perhaps Petrosino might have written a stronger poem had she not responded line by line to Sexton's. The emptiness of her ghosts has nothing to do with the shocking and violent images of Sexton which seem to refer back to some horrible injustice. It came up that Sexton battled depression, which is repressed anger -- you feel it in her words which have a visceral effect.
Declaration by Tracy K. Smith is brilliant -- more a palimpsest than an "erasure poem" -- some heard the rhythm of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.. some thought of "Hamilton" -- but we all admired
how the Declaration of Independence turned into a story of being black...
Who is "He" -- the king? the king-pin? Interesting use of capitals..
The choppiness, unfinished/interruptedness is quite effective.
The dance piece -- the end rhyme distracts... at first aabb, then abab, then abba, then eye rhyme and ending on embraced rhyme. Keat's urn, the title of the Graham piece, "Agon" which means struggle in Greek... the struggle in the dance, the difficulty of holding paradox -- unmaking/making its death...
"the still point, that's where the dance is"... I was glad that Joyce brought up "sufferance" -- how
the lines above it are somewhat biblical... and one thinks of "suffer the little children unto me..."--
but it also means, "absence of objection" -- the lapse, the pause... the movement to be...
The poem seems to peg the nature of creativity... where the dance is the product.
I had to leave early from Pittsford for the discussion of TSE, but Judith provided a few associations below.
I loved how Paul at Rundel summarized it... the whole poem is a dance -- an elaborate, still point!
**
**
To whom does Neruda speak? One idea is to speak to all that does not let him rest.
5 things: Love and 4 seasons, although he trades in Spring for looking in Mathilde's eyes.
Seasons are everything-- echo everything there is in life. I amnot sure of the tense in the line
"My heart went on forever"... but one feels almost as a ghost speaking.
What makes us want to be? The repetition "I do not want to be if..." It happens that I am...
and I'm going on. And the sense of "nearly nothing, and almost/everything" comes again,
"it will be inside me/that grains will grow..." that even once buried, although he doesn't say so, he goes on living -- this true love of life... the silence to let go of one life to continue on...
Such a reassuring poem... I see my 95 year old father this way... he indeed has lived "so much"
it would be a forcible act to forget him... his rich life before dementia, the hanging on for the past 10 years which allows me to review the many stages of who he is, his dignity, his tenacity in hanging on to life-- with gratitude -- yes... he would definitely feel like that "well on whose water/night leaves its stars/to go on alone across the fields.
The Repression has an interesting title -- as if hooked to the shorter lines (nouns, noun phrases), which almost make a poem in and of themselves... The longer lines embrace reflections... the shorter ones, more sure about
what attitude to take... one sentence (without a period)... We all got a chuckle out of the impatience of youth... -- the marvelous pile-up of adjectives...
undreamed-of (conclusions)... to many of the /even-then-preposterous, self-evolved...(almost mortifications) inflicted on myself in "starting-out days, improvement days, days when the idea alone of "psychic peace...
but see -- I am quoting the poem... the brilliant understatement makes is so witty... ending two lines later on "inconceivable capitulation" !
We compared the two poems entitled Ghosts. Some wondered if perhaps Petrosino might have written a stronger poem had she not responded line by line to Sexton's. The emptiness of her ghosts has nothing to do with the shocking and violent images of Sexton which seem to refer back to some horrible injustice. It came up that Sexton battled depression, which is repressed anger -- you feel it in her words which have a visceral effect.
Declaration by Tracy K. Smith is brilliant -- more a palimpsest than an "erasure poem" -- some heard the rhythm of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.. some thought of "Hamilton" -- but we all admired
how the Declaration of Independence turned into a story of being black...
Who is "He" -- the king? the king-pin? Interesting use of capitals..
The choppiness, unfinished/interruptedness is quite effective.
The dance piece -- the end rhyme distracts... at first aabb, then abab, then abba, then eye rhyme and ending on embraced rhyme. Keat's urn, the title of the Graham piece, "Agon" which means struggle in Greek... the struggle in the dance, the difficulty of holding paradox -- unmaking/making its death...
"the still point, that's where the dance is"... I was glad that Joyce brought up "sufferance" -- how
the lines above it are somewhat biblical... and one thinks of "suffer the little children unto me..."--
but it also means, "absence of objection" -- the lapse, the pause... the movement to be...
The poem seems to peg the nature of creativity... where the dance is the product.
I had to leave early from Pittsford for the discussion of TSE, but Judith provided a few associations below.
I loved how Paul at Rundel summarized it... the whole poem is a dance -- an elaborate, still point!
**
“lully lullay, the falcon
has borne my make away. (make=
mate)
lyrics:
The maidens
came
--Anonymous
The maidens came
When I was in my mother’s bower;
I
had all that I would.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
The
silver is white, red is the gold;
The
robes they lay in fold.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
And
through the glass window shines the sun.
How
could I love and I so young?
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
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