poems for Dec. 14-15

The Terraced Valley   by Robert Graves

My Father’s Kites        by Allison Joseph.  
Happy New Year by Rob Carney

For It Felt Like Power by Carl Phillips

 Prayer by Carolyn Oliver

 THE RADIO IS FULL                      by Lindsay D. Alexander

Wildflowers  by Linda Pastan

Death of the Old Year

            by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Winter Solitude - Poem by Matsuo Basho

For further reading:

http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/church/auden/Joseph Brodsky:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57943/star-of-the-nativity(see his 2002 "Nativity Poems":  https://www.amazon.com/Nativity-Poems-Bilingual-Joseph-Brodsky/dp/0374528578)

The Graves poem uses the "legs" of rhyme and rhythm to explore a new world --
how does one consider a world inside-out, or outside-in,  and what kind of world would find a sun unnecessary? Graves plays with the rhyme scheme:  AA BB CC to ABBA CC to AA BAB CC DD
to a long scramble of 14 lines: ABBA DCD EFC GG EE
as if the rhyme were trying to "unscramble" returning to the "out" rhyme where "inside-out" and the reverse line up to mirror in and out as distinct, recognizable worlds.

This trick of time, changing the world about

To once more inside-in and outside-out.

I see the valley as the right and left glove, neither descending nor ascending, earth/counter earth

although the poem  seems to point to some otherworldliness, embracing shadows and ghosts...

the ending of the first stanza

For more than sunshine warmed the skin

Of the round world that was turned outside-in.

One of those poems that intrigues me, but I confess, I am not sure I have grasped what Graves intends the reader to understand.  David's comments helped, "if words are baffling seek what  feelings expressed in rhythm and rhyme – it creates a mood of a song… meaning not as important… what happens beyond life."  Unfortunately, Judith who suggested the poem was not there.  She had mentioned it triggered by TS Eliot's Burnt Norton, which deals with time.

My Father's Kites is a delightful hommage to a father.   The enjambments imitate the flight of the  kites assembled from odds and ends which yet resembled diamonds above what sounds like a derelict neighborhood.  I love how she has the bones of the kites come from the twigs of the roses in the garden, only the father could work such beauty into this unforgiving land.  The ending speaks for itself.  

Father, you left me

with this unsated need to find the most

delicately useful of breezes, 

myself into the untenable, balance my weight

as if on paper wings, a flutter then fall,

a stutter back to earth, an elastic sense

of being and becoming forged in our front 

yard your hand over mine over balled string

Happy New Year:  Fun personnification of a new year... here in the north with the cold...

how to welcome it in... purring like a cat!  

**
For it felt like power:  We have been looking at poems which have notes from the author.
If Phillips had not mentioned "the pointlessness of expending energy on what can't be changed"--
I might not have picked up on it in the poem.  I love that "they" is not understood as "leaves"
until the third stanza... It is an invitation to re-read the poem.  What is the "it" in the title?
How does the metaphor of leaves as suspended heroes (inside the myth made from the myth of themselves) become leaves as sunlight in fog?
I like that touch of mystery.  It is clear that leaves sense no regret -- unlike humans when things
fall and die.  The colloquial touch in the 2nd stanza seems out of touch with the general tone
of the poem.  Why did he change "ginkgo" mentioned in the note to "sycamore"?
How does that matter?

One person pointed out that the title and last sentence felt like the Vietnam memorial --
transcient... 

Prayer by Carolyn Oliver

after Emily Dickinson’s “For each ecstatic instant”

captures the passion of Emily – constraint of her life/poems – but opposite expression.

Below the Dickinson -- Oliver uses each word, "Golden Shovel" technique as the final

word on each line.  

FOR each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour	5
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

 We discussed it at length... the difficulty of the "burgeoning language" and sense of "overstuffed".

Phrases like " possibility's delectable promiscuities" feels rather over the top.  Strange hubris of Asking "to be filled with sound and sense until overthrown" would seem sufficient -- but she pushes it futher.  What is "womb-hollowed with the promise of holding all God cannot know."?  Bliss. Rage. Tears.   The full gamut... 

What is a prayer -- but a supplication, a wish expressed... she wants to experience                                                            everything.  And as Emily says, "we pay an anguish"for such an experience.  One person was reminded of the movie Babette's Feast. 

The next poem weaves the title into the first sentence.  It sounds like an explosion of feeling as well in the ecstasy of Spring -- the radio playing music, and all the world exploding like a narcissist,

with love... Fun poem... but did not mark me with a sense of being memorable...

Wildflowers on the other hand is pure delight.  I love that it is a plural "you" which can be

confused with a personal you of a lover.

Pittsford will discussion "Keeping Things Whole" , "Death of the Old Year" Dec. 20th.

Both Rundel and Pittsford had fun with the Basho... How many ways can you read it?

Winter

Solitude

in a world

of one color

the sound

of wind.

Winter in a world
Solitude of one color
sound of wind

Winter color
Sound of solitude
in a world of wind

etc.