Even the Rain by Agha Shahid Ali. (see March 29-April 5)
(Kathy brought up James Merrill who said to Ali, You may not be able to make changes in the world, but you can master the form. Here, he certainly did with his Ghazal!
(Kathy brought up James Merrill who said to Ali, You may not be able to make changes in the world, but you can master the form. Here, he certainly did with his Ghazal!
Spring Creek by Dan Gerber (see March 29-April 5)
**
Meditation on Beauty by J. Estanislao Lopez. (in New Yorker issue with the cover of Trump,
naked, his podium protecting his private parts. Entitled "Exposed")
Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World by Martin Espada
Meditation on Beauty by J. Estanislao Lopez. (in New Yorker issue with the cover of Trump,
naked, his podium protecting his private parts. Entitled "Exposed")
Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World by Martin Espada
Not Verb, but Vertigo by Eleni Sikelianos (not discussed at Rundel)
Like the ghazal, Lopez has chosen couplets -- but there the comparison stops. His use of enjambment heightens suspense, invites the to complete ideas such as...
but then I read about NY subways cars that...
room/in the margin of error for us to save ourselves...
Here in the South, you can hear applause...
... and isn't oil
Ancient and opaque, like an allegory
suggests we sacrifice our most beloved. Likely
skims its belly...
but even then, he does not read the poem with any expression, emphasis on pauses, breaks.
His biography says he lives and teaches in Houston . In 2016, he had this poem published in the New Yorker. "Erik Estrada defends his place in the Canon". Opening line:
Back then my mother's Spanish moved
about the house like a ghost only she could see.
I say all this, to emphasize how easy it is to take a poem on the page and misconstrue it, especially if it is meant to be read. This is not a spoken word poem. There is a progression of describing
something which should normally be considered ugly (a sunken subway car) into something beautiful--rendered into "human-enabled grace". The sounds and images in the third couplet
point to "Beauty" ...
Hope enters... quickly followed by doubt... beauty as distraction --
and some heard a sarcastic reference to dismissal of climate change, and removing beauty from
a lofty position in the company of truth . "Beauty (after all) is just another distraction".
Racism... (even the buried are divided...)
I asked people to give me their associations with "oil". Amazing... fuel, lubricant, the beauty of the shale where it is, the smell, the rainbows of a drop of it in a mud-puddle, etc. Allegory:
back to self-destruction-- "ancient and opaque... the allegory suggests we sacrifice our most belovèd."
It ends on a disturbing image of a sea-turtle... indifferent to the warming.
Lots of discussion.
Martin Espada shares this background with his poem: I wrote this poem for the National Children’s Day event Within Our Reach, held at the Newtown Congregational Church on June 8, 2013—less than six months after the tragedy. The ‘city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass’ is Tirana, Albania, site of the Bell of Peace; the city ‘where cannons from the armies of the Great War / sank into molten metal’ is Rovereto, Italy, site of the Campana dei Caduti (Bell of the Fallen) or Maria Dolens bell. The ‘town with a flagpole on Main Street’ is, of course, Newtown.”
How do we use bells? In our communal lives… celebrations and warnings... school bells, church bells, and the memory of the cracked Liberty Bell... We think of Poe's poem about Bells (although they are not made of iron!). Here Espada gives us creative inspiration as we face tragedies in our lives. "If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover too, the terms with which they are connected to other people... This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."
The sounds, the repetitions, alliterations, remind us that poetry enlists sounds to make things more beautiful. Metaphor, sounds of all the weapons transformed to language of bells.
He speaks in present tense of a world where cannons and bullets melt into bells.
Tongues of bronze replace tongues of smoke..
Other encouraging books -- to read:
but even then, he does not read the poem with any expression, emphasis on pauses, breaks.
His biography says he lives and teaches in Houston . In 2016, he had this poem published in the New Yorker. "Erik Estrada defends his place in the Canon". Opening line:
Back then my mother's Spanish moved
about the house like a ghost only she could see.
I say all this, to emphasize how easy it is to take a poem on the page and misconstrue it, especially if it is meant to be read. This is not a spoken word poem. There is a progression of describing
something which should normally be considered ugly (a sunken subway car) into something beautiful--rendered into "human-enabled grace". The sounds and images in the third couplet
point to "Beauty" ...
Hope enters... quickly followed by doubt... beauty as distraction --
and some heard a sarcastic reference to dismissal of climate change, and removing beauty from
a lofty position in the company of truth . "Beauty (after all) is just another distraction".
Racism... (even the buried are divided...)
I asked people to give me their associations with "oil". Amazing... fuel, lubricant, the beauty of the shale where it is, the smell, the rainbows of a drop of it in a mud-puddle, etc. Allegory:
back to self-destruction-- "ancient and opaque... the allegory suggests we sacrifice our most belovèd."
Rather like the Trojan war… we can
have what we want... but at a cost.
It ends on a disturbing image of a sea-turtle... indifferent to the warming.
Lots of discussion.
Martin Espada shares this background with his poem: I wrote this poem for the National Children’s Day event Within Our Reach, held at the Newtown Congregational Church on June 8, 2013—less than six months after the tragedy. The ‘city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass’ is Tirana, Albania, site of the Bell of Peace; the city ‘where cannons from the armies of the Great War / sank into molten metal’ is Rovereto, Italy, site of the Campana dei Caduti (Bell of the Fallen) or Maria Dolens bell. The ‘town with a flagpole on Main Street’ is, of course, Newtown.”
How do we use bells? In our communal lives… celebrations and warnings... school bells, church bells, and the memory of the cracked Liberty Bell... We think of Poe's poem about Bells (although they are not made of iron!). Here Espada gives us creative inspiration as we face tragedies in our lives. "If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover too, the terms with which they are connected to other people... This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."
The sounds, the repetitions, alliterations, remind us that poetry enlists sounds to make things more beautiful. Metaphor, sounds of all the weapons transformed to language of bells.
He speaks in present tense of a world where cannons and bullets melt into bells.
Tongues of bronze replace tongues of smoke..
Other encouraging books -- to read:
The Sixth Amendment: John Paul Stevens: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/26/306837618/justice-stevens-six-little-ways-to-change-the-constitution
Wilfred Owen – what passing bell for those who died
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