A March Launch Audio in a New Window by Ishion Hutchinson
Black Space by Ishion Hutchinson
Dog Tag by Jane
Hirshfield
Often I Imagine the Earth by Dan Gerber
These Poems by June
Jordan
The Plutzik series invited the Jamaican Poet Ishion Hutchinson (pronounced EYE-shawn) on Tuesday April 10. Although I was not able to attend, the two poems by him were stunning examples of layered meanings
rife with historical references.
How do you understand "March": a month (thank Anschluss, March 12, 1938)
March as verb, as noun... as protest, as military goose-step
"Launch"? new book, war, missile, etc.
"New Window"? New vision; on the computer, a new document...
At first it looks like language play, removing the T to make Syria... Many looked up this fairytale-looking country in Southern Austria, with its White Panther on the flag, and some maps highlight it's heart-shape
in red.
A curious perspective -- "above my voice" -- and a reference to the tarry, bituminous muck and not to get
too hung up on "the terms". 3 stanzas with jarring enjambments, ex. on edge... //
on edge of shriek... It feels like entering a horror movie without any introduction... Words like entropy--
dispersal of energy -- but irreversible... like war... the end of an old order...
the public weal... obtuse centurions in a "flare"(which now seems military)of bougainvillea... (what should bloom peacefully...) -- but we're not finished with centurions... their patent-seeking, gift kindled.
That last cluster gives a definite "emotional feel" although logically it takes a while to parse for meaning.
The group came up with patent-seeking as the military-industrial complex... and "kindle"-- a "gift" ignites
something that has potential to burn. One reads the fragments perhaps as charred remains...
The discussion came up of the syntactic sense threaded in a poem, sometimes as a hint, sometimes
more accessibly, much akin to playing music and disregarding the bar lines.
The final stanza delivers the image the previous 5 tercets prepare us to see in a "new window"...
white panther... and I think of white supremacy... the black panther's response... the seen and the unseen
of power's shadow.
Black Space is another case of a loaded title.
Black: black hole; night; dark; depression; skin color;
Space: living space; ghetto; outer space; breathing space dealing with others...
The poem is dedicated to Erna Brodber: black artist.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Brodber
who created an space for black artists...
The epigraph: Richard Crashaw, one of the Metaphysicals: the last line of his poem "Wishes to His Supposed Mistress"
http://www.bartleby.com/331/124.html
The intense and intimate depiction of Richard Crashaw that prefaces his English volumes of poetry (Steps to the Temple, 1646, enlarged 1648) is also a candlelit window that opens on his soul. To look through this window is to discover Crashaw in the state of unruffled devotion...
Perhaps the intent is to intensify a sense of the sacred. Perhaps there's a slight echo of the Crashaw in the 3d to last stanza -- myself/outpaces me/in wonder of her.
A lovely tribute to this woman at least twice his age, elevating her to muse.
The image of the salmon bell combines sounds... the color, but also the idea of the leaping fish...
I'm not sure I understand what cloud fractals... but have a sense of worlds within worlds--
safe from black feelings of grief, malice.
Dog Tag... again... what associations? The clink of them against a living heart... the identification of the dead... Without the note, we struggled with the 6th line... the reduction of the full significance of these three things into 3 terms "Blackcap Mountain. Blue scorpion venom. Persimmon Pudding".
The poem could almost work without that...
The final two lines bring shivers. An entire portrait of a man with a great heart.
The dog tags, the echo...
The Dan Gerber poem: One of those satisfying Zen, well put-together nuggets (Susan)
nothing is anything by itself… (David)
last lines of Nemerov… those… we build our Babels of. – from The Makers.
The perspective of an atom -- the smallest unit... but mostly empty...
form is emptiness, emptiness is form... and this miracle of flying... because of connection...
We chuckled at the "Teach this poem" prompts. Sure... there's the line,"These words//they are stones in the water// running away".
But we didn't need the image of stones in the Black sea to relate to Jordan's metaphors.
Stones are markers of time... are compressed matter...
I love how she alludes to the fact that poems arrive, tap the poet -- and perhaps the poet cannot tell
you where or why or how... but there is a you for whom they are written.
Maybe like Whitman and his idea of being part of the cosmos, containing multitudes or himself,
and others...
2nd stanza. are the stones running away or the water? When I am by a brook, I see that,
and she captures the ambiguity with the line break.
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