May 16-17

One Heart - by Li-Young Lee

From Blossomsby Li-Young Lee

Micro-minutes on Your Way to Work by Brenda Hillman

Species Prepare to Exist After Money by Brenda Hillman

Between the Wars by Robert Hass

 The Song of the Banjo by Rudyard Kipling

In Poetry in Person edited by Alexander Neubauer, which Carolyn brought to class,
the interview with Li-Young Lee speaks about interiority-- the pilgrimage in search
of self.  For him, writing is an act of love... so this search for the self has nothing
of Byron's solipsism... His poems are shapes of love.  So it is with the first poem,
which opened and closed the session.  He captures the "one-ness" and connection,
the sounds of ethereal "f"'s (flying, first, freedom, fastening, falling) threading
the sense of release in the "work of wings" as we are born, journey to the end of life.
Note the past tense -- the work was always freedom...
The use of "even" -- it is not just flying that is born of nothing -- everything is --
very much like a Zen Koan.

After ending with long and rather tedious Kipling describing the Boer war, we returned
to Li-Young Lee after speaking of Kipling's contradictory story of sending his legally blind
son to the front... the conflict of patriotism and wanting himself to serve, and projecting that
on his own child, he willingly sacrifices.  How do you resolve that?

Li-Young Lee perhaps allows us to examine the I, which preoccupies him, without using
the pronoun or giving a sense of the poem as a mirror as Hillman does when she reduces herself to
little i (Species prepare to exist after money).  Who is I, in a culture, in the inexactness of the self
we live with yet, also the I which is the universe... where all small i's are extinguished.

From Blossoms, allows us the journey of the peach from blossom to the fruit savored from hand to mouth--as if ripe juice were running through our fingers and chin...  Sensual, the gentle mix of
outward sign (Peaches, painted) and inner "jubilance".  Little English glitch... the brown paper bag
does not come from blossoms... From blossoms comes peaches in a brown paper bag...
the b's and p's (blossom, brown, bag, bought, boy, bend... boughs... bite, full circle to repeat of "blossom" accentuating the miracle of peach (4 times mentioned, and "eaten" in the 4th and final stanza... peach as eternal life in Chinese culture, allowing joy.

We enjoyed the first Brenda Hillman poem... the title is a wonderful hook..  We explored "silver"
and "nothing" the repeat where the two words are separated... the blend of lyric and prosaic...
the sense of moonlight, flash of feather, a distant ice age, and "caged" stars.  In the end, it felt
we were rewarded with increased enjoyment.  Less so for the second poem, which also contained
counting -- seven tiny silences... like the 5 zeroes + one.  There was a cleverness to it but I am
reminded  of Auden's comment:  "Poets who want to change the world tend to be unreadable."

Robert Hass:  His poetry doesn't push beyond the normal breath.  His image of "whole notes of a requiem the massed clouds croaked" could be referring to redwings, cattails, or details of Polish history.  Odd "lifeline" effect of the opening line repeated line 15.  No stanza break, everything smashed together...which gives a feeling of assault.  Night as beggar; two different ways...
first, with silence in tatters; secondly simply dressed as beggar only to end on  children begging chocolate.  Unsettling.

Between wars... 1922 ...

Kipling's style seems incongruent with the horrors of war with "pilly-willy-winky-winky popp"
and tump-tumpa-tumpa-tump... tunka to tinka, plunka with a tara-rara-rara.  We discussed at length the contradictions of his personal life.

May 9-10

Hymn to Timeby Ursula K. Le Guin

Adios by Naomi Shihab Nye

Being but Men by Dylan Thomas

Paradise  by George Franklin

The Two by Philip Levine

Against the Kitchen Wall  by Eleanor Ross Taylor

In a letter to my mother, not sure when, I describe to her the idea of "O Pen" as a chance 

for people to respond to how a poem is "working on them".  For me, what counts is a poem

which pries open an angle that allows a bit of light to glimmer on the complexity of being human.

Today's selection certainly provides food for thought!

Le Guin:  Peaceful tone, and a "sense of complete thoughts expressed without the benefit of grammar" as Jim phrased it.  Strings of words, familiar, like "Let there be" --

and the mind continues... "light" -- but the poem insists that time, not God, is making 

a declaration about the 4th dimension where time, light, energy swirl in being.

Both groups thought of the song, "Turn, turn, turn"-- with a thought that when a poem is set to music, usually, it is the music that takes the upper hand.  A Hymn to time -- a praise song... without

the usual trimmings or need for music... Instead, there is a subtle crafting which develops a sense

of "all-ness" :the four fragments that start with "And" and end with

a period; the repeat of radiance; the rhyme of dance/expanse/chance... the sandwich of slant rhyme of room/home/returning to "womb"... the tiny reality of gnats juxtaposed with radiance...

Le Guin is versed in the Tao, having worked on its translation and here, captures the spirit.

Comments: Round of life… Tale for the time being… Japanese Buddhist Monk… or Heidegger,

Time and Being... 

we're all "timed" beings.. 

role of time.  Story of the trapped miners and only one miner had  a watch and lied about time. 

He knew how long they had, the others didn't, and was the only one who didn't survive.

We don't understand anything until we have distance from it…

Adios:   In English "goodbye" was "God be with you" -- the final farewell... be with God...

The advice, 3rd line: Use it. Learn where it begins,-- the small alphabet : a... of departure.

The opening stanza seems to point to how we communicate... the importance of wishing
each other well... like a blessing... commending, commitment,  benediction.  
Juxtaposed with the sensual, smelliness of decay... the liquid "l" of linger, leaves, smell, mold...
how leaves is both noun and verb.  In a way, a poem of finality... 
Like the sound of earth on a coffin in the final its... followed by silence.

At first I didn't think this was one of her strong poems -- but on spending time with it, 
I admire how she treats difficult subjects lightly…with feeling.
I sense a long voyage -- she  takes us way out w/ goodbye and yet keeps you close.

Each line allows a pause… 

Being but men seems to start with our human-ness, our fears.. The role of "afraid"--

or is it merely descriptive... the w's whisper in a world of wings and cries... wonder watching the stars.  He tells the aim... but that changes nothing.  The opening line repeats as last line. 

Walk into trees, as opposed to climbing them.  Contrast of adults/children, a sort of Wordsworthian celebration of innocence, which allows "ascent" as opposed to walking into obstacles... Role of

"noiseless" and rooks -- careful not to wake up the dark... able to transcend...

We wondered if this were written about the the rumblings of world war 2 ... 

The word "soft" -- for syllables and for ascent... the sibilance repeated in bliss and stars... 

The Franklin was a delightful parody... what do we wish for with "paradise"?  We do not know

the outcome of Mephistopheles...  O Pen diverged into a long discussion about Job... Jung, Noah's Flood and John provided this link to lyrics.

https://www.google.com/search?q=before+the+deluge+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari   

Oasis enjoyed the pokes at "perfection" where poets "mumble, make last minute revisions on the marble"  (staircase to heaven?).

The story of "The Two" is masterful in its complexity.  Who are these "two"-- a "he" and a "she"

unsure of what to become... the parallel of Fitzgerald, who started as an Ad man (hence the famous

one-liner "we keep you clean Muscatine"...  Oasis felt it was like a writing exercise... like describing a Hopper painting, making up a solution for. a problem... but addressing the mystery of love.

By the end "Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write" takes on large proportions--

life in America... what work is... what betrayal of the American Dream... 

Eleanor Ross Taylor: for me a poet I didn't know, but happy to have stumbled upon.

We are on the edge of a story -- a sense of being in a secluded prairie with a posse of evil

men about to lay waste to this woman's home... and yet, she is the one who accuses herself

of being the one who "laid waste".  The adjectives bankrupted, malpractice... give the sense

of abortion... the "gifted wheat" -- money?  Sacred pear-- "life".

A satisfying poem, even though left with unresolved mystery.  

my FIFTH book-- Launch May 5

**
So, the last  entry on this blog, I was too tired to be able to articulate much of anything...
My fatigue by last night was so great, I couldn't even stay awake for the
 delightful presentation of pictures, bringing humor to the "stuff of everyday life"--
I do recall the selfies... someone hailing a cab, but all you see are the arms doing an
"I'm a little teapot dance".

Perhaps the exhaustion aside from little sleep and too many projects, is also the
looming question of why I write the blog... no one reads it, as far as I know... rather
like me writing morning pages of words... they are little bridges to thoughts... most
of which are temporary scaffolds in which to imagine beautiful buildings...

We returned from Europe, family, friends and Rennes (sister city) connections...
followed by my presentation at the NYSAFLT conference on livening up the French class with poetry...  and Michael Czarnecki's new book, and my query to him about publishing my
new and revised.  The answer was yes -- and let's do it for poetry month -- so the ms went
to him March 25.  Since then:
April 14: Pittsford Library Talk : When Words Come Alive
April 15: Nice Boots Collaboration
April 18: The Fun of Nuts & Bolts & Possibilities (Rundel)
April 23: MCC French Club -- poetry
April 26: Ad Hoc at W&B
April 28: Poetry, Potluck

Hosting of Chinese Film Maker, Ermao Zhong April 25-29
2 sessions prepared for W&B, but cancelled April 21, 28
ready for May:
May 5:  BOOK LAUNCH!!!
May 9 : Garden Club tour of the MAG
Teacher In-Service on using Centennial Park and Poets Walk

Here is the flyer the library put together for me.  Picture is from 2010 I believe...
same picture as the one used by Susan Trien in her write up about O Pen...




I have been up sometimes before 4 am, thinking poetry... looking at the voices in my head
who nag me about why I think I should even consider putting a book together.
I try to treat them with kindness.  They come from feelings I gathered along the way
that I didn't matter, was not important, forgetting that indeed, although there was a time
when my mother couldn't be herself, much less a mother, there was also a time she gave
me the gifts I enjoy so much:  enthusiasm and energy to connect people (her teaching
of Sunday school; my writing of poems for Church holy days when a choir member 2 years ago)
my joy of teaching French, art and poetry appreciation; her joy of teaching tennis, and being a counselor at Aloha Hive with nature puzzles...

So many parallels... and finally, I can separate from her -- not be afraid that her struggle indicates
my struggle -- that I will have failed for 20 years not to be the mother my children deserved...
that the next step is to be institutionalized for another 25 years in a locked ward.  How she
maintained her dignity and was able to survive is an inspiring story.

The poems in Twilight Venus do not dwell on her, on my working out of complex relationships,
but reflect the work of a poet eager to mediate the ability to see the sacred in the natural world
with the ability to view injustice, pain and sorrow with greater compassion.

I learn from the generosity of the people who wrote blurbs-- as I steal from MJ above and from
Bart: Oh yes, I'm mercurial, but also capable of writing an ode to a broom, "making room to mirror
time's sweep... in time with each heartbeat, making room for the quiet...

and from Tony: resplendent, elegant surfaces... to encircle life's bone-stark realities, says Tony...
all of us wanting-- our exquisite longings that lead us further than we thought we had a right to go.

and Sylvie:  colors, rhythms, images gathered through my love of music, visual arts, personal life journey.

I push my humble rock of poetry up the slopes...  do not childe myself for having chosen this route,
but feel like a seven year old... curious and eager to see where I am going next.

**
People who know me like my book.  People who don't know me well don't ask about it...
What to make of that?

Poems for May 2-3

The Writer byRichard Wilbur, 1921 - 2017

 The Habits of Lightby Anna Leahy

My God, It’s Full of Starsby Tracy K. Smith

Disobedience- AA Milne

pi by Wisława Szymborska
The Republic of Poetry by Martin Espada

The opening poem  develops both an insight into the writing process as well as a tender father-daughter sentiment many of us as parents have felt, observing our children... knowing they are the ones who need to navigate their boat;  What do we wish for them?  Wilbur, with  his balance of elegant craft and authentic emotion, wishes her "lucky passage" -- as he develops the metaphor of the ship, on a journey.  He, the writer, knows the path of a writer, and brings up the story of a trapped  starling-- akin to what it is a writer wants to free into writing, put into the world.  Watching her, this wish for her "lucky passage" is also a celebration of writing as a process... Wishing this "harder" is not the same of wishing this "even more" -- but has an idiomatic ring along with the sense of "hard" -- which is the nature of finding the road, surviving the voyage...  The door that separates the Father from the daughter is akin to the starling trying to to find an open window...
There is so much to admire about this poem-- how he pauses, then the daughter pauses, the parallel
of the seasoned writer with one just starting out... the sounds, and the lovely build-up of rhythms:
4 adjectives in a row... 3 one-syllable ones with the 4th one, with 4 syllables separated by line break:
We watched the sleek, wild, dark       
And iridescent creature      

-- Interesting that a starling, whose feathers are indeed iridescent, is not native to America... but introduced because of the remarkable plumage, and now, like violets in a garden, is overpopulated.

The next two poems were taken from "Brain Pickings" -- a weekly, generous helping of ideas-- see: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Popova

Habits of Light... and some thought of nuns and their black and white uniform... others shared information about the woman astronomer...  Henrietta Leavitt, astronomer : how she measured the distance from Earth to stars; discovered 2400 of them, yet was not recognized.

Who are we?  What does it matter that we are recognized or not? Her poem is dense and addresses
relationship -- the old school relevance of poet and astronomer who consider vastness, and try to
pin it down. Back to Nemerov and "The Makers": masters of interval relationship and scale.There is a  completeness… yet one can't isolate details. 

Here, an obscure astromer not noticed until finally through time  her discoveries seem to matter.

A sort of  stealth poem about the physics of life.  how things are not noticed… 

We loved the Tracey K. Smith poem, learning about her father, and discussed the glitches and mistakes of the hubble... the oversights and overconfidence, the hubris of launching it without

testing... the cost of the repair.  Smith gives us a portrait of her father... and also a portrait of the times...The last line points to our need to understand what comprehension is all about...

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.   

The A.A. Milne was a breath of levity... with its underpinnings of menace.  Fun to read and hear.

Pi... another brilliant poem by Szymborska-- her imagination is so great -- weaving numbers

with  story... as one person put it, like reading a double helix...

The "plot line" becomes clear when you  skip the numbers--

finally what is interrupted or connected as these two languages, one of decimal system and the other for calculating spatial geometries... Can they communicate?  be translated? 

… 

We read the Republic of Poetry -- apparently not quite the right version.  Jan will bring it next session.

                                                   

     

April 25-6

Sarajevo by Howard Nemerov
Luck in Sarajevo by Izet Saajlić translated by Charles Simic
Being of Three Minds by Howard Nemerov
The Makers by Howard Nemerov
On the Extraordinary Beauty of the Ordinary -- Nano poems by Sabina Messeg
Eclipse by MJ Iuppa
146 (All overgrown by cunning moss) by Emily Dickinson

Judith came up with the idea of Nemerov's poem which is not some variation on a villanelle,
but some called a viator. It consists of any stanzaic form in which the first line of the first stanza is the second line of the second stanza and so on until the poem ends with the line with which it began. The term, Viator comes from the Latin for traveller. An example of Skelton's form may be found in his excellent reference book, The Shapes of our Singing, and is entitled Dover Beach Revisited.

Not only are lines repeated but also  end-words, colors -- green, red, gold

The discussion brought up the Austrian and Hapsbug flags, German, English Eagle,  a crowned Lion.
The joy of repeated forms for me lies in the challenge of twisting language...
the constancy of the repeated first line contrasts nicely with the variations of the end words.
The Archduke's death was an accident providing an excuse for a war, wrapped in the lie of
"be home for Christmas" and "the war to end all wars".  Blindness, visions of dragons' teeth
in the field filled with "human filings..."; wheel of chance.

The next poem takes place in 1992.  My notes refer to "spatial planning" -- the second stanza
the irony of air-dropped food which falls on someone's legs. Luck?
Perhaps the next poem helps us understand why we wish for it, count on it, hope for it...
Identity : Difference:
likeness lies.  The authority of logos.
Stanza two brings in the magician... on the way to accessibility (build tower of Babel ) leads
to the unexpected... Money changers and religion...
Little i gave us a lot of fun:  Ego, how it wants to be deified, but back to "difference" --
we are not God, and defy Him, puffing up our names.

The Makers:  Pleasing phrases; metaphors;
relationship:  The makers (poets) are the first to say "above, beneath, beyond....
Ending the poem on "of" on purpose.


Nano poems, like Haiku.  extra spaces...

Eclipse:  metaphor for  extinction of a black person-- what is it to be an "oily smudge" of a man...

Dickinson: Feminist poem -- references to Brontës.

**
I am typing these comments a week after discussion.  Believe me, it was rich and rewarding...
and begs a better explanation.  Read the poems -- imagine at least 3 ways of responding to them.
Then comment on this blog.
I don't have time to do so right now.