Haitus: from June 6- November 14 2018

This year was around May, for some reason, blogger made it difficult to post write-ups, so I just stopped.
That's not to say 6-7 poems were not sent out, sometimes 14 different poems between the two groups.
New members came, regulars swelled like tides coming in, always 20, just never the same...

I was grateful for the hiatus, as it was a challenging year with big changes.
Two memorials for my father; a visit in the summer to see my father-in-law, who also passed away,
almost a year after my father.

My husband's retirement, and re-peated, "almost" retirement all summer.

In addition to life at home, we made many trips to visit friends... saw our family as best we could, as
everyone seems super busy.
When not traveling, we did a lot of hosting, and thoroughly enjoyed our sister city contacts, with a visit to Rennes in March, and receiving a delegation in May.

International travel:
March and Aug visit to London;
March in Brussels (as well as London and France);
Trip to Portugal : Aug. 29-September 8.
Trip to Japan : Oct. 21- to Nov. 11

Talks at Rundel (Jan. + April 18) NYSAFLT (March); book launch (May);  Twilight Venus !!
Happy to provide details.

French found increased use moderating tours at MAG from October 6 on for the special exhibit on Monet as well as moderating The French architect (11/14).

I am not sure if writing up the poems makes a difference in my life or not.
It's rather like playing the piano every day -- I don't do this in preparation for a concert, but
for the pure pleasure of being in contact with something that feeds my soul.

I will be using this blog more like a personal sketch book --  but please know I welcome comments.

Poems from Oct. (November:no meeting 10/17, Pittsford)
Thanks to Kathy Button, David Sanders and Elaine Olsson for facilitating 10/24; 10/31 and Nov 7.

Poems for November 14:
Like You, Roque Dalton
The Names, Billy Collins
Names of the Lion -- a selection from David Larsen's translation of Ibn Khalawayh
This is not a Small Voice, Sonia Sanchez
The Blessed Angels, Toi Derricotte
Keeper of Sheep, Alberto Caeiro (one of the many names used by Fernando Pessoa.)
Deleting Names -- a Decaying Sestina, Lawrence Schimel
When Giving is all we have,  Alberto Rios

Poems for November 21:
Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene, 2015 : Craig Santos Perez
The Pumpkin, John Greenleaf Whitter
Peace Path, Heid E. Erdrich
Crows, Marilyn Nelson
The House on Moscow St., Marilyn Nelson
The Moment, Marie Howe
The Moment, Margaret Atwood

O Pen - Poems for June 6

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

Remember by Joy Harjo

Prayer by Galway Kinnell, 1927 - 2014

Experience by Carl Sandburg

To You by Walt Whitman

poems for May 30-31

Ritual Object by Tsitsi Ella Jaji

Touched by Deborah Tall

Answers  by Virginia Lee Hines

 The Laws of God, the Laws of Manby Alfred Edward Housman

What The Dickens?  by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Broken Sonnet For The Decorative Cotton For Sale At Whole Foodsby ASHLEY M. JONES

 Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

See poems for commentary

May 22-23, 2018

see poems for commentary 

Poem for South African Womenby June Jordan

Commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who, August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against the “dompass” in the capital of apartheid. Presented at The United Nations, August 9, 1978.

from Passion (1980). (see Interview p. 66; March 21, 1979: Poetry in Person)

 

Sunday Lemons by Derek Walcott

[1]p. 122 Poetry in Person.  "London. wondeful line, -- marvelous exactment… is it in the music? the metaphor? in the rhythm that moves as the line moves…"

Walcott:  This is going to be very detailed, what I'm going to say:  I don't like that line anymore.

… the pitch of a line is where one tests the honesty of a poet… reality is the vibration that happens differently to millions and millions of people over generations, and that is where the validity of the thing is. 

… That line is one extra key, one extra pitch up that is not true to the harmony, or maybe the modesty, or what is being painted."  modesty of speech: plain words, not necessarily the right ones. p. 123

vague (wave in French). the joyous torment all your life, doing the wrong thing… "ruin a fine tenor voice for effect that bring down the house". (Auden, In Praise of Limestone)

Water by Philip Larkin2

chemotherapy by Lucille Cliftonthe right hand column shows words from the original versions. Poetry in Person p, 158-9)

La Chapelle. 92nd Division. Ted. by Rita Dove (September, 1918)

Love is smoke stardust-like but smoke nonetheless. – Kamakura, Sayumi

https://soundcloud.com/larry-goldings/its-only-smoke-1

Like a ghost that dances from the tip of a lit cigarette
I know what romance is, but it hasn't happened yet
Watch it floating up to heaven only knows
Disappearing before you get too close

It's only smoke
You might say a flame is burning
Only smoke
But my heart is more discerning
Only smoke...

Eyes are hypnotizing when they hold you within their embrace
Words are mesmerizing even when they've got nothing to say

The game is charming in an empty kind of way
What's the harm in asking me to play?

It's only smoke
You might say a flame is burning
Only smoke
But my heart is more discerning
I keep dreaming of a fire, but when I wake up to the cold
It's only smoke

Nov. 28

November 28-29

Thanksgiving by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Rhapsody by Aditi Machado

portraitures and erasures by Chiwan Choi

Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón

Images by Jaime Manrique

Style of 19th century... familiarity of form... tucking in message; 
fun of choices... Rhapsody or rhubarb? and where do you go when you leave familiar behind?
sounds... Ashbery-like...
dream-sequence... passionate, personal; memory and what it is like for parents to leave homeland,
and lineage ends with their children... legacy and they die on foreign soil.

Fine then... I'll take it.  (Whatever it is.). A sense of confidence of who this tree, leaf, being, is.  
Images:  photographs... imagining the stories.

Here are a few more thoughts from the group:

" I realized when I thought about class that it is no wonder we all were so responsive to the poem "Instructions on Not Giving Up"! We did talk about searching for "roots" and the significance of family "trees". And then the idea of legacy and how a tree drops it's seeds in abundance as it nears the conclusion of it's life cycle. We humans might not be able to understand how we drop, and receive, seeds of our life to and from family and friends. And even if there isn't progeny to carry on a family name, there is the progeny of us, of the essence of us, which lives on in our friends and in our family as we have interacted with them. And then as a dropped seed, it lives on in the legacy of themselves. All of that cannot be chartered in the DNA!! Maybe it could be in the interstitial fluid that Bernie talked about as if we filter each moment of the day through the subliminal essence our entire being!??!!"

The “I” in the poem that talks about all that over-the-top headiness of spring so beautifully captured in the sonics,

almost seems to grow into a “we” — so it’s not that only  the tree seems to say, “I’ll take it all” —

it’s a contagious, inclusive spirit for all of us.

From Maura’s Grandpa Fred Goerdes:

Don’t you be 

        what you ain’t,

If you isn’t 

        what you am,

Then you ain’t

        worth a damn.