2. Transubstantiation by Susan Firer
3. In This Country, I Hear, by Bertolt Brecht. (translated in new volume of his poems, 2018; 11/12/18
4. Autumn Passage by Elizabeth Alexander
5. Equinox by Esther Morgan
6. A New National Anthem, by Ada Limon
7.Let America be America Again, Langston Hughes
(I too,
Spanish next to the English translation of Roque Dalton, "Like You"
**
Comments:
1, I love the title -- it's the poem that said these things --
so what does that mean about words and how we use them? about poetry.
Hallucinatory quality -- is grass marijuana, lidocaine, a numbing street drug,
ramen and coke a substitute for rum and coke or cocaine... breathe sugar--
Like Kubla Khan, the sounds weave around... and there's a pleasant sense of entering a bath of wit.
The experience of waking up in the morning.
2. The next poem got caught up in petrichor
And one thing becoming another, until
rain ribbons the windows, and rocks
deepen and shine their colors in the rain,
the smell of the rain like ichor, which runs
in the veins of the gods.
The tone felt baptismal, sacred... but the lineation and sound was not very poetic.
A cycle of life... finding beauty in sorrow.
3. Long discussion about how "not-smiling" is apathologized in America.
Role of sales in America. That this is an old poem, written by a social activist
who wrote 3-Penny Opera... reprinted in the Nov. 12, 2018 New Yorker.
The jab of the poem is the problem with blind acceptance... "buying into" a culture
without question, at risk for self-deceit. What is happiness? What traps us into
believing something is "successful"? If we all hide behind the mask of a pleasant smile,
we cannot distinguish the reality of people. We dare not not smile.
4. A totally accurate description of the beginning of death. The repetition of the fragment introduced by "on" has a feel of an ode. Unusual juxtapositions: miraculous dying body; dazzling toddler; the body magnificent as it dims, shrinks, turns to something else. A sense of autumn, the glory (repeated 3 times) of the vibrant colors, passing into death of winter... On… as in onwards… through the passage… urging…
with 8 lines about a child balancing on "I feel the earth's pause" (see title) followed by 8 lines, all about nature. Love the "lifelong tilt...."
6. The start is "ineloquent" but when she starts to speak about the flag, and all that needs saying
in a true National Anthem -- that could be sung in all countries if we could understand "my bones
are your bones..." Wonderful poem.
7. I had the group read the words in parentheses like a chorus. No black people attended. We were like trespassers, adopting the words of black people like outsiders. We also read "I too Sing America" written 9 years before, in 1926 which was more hopeful.
8. The Roque Dalton -- the Spanish revealed the problem with translation in the opening lines.
I love love. vs. Like you I love love, life.
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