poems for Feb. 20-21

 We did not finish discussion of the last two poems in the February 13-4 packet:

The line up for Feb. 20-1
  Poem for a Lady Whose Voice I like

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48226/poem-for-a-lady-whose-voice-i-like

(You tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EO_nP2QjI

And Black Boys Play the Classics.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42877/black-boys-play-the-classics

What Make a Man by Geffrey Davis

On Anger  by Rage Hezekiah

The First Book by Rita Dove

Giovanni:  What an unusual way to  portray racism, sexism and accomplish a portrait of a real person at the same time.  The "Lady" in question is Nina Simone, who changed her name, bore the criticism of her parents for having played in cocktail lounges, and had plenty to sing about in full voice.

The reference to Genesis, the "Black" within, the big "Black" greasy rib, where "Black" has a capital letter (no where else in the poem... is filled with overtones about what "black" is... the void from which we all come from... the dark side of us, the prejudices of "adam" and how did he get a big Black greasy rib, and who is calling it so and why... 

and what is sapphire and is the 4 part divide 4 part harmony?

The last two lines changed in the youtube to "i'll show you an empty person"... hungry is stronger,

and works with the chitterlings, good things to eat, the black within, the song... the desire to feel

complete.  As Judith put it, the woman's voice is pulling a "going to church lady" on him.  She also brought up The Creation, by James W. Johnson.

for the Derricotte: beautifully set up poem to address stereotypes.  The kids playing classical music

are wearing ratty sneakers... but the most popular act in Penn Station... 3 reactions to the fact they are black:  White businessman don't stop, listen, notice and just toss in coins;  Brown workmen stare in amazement , and a three year old white boy transforms them into angels... 

the trembling... could be these three voices... or the strings of the violins and cello, the rumble of the train station... or the tension of being a reader, pulled into this, one of the "us" experiencing the trembling.  Only two choices ?  What is left out?    What if A had been B and ended the poem? 

Beautiful, regular rhythm, but set up in uneven lines... pun of "bar"... the admiration of the workmen for people of their race achieving... the indifference to the music... which is as good as being indifferent to the soul each of us carries inside... 

The next poems:

What Make a Man:  the format really helps the flow of contradictions... 

What make?  a man.  It is not written that way.  But then, the closing line is not written so we assume

"you are my sun!"  Shine each dark step... both a sense of "shine on", but the act of polishing,  (Jim calls it an "encouraging imperative").

like shining shoes.  Rich poem... What make:  second stanza the man... what make him see, open him, offer... what get the man loaded, is no longer what make... 

There's a difference between choice and decision... the --no-- two lines down from choose...

stanza break... to the next line:  what make a man decide...'

how we can be contradictory things…  A beautiful poem about humanity; Martin brought up control over others evokes a pathology in the brain…  which could explain the first action... the refusal to ask forgiveness.  

We don't know the circumstances that would make this man park the car two block away--

nor do we know what it is "away from" ...  the poem closes on the intimacy of  his arms filled--

one hopes, with his child...  the mystery of a soul.  

On Anger, written by Rage whose last name means "God is my Strength and is one of a King. 

The capital letters, italics, the words of the therapist are outside her.  Why should Rage have the job of
"sating" a therapist?  I love how armor sounds and looks like marrow... how her emotions, which includes anger
fill her with a sense of herself which seems to serve her.  

The First Book unfolds the mystery of the endless road of  shared knowledge... 
I love that you can read the last two lines two ways:
Just the world as you think...

You know it.

Do we know how the world as we think we know it really is?
Fabulous questions to think about!

Poems for Feb. 13

How It Seems to Me by Ursula le Guin
American History by Michael S. Harper
Coherence in Consequence by Claudia Rankine
A Brief History of Hostility  by Jamaal May (excerpt)
 apologies!  Only PART of A Brief History of Hostility was shared.  See the full poem (and do scroll down!!!) here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/brief-history-hostility.  It is a 5-part poem.
On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley
Won't you Celebrate with Me by Lucille Clifton

Please do read the commentaries of the poets commenting on each poem here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/12-poems-read-black-history-month

You will also find poems we do not have time to explore.  Robert Hayden’s Middle Passage, for instance, which expands on the details of the incident Michael Harper

refers to.  

The discussions are rich and hopefully will continue.  Harper calls on the fallacies in what is called “American History”, conveniently sinking truth out of view.

Rankine’s poem leaves a feeling of struggle between black and white — and at least three ways to read the final stanza, where one senses the antonyms of coherence at work.  I did call the Phillis Wheatley library to find out if they might have any of her original manuscripts.  I gather from the commentaries, that the italics used are here’s. 

**
Pittsford discussed the poems above as well as
Lost Dog by Ellen Bass
("joy does another lap around the racetrack/of my heart")... loss opens us to greater appreciation.
One Way Gate by Jenny George
(vivid language: "It was cold and their mouths steamed like torn bread."  It is the month of January, but the herd can only face one way, unlike Janus.  One fate for them.  Perhaps at the end, it is the 
girl leading them to the slaughterhouse telling herself to "get on..." do the job she must do.  A richly
layered poem.  

**
Brought up in discussion this Mary Oliver poem.

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

**
Le Guin has braided self, soul over time, like strands of DNA... the grounding of the ethereal soul in the rock, the transformation. from before time to after.  The O sounds.  Omega… slowness, the liquid l's,
softness of the sibilants increase the pleasure of this poem, which embraces our appearance,  allows acceptance of our eventual disappearance.

Last book by LeGuin: So far so good.  One of her stories… “Slow time”

Also recommended: 

Stroke of Insight:  Jill Bolte Taylor

.The Golden Helix – by Theodore Sturgeon

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers 1st Edition by Mary Roach (Author)

(task of spiritual journey, to get rid of hardening into our selves. ) 

**
The commentaries of the black poets on the work of black poets are wonderful.  What I loved about
each group discussion was the organic nature of working towards understanding.  In the Rankine, Martin brought up "being vs. not-seing"  in the first stanza as a way of understanding how we are if we cling to our rigid orthodoxy of belief... how can we arrive at knowing the other, if we don't see them?

3 ways to phrase the final stanza.
Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other,
as the same pulsing compassion,
___  would break the most orthodox heart.  (this knowing, as the unstated subject?)

Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other as the same pulsing,
compassion would break....

Were we ever to arrive at knowing,
the other as the same pulsing compassion,
would break the most orthodox heart.

The fact is, the  struggle between whites and blacks has been one of unfair treatment,
insidious and unaddressed abuse of power...
we each have a pulsing heart... the possibility of compassion that comes from knowing
the other...
The poem begs us to examine what undermines coherence, unity, face what we avoid...

In The Phillis Wheatley, I loved that Jim coined the phrase, "the bi-directional sentence" --
"once I redemption neither sought nor knew" --
regulating the syntax to
"Once I neither sought nor knew redemption" precludes the rhyme with "too" is excluded...

Poems for February 6-7

After the Angelectomy by Alice Fulton
Dead Stars  by Ada Limón
Poem from Holderlin by Susan Stewart

Clouds Gathering by Charles Simic

Snow Angels by Max Ritvo

It was a pleasure to hear Alice Fulton read her poem, in a measured, thoughtful tempo, with

beautiful diction... things like "mini-a-ture" allowed three syllables, the pacing of the line breaks

done as she intended.  audio https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/89890  

I find it interesting the the Poetry Foundation misspells Fluorescent in the 4th couplet, but in the this  fine review of the poem, replete with background on Angelos, it is spelled "florescent". https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/mondays-poem-after-the-angelectomy-by-alice-fulton/46716

"Fulton is exactly the kind of poet Shelley had in mind when he said 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Alice Fulton reimagines the great lyric subjects―time, death, love―and imbues them with fresh urgency and depth.

I was not present to facilitate the Pittsford discussion, but enjoyed these comments from the Rundel group:

Title: original -- implies our divinity removed.  Followed by "organ" which could be the one played in a church,

the first couplet also provides an original slant to the meaning of "angel" as "organ of veneration.

The richness of the homonyms is pleasing -- instead of Whalebone, wailbone as is the slippery nature of words.

Grudge sliver looks almost like silver, and the 5th stanza, "I'm so dying"...

written instead of so tired.  The reader to invited to think about such expressions -- and clichés... I'm dying to go to XYZ; I'm dying to eat... to do... to like a last wish to experience before dying, as opposed to the fed-up-ness of I'm so tired of XYZ, so tired of feeling XYZ, doing, eating, XYZ.  

All these things point to the deft use of craft and an effective use of vernacular to support the more latinate, theological abstractions.  The pacing as well, for instance, two one syllable words in the 8th stanza, the double meanings of
phrases with line breaks (Everything happy goes /.  Everything happy goes /to many decimal places.. which means
not a disappearing, but dispersion.  The use of the word excarnate -- the infinite, not incarnate in word, but endangered
because of the nature of our finite selves.  I love the humor of limited liability, night with no dilution anxieties and day
duty cubed.  

One person mentioned the sense of reading Freudian slips... a sense of someone coming to grips with dying, but also questioning faith.  For such "heavy" material, we all concurred the poem was accessible and a truly enjoyable read.
What is happy, and how is it infinites are so?  It's not because they go on forever.  But there's an ease... when asleep,
dreaming only that one is asleep, everything existing at the courtesy (not the expense) of everything else.
Indeed, let us be grateful for the kindness the infinite bestows... 
The poem invites the reader to contemplate what life was like before the "angel-ectomy", why the speak of the poem tells the infinite you're kind.  How too, travels from kindness, to all the angels, those who have them, and those who don't.

Ada Limon: Under the Stars is in her book, The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)
To get a feel for Ada, after the discussion, I found this interview: https://www.guernicamag.com/ada-limon-connected-to-the-universe/.  It doesn't surprise me that she moved to Kentucky from NYC, where she can be closer to nature and see the stars.

I love how her poem,  embraces the big questions juxtaposed with the everyday mess of the moment.  For instance,   the apt 
detail of taking out the trash... with"learn some new constellations" relating to Orion, one of the 88 in the sky, as well as the dictionary definition: a group or cluster of related things. We looked at the constellation Antlia which is the latin for Pump.  If you look at an 18th c. drawing of an air pump, at the time Antlia was made, you can imagine the "mental doodling"  to join the stars into a coherent image.

We've come this far, survived this much.  Have we decided not to survive because of our poor stewardship of the Earth when she asks What/ would happen if we decided to survive more?  She doesn't  spell out  global warming, per se, although I sense  it in rising tides, and many mute mouths of the sea, of the land. 
 Her appreciation of the capability of human beings to comfort others, even while they suffer themselves, comes as a question of choice.  What would happen if...

The image of constellation returns, the implied "pointer stars" of the Big Dipper towards the North Star, we see now,
in future generations-- Imagine indeed... "If we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big/
people could point to us with the arrows they made in their minds,/

and here I pause... to dwell on the possibilities of big that include big-hearted, as big as the sound of time painted in the opening lines.

We did not have time to discuss the Poem from Holderin.

Clouds Gathering:
In a way, the couple feels like America.. a nation after World War 2, getting the "good life"... and 2019, wondering
if we are not headed for an unhappy ending... However, to stick to the poem... it is a couple... 
the "naked" in the first stanza could be that they are open, exposed to each other.  The red of fire and blood 
in the second stanza points to the foreboding storm prepared by the title... 

We have our little moments, some have years where everything seems to run smoothly.  The ending stanza
blows ominously, as if to remind us, nothing is forever.  
Lori shared this quote from Tennessee Williams:

“The world is violent and mercurial--it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love--love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”

We ended with Snow Angels
If you didn't know Max died of cancer, it might be hard to see a parallel between the poison of chemo, 
numbing of pain killers and "parts of God" in this complex poem.  As Jim put it... a real "snow job".
It comes from his book Four Reincarnations.  A good review: https://www.kenyonreview.org/reviews/four-reincarnations-by-max-ritvo-738439/

If the snow is chemo, bringing suffering to cancer... 
no... if the snow is this whole process of being alive...

It took us a while to work through the syntax... arrive at the mystery in the words small, smallest, small enough -- the calm sibilance like the sound of a child's snowsuit as he or she sweeps small arms
and legs into an angel. 

poems for January 30-31

American Sonnet for the New Year by Terrance Hayes

Eunomia- Poem by Solon

snow by Patty Crane
Hummingbird Abecedarianby Aimee Nezhukumatathil

From the Book of Time (excerpt)

When Death Comes  by Mary Oliver

Breakage by Mary Oliver 

The American Sonnet, published in a recent issue of The New Yorker, has the audio recording of Terrance Hayes reading, which makes for an interesting contrast of how a reader might interpret this 14 liner,

filled with repeating words, ingenious adverbs, and absolutely no advice from the traditional use of

line endings or punctuation, and how the poet does.  We discussed at length the choices a poet makes

by giving such information or not, and how that influences the message of the poem.  Perhaps it is

an insidious method, to allow an emotional layer of rage with overtones of what makes an "ugly American", not just the ugly "things" .  Our eyes lined up "things" as the un-capitalized subject of unpunctuated sentences; noted the placement of ugly, present in each line, except the penultimate one (regularly truly quickly things got really incredibly/// saving "ugly" as first word as the beginning of the last line).

The possibilities for contradictory meanings are amazing.

The next poem, by Solon, (638-558BC) one of the seven wise men of Greece were well-known, both to each other and to the general public reflects his law-making background and rhetorical skill. When Anacharsis, one of these wise men, came to visit Solon in Athens, saw Athenian democracy at work, he remarked that it was strange that in Athens wise men spoke and fools decided.  Our current

New Year in America would be characterized by Dysnomia, named in the poem for bringing 

"countless evils for the city".  I love the rich discussion that ensues from each person’s observations as we discuss poems.  What makes a poem a “successful poem” varies for each. After reading Solon (in translation,) How does this response to the one above strike you?  https://thepoetryprojectsite.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/eunomia-by-solon/  

 Both poems point to the role of poetry to address politics and the common good.

Snow, a poem found on Verse Daily, speaks as well to the structure of poetry to address the tendency to lump a noun into one term.  The first stanza arranges the rhythm -- repetition of snow, the 

breathiness of flakes fallen, each labelled snow, 

                   " Not a single flake alike
but all of them       spoken for                   
                and we think nothing of it"

the breath before the "naming" and the "thinking nothing of it" applying to the nuanced layering of both. naming, individuality.  The second stanza with its measured mention of three birds,

followed by                 "Think bird is bird is bird is" has the same nuance -- is it the three birds

who think this, or is it a command to the reader to apply "bird" to the different names, or both

and more?  Like the Hayes sonnet, how do you emphasize the words:  Think bird.... is bird... 

is bird... is... or Think.... Bird is... bird is... bird is... or perhaps bird is bird.... is bird... is

Oh the power of words!  We delighted in the lineation of the final stanza where the bird

is set free from "word cages"!  

The Abecedarian met with less success.  More like a clever exercise applied to understanding the rhythm of her father's language... but did not move the heart. 

The three Mary Oliver poems contrasted her style.  Most know her from "Wild Geese", "The Journey",  and poems like "Mr. Death", or in this case, "When Death Comes" which also mentions

each life as common/singular flower... each with a "comfortable music in the mouth", "precious to the Earth".  She first wraps the reader in a sense of acceptance, belonging, value, hen invites the reader

to contemplate how the gift of life is used... Her lines "I was a bride married to amazement./

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." have been often quoted.    She sets up

the formula, "When it's over... I don't want" -- but beyond this anaphor, variation.. twice, when it's over,

and twice positives... but  "I don't want" comes three times... as if our power to choose will ensure

the last line, "I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world."

Indeed, her poems show us how to live so we won't feel this way. One of the group felt so discouraged...

as if indeed she hadn't gotten beyond "sighing, feeling frightened, judging whether she had  made of my life something particular, and real."  And so I quoted Wild Geese -- "You do not have to be good...."

"From the Book of Time" is the title of  Part Three in the book-long poem, "The Leaf and the Cloud".

The book is masterfully arranged in 7 poems, and Part 3 also has 7 parts.  I only used the first two,

which are positive.  Here we have the "philosophical" and spiritual Mary Oliver, inviting us to 

consider the particular leaf, the cloud, so often treated "cloud is cloud is cloud".  I love that the nouns

"leaves" and "clouds" are also verbs in both singular and plural -- not the only pronoun in English

that makes them sound singular, is 3rd person singular.

I chose "Breakage" as an example of Oliver's fine craftsmanship. She hints at "the whole story" in the title, the mention of gulls, creates a coherence of images of particular shells resonant with voice.  It convinced

the more professorial in the group that  Mary Oliver is not "just a sentimental poet,  good for people who read poems for healing."  And what is wrong with that?  Her poems are memorable, accessible... 

and well-crafted, imbued with a generosity that acts like a salve on the soul.