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.
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.
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