Peach Picking by Kwame Dawes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
Florence, Kentucky by Adam Scheffler
The Children of the Poor by Gwendolyn Brooks
"We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface, but connected in he deep." Wm. James
The first poem swept us away with the sound play... the idea of peaches as bodies... easily scarred, bruised, which brings to mind memories of slave days... the basket of peaches like a boat, sailing
all the way from Africa, where there are 800 varieties of Acacia trees. Every detail of the poem
points to more than peach picking... the ache... the sorrow, in the background of what is
"unremarkable" where a house rises like a dream...
the closing couplet is haunting.
in the middle of nothing: a body with no context
just the language of loss haunting as a low country hex.
Comments about the Langston Hughes poem: it reads like a song; sings yet is solemn as a sermon.
The "I" in poem is eye of history. 3 rivers: Nile, Euphrates, Mississippi... I love the rich paradox of
the muddy river, shining golden in the sunset... how do we know rivers? the flow of life, history?
We would have wanted to hear Adam Scheffler read his poem to hear how he pronounces the first two words: So what. vs. So what if... As he explains in the note "about this poem", Florence, KY
has nothing of the splendor of Italian renaissance, but rather this town on the Ohio river where the areas of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky merge, represents the ugliness of prisons, gun stores, Walmart.
In this glimpse of a stories of an old man, a bald man hectoring a young infant-carrying girl, a nurse...
it is not the river, but TVs which "spin despair’s golden honey—".
The poet calls us to empathy. Ending on the memory of walking out on the ice... which
miraculously/mercilessly… does not break... reinforces suffering that will continue. Perhaps the noticing leavens it. but someone quoted Thomas Hobbes: " Life…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
The discussion of the 3-part poem by Gwendolyn Brooks brought up mention of Annie Allen (1949) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Allen
How to deal with indifference... the quandary of not having means to help one's children... and the final stanza... Shall I ask them to pray? If that doesn’t work…
hope they will figure out how to survive and wait… holding the bandage.
Patience…
Running,by Joy Harjo Poem from July 9, 2018, New Yorker. resignation…
It came up today to wonder how Joy Harjo would read her poem, “Running”. Here is the audio link
poetry: structure for understanding the world, and perform rigorous studies of the human soul.
Agile music… it doesn’t travel in a linear way… it interanimates matter and spirit… us and them…
(from reading at Cornell.)
As Native American, Harjo takes us through history, violence, and running, running... ending
" It was my way of breaking free. I was anything but history.
I was the wind. "
And yet, the poem seems to indicate just the opposite…
Powerful discussions about racism, prejudice, injustice...
The question remains... how do we, with so much privilege act to change this?
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