May 16 -- Poetry Oasis only

A Word on Statistics -- Wislawa Szymborska. (for O Pen, June 3)
Also Known As  by Jim Moore
Ruins by Eliza Griswold
Low Road by Marge Piercy

 Like You by Roque Dalton 

Szymborska:  What happens when you take numbers and apply them to abstract nouns? With her habitual wry humor, Szymborska addresses the human condition.

She starts with those who know better, and all the rest, who are unsure of every step.  Are there only

two categories? Humans should know better than to use an adverb like “always”, especially in the context of “good” barren of any defining context.  And will I be the first to admit that I struggle not to feel a titch of envy when I admire someone?  At least, there are 82 others per hundred like me, although I join a slightly smaller crowd of those “led to error”.  Do you live in constant fear? Where does your mind go with such a question—?  Do you imagine totalitarian state, make columns of which fears are real, which imaginary. And how about how you behave in a crowd?  Do you become savage?  Define cruelty, wisdom, justice… and each word in the phrase “getting nothing out of life except things”.  The discussion touched on several possibilities, such as,

things which are of value, things as part of contemptible capitalism, or things as what is considered “devoid of emotion.  The conceit of the poem comes from this juxtaposition of concrete measurement to subjective items.

What does it suggest about “ranking” and judgement?  Jim suggested this poem be shared with all departments

of sociology and psychology. And who might be the one out of 99 who is not worthy of empathy?

In the end, does any of this matter, since we all face inevitable death?

Jim Moore: We enjoyed the conversational tone, the clear thinking, the turn from the idea of someone dying in the first line, to the larger vision of “sky” which blankets the earth and the surprise of the ending.  In French, the word for sky is also the word for heaven or heavens, and indeed, if we compared Earth, as one small planet in the universe, to our brief existence on Earth, our personal story indeed does not need a loudspeaker. So, take time to wait, contemplate on that green bench… get over yourself!

Griswold: Take a cliché, say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and change it up.  The title comes from the closing line:  Rome is also built on ruins.  The Poet is a journalist  and one has the sense she has experienced horros up close.  The opening stanza alternates the repulsive with what could be appealing… Spring in Trastevere, a town outside Rome, Ragazzi, turquoise sneakers, paperwhites… but the day is oozing…the nuns sneakers clash with the ability to mount stairs, and the alliterative p treatment of pus in pimples pushing up like paperwhites describes the adolescents. Spring — and what springs up… Like the image of  a dead man left in the road in the Congo.  Like this. No, like that… How spring and the idea of eggs hatching and bulbs sneak into description of a heart.  The last stanza with the flock of tourists, like scavengers, but in matching hats. And the realization that being Rome’s ruins, are filled with life… the surprising healing of feeling alive, although she is too good a poet to say it that way.  It’s curious that we discussed Merwin and his poem where gratitude walks hand in hand 

with misery.

see below.

Piercy: This poem of resistance, well-known from the 60’s and 70s.  How would you finish these sentences:

“What can they do…

“It starts when you do…

But the line break finishes the sentences this way:  “What can they do/to you? with a graphic description of horrible things one could do to another.  

The second phrase: “It starts when you do… needs the context of an entire stanza:

It goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again after they said no,

it starts when you say We

and know who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.

We decided that we would all make signs that say, “violence ends when you say WE”…

The final poem by Roque Dalton confirms the power of unanimous blood.  

Another wonderful session.

poems for May 15 -- O Pen only

For O Pen:  5/15
Ode on Melancholy by John Keats
After the Death of Orpheus by Ursula le Guin
John Henry Crosses the Threshhold by Shamiya Bashir
Medusa by Louise Bogan
Maenads  by Ursula le Guin
Ode to the Little "r"by Aracelis Girmay

Judith provided the 4 poems after the Keats.   Her comments:  Herewith attached my choices, all by modern women poets—to sort of sharpen the contrasts, as it were.  I have attached them in order I prefer, with the unusual John Henry poem deliberately hammering his way between the older more traditional subjects.  

                There are of course innumerable possible other choices—... 

  She had also included in her suggestions Penelope (#2) by Barbara Hamby

or Salome by Carol Ann Duffy.

What a wonderful discussion today!  Thank you Judith for culling a variety of modern treatments of Greek Myths!   Recommended reading that came up: Circe by Madeline Miller https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959740-circe (thank you David) and many references to Robert Graves… Judith particularly recommends  Darien, Leda, Lament for Pasiphae, The Song of Blodeuwed,  the startling, superb Penthesileia… And Dowson’s mournful Villanelle of Acheron…and the final sonnet in the Fatal Interview sequence by Millay.  (Gorgeous, but lacks the edge of the contemporary ones!!  And the veiled mystery of Bogan’s.)

We started the discussion with the Keats, as a follow-up from poems that “Praise the mutilated world”.

When David read the second stanza, he did not pause at the end of the line, but carried through to allow the meaning to flow, emphasized the word, “glut”.  Melancholy is mistress, holds the keys, and will always have the final word.  The Ode, is praise for melancholy because it befriends

beauty, joy, pleasure— all of these fleeting states. We are wedded to change… so don’t try to forget, stamp out with drugs, or pray with a rosary of poisonous berries…we cannot escape mortality… so  find joy in what is not shrouded … feel the juice of life… yes… you will find melancholy in the best of what life offers that brings us joy because it cannot last forever.

For the poems on retelling myths, the joy, as Judith quoted from Kipling, lies in the 960 ways to tell a story— all of them right.  Myths are subjects for exploration, not answers!

After the Death of Orpheusby Ursula le Guin.   How can Orpheus, who made rocks cry from the beauty of his music, find the beginning of music after death?  Conundrum! You can’t call  the afterlife “hell” but rather going to the underground, the basis from where all life starts.  What is unsatisfying abot limbo, is that there is no satisfaction for ones desires.  “I’d rather be a slave in the living than king of underworld… “ the 

descent into silence embraces a yin/yang. “There is nothing to be said.//

Under the weightless boat

the waters of shadow ran silent

towards the beginning of all music.

We puzzled over that… how  music coming out of silence is like a blank canvas…

I did read the Barbara Hamby, and everyone roared! I had feared the sarcasm a little over the top— but in spite of the “noir”, it certainly worked. away.  Look at the language of the final lines:

 “As if they would.  A more ratty shiftless bunch

of creatures would be hard to rustle up. My bad luck,

they wanted to be king. I'd thought of giving them a lunch

of strychnine.  Then you showed up, a geriatric Huck

Finn.  So be my guest, finish them off.  Then I mean

to poison you. O Ithaka is mine.  I am queen.”

Everyone loved the propellers  in Ode to the Little "r"by Aracelis Girmay

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZUOiZG84c0

We spoke of immigration…. the imagination and beauty that allows survival

John Henry Crosses the Threshholdby Shamiya Bashir: not a conventional sonnet, but, Judith calls it one.

the word Threshold is loaded… threshold of safety, rescuing slaves…of new life, but also  of death…  

Medusa by Louise Bogan: Judith chose this poem because although there are lots of Medusa she found this one interesting and vague. Bogan was first female Poet Laureate…and her biography compelling.  We discussed who the I is in the poem?  It is not Medusa speaking… (We spoke of the general mythology behind the gorgons, and story of Perseus…) We didn’t think it was Perseus… but for sure, you get the transition from movement to the stillness of death.

Maenads  by Ursula le Guin: Ah… those Bacchic debauches!  Here, it feels to be a poem in two parts:  the young, and the older middle-aged women protecting the younger ones— perhaps selves they had been…

I also had not included Salomé,by Carol Ann Duffy:  Judith read it.  Duffy is not Poet Laureate of England for no reason.  

In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter.

I flung back the sticky red sheets.

and there, like I said—and ain't life a bitch—

was his head on a platter.

poems for May 8-9

FOR O PEN: 
The Speaking Tree by Muriel Rukeyser   
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/76186/until-you-look-again

13: 54 minute memorial by Gerald Stern. w/ his poem, “Rukeyser” 

you can hear Rukeyser read The Speaking Tree at 6:47-8:42 )
If you listen to the link, you will hear Gerald Stern say how he loves Rukeyser for her courage, originality, irony, radicalism.  How she makes herself culpable, not  aggrandizing.  

Her poem is indeed mysterious and beautiful... startling.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski  
taken from this site: from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/142028/poems-of-hope-and-resilience
Romanticism (The Blue Keats) by Roger Reeves
The Ball  by Wisława Szymborska
Our Valley by Philip Levine
The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

Joy Harjo reading her poem, Remember

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH0hp-n9gG8

FOR POETRY OASIS: Instead of the Rukeyser, The Blessing  by James Wright
Instead of the Levine and Ellen Bass, A Map to the Next World— Joy Harjo 

I find it reassuring that in spite of having TWO different line-ups, due to my oversight of not saving an updated "doc", both groups had wonderful discussions.  Both sets of poems reflect the theme
of making sense of life as we hold contradictions.  Actually, in my book, this seems to be one of
the primal powerful reminders of poetry.

Comments: 
The Speaking Tree:  Great Alexander... Tall Alexander... Stiff Alexander.  These small shifts in adjectives to tell of his transformation... The repeat of "turned... turning..." in the first stanza...
"The trunk coils, turns" in second stanza... where noun and verb also seem interchangeable...
Alexander and tree taking turns perhaps... snakes, fishes both noun and verb and part of all of the other animals in the tree.  Third stanza.  "He cannot turn.// But he is tree to turn."

The powerful diction, told like an Anglo-Saxon saga, the sounds, rhythms, especially end of
second stanza gives a convincing ring  of importance where myth becomes epic.
From Alexander who "walked the foam of ripples into this scene" we witness the people and animals of the speaking tree.

Three of them in their shore-dance, flames that stand

Where reeds are creatures and the foam is flame.

The final stanza is ripe with enigma. What kind of choice is there if you cannot turn, but are free to do so?  What happens in this speaking tree that divulges to us, the double-edge of "what we mean".  

(turning our words into sense but also what it is to be alive.)

Try to Praise the Mutilated World :  

One could dwell on the title, which repeats with slight variation four times.  Praise is not

the first verb to choose, facing a mutilated world, and yet, when praising, one is put into a

"higher state", the bigger picture of being grateful to be alive, with the "in spite of circumstances"

taking second place.

Try to praise... then becomes you must praise...  then the dutiful conditional, you should praise

until finally, simplified to the only things you need to do... praise.

The wild strawberries, the room with curtains, the concerts, the gathering of acorns, each can be seen as metaphors for pleasant memories which offset the thread of exile, the uncertain voyage, the sinister  joyfully attached to the executioners' song.  I admire the final sentence, in four lines, with three ands

the feather, the light, the loss and the return.  

It stands out against the strength of the powerful damage implied by mutilated.  By praising, we

are reminded to return to what is good.  

 

The Blessing:

Just like the accumulation of "and", the interconnection of touch in this scene, allows a transformation.  The horse nuzzles the speaker of the poem, the breeze moves him to caress her ear, which reminds him of the delicate skin of a young girl's wrist-- and the surprising realization,

of the possibility of breaking into blossom if stepping out of his body.  And how to explain that mystery?  In the context of the speaking tree, and "praise", it is a celebration of the good that

we can experience.  We did question why we need the setting of Rochester, MN, and the presumptions that the ponies' eyes darken with kindness... come gladly... can hardly contain their happiness... And yet... that is part of the magic.  The midpoint of the poem, "There is no loneliness like theirs" turns from observation to connection.  Indeed a blessing -- a breaking open to a higher

plane. 

Romanticism (The Blue Keats)

We discussed the title... perhaps the "blue" is referring to Melancholy and Keats Ode... how to find the "truest" melancholy... 

Like the Rukeyser, there are overtones of older poems... "baffled heart"... but also the clinks of chains

and slavery.   What is it we desire?  And how does the first mention of bamboo terrace and harp change at the end?    There is a sense of mosaic... of collage... and as one person described Leonardo's drawings... "completely unfettered way of leaping between subject matter.”

Although opaque at beginning there is a hint of wry humor... 

The end of the poem requires careful attention... 

... I want to know before

I am both house and savage wind, before all of the tents
In the city become tattered rags snagged in the hair
Of our children and the red-headed trees. I am careful
To want nothing that I cannot lose and be sad in the losing.
A terrace made of rotting bamboo. A harp lost in its singing.
My last name and the tomatoes falling from the vine. Woman,
I want this plum heart. And the dying that makes us possible.

**

 The Ball

The earth... and then a district fireman's ball...  from large and universal, to one small aspect...

we loved the anaphor, "as long as" which hopped along illogical premises that never finish...

but paint a picture of human nature... 

The Valley:

A perfect sequel to the Szymborska.  He draws a huge feeling from what we might call ordinary.

Now you say this is home,   

so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,   

wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

The thing is

I love this poem... its easy manner where the title spills into the poem, as if dropping a piece of advice... but the topic is how to deal with grief.  A pearl of a poem which shows how. 

A Map to the Next World 

This is a long but satisfying poem, blending Indian ways of old with the modern world... the sense

of "next world" as a "next way of being" understanding the complexity of loss of old traditions,

estrangement from nature... and so much more.

Poems for May 1-2

The Body Remembers  by Yusef Komunyakaa
Why Regret?  by Galway Kinnell
The Speaking Treeby Joy Harjo
You Called Me Corazón by Sandra Cisneros
Dust by Dorianne Laux

3 animations of Whitman’s poem below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jCw8ydqkrg

A noiseless patient spider, 

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, 

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, 

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 

And you O my soul where you stand, 

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, 

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, 

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

DISCUSSION

**

We listened to Yusef recites his poem, which changes the way one hears it... more halting, almost like syncopated jazz, so the line breaks are not pronounced.  The title repeats in the 3rd couplet, and the 5th couplet before the end, How to understand these sentences:

"The body remembers every wish one lives for or doesn't, or even horror."

The body remembers the berry bushes heavy with sweetness shivering in a lonely woods, but I doubt it knows words live longer than clay & spit of flesh, as rock-bottom love.

I love how poetry parses a sentence, allows the ripening of syntax to provide multiple layers, unlike conversational speech or prose.

There are three questions:  

Do you remember how quickly we scrambled up an oak, ,,, how easy to trust the water to break our glorious leaps?

Does Johnny run fingers over the thick welt on his belly, days we were still invincible?  (two different memories, but triggered by the touch of the body).  And after the second "body remembers", the question, "Is it easier to remember pleasure /or does hurt ease truest hunger?  

We discussed "ease" as choice of verb, the paradox of hurt easing... and what it is we truly are hungry for... 

and what is this rock-bottom love?  How easy then, to trust... that pivotal moment and the recounting of it, "rocking back & forth, uprooting what's to come,"
and ending on the "weight" of the  shadow of the tree hinted at in the opening couplet, where one envisions the speaker of the poem weighing his self, without tilting the scales.  

It takes a group to appreciate such a complex poem, and parse out the rich sounds, double-entendres, as past, present, memory,  remembering in the body, a half-forgotten  ballad.

**

Galway Kinnel asks a great question:  Why Regret?  The strategy of questions, (Didn't you like... wasn't it a revelation... didn't you almost... What did you imagine... didn't it seem,  didn't you find it calming... didn't you glimpse, weren't you reassured.) allow a shaggy-dog poem of vignettes that paint innocence, iconic pictures, experiences, observations about nasty discharges, ephermoptera, Casanova, pinworms, Monarchs...   And just as the reader might say, 
"enough already", the simple last question,

 Doesn't it outdo the pleasures of the brilliant concert/to wake in the night and find ourselves/holding hands in our sleep.

The "it" is so big... so teeming with life... and indeed, back to the title.  Why regret.  

The one non-question comes haiku-style mid-poem:  "Think of the wren/and how little flesh is needed/to make a song.

Delightful poem!

**

Joy Harjo as a native American quotes Sandra Cisneros, Mexican poet.  I looked up "Harjo" and found it means, "crazy, or so brave as to seem crazy".

The unspeakable could be horrifying... or so enormous, words cannot explain it... 

the use of em-dashes, echo the broken, followed by another line, then again broken.  Indeed, "what shall I do with all this heartache?"

The speaking tree is our witness... and our model providing the advice in italics at the end of the poem... drinking deep what is undrinkable. 

Discussion about myths of trees, references to Ents, and Shel Silverstein's "poet tree" came up.  

**

You called me Corazon.  The use of "heart" in Spanish in the title, 2nd and final stanza build up to the untranslatable feeling of a homeland, the bond between mother and child.  

**I read aloud the English of this:  Cisneros poem :http://365traducciones.blogspot.com/2005/06/once-again-i-prove-theory-of_09.html
**
 Dorianne Laux, "Dust".  Such a loaded word!!!!
How do you remember the "flavor" of something?  again... the sense of something that cannot be pinned down in words.  We discussed the contrast of "bright light/black wings" -- the sense of the ineffable, the shadow... and  truth… dusting of small particles…
**
I read aloud Whitman's noiseless patient spider... seems to gather all the filaments of the poems discussed in a satisfying manner.  As ever, I thank everyone for their sharing and participation.