Why Regret? by Galway Kinnell
The Speaking Treeby Joy Harjo
You Called Me Corazón by Sandra Cisneros
Dust by Dorianne Laux
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
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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
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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…
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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.
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