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.
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-n9gG8FOR 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:
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.
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.
**
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.
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.
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