Poems for August 28

Here and There by Emily Grosholz

Recurrent Things –by Bruce Bennett
The Charm of 5:30  by David Berman
Tim’s Room by Bruce Bennett

Emily on the Net by Bruce Bennett
Fellow Creatures.  by Bruce Bennett

On Not Reading by Bruce Bennett

About Bruce:  "Lyrical, virtuoso of his own perception who also attends closely to the lives of others-- to our lives -- in all their folly, sorrow, and beautiful vitality.
Founder of Field and Ploughshares.  Horatian wit and Juvenalian indignation."

We thoroughly enjoyed the Emily Grosholz— the lyrical nature of her piece, the enjambed lines which accentuate the nouns in the first stanza as well as enhance the cadence… (In French poetry, more seems to be made of the stride to the “rejet” — so the break between  slow/Revolution;  rusty/Answer;  invisible/Bird 

feels particularly special to me as French speaker).

The last line is enviable for its synesthesia… 

Your poem, “Recurrent Things” is a witty rejoinder to continue thinking about what it is we miss when we go away… It is one of the poems people might want to ask you about when you visit, wondering if you might be giggling even as  we suspect a serious thread!

We spent over half our time exploring “Tim’s Room”.  Comments on this included David Sanders’ notes on monologues, the crafting of the short sentences which emphasize the difficulty of the situation.  The metaphoric expanse of “room” in the title; the words not spoken to the drunk driver that  might help the father (or mother) to address the anger, grievance the complexity of being human and making room for  "restorative justice”…  works like a pandora’s box, with no clue in the poem of whether this will be a possible outcome.  The ending  with the echo of “and not even stop” — referring both to the murdering driver/car and the pain…  The group commends you for your ability to make us feel so strongly, both the universal injustice of accidents, but also this “microcosmic" example of what we face in macro world where nations  and races are wronged… and how how we cope.

                                                                     

Emily on the Net is SO brilliant, capturing both the spirit of Emily’s poetry, but also, the characteristics of the internet, the double-entendre on “Rest” … and more.

I asked those present to think about questions they might have for you about this one… The approbatory smiles made it clear how much it was enjoyed.

We loved as well the villanelle, Fellow Creatures … with Frostian overtones.  David S. brought up   To a moth seen in Winter.Everyone loved how the form did not lend itself to not sing-song, but supported the sense of unexplainable gesture, feeling.

We ended with “On Not Reading”  and again, applauded your cleverness, especially separating this sentence with a stanza break.

I miss not knowing what
life is about                                       


As brought to us in books
those masters penned.

It is a balancing act… how do you know what life is about if you only write?  And yet, knowing life finite, does not each person wish to leave their

own individual mark?

I do not do justice to those present in representing all the angles and observations of the discussion, but hopefully you sense how appreciative we all were to have poems both with masterful form as well as  pith.

Will see what David picks for September 4.  I told him these were originally selected.
Also, he may, or may not use:
The Cat's Fancy  by David Berman

 Comforts  by Bruce Bennett

**we did get a kick out of the two "David Berman's" -- and enjoyed the Charm of 5:30, which
worked in just fine.

As Elaine R. put it, the first 3 poems satisfied all she loves about poetry:   first one lyrical… second one funny… 3rd : full of life!

Just Another Day in Just Our Town -- by Bruce Bennett 

The One Thing by Bruce Bennett 

Random by Bruce Bennett
An Ending  by Bruce Bennett

September 18, David and Bruce will do a session.

So many poems to choose from!  
from Here and Now... 
Señpr Tesi... something not meant to be... but what a ball having him.
speeding p. 54
Don't" p. 59:  it should have been a great day... but it wasn't... 2 people frozen.  You want me to go?  OK, I'll go.  He wasn't sure exactly what he meant.

That kind of Sprezzatura ( certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".) is so welcome.
Fat, p. 70
Missing the class. 71
plot: 73
Best Seller 76 -- for writers

Bruce Bennett

https://justanotherdayinjustourtown.com

“Coleridge said that poetry must give pleasure, a requirement that Bruce Bennett’s work has long filled to overflowing.  It is one of the most enjoyable bodies of poetry I know, which isn’t to say that Bennett does not go deep.  Often he compresses realms of wisdom into tight, economical packages.  This generous harvest of his new and selected poems will nourish mind, heart and funny bone.  Some of Bruce X.J Kennedy onNavigating the Distances, 1999

(on back cover of Just Another Day in Just Our Town

“Bruce Bennett is one of our most distinguished lyrical poets. Like all great verse satirists, he has cultivated a technical virtuosity that he deploys with both principle and sprezzatura. Unlike many of them, he also extends his skill into serious modes and even heartbreaking subjects. This new volume showcases not only his Horatian wit (and occasionally Juvenalian indignation), but also his deceptively plainspoken tenderness as he looks with a clear eye at the way we live now. He is that rarest of lyrical poets, a virtuoso of his own perception who also attends closely to the lives of others—to our lives—in all their folly, sorrow and beautiful vitality.” – David Rothman, from the back cover of Just Another Day in Just Our Town

This review gives a lovely flavor, citing many of the poems in his latest book.

https://www.literarymatters.org/10-3-a-long-obedience-to-an-exacting-muse/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXN6GyIHwpw  (you tube of The Donald Trump of the Republic)

http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2016/bennett.html\

https://www.pshares.org/authors/bruce-bennett

sampling of his articles in Ploughshares

David Bermanwas a wonderful member of the Powow River Poets with several awards to his credit, a fine translator and scholar, a distinguished lawyer, and a beloved friend whom we’ve lost to cancer. He studied with Robert Lowell and Archibald Mac Leish, worked with language the way a jeweler works with stone, and served as a kind of yardstick to the rest of us during the many years he graced our monthly workshop. Although he had published excellent work in three chapbooks and many journals, he left the bulk of his work unpublished, as his profession left him short of time. Several of us—A.M. Juster, Bruce Bennett, Rhina P. Espaillat—have acceded to his widow’s desire to submit some of David’s poems to the magazines we most enjoy reading and to which we submit our own work. These two happen to be about David’s relationship with his cat, but they transcend by miles the typical “cat poem” genre.—fromRattle #62, Winter 2018

Bruce Bennett: “David Berman, who had two poems appear in last winter’s issue of Rattle, was the first reader of my poetry for more than 55 years, and for most of that time I was the first reader of his. We met in Archibald MacLeish’s English S at Harvard in the fall of 1961, when I was a first-year graduate student in English and he was in his second year at Harvard Law School. He passed away in June 2017.” Note: For more on formalist poet David Berman, watch Rattlecast #3— 

poems for Aug. 21

This Is The Garden:Colours Come And Go by e e cummings

I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store  by Eve L. Ewing

 OBIT [The Clock]by  Victoria Chang

 Sentence  by  Tadeusz Dąbrowski

Sightings BY DONOVAN MCABEE

Origami, by Joyce Sutphen

Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland

The Social Life of Water 

We wondered when Cummings wrote his sonnet... picked up on echoes of TS Eliot (Wasteland, 1922)   Of course the punctuation bears note -- that odd defiance of colon... no space around it, only to repeat the words "This is a garden." simple, non-poetic sentence starting the second stanza of this 14-line poem -- is it playing to be a sonnet with one stanza of 8, another of 6?  There are echoes of Frost,

Nothing Gold can stay. https://poets.org/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay

First Stanza:  go/snow embrace wing/lingering

blow/slow embrace sing string

the sound system: lightness of f, t sibilances altering  from ss to z,whooshing  in strong,  (followed by silent, silently) absolute, baths, bathe.  A sort of hissing in pursed lips echoed in the ps sting of harps

released in  celestial followed by the tension of str in string.

In the second stanza, time shears with the sh/sh certitude of shall surely and slow to arrive at  sleep.

The echo of silent in "other songs be sung" creates a sense of two worlds in the two stanzas, the first more literal, the second metaphysical. 

Steal has two senses.  to walk quietly/softly progress  as well as to rob.  The Silver-fingered fountain (those fluttering, frail f's!!!!) evokes the sense of wisdom-infused sages creating, not gold, but the reflective silver of words penned to stay. 

The group picked up on the magical, mystical, almost religious overtones.

**

Such a contrast with the Ewing poem.  She too plays with punctuation -- why no capital letters for the beginning of sentences? The title allows us to twist history.  What happened in 1955, is happening now... maybe in Mississippi, maybe elsewhere; maybe retelling the story, how it might have been otherwise... 

The skill of the opening stanza -- a grocery store!  And a black teen... where plums stand for vulnerability... and a sense of coffin taking a human cradling:  

"looking over the plums, one by one
lifting each to his eyes and
turning it slowly, a little earth,
checking the smooth skin for pockmarks
and rot, or signs of unkind days or people,
then sliding them gently into the plastic.

whistling softly, reaching with a slim, woolen arm
into the cart, he first balanced them over the wire
before realizing the danger of bruising
and lifting them back out, cradling them
in the crook of his elbow until
something harder could take that bottom space."

Brought to mind : I thought I saw Joe Hill last night

https://songofamerica.net/song/joe-hill/

Everyone loved the Obit (clock).

Clever conceit and opening!

The Clock—died on June 24, 2009 and
it was untimely.  How many times my
father has failed the clock test.  

Indeed.. how we all fail to survive time.. our discussion included references to actual scientists interviewed, the need for "memory soles" on shoes, so at least you can remember when you

walk into the kitchen where you are... and the marvelous story of the Rabbi who is the judge

of differing stories, each teller told, you're right. and when the third person points out the paradox,

he too, is right. 

\

**

We listened to The sentence:   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/22/sentence

It could be another poem about alzheimers... or Buddhism... or the "conviction" that

puts us into self-created cells.  The opening and closing sentence is set up differently,...

It's as if... + and on it a single sentence

in a language you don’t know. vs.

you’d yearn

for that one single sentence in a language you don’t know

What sentence sums up your life?  How is it a sentence determines how you live it.

**

The next poem starting out so lightly, almost funny, allows space for grief of a man,

perhaps an atheist, mocking religion earlier, to feel two years later, the deep faith

of the one he loved and mourns.

**

The group wanted to workshop the Sutphen. 

tone:  created by potential…  origami… undanced floor.. —good.  too  Dr. Seuss-y; too tidy. a little too didactic. Sophisticated ideas for a grandmother to a granddaughter… 

**

The two Hoagland poems were of course well-received. 

How many times do you wonder -- "and if I could sum it up in one word..."

The title prepares us for the inability to communicate the pain of everything going along

(we think) smoothly, then pop, there goes a friendship, a marriage, darn, even the place you were reading a book, -- then, after losses, a tree...not just any tree, but one that has heart-shaped leaves  Hoagland calls spade-shaped.  He doesn't sentimentalize, but gives us the scene, how it is to diminish, cede to cancer... and that small and yet...that makes you feel life is on your side.

**

Even though we had run out of time (well.. continued towards 2 pm... !)

The Social Life of Water tweaked a lot of discussion... comments included.

power of water. David's scientific explanation of what happens to the two oxygen  because of one hydrogen ...

personnification of each body of water.

use of verbs.

 water…so versatile in form-- but the key element:  it  reflects. 

unicity of being human… wonderful — but paradoxically isolated… 

grief of being separate from the all.  

We’re always excluded.

Life is ineffable.   Poetry helps us grasp it better.

poems for Aug. 14 (Elaine Richane)

The Future  by Wendell Berry

 Odes    by Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa). Translated by Edouard Roditi

Coloratura by Wisława Szymborska

View with a Grain of Sandby Wisława Szymborska

Sewing, Knitting, Crochetingby Naomi Shihab Nye

Oh Demeter by Ellen Bass

Mighty Strong Poemsby Ellen Bass

Mother of All of Us by Stephen Levine

Garden Notes by W S Merwin

Elaine Richane chose these and will be moderator.  Thank you Elaine!

Bernie's addition: Mother of All of Us,  reminded me of "Requiem" by Eliza Gilkyson.  Here's a brief interview on NPR about the background of the song: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=4847831

And a link to an audio clip of her singing it with her daughter:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4847831&utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20190814&utm_campaign=npr_email_a_friend&utm_term=storyshare
Here's the wikipedia page on Stephen Levine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Levine_(author)

He also included Shoulders, by Naomi Shihab Nye, which Nestles well between "Kindness" and Levine's poem.  Video on it seen at his retreathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCy8Cfvoe6g&authuser=0

Sent to the group the Evan Dawson interview as well:

poems for August 7

from Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith. (excerpt:  read  http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/be-recorder-by-carmen-gimenez-smith/)
Puerto Rican Obituary by pedro pietri
Still Waiting by Harryette Mullen (response to Alison Saar's work: https://www.otis.edu/ben-maltz-gallery/alison-saar-still
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
"Out of the rolling ocean the crowd" BY WALT WHITMAN

This week's selection includes older poems, such as the 1973 Puerto Rican Obit, and Ginsburg’s 1955 “Supermarket in CA” and  Whitman’s “Out of the Rolling” which made its first appearance in 1860 Leaves of Grass and brings to mind both “timely” and “timeless” qualities poems voice.  

The first poem, is only an excerpt, and I recommend the Graywolf review below to enhance the appreciation of the appeal to the reader to be “recorder, embody witness. 

 http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/be-recorder-by-carmen-gimenez-smith/

I also recommend looking at Alison Saar’s work to which Harryette Mullen responds in her poem: https://www.otis.edu/ben-maltz-gallery/alison-saar-still. (The MAG has Saar’s maquette of the giant statue of Harriet Tubman on 103rd St. in NYC

The first poem is an excerpt-- from a book entitle  Be Recorder and a long enough to fill three-quarters of the book.

It is not fair to judge a long poem by an excerpt... not perhaps to compare, as well did the contemporary excerpt with a poem written in 1973--

however,

For the last two poems, I was absent for the discussion.  Apparently...

 both Bernie and David had seen him in person.  Is Ginsburg's poem  a love poem to Walt Whitman? The topic  of homosexuality came up, both Ginsberg’s openness and Whitman, more closeted.  

The group appreciated both poems, talked more about their meaning, symbolism of the grocery store and the ocean, etc

*

I love the title of the first poem:   Be Recorder.  How  (and what) do we "record" ?  We only read an excerpt from this very long poem which is the title poem of a book of the same name, and occupies three-quarters of the book.

There is no punctuation, as Carmen weaves repetitions and repeated variations which speak from the hard work of bones to the hard work of the soul.  

The entire poem by Pedro Pietri contains the same kind of organic pulse...  definitely the power of the spoken word, where fragmented speech accentuates the pain in telling the history of his people, with repeats of first names  -- Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel.  They could be any john, mike, tom, dick, harry equivalent , caught in the slavery of work where the pay-off is to die. after they turn" the other cheek by newspapers

that mispelled mispronounced

and misunderstood their names

and celebrated when death came

and stole their final laundry ticket

They were born dead

and they died dead 

Incantatory, much in the style of first thought best thought.  Comments included appreciation of the hints of humor in this tale of survival... the pulse of the rhythms.  Like Paradise Lost:  no man wished it longer... not the greatest because not the first.   (Johnson)Someone else quoted Robert Graves:  You can't go full strength all the time.

The Harryette Mullen brought up the general idea of  ekphrastic responses...   Jan summed it up as a stunning encounter with a quite surreal and provocative work of art  The  repetition of the B's in black, bear, blacken the blues, bucket of blood, basin of tears... 

the litany of  questions:

Do you think you can handle these bodies of graphite & coal dust?

Would you mop the floor with this bucket of blood?

Would you rinse your soiled laundry in this basin of tears?

Would you suckle hot milk from this cracked vessel?-- sound

Would you be baptized in this fountain of funky sweat?

We spoke of white privilege and how what may sound like an invitation to "approach"
must be understood with the multiple layers of  "with care".
The end line certainly has more than one meaning:  let the oppresser come carefully... and treat the oppressed with care...  How do we touch another?  How are we touched?  

The last two poems summarized by Barbara:

There was a lot of discussion about Alan Ginsberg, both Bernie and David had seen him in person.  Then it was the question of whether it was a love poem to Walt Whitman, and the idea of homosexuality, both Ginsberg’s openness and Whitman, more closeted.  

The group appreciated both poems, talked more about their meaning, symbolism of the grocery store and the ocean, etc. It was a very good discussion.

poems for July 31

Industry Is All Around Us
Algorithms 
Episteme || Doxa || Gnosis
That Forever
Double Sonnet w| Late Stage Capitalism Ending at the Office
Poem Ending in a Line from Emily Dickinson (from local group "

We were indeed in for a treat!  Local poet, Alicia Hoffman was our guest.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Author of two collections, "Railroad Phoenix," and "Like Stardust in the Peat Moss," her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including The Penn Review, Radar Poetry, A-Minor Magazine, Typishly, The Community College Humanities Review, Softblow, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Find out more at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com. 

Several of the poems by Alicia Hoffman are from a local group responding to the same prompt: https://sites.google.com/site/wandaprompt/home  
**

We followed the usual format of each person reading -- in this case, couplet by couplet... and then the usual responding, with the added advantage of being able to ask the living poet present, questions.
For instance,  what her thinking process was, and how she generated work.  We asked Alicia about her preference for writing in couplets.  Her response: that's how the poem comes most easily... it is not a formal decision like an architect designing a building, but rather an organic process and the couplets and enjambments allow space and pauses for the poem to develop.   She works by sound.   
Everyone present, including Alicia was thrilled with richness of both the poems and discussion. 

In the first poem, the prompt: (From June  2018 ): "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see." -- Rene Magritte)  

David:  last couplet… paraphrase of Magritte… and ironic.

The poem addresses the current emphasis on productivity vs. incubatory…  grasshopper and ant…. shy girl.  not the writer… 

The word "Industry" is a  loaded gun in our society, filled with judgement about what

is "worthwhile", the praise for the industrious soul,  as well as the power of Industry, and so little

respect for downtime.  Perhaps we oppose incongruous to "industry" and allow a sense of a larger purpose than for instance the  act of growing as "industry" in nature,  We enjoyed the little lesson on crafting a poem... how most poems "end on an object" (line break, stanza break) in ambiguous movement.

Comments included, how well the poem captures life today,  how language  fails… for instance the paradoxical way one can talk about tao, but that is not the real tao. I love the steady sense of conviction with the surprising support of "indolence".  How dark and lazy are not synonymous...  

... Underneath 

what we are accustomed to  

is all the love we are creating

in earth’s more indolent spaces.

Stevensesque flavor to  indolent spaces-- what might they be?

Elaine: Industry… what does it mean?  Incongruous vs. natural 

Love and Life . synonymous.  energy of living… 

Algorithms (published in Typishly) is a delightfully clever poem responding to the computer age -- what organizes us... things like facebook, and what we  are trained to expect to see …  conflict between established and uncontrollable. 

The cleverness... 

what equations help us to equalize...  how snow is followed by so now... parrots parroting... how the verb scan used to be used for our eyes, searching the (blank page of) sky... Judith brought up things we no longer see or hear... for instance, there is  no more  train whistle heard in the distance... 

I remember hearing a good place for a poem to start is to start with a sentence, "I want..."

group comments to these couplets.

Myself, I prefer my sources to sweep in                       alliterative.
like wind whistling through antelope canyon,

sharp scent of sage in the air. I prefer wine
so dark it carries in its darkness rumors

of the great mysteries. I want to look god                     huge universal
in its many faces and demand the answers.

I want to walk across the bridge of the world,              another whistle in the w’s and repeated want.
live in a way that makes it a little bit better.

We were gratified that Alicia confessed the words in the title of the next poem are not part of her everyday vocabulary!  Like the line "I know I like the sound of solipsistic" -- which confines the

liking to the sound, not the meaning, perhaps the title is the same.   

 Episteme || Doxa || Gnosis[1]https://mapandterritory.org/doxa-episteme-and-gnosis-ea35e4408edd  what is taught; what is told to us; what known from personal experience.

The discussion was far-reaching including everything form Satie's Gnossiens,  a picture of a grandfather holding a grandson's violin case with the grandson trailing him while looking at his i phone... the delight of finding 4-leaf clovers... and admiration for the breathing rhythm of couplets

allowing a bigger making of the poem.  She captures the mysterious nature of knowledge and pleasure... and perhaps in the last line, confirms the wisdom (gnosis) we hope to reach:

 It is hope we continue to continue for.     

That Forever:  what a title for a poem which starts with reading a history of the human race...

I LOVE this poem-- how in 13 couplets we travel from "idiosyncrasies of imaginative names"

albeit, real people in the annals of history of wars, famines, disasters, to a scrolling list of hypotheticals (we are informed are part of our human trademark), which might include nuclear annihilation, or being swirled up into the vastness beyond known galaxies...   

I feel as if I am observing a painting that opens up to every detail of every culture, as miraculous as that opening flower.  Hypotheticals about what it is to die, swirl by up to the last words... where I believe indeed, we walk into a "story that forever is the future."

It is a celebratory poem I would call  a "Whitmanesque". 

We ran out of time, so no discussion of That Forever. Nor, Double Sonnet w| Late Stage Capitalism Ending at the Office*.  We ended with the Poem Ending in a Line from Emily Dickinson. 

Marcie pointed out the pleasure of reading a poem with a 

from April 2019 everyone responds to the same prompt:  “Sort of In honor of Mary Oliver - Be on the lookout for a small thing in your everyday life that you feel grateful for. Start there.”

Alicia’s mind went to “Dickinson's 372 "After a great pain a formal feeling comes... and did a little "throat clearing…" Note the opening words are "Start here.

**Marcie: no other poem starts there… and how refreshing to think 

 waking up need not be stressful!  

Start here, between wakefulness 

and sleep, between the reckoning 

of another day and the bliss 

of the body between the sheets.

David:  likes the luke warm response to Mary Oliver in the prompt, avoiding the gushing Oliver-esque oversimplification.  On the contrary, the poem is  probing… the emotion runs through the prism of the intelligence.

We loved the title... how the poem ended on the last line of the Dickinson:

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

**

---

[1]This and the next two were published in Live Encounters  https://liveencounters.net/le-poetry-writing-2019/07-july-pw-2019/alicia-hoffman-alexa-plays-miles-davis/?fbclid=IwAR0iMDlLrh9DW9tGbaLFa3d16srn7AolyR7C-5zp0-8aINhol_SxoZ_2Lys

someone brought up this line: I just dropped in to see the condition my condition is in.