Wondrous by Sarah Freligh
Starting With an Old Photo of My Mother and Ending on a Hill
We Smoke (prose poem)
Blissfield, Michigan (loose sonnet/terza rima)
Pilgrims
(from an exercise that eschews the “I” and is limited only to what you can see from your window)
A Letter to You About Myself (epistolary form)
December (extended metaphor that gains additional subtext from its placement in the book)
Last Letter to You Wherever You Are
My Friend
Geography
Comments from Rundel:
Wondrous: Beautiful reflective poem. Did she come up with form right away? (answer, probably not-- after many drafts, sometimes a form suggests itself.) Where lines break, makes it feel more conversational. Like arranging flowers… silences in music, it contributes to the whole of the tone.
How title is repeated twice at the end -- once for EB White, how the words made him cry, and once for the mother... hearing her voice say those words 10 years after her death.
How the enjambment of grief tumbles past the line break, through the space of a stanza brief, to fall multiplied on the verb
multiplies the one preceding it,
Comments from Rundel:
Wondrous: Beautiful reflective poem. Did she come up with form right away? (answer, probably not-- after many drafts, sometimes a form suggests itself.) Where lines break, makes it feel more conversational. Like arranging flowers… silences in music, it contributes to the whole of the tone.
How title is repeated twice at the end -- once for EB White, how the words made him cry, and once for the mother... hearing her voice say those words 10 years after her death.
How the enjambment of grief tumbles past the line break, through the space of a stanza brief, to fall multiplied on the verb
Starting With an Old Photo of My Mother and Ending on a Hill: I showed the picture -- read aloud the Raymond Carver, Afterglow, spoke about the importance of going beyond description when writing an ekphrastic response. Mike: "
Spoke about the sound of deciduous windows; the "shell" image Judith brought up in O Pen: in the remains of the factory... the shell of the womb of the whale, the shell of talk of the boys, blank eyes of cows as empty as parking lot.
We Smoke: metaphore. What smokes in us... what is muffled in our inner fire.
Their very lives “smoke”… smoking as diversion… first stanza: smoking like a ritual… second stanza, projections of what the children they will not keep will be like; the bang up of the moth
returning them to repeat, smoke some more.
Blissfield, Michigan. What a name of a town! Showed the picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissfield,_Michigan#/media/File:Blissfield_township_business_district.JPG
everyone appreciated setting of the first moonwalk, and description with first sex-- those astronauts watching...
Pilgrims: everyone felt the details were perfect... and how cool it was that each person had a different version of the story -- for instance the ash falling down: could be from the lit cigarette, that small act of kindness to another; or maybe snow, the "pilgrims" not going into that bar for a drink.
Richness of sound and image: afternoon trudges; the silver choir of bottles... mouth feel of words (Pinsky).
Pilgrims: everyone felt the details were perfect... and how cool it was that each person had a different version of the story -- for instance the ash falling down: could be from the lit cigarette, that small act of kindness to another; or maybe snow, the "pilgrims" not going into that bar for a drink.
Richness of sound and image: afternoon trudges; the silver choir of bottles... mouth feel of words (Pinsky).
A Letter to You About Myself: enjoyed the shift from present to projected future. "
December: Loved the feisty petunia -- how stupid is often a word to describe how it feels when things aren't going the way you expect them. A sense of unjust abandonment.
The unexpected longevity-- and how if the Petunia didn’t give up.. maybe stupid is me… the petunia puts me to shame.
vs. the discussion about people giving, giving, giving, but neglecting themselves from Wed. group.
Geography: only had time to briefly touch on this one. Loved the title, the changeable nature of geography on maps; loved the leaps... the images, how the mother slips in, her death, back to JFK in Dallas.
MORE POEMS BY SARAH FRELIGH
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