Poems for Nov. 20-21

Remembering the Night I Dreamed Paul Klee Married the Sky by Jack Ridl  (for Pittsford )

Mercy by Kelly Weber

Even-keeled and At-eased  by Alberto Rios

Presidents’ Day by Louise Glück
Snowflakes by  Howard Nemerov

Club Icarus by Matt W. Miller

Emancipation Proclamation by William Heyen

Ȟe Sápa, Five[1]  by Layli Long Soldier

November Night by Adelaide Crapsey   

For the Anniversary of My Death BY W. S. MERWIN

---

[1] https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2012-fall/selections/layli-long-soldier-763879/

The next four poems were in last week's line-up but not discussed by Pittsford.   Rundel  did discuss the Jack Ridl the week before:
Discussion: people felt the dream was about the homeless.  My favorite lines:

Above us, the old sky held 

its cross-stitch of stars and we half expected the light to shiver in our back pockets.
It was just that we knew. It was

just that it was cold.

Do you want to pronounce the emphasis on "just" -- to mean, it was "fair"... or "simply" -- or maybe put the accent on THAT.
Now, "just" takes on a sense of "only".  I love the stanza break-- the sky has a large space to hold before mentioning stars!
The long space after "it was" holds the dream perhaps existentially, or simply as  if to remember it...  The placing of the spoon across his palm.. perhaps to remind him to eat? although normally one would say "on" or "in his palm".  
The last sentence starts with a dangling "I"
(remember how big the napkins were".

My question: How does unraveling the complexity of  this poem  feel satisfying?  frustrating?  Knowing Paul Klee and his use of stars, 
it feels like an ekphrastic poem.  Why do we remember certain things?

2. Mercy: Comments:  We enjoyed the strength in the horses, and how we can see something that can harm us… but only see the positive aspect of the strength.
3. Rios:
We howled at the fun...  a sense of Mary Poppins. or  Bad Tuesday and Bad Wed/.  acting “owl-ly”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday%27s_Child

The mobius strip effect.  In French, when misbuttoning a shirt, one does say,  the buttons line up like Sunday with Monday... In Spanish, I didn't find such an expression, but was reminded that mañana can mean both "morning" and "tomorrow".
Of course, the poem is making fun of conventions -- the right laugh... to look natural as if without a care... How, in the case of Rios,  he could be referring to  balancing the poet/teacher in him,  as well as the Latino to get along… 

"Even-keeled" is  at odds with “at-eased” — action done to you…

How do we contract with the world… corporate world.. cultural divide… get along?

Judith and David brought up Hamlet… Act. 1 sc 2:  I know not seems.

President's Day". We enjoyed the flippant tone of this poem which appeared first in January 2009.

January 4, 2009

Discussion: Loved the superstition of snow vs. salt... the present losses, the memory of sunshine,

how joyful to bask in it... The Great Recession—which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009—began with the bursting of an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble. ... In the post-World War II recessions before the early 1990s, it took an average of 10 months for the economy to regain the jobs it had lost during the recession.

Snowflakes by Howard Nemerov -- a pearl of a poem!  One sentence in 4 lines that is filled with sound, each line interrupted by hesitation; iambic conclusion. rhythm…

difference between prose and poetry… snow as metaphor across time.and addresses the nature of the soul...   Why not treasured in heaven?  Nature of the soul… a sense of Paradise Lost; rebellion in heaven.  book of revelations.   No two of anything alike. 

 Note that the Emancipation Proclamation is from Poets’ Walk.  Here is a listing of poems alphabetized by poets last name: https://mag.rochester.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PoetsWalk-Alpha.pdf. To see/hear a poem, you need to use the cross-listing and click on the carved words (alphabetized here:   https://mag.oncell.com/en/poets-walk-78374.html.). A little booklet of “fun” with the poems:

For Pittsford:

 am pleased to share that my poem “Ugliness came up” was posted today here: 

https://zingarapoet.net  

There were many references that came up  today —

1. for the Rios: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday%27s_Child

and Hamet, Act I, sc 2: 

“Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.”

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

80No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”

For they are actions that a man might play.

85But I have that within which passeth show,

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

**

2. For the Matt Turner poem “Club Icarus”:  not only Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts” http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html

(link shows the Brueghel painting)

but when someone brought up “Ignorance is Bliss” — the full context in the Gray poem here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44301/ode-on-a-distant-prospect-of-eton-college    

and another poem in his collection Club Icarus: 

Child’s Play + https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-eighteen-matt-miller-the-adroit-journal/

Judith adds  this to the Icarus discussion from  Carol Ann Duffy’s book  https://genius.com/Carol-ann-duffy-frau-freud-annotated that
She mentions “Mrs. Icarus”  is opposite the page with Mrs Freud’s poem—"a perfect sonnet, composed
mostly of synonyms for The Freudian organ.”

Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last/to stand on a hillock,

watching the man she married/prove to the world

that he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

Mark your calendars:  December 8: 4-6 pm a solstice celebratio

**

3. The anaphor, “whereas”— in the Heyen poem reminded Emily of Christopher Smart’s  poem for his cat:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno

4. For the Layli Long Soldier

in this interview: https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate

Joy Harjo speaks of the “ancestor tree of poetry”…  and makes this reference to Layli:

Layli Long Soldier’s poems emerge from fields of Lakota history where centuries stack and bleed through making new songs. The sacred and profane tangle and are threaded into the lands guarded by the four sacred mountains in the poetry of Sherwin Bitsui. America has always been multicultural, before the term became ubiquitous, before colonization, and it will be after.

5.  I did read the Adelaide Crapsey Cinquain on Poets Walk

November Night by Adelaide Crapsey   

Listen!

With faint dry sound

like steps of passing ghosts

the leaves, frost-crisped break from the trees

and fall

and mentioned the closing lines of the Poets Walk selection of Merwin’s poem

For the Anniversary of My Death 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

6. In closing, Maura shared Leo Buscaglia’s children’s book, the fall of Freddy the Leaf — captured here in video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qst-rXrU81o

poems for Nov. 13-4

A Bowl of Fruit — Stephen Dunn

The Inheritance by Stephen Dunn 

Documentary — by David Ruekberg

The Falling Body by Abby E. Murray

In Praise of Air by Simon Armitage

Reel — by Barbara Crooker

November by Maggie Dietz

Stephen Dunn seems to find pleasure in the “messiness of theory” as he “paints in words”  the play of ideas and things while teasing his colleague who clearly prefers examining analysis over givens.  The fun of parenthetical remarks, poking fun at himself, rhyming oranges with oranges, intending that his intention seem spontaneous, etc.  Bernie gave some background about his last book, Local Visitation

Bernie shared this article : From Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts, Fall 2003, Vol2, #2 - by Ron Smith which speaks about "A Bowl of Fruit" 

Dunn's poems stand alone as individual works of art. But together, in groups and sequences, they suggest more intricate patterns and concerns, more comprehensive and complex themes. After its prefatory first poem, Local Visitations is divided into three major sections, "Sisyphus and Other Poems," "Here," and "Local Visitations." The very first part of the book is, I think, by far the most interesting, significant, and successful.

From the beginning, Local Visitations foregrounds Dunn's increasing tendency to emphasize the artifice in the art. The book opens with "A Bowl of Fruit," a poem which presents this epigraph attributed to Professor Jeanne-Andrée Nelson: "For me, the pleasure of poetry is taking it apart." Dunn's poem responds to the wrongheaded notion of reading that such a quotation implies. "A Bowl of Fruit" begins by addressing Nelson and also referring directly to itself: "Jeanne, I have spent days arranging / this bowl of fruit, all for you, / knowing how much you like fruit / (not to eat but to examine)." As we might expect from Dunn, "A Bowl of Fruit" is a good-natured attack, a moderate chiding, really, which in fact modulates from friendly lampoon to "seduction." Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned" ("We murder to dissect," the great Romantic had fairly hissed) seems downright violent next to Dunn's amused, crafty correction. Dunn merely causes his "still life [to break] open / into life, the discovery that the secret worm [in the apple], / if real, will not permit you any distance." The gentle mischievousness, the light touch with allusions (the book of Genesis, Blake's "The Sick Rose"), the generous restraint displayed toward his chosen antagonist, the easy, unapologetic employment of the familiar if not the cliché (the apple and its worm)—these are recognizable Dunn qualities. However, the Brechtian, or if you prefer, postmodern, flouting of literary illusionism is new in Dunn, or at least new in its level of up-front audacity. Through it, Dunn continues to insist on the artist's necessary paradox: Only by embracing art can we truly embrace life (and vice versa, of course). The Freudian playfulness of the phallic worm is natural here, since the speaker is in fact the poet. 

The group found the first poem a delightful exploration of the process of writing, using still-life and life.  The Jeanne in question, is one of Dunn's colleagues and professor of French.  We loved the playful non-rhymes, the sounds and allusions such as  " The unexamined life is not worth living…"  Pittsford's discussion brought to mind, Wordsworth, "We murder to dissect".  Hard to resist thinking about  pears... St. Augustine. https://augustinianvocations.org/blog-archive/2017/1/19/st-augustine-and-the-pear-tree-a-lasting-story. John brought up Eric Satie,  poire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQmuAr93OlI --  "Nothing to do with that side; must look for something else or I am lost."

 We listened to Stephen Dunn read his poem “The Inheritance”   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-inheritance-stephen-dunn  where his voice seems resigned, and tired.  Although he does not articulate well, the tone is kindly… He seems to be talking to himself, reviewing expectations and disappointments, not particularly pleased where he ended up.  Perhaps the inheritance is something that defines him, but his last two sentences break out of resignation with the “why not” argument turning what sounds like an aphorism about being a guest in your own home into a more complicated reflection that concerns “almost” everyone, and accepting of the fact that feeling troubled is more universal than one may think.  He plays with “vanity dogging one’s days” by personifying it into a clownish dog.  Throws in a little Great Gatsby with a “while your at it” job description of referee for “the uncertainties of the night”.  

The Pittsford group felt the poem was visiting a retirement home.  It's an uneasy feeling of viewing fractured truth... and yet, one senses  a kind of generosity in it… 

Summaries by various members: the road to paradise is paradise; accept what is the way it is without hoping for a silver lining. Don’t worry about reconciling doubts with realities (but isn’t it a comfort for those of us who do, that he wishes for this).  The clever use of "you" as if talking to himself, but also the reader.

It was a pleasure to have the visit of David Ruekberg poet who read his poem aloud.  We loved the long dinosaur period juxtaposed with blink.  Our “blink” in time won’t be as long as that!   

He captures the sense of the “old dance”, the “round of seasons” echoed in the poem.
“reel”… The snapshots of being an English teacher, references to neighborly love, voting, medecine, juxtaposed with the environment is effective… returning to the old score where old dogs just call tricks by a different name.  Important questions:  why we shy away from interrogating ourselves… yet seek answer, ache for belonging.  The last image of “uncorking a bottle” — the symbolic blessing of a new ship, but loaded with warheads named after mothers is brilliant.  There’s an echo of “bulwarks” we have constructed. As one person, the poem is filled with “impingements of opposites.”

Discussion  included  climate change, environmental concerns, habits.  David spoke of inspiration for the poem... the Baltimore science museum… sense of time moving. How a poem allows ideas to morph.  Jan felt it ressembled a Zen Koan; David remarked references to Frost.  

One square inch of silence brought up the  Hoh Forest : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Square_Inch_of_Silence

The Falling Body sketches the parallel of falling in war, with the poet’s daughter falling down stairs, where the couplets indeed feel like like stairs,  and the story clatters and accelerates down them-- both the actual fall, but also the sense of the father's ptsd.  The last line confirms, the indifference of the crowd to either fall.  

I read aloud another Abby Poem, that speaks of the "ache of the unsaid", the "things not done; responsibilities not met; old friends uncalled; letters of concern unwritten... a life of excuses littered around her".  She is deservedly Poet Laureate of Tacoma!

We loved the Armitage and Elaine brought up the fact that the poem was printed on a wall with Titanium oxide:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk › worlds-first-air-cleansing-poem-1.373843

May 14, 2014 - In Praise of Air: Poem displayed on the University's Alfred Denny Building ... “This poem alone will eradicate the nitrogen oxide pollution created by ... on is coated with microscopic pollution-eating particles of titanium dioxide ...We enjoyed the theatricality of the 3^rd stanza:                    

 like Christopher Marlowe; stage talk… 

“Among the jumbled bric-a-brac I keep                                   

a padlocked treasure-chest of empty space,

and on days when thoughts are fuddled with smog

or civilization crosses the street...

the image of "cars blow kisses to our lips from theirs"-- a mental image of crowded cities.. 
and how "air" has the last word... with the pun of the last line:
"My first word, everyone's first word, was air".  

The "ai" in  praise, and air; lots of slant rhyme....  And the power of a child's first word -- which sounds like "air".

Reel:  delightful 13 lines replete with alliterations, enjambments, "maybe" answered by "of course" followed by "but right now" -- mid-Fall preparing for winter a perfect metaphor for how to meet the end of life.

Maggie Dietz takes 6 tercets to look at November.  Chestnuts are "busted"... the sky, "hardened plastic" hovers.  the "pasty" river coughs up reed grass... the days throw up a closed sign around four.
comments: Elocution required!  can’t read this w/ mashed-potatoes in the mouth. If you have any doubt, Dietz lets you know:  show’s over -- the 1 + 3 end rhymes, visual and sound imagery coordinate.  We enjoyed it, but wondered why the Capitals at the beginning of each line.   

no meeting Wed. 11/26 or Thanksgiving, 11/27

However, I did send this:

Gratitude — Jon Davis

my favorite lines:
opening

Forget each slight, each head that turned

Toward something more intriguing—

and other forgettings...

Remind yourself you never wanted them.  (honors, recognition)

When the spotlight briefly shone on you,

and the last two lines:

Silent darkness, and you, hidden in that wider dark,

Your refusal a kind of gratitude at last.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here”  by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo “When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos “Thanks” by W.S. Merwin “The Thanksgivings” by Harriet Maxwell Converse “Dusting” by Marilyn Nelson “Red Brocade” by Naomi Shihab Nye “A Toast” by Ilya Kaminsky “Starfish” by Eleanor Lerman “Earth Your Dancing Place” by May Swenson

Poems for November 6-7

Walking Down Westgate in the Fall by Howard Nemerov
The Dying Garden  by Howard Nemerov
Soprano by Rita Dove
Rhapsody  by Aditi Machado
Author's Prayer by Ilya Kaminsky
Danzsirley/Dawn's Early by Gloria Muñoz
Small People by Naomi Shihab Nye
Poem for Ugly People  by Abby Murray (from Hail and Farewell https://www.perugiapress.com/wp/books/hail-and-farewell/
Reasons to Love Us,  by Abby Murray

Jim thought this article might provide insight into Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa  which came up in discussion 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/magazine/searching-for-a-lost-odessa-and-a-deaf-childhood.html

So many wonderful poems... so many conversations within each one, as we noted with the two Nemerov selections Judith suggested.  Forgive the typos... you can doublecheck by referring to
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33179

The first two poems are a timely seasonal reminder -- but not just one season, or just "weather" --
but reflections on how we traverse passages through time.  As several people pointed out in different ways, the rich blend of sounds matching the depth of the thinking.  An almost sacred feel to "litanies of change", and Chrysanthemums (flowers to commemorate the dead) consenting with the winter...
An entire seminar could be held discussing the inner conversations and echos of Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost... Although published almost 50 years ago, I love the timelessness, that sense of a Western Gate, the setting horizon as time marches on.

In the Dying Garden, the long inner sentence, pausing between semi-colons, colons,  does not feel as if the season is dying, but rather, captures what the Fall is.  I love how both the second (long) and third (short) sentences start with And.  The chime of the "four o'clocks with phlox, hollyhocks"
sets up the lowing vowels alternating between "om", "em", "um" threaded in the "m's".

One person wondered if he didn't come up with that last sentence, then build the poem around it!
Judith brought up the "ember days" as fasting days.  Someone else mentioned-- it's "right out of "everybody", as in common experience,  which brought up the practice started by Morgan O'Hara of gathering people to handwrite the Constitution and Declaration of Sentiments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments

For the next three poems, I selected them from "American Poets"  Vol. 57, Fall-Winter 2019 the journal of the Academy of American Poets.
Rita Dove was the Wallace Stevens Award Winner.  Chancellor Ellen Bass writes :"The depth of her insight is astonishing.  She sees into our most complex relationships and renders those truths with startling precision.  She delivers us to ourselves.  With technical virtuosity and luscious music, her poems torch us with beauty and brutality, innocence and ruin.  Fiercely political and exactly intimate, this is brilliant poetry at its height."  She quotes the first 4 couplets of "Soprano" -- and continues, "Rita Dove could be describing her own poetry."

I asked the group to ask the poem questions.  Why the title?  Why the parentheses around the 4 specifics",  why the thin lines of the couplets pouring out the one sentence which ends as question.
Again and again, we discover there are not answers... but the richness of details we notice call forth associations... Soprano... the highest voice... and David thinks of In Paradisio (Faure Requiem) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT5Lws5QTgk
 Soprano, as the "spokesperson" poet; the parenthetical possibilities of the room you don't need,
the "thin" lines allowing the pouring "clean as moonspill" --
I don't know if it's a question of just body or mind or who "goes home" gives up... but the combination of question tucked in after 10 couplets "seeding the path" of the voice is highly effective!

Rhapsody or rhubarb -- is a delightful choice set up by the title. Aditi Machado was awarded the James Laughlin prize (for a second book) for Emporium. I'm not sure if the poem is from this book, which "deftly builds up into a critique of capitalism and its plundering."  Further on, the poems are described as "work that comes from the margins-- and from many of them simultaneously... leaving us with an emporium of possibility made by a magician's hands and a visionary's eyes".
Hmmm.  OK. This doesn't help, whether the poem was from Emporium of not.   The poem we read overplays sound... we did not care for the gratuitous Indian script we think means "juice" and the rather flip teen-age tone "like/I get I'm out of tune."  Too much I, and hard to fathom depth if there is any.

Judith reminded us that "rhubarb" is what you have actors mumble, if you want to create the sense of a crowd mumbling.

She has two poems called "Rhapsody" in the following journal: https://www.lanaturnerjournal.com/v/vspfiles/downloadables/Lana_Turner_No_11.pdf
preceded by a rather heady assemblage of ideas in an article about what is objective and what's figurative.

Ilya Kaminsky was awarded the AAP Fellowship , and a general eloge paid to his work.  I selected thus, a poem from his 2004 book, Dancing in Odessa, but made a note about his book, The Deaf Republic  a highly inventive "unfinished manuscript".  The group didn't feel the poem convinced us that Kaminsky is "a tremendous broker for the poetic arts in our world today."

Danzsirley/Dawn's Early  by Gloria Muñoz, won the Ambroggio prize for a ms originally written in Spanish, with an English translation.
The group wanted a longer poem!  One person offered "for si las moscas" means "just in case"--
which makes sense for being prepared for anything -- from flies to whatever metaphor they stand for.

Small People came from Naomi Shihab Nye's book, The Tiny Journalist -- it does have stanza breaks...  one after the first 5 lines, another after the next 4.   The power of her last stanza, with its clear image of "riding on every train to better history... and what we weigh... the three words...
fog, suitcase, tomorrow... -- what is it, unnamed, that has already left... Haunting poem which
invites further reflection.

We ended with two poems by Abby Murray which were satisfying and provided us a sense of being in a conversation with an authentic, human character.  No pretense.  Certainly craft... good sounds and images, and paring down ugly to the undisguised u.g.l.y.  No extra vowels.  If we're honest, see past appearances, understand there's a link between what is considered ugly and the beauty of what we might not otherwise admire.  

Beauties of Yesteryear:  Villon.

Rodin:  She who was once the  beautiful helmet maker’s wife. we dismiss.  beautiful… we might become involved.

longer stanza… coherence.  not interrupted.   

imagery so strong.  gum on the tongue; dotted. 

Beauties of Yesteryear:  Villon.

Rodin:  She who was the helmet maker’s once- beautiful wife  http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/sculptures/she-who-was-helmet-makers-once-beautiful-wife

Reasons to love us:  We loved the smoothness, how like Rita Dove's one note, reassurance spindles

down the skinny lines.  We were reminded of the  Taoist story of the Chinese farmer, who gets a horse.... it runs off... comes back with another... the son rides it and breaks a leg... but what is bad news, since the Emperor is calling up all able-bodied men to fight in the army...  Taoist theology emphasizes themes such as naturalness, peace, effortless action, detachment and receptiveness.

The farmer's tale captures many of those. In short, it reminds people that it's best not to get too upset -- or attached -- to what happens to us. Even something that seems dark and confounding can turn out to be an opportunity.

Abby's poem delivers that kind of wisdom with an extra dose of empathy.

oct. 30-31

In the Land of Superstition  by Stephen Dunn
The Beginning of Something Is Always the End of Another by Sarah Freligh

How It Is by Maxine Kumin 

Cross That Line  by Naomi Shihab Nye 

Morning Song by Naomi Shihab Nye

Whose sleeves: American Tagasode by Ed Roberson

Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today by Emily Jungmin Yoon

Stephen Dunn : https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n2/features/smith_r_111403/dunn_s.htm

We will continue with more Stephen Dunn Nov. 10.  So many intriguing titles...

"The Other Side of Things"

Sisyphus as Rest; Sisyphus among the Cold Dark Matter; Angels in the Rafters; A Postmortem Guide.   Always interesting to see where a poem will go when you explore old "friends".

 How's the rock rolling business going? Is your rock getting any smaller over the years?

But to be more serious, I made notes quoting Wallace Stevens:  "Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation"... why not make up a land, filled with superstitions and wander around them... pretending that we are safe with our tried and true salt thrown over the shoulder, and all we avoid,

like 13th floors and black cats.  I love Dunn's image:  "the roulette of this or that"... 

Why do we shy away from the world as it is, trying to create the world we want?  

In the discussion it came up that more people used to know about superstitions... and actually believed them.  And indeed, as Dunn says midway in the poem, "Sometimes it works"-- and if not,

we find/out fast... 

We enjoyed the title of the next poem -- usually we think "the end of something is the beginning of another" but here Freligh has reversed the role.  The "uh" sounds predominate... the images -- "ruff" of sun's first light (in a rough and tough life where you "butt" the last cigarette... the ex runs off with a slut)... The urn, the hugless state of losing a mother, and the scene at the cemetery-- the fellow who needs to dig the grave, waiting.  So many layers that reached us all.

Comments;  feel the sideways slide… the senses help us  experience the poem… invent.  physicality…  

How it is:   brought up because of  Sarah's collection Sad Math,  and Sarah had told the story of Maxine and Anne Sexton when we discussed her poem " Starting With an Old Photo of My Mother and Ending on a Hill" and the line in that poems "I will never wear her clothes. 

Poignant... the details of what is left in the pocket... putting on someone else's jacket... imagining the last day of his/her life... going backwards in time... "reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fish into a ceremony of sandwich..."... which prepares perhaps the "fishing out letters", etc. the "uh" sounds here too... August... unwind... back up, unlaced, running, dumb... for the blue blazer, swelling (like Sexton's words)  into the metaphor for death, the dumb resounding, silent.

Cross that line: 

to listen: https://onbeing.org/poetry/cross-that-line/

The metaphor clear; Story of Paul Robeson... Voice carries. Discussion included remembering how Marianne Anderson. refused to sing in places with segregated seating; an  immigrant from Ukraine singing waiting for entry;

All our thoughts are lines.  

Morning Song:  from The Tiny Journalist-- the mindfulness... the fact that a tiny journalist is bigger than we are, because of her ability to tell what she sees.  Killer line: What was our crime? That we liked/ respect as they do? That we have pride.

Barricades of words and wire... how perfect to pin what divides us from understanding each other.  We loved that the ending line led to a discussion of what a "better idea" than retaliation by fire would be.  Whether it be peace, truth, or inciting people to also share what they see... Kathy reminded us of this quote by Amichai:  “From the place where we are right  flowers will never grow.”

American Tagasode:   an invitation to learn about a Japanese Elegy from over 1,000 years ago, the metaphor of a dead wife's presence in the folded sleeves of her kimono, the trigger of scent for other memories.  Here too, the style seems to fold in the spaces... 

A perfect "balancing" between Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice... explained in the multiple meanings of "Chada" in Korean... to wear... we are worn... to pick up on Ending and Beginning theme,

today you are the youngest you will ever be... you are the oldest you have been... the coldness of the season, the heat of the tea, the chill on the skin, the work of the heart...

It brought up these reflections: we look at things from Center.  Asians look at edges. (action)

in order to see the ballet need to see what people on the outside are doing.

Othello with 4 dancers.  http://joffrey.org/othello

different ways of being … 

balance … 

Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/101675/dont-bother-the-earth-spirit-who-lives-here