April 1-2

We will continue "virtual" discussion via zoom.
In the packet:

Basho

Pileated Woodpecker Barbara Loots

The End of Science Fiction — Lisel Mueller

Proximity  by Karen Head

Let Me Begin Again Philip Levine

Sent with the email:

1. STOP! An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans

I love listening to the Italian video (English subtitles) . A link to it (from a reply to the original facebook post in English, by Kristin Flyntz. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3020095601354571&id=100000624824896

It’s gone viral in many languages here: #LISTEN #ASCOLTA 

 2.  Lockdown https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ireland-priest-coronavirus-lockdown-poem_n_5e748a0cc5b6f5b7c541e875

3. Pandemic by Lynn Ungar http://www.lynnungar.com/poems/pandemic/

We did not get to the Covid poems...
Follow-up email 4/2:

Dear all,

It takes a group to make a terrific group!  Thank you Elaine for inviting us all!  I may have missed a few items in this short summary follow-up from April 1 — feel free to add.

 Thank you all for participating as you can.  

Links: I give a cursory summary of comments on my blog here: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8871830243813058410#allposts

(see Recovered Discussion points April 1)

Thank you Kathy for all these links

and to John for bring them up.

Philip Levine reading his poem, “Let me begin Again”  

Let Me Begin Again   the poem which we discussed 4/1,              text

His other poems: Poetry of Jazz, vol 2 

The Simple Truth  title poem of his Pulitzer Prize winning book       text

Poetry of Jazz Vol 1

What Work Is                  text           

They Feed They Lion        text 

 Thank you also Kathy for the info about Mary Sybist and the Annunciation series from which the picture puzzle poem came.  :https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2014-winter/selections/incarnadine-by-mary-szybist-738439/

from Bernie : Fwd: "Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution" Netflix film trailer

 a blurb from IMDB on the documentary film: 

Down the road from Woodstock, a revolution blossomed at a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement.

Directors:  James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham

Writers: James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham

Stars:Larry Allison, Dennis Billups, HolLynn D'Lil  | See full cast & crew »

And here's a link to a YouTube trailer of the Netflix movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrIs22plz0

It was a great session… I hope you all are well and safe.  A friend of Bernie’s has taken to signing off this way.

Stay well

      Stay hopeful

             Stay curious.

Bernie likes it, and so do I, so thank him,

as I wish it to  you all!

Kitty

Winding up March 2020 selection of poems and update

I hope you are all faring well, and finding ways to deal with the “new normal.”  Here is a lovely

 gift from the Rotterdam Symphony Orchestra:  https://youtu.be/3eXT60rbBVk

free museum entry: http://mcn.edu/a-guide-to-virtual-museum-resources/?fbclid=IwAR1Kt_-O42utyzE63fSQMo__U1e2jaaMK4MRRoIFTw0fnS-eRn2jvMRVmy4 

LIST OF POEMS:

from Judith: The Grief of a Girl’s Heart" attributed to Lady Gregory.  It’s different from this one: https://westcorkcollegewords.wordpress.com/poetry-ponderings/grief-of-a-girls-heart/ 

Raglan Road: Patrick Kavanagh https://allpoetry.com/On-Raglan-Road

(and sing the ballad “Cockles and Mussels”— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruNdU6bGE5E

in case you don’t know about Molly Malone — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Malone

1.  THE EVERLASTING SELF  by Tracy K. Smith,

2. TODAY, ANOTHER UNIVERSE by Jane Hirshfield
3. SINGULARITY by Marie Howe
4.  A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH by Maya Angelou
5.  THE MUSHROOM HUNTERS by Neil Gaiman

6. THEORIES OF EVERYTHING by Rebecca Elson

7.  ON THE FIFTH DAY by Jane Hirshfield
8. Gold Mountain  by Emily Yong
9. Morning Song  by Sara Teasdale 
10.    WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES by Mary Oliver
11. Spring Morning by Marion Strobel

 PLEASE pick any favorites you’d like to discuss at a future date and let me know.  I apologize for the length of the document… but would appreciate a cursory look and response if you deem appropriate. 

Last Wednesday, thanks to the prompting of John, we gathered to discuss the poems sent out  March 25-6

via zoom.  If you wish to try zoom out, and haven’t indicated it yet, could I ask you to kindly let me know?

If you wish to see a quite cursory summary of the discussion, you can find it here: http://kdjospe.blogspot.com

zoom update:  Ken is attending a consumer reports video conference on Tuesday 3/31 at 1 pm on how to navigate potential security concerns, and tips to change setting to provide more security on Zoom and other apps to find out more.  He has promised to send me any information.

for meeting: Everyone is welcome to join in on a zoom meeting! You need to download zoom.com

You will receive an invitation from Elaine, since she has no restriction on time with her zoom account, but I will moderate.

Both O Pen (Pittsford Library) and Poetry Oasis (Rundel) participa

(virtual) March 25-6

Due to Covid 19... this is the second week of not meeting in person.  However, 10 of us met by zoom.
Discussion below.

Sent out:
bilingual version of Pablo Neruda:  A callarse /Keeping Quiet 

 the English column is missing two key things:

1) n the 6th stanza, it should read:

What I want should not be confused

with inaction.  (total inactivity)

2) and the last stanza is missing the final verb:

“Now I’ll count up to 12

and you keep quiet and I will go."

In honor of celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year: (for quick review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz

What Was Told, ThatJalal al-Din Rumi - 1207-1273;  translated by Coleman Barks, 

For a change from Patrick Kavanagh, Raglan Road, or general Saint Patrick’s Day, an anecdote about W.B. Yeats

with a thank you to Paul Brennan.  Yeats, had been asked by a friend to help boost the reputations of  struggling young poets whose futures in the trade weren't bright. The result --this poem by Yeats

 To a Poet Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine

For a little Gilbert and Sullivan style fun: Seen on face-book: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shaVy41ZCbc
I am the very model of effective social distancing!

What’s on the web:  Special issue of Rattle: https://www.rattle.com/a-dispatch-from-seattle-by-sherman-alexie/

https://www.rattle.com/coronavirus-in-china-by-anthony-tao/

Lord of the Flies by Dorianne Laux

Darling Coffee  by Meena Alexander

(from mass mailing forward I sent from American academy of Poets -- Poems to connect us)

The Days to Come by Medora C. Addison

Dreams by Langston Hughes, interpreted in ASL by Dangerous Signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HSn3o0kv4k
**
Discussion:

1) Neruda: A callarse / Keeping Quiet.  There are many links which show both version and contain discussion.  Here’s one: https://exploringyourmind.com/pablo-neruda-and-keeping-quiet-the-art-of-connecting-with-kindness/

and another one with even more poems:

 http://spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/02/pablo-neruda-callarse.html

Preguntas semilla para la reflexión: ¿Qué significa para ti no hacer nada? (What does “doing nothing” mean?) ¿Puedes compartir una historia personal se un momento en el que sentiste que la vida interrumpía tu tristeza debido a haber hecho una pausa? ¿Cómo reconcilias la expresión: "sigue avanzando” (always moving) con la crítica del poeta hacia nuestra obsesión por movernos constantemente? 

** We enjoyed how the common, everyday language could express so much…  Being quiet is a calm stillness that should not be confused with inaction, inactivity.  Just as distractions, moving out arms around, should not be confused with “worthwhile pursuits.”  The point is to understand ourselves (both individually and collectively).

A timely poem in these strange times.

The second poem, addresses our connection to and understanding of life.

The “That” in question is the repeated cause and effect — if we take time to listen to all around us, however you understand God, or love, or whatever is speaking… The opening line makes the universal message clear — whatever was said to the rose, the cypress, the jasmine, people of Chigil, pomegranate flower… can be understood with our heart that underlies any eloquence of language.

We skipped to page 3 and the poem by Dorianne Laux.  

  is poetry more reportage… word as play (as in stage)… less personal take, reflection?

We enjoyed the fine crafting, playing on “the last shall be first, the first last"

Matthew 20:16 King James Version (KJV)— but in the end, we all die… chosen or not… The play on “top of the pile” as a good thing, no longer is… the word “shrouds” as both noun and verb…  How does the the note by the poet about the poem elaborate, contribute to its meaning?

Darling Coffee:  I saw it as the name of the café… as well as personnification of a coffeeshop and what is served in it.

Everyday elevated to conjugal bed “tucked under wild sheets:/fit for the conjugation of joy.”  A bit precious… but we all “get it”— 

coffee, connection, sources of warmth…

The Days to Come with its repetitions had a “Wordsworthian” flavor.. a hopeful message, infused with nature’s beauty, music and our unique ability of using language to preserve memory and the food for future thought.

**

Such notes do not do justice to the sharing.  

As always, it is gift to have many readers sharing — turning a 2-D poem on a page into a rich prism, first sounded by voice,

then rounded by response.

March 19

first cancelled session: sent March 13.  plenty of shamrocks to pick here:

Please tell me which of these 100 Irish great poems tickle your fancy.  https://ireland-calling.com/100-favourite-poems/.

We have discussed many of them over the years.  You’ll see I’ve picked #69 and #80.

The second poem appeared this morning on Poems for the Resistance: you can subscribe here:  https://tinyletter.com/poemsfortheresistance

Yesterday’s poem posted there however, irritated me no end as self-indulgent, even the “vague awareness of social injustice” couldn’t redeem it.  I enclose Cambell McGrath’s Capitalist Poem #5 and 5 responses to it.  Sometimes the healing power of poetry comes from workshopping someone else’s published work!  

Pegasus by Patrick Kavanagh
Instructions on Not Giving Up  by Ada Limon
But Men Loved Darkness rather than Light by Richard Crashaw**
Lines Written Near San Francisco BY LOUIS SIMPSON
Follower  by Seamus Heaney
Placement by Kitty Jospé--a golden shovel using title of painting "The Best is yet to come."

** apt for our times...

The world’s light shines, shine as it will, 

The world will love its darkness still. 

I doubt though when the world’s in hell, 

It will not love its darkness half so well

poems for March 11-12

Nude Descending a Staircase[1] by by X J Kennedy
"Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Wait by Galway Kinnel
Emergency Management by Camille Rankine
Labyrinth. by  Kenyatta Rogers
Like Brooms of Steel (1252) by Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase,_No._2

David started us off by reciting from memory A Boundless Moment  by Robert Frost--

a perfect inspiration in these days awaiting Spring, when the beech leaves are white

and still hanging on after winter...  and what is this law of attachment?

As ever, a lovely panache to wrap us up in nature and philosophy...

We have discussed the Nude before... but this time, George, from Rundel thought of his Haitian mother...naked, hugging trees... some felt he captured the power of the nude in a playful way... all others felt the  nude application to her mind presumptuous.  I still admire the craft, and am particularly fond of the w's at the end... 

One-woman waterfall, she wears/her descent... perhaps like Fanny Choi's Cyborg, she'll know what to do if misinterpreted -- "collecting motions into her shape" even more convincingly than anyone collecting thoughts. Burne's angels came up.

and the Millay was triggered by the week before.

"Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that." one of my favorite lines.

Wylie uses prink in Scots dialect… 

Lauren Bacall.  You know how to whistle don’t you ? Just put your lips together…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MheNUWyROv8

Another Kinnel, so why not. this was the one written for the person contemplating suicide.  
Wonderful advice without that irritating, "oh, you'll understand when you are older..."  The music... the beat of the loom,
the slow making of what is being woven...

"music of looms weaving all our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

most of all to hear,

the flute of your whole existence,

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.  "

Recalls "...   have to rehearse…  readiness is all." Hamlet Act. 4; 

 The Rankine was in a recent issue of the New Yorker...
Beautiful ending... if I could be... 
what is something/nothing?  If the wind,  we can only see the effect of wind.

 if  nothing -- perhaps the ending is with a period, or an unending list of possibilities to come.                                                          

Laybrinth:   constructed in a series of boxes.

Comments: he only gives us contours of what he’s missing. each “box” an aggravation… 

paralysis == peril of parallelization…

disorientation… 

We ended by being completely puzzled by the Dickinson.  

March 4-5

Vertical View of a City by Nikki Wallschlaeger

Robert Frost Discovers Another Road Not Taken by X.J. Kennedy

Interpretation of a Poem by Robert Frost by Thylias Moss

What a Cyborg Wants

Why Regret? by Galway Kinnell - 1927-2014

For Pittsford:  Bernie's poems:

Togo

Growing Older, Outside Togo 

Everyone liked Bernie's poems!

**

The first poem is brilliant -- a vertical stack of stanzas and the idea of someone looking down -- maybe a bombardier, but it is hard not to think of God, who also sees opportunity for joy in the sky, we sometimes call heaven.

The 5th stanza only has 4 lines, whereas the others have 5.  Is there hope that maybe there will be a change

to the rebuilding of those glass houses which house those who throw stones at the less fortunate who according to their privileged point of view, deserve to die?  

Nikki cleverly incorporates the universal desire of wanting to feel important into the second stanza, dismissing

the feeling of "overlooked" as "overbooked".

We noted that guns were referred to with syntax for humans : "weapons who kill"-- without belaboring the fact that funs don't kill... people do.

**

XJ's poem (the X adopted by Joe Kennedy so he would not be confused as poet, with the Senator) does a splendid undercutting of the whole misconceived idea of Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken".

What makes all the difference of course, is the fact of choice, not whether the path followed  was well-trodden or not...Implied is a tongue in cheek question about how in the end we pave our roads -- will it be towards heaven or hell?

One person made the comment that it felt like a jazz improv on the Frost!

Another re-take of Frost: One imagines perhaps what it's like to be black and running away from a slave master in the woods.  but then... see the problem of white vs. black neighborhoods.  

"Of course she delighted in the filling up

of his woods, she so accustomed to emptiness,

to being taken at face value.

This face, her face eternally the brown

of declining autumn, watches snow inter the grass,   

snow, here is not complimentary... and the sun is blond and nordic... and Jim, as in Jim Crow, and twice repeated promise not to bear him bastards...Although Frost wrote this during the Jim Crow era, 

it would be just as disingenuous to think he was thinking of this as to trivializing his poem as a tribute to American individualism. 

Social Activist Fanny Choi gives us yet another alternative  point of view of who women are in our society-- why not a cyborg who works perfectly, is clean, includes everyone (reply-all) and believes...

that when someone says, "I love you" they mean it, and tests them  by tearing off the skin. 

It called to mind

 Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll.  

https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/marge-piercy/barbie-doll/

 We discussed this Millay poem the next week...https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148561/oh-oh-you-will-be-sorry-for-that-word

I know we discussed the Kinnel before, but I just love how he writes... he knows how to write so irresistibly, you too want this power, bringing all parts of the world together.

The backstory of writing this poem for a student contemplating suicide only augments the irrefutable proof that regret, or complaint, or wishing to die already, has little to support it when there are so many miraculous things happening all around us.

Poems for Feb. 26-7

Not me by Alberto Rios

The Middleman by Alberto Rios

Border lines by Alberto Rios

The Broken by Alberto Rios

The Flour Man by Alberto Rios

Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman

My Species by Jane Hirschfield

Desert Bestiary Sonnet, One by Alberto Rios

The Pedestrian by Tommye Blount

We started out with a tribute to Leap Year from Paul, citing Gilbert and Sullivan: Paul.  Pirates of Penzance. 

https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/piratesofpenzancethe/whenyouhadleftourpiratefold.htm

followed by an inspired listening  of. 

I am the very model of a biblical  philologist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2SvqhfevE

followed by the announcement... of Harold Danko … 11th annual Feb. 29^th concert... https://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/harold-danko-the-piano-worker/Content?oid=11463145

The Rios poems were taken from Stories About the Sky.

Not me

How many people live inside of us? The discussion brought up  obsessive compulsive people…who  have a harder time  with detachment..   (Martin); 

Kipling — two sides of his head… https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/two_sided_man.html

 consciousness… bicameral mind… (James)

whale’s two eyes never merge into one vision… (Melville's Moby Dick)

lyrics of The Man in the Looking Glass — I’ve seen that face before

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=The+Man+in+the+Looking+Glass+%E2%80%94+I%E2%80%99ve+seen+that+face+before&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Not I… disembodied face … no answer.  Beckett 

We enjoyed Rios' humor and humanity of the fact that we are both the subject and object.   

The Middleman : 

always someone one-upped…. Why are we always striving… feel being stymied…pursue the  futility of “if…”

Rodney Dangerfield… 

Universal desire to be unique…  “individuation…”

elephant:  which part does a blind man feel?  

middleman:  passing things on.  trying to get recognition… employment… and that immense elephant in the room...
Loved the details of the only thing "real" the middleman does -- track mud in the room! We all do. It is not an accomplishment-- but at least it's honest.

Border lines  starts with an epigram:

A weight carried by two

Weighs only half as much.

What is a map?  Who draws the lines? How do we look at it? Like a cow in a butcher shop... 

"But in truth we live in a world made

Not of paper and ink but of people.

Those lines are our lives. "

Why not look at a border as what joins us,

Not what separates us. 

The Broken:  I love how simply Rios writes his convincing lines.
He does not change or soften this truth: "Something is always broken.

Something is always fixed."

Flour Man: brought up old recipes and memories... what is passed on.

Love this line about the Grandmother:

Moving with the rhythm of the centuries

Inside his grandmother, years for hands,

and the skillful way Rios' "son" as the grandson, becomes her son again.

"But who turned and saw himself for a moment

In the broken mirror of her face"

**

Cold solace:  We all enjoyed this one. pain of loss and love. 

Challah on Shabbat like eucharist… tortillas staff of life.  

step on dead wife’s poem… Golden Bells : Poe

how love carries on…. what the communion service… Frost.  Directive…

oral tradition of passing on … oral tradition of food.

My Species; What a title... what a metaphor.  the heart of an artichoke just as spiny inside the
edible leaves.  Layers... why we keep testing the spiny leaves, not wanting to believe there is only a spiny heart -- surely there is something beyond?

Bestiary -- how a poet sees the desert in a list of beasts.  Not all beauty at all -- but imaginative and alive.

The final poem uses brackets the end ni[ght, neighbor]
ni, could turn into "nigger"... or the carry on "no one died" with second syllable of deny...
We speculated about what's on the "side" --
how we use our side mirrors, or not, or fail to see, in this case a black pedestrian -- and the dismissal of what could be fatal. 

calm down, all good, no one died, ni[ght, neighbor]—  

no sense getting all pissed, the commotion

of the past is the past; I was so dim,

he never saw me—of course, I saw him.

Fine poem, good use of line breaks, and much more than about "walking down the street".

Pittsford brought up "code switching".

poems for Feb. 19-20

The Untied Stales by Paul Hostovsky

Pomegranate Means Grenade by Jamaal May

For the Sake of Strangers — Dorianne Laux[1]

I Will Love You Most When I Can Barely Remember Anything by William Evans**

Wake Up by Carl Phillips**

Weight by John Freeman **

The Clock by Victoria Chang**

This Paper Boat  by Ted Kooser

The Quiet World  by Jeffrey McDaniel**

** these poems taken from Tracy K. Smith's site, The Slow Down https://www.slowdownshow.org/episodes/year/2020

The first one:  Yes, we live in a staleness of what was conceived in 1776 as a glorious assemblage of states each supporting equal "liberty, justice, freedom" for all.  Why cross the l of the lie to sum things up in a tidy T?    How easy to read “united” for untied… usually things spill out.. but here,
the dark crayon, like a storm sweeps past any borders.  Two sentences... 
How perfect... the careless label, the darkness... as if the child understands what the father knows.

Pomegranate: (Granada) another child enters, more black crayons... darkening the sun as there are few colors in the picked-over box ... Ashen lines... and in the poem, an older man instructs Jontae, 11 years old, wanting him to know men who prefer to see him pull a pin from a grenade than pull a pen, are afraid.  There is a gentleness in the voice of this poet from Detroit-- but the poem could be from anywhere in the world.

For the Sake of Strangers:  depending on how one views the world... the last stanza could be positive or negative.  However, the discussion revolved around the amazing way a kindness will change
one's attitude about life.  The weight of grief... yet one is empty... and how to understand  -- how a kindness keeps you from the temptation to fall weightless from the world...

I will love you... The next poem combines humor and the sadness of dementia... how time / flies when you begin
to remember less of it... -- the example in the same couplet, both told in the present of dropping off a daughter... and  decades later,  being pulled out of a car by an officer as "the sun goes down."

Clever... the only thing that is agile... as we age... is time... How we, like Babylonians invent systems as if to contain it... as if to deny "a worst day never ending" -- 

Wake up by Carl Phillips offers another vision of aging... the weight of grief over what's lost...

Like reading a dream.  Wake up… beginning and end… 

images picked up and dropped.. 

transitions… seamless with things that don’t make sense.

Get ready for the work ahead. The Second Coming + Yeats. world turned upside down.

Weight by John Freeman :  a reminder of how we may cause pain... how self-doubt...  how convenient to hear people with noisy pockets and know to avoid them.

The Clock:   A meditation of sorts...  

An elegy for the poet's father who has dementia... There are no stanza breaks in this thin, single, column.  One person commented on the NPR interview about a physicist telling difficulty of clock test knowing he had dementia, describing his experience while  he could still tell time.

Now that the clock is going out of use we wondered what kind of "clock test" will be used when we have no more clocks.

A meditation of sorts... Enough to want to quote all the details... playing on the expression "to do something without second thought", the author's father cannot find the first most important thought, as every thought a 2nd, 3rd, 4th thought";  is the paper sad, once folded because it has seen the shape of an origami swan... or does it aspire

to flatness? a life without creases?"

How "our brains allow language/to wander without looking back but/knowing where the pier is."  

Words dealing with "fish"... like fishing for words... When they're gone, they're gone.

I used the Ted Kooser poem for a valentine. A perfect metaphor... 

It reminded one person of the Day of remembering the dead. What Valentine do you have ready, floating in the future... 

The last poem had a lovely preamble... 32 times of "I love you"... and the imaginative setting of

a time a government would allot 167 words a day.  

The idea of a "broken record" played invisibly of "I love you"...played in the silent breathing 

when they have used up their allotment.

---

[1] From Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry – column 777” posted 2/10/20; prefaced with a quote from Tolstoy: "Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.