Poems selected for Valley Manor discussion from Poets Walk - June 22

Poet’s Walk runs along University Avenue between North Goodman Street and Prince Street and honors poets, past and present, as artists of the written word.  You may have noticed 100 tiles and 15 granite pavers in the sidewalk with words…

When inaugurated in July 2010, at first blush, pedestrians puzzled at how to make sense of  these fragments — was it one long poem?   The designer, William Cochran, selected the liveliest words of the 115 poems, words of poems scribed by those with a Rochester connection, some still living. 

There are many famous poets with Rochester connections —Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglas, Emerson, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton,  Cornelius Eady, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Naomi Shihab Nye  to name a few. (these poets have lines inscribed on granite pavers. Other famous names (on tiles): Alan Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Marie Howe, Rita Dove, Robert Creeley, Galway Kinnell, Carl Sandburg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Heyen,  Amiri Baraka,  W.D. Snodgrass, Anne Waldman…) 

You may recognize guests in the Plutzik series at University of Rochester, others through publication at BOA Editions.   Some were local Professors from UR, St. John Fisher, RIT, Suny Brockport; some belong to the local poetry organizations, Just Poets and Rochester Poets,  some have been teachers or readers at Writers and Books.

To read all the poems (!) https://mag.oncell.com/en/poets-walk-78374.html

look up the poem prompt tile and that will take you to the poem.   You can also listen to the poems by dialing  (585) 627-4132, you can hear the poems spoken aloud.

We should be able to read/discuss the first six.   The other four I include to give you an idea of the variety!

Simply by M.J. Iuppa 

Boarding a Bus by Steve Huff

Driving by Wanda Schubmehl

See by Sally Bittner Bonn

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Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye 

Tell them I'm struggling to sing with angels by David Meltzer

Bus Stop by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Rochester Rhythms by Vincent F.A. Golphin

Invitation to Tea by Kitty Jospé

One Heart by Li-Young Lee

Only Geri and Suzanne came today.  For "Simply", I loved Suzanne's honesty... I don't get it!  Isn't that the case of so many poems.  Geri enjoys making summaries of how the poems "mean" to her.  Such a curious title... Simply as adverb could almost feel like advice to live simply... taking an old childhood song (rain, rain, go away, come again some other day)
as spring board, to jump (too sudden)... How "too" could mean "also" -- so the song, arriving perhaps attached to wanting tears, or sorrow to go away, shifts to vivid details that carry the tune away.

Boarding a bus: the poem tile "each of them whisper" acts like an overtone of warning... We wondered if there weren't some autobiographical detail involved in the book, Daring Escapes,  from which the poem was taken.
Escape, whether through drugs, alcohol, distraction... or taking a bus to... who knows where, is perhaps what we all do.
This glimpse of a couple in a small town in Iowa invites us to examine how we face whatever it is we face.  I love the details of counting "fives and ones" like evening prayers... repeat... then declare-- with the actual words quoted...
We enjoyed how the poem "unrolls" the scene, just as we wonder how far they get... the ominous feel of sunset,
loneliness, the old man changing a flat don't encourage us to think their ones and fives will get them far.

Driving:  the repeated driving fast three times... the change from "darkness" to "dark road" the shift of "fast" to mean not speed, but staying fast, as if tightly bound before the fourth driving fast...
The strength of the gerunds... finding, claiming, blowing, coming... this progression in the dark with a sense of confidence,
bring us to driving the roads of the body, a shift of focus on the self -- one familiar with the shadows.  The occlusives in
keeping ... calm... curves echo this claiming of the roads...

See:  delightful glimpse of childhood... how a handful of dirt, a dandelion, shunned in an adult world contain as much magic as clouds imagined as gathered, tucked into a pocket.

Shoulders  is a brilliant poem and we are lucky to have Naomi Shihab Nye's voice on poet's walk!
Beautiful example of what we all need to do... no matter how wide the road is to cross, no matter the weather...
inside our invisible jackets we all could be labeled, "FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE."

Bus Stop: wonderful sounds... stubborn sleet... dusk stains it... personifying the  weather -- and you feel the father calling... in the days before people shouted conversations into the wind, but shelter the phone, to keep the conversation private... but in this case, as if the father is sheltering the voice of his little girl.  How that little phone is her, pressed against the cheek.  It's not about waiting for a bus... what the stop of a moment... how we keep it even when we board the next.

Invitation to Tea:   strong images and liquid references "draw one in"/  one "drinks the poem".

One Heart:  Hard to understanding how "sky is inside you" but fitting for a poet who looks at the inside, "soul of things."  Flying gives a sense of no boundaries!  Even if things fall... the work of wings fastens us to the wholeness beyond us...
My words fail to convey the feel of this short poem.

3 days of a Forest, a River, Free 
Very much the sense of a fugitive slave crossing the Ohio, being chased... the freedom of the forest... how crossing the river to freedom means also losing "dry fear".

   

June 24

Weather by Claudia Rankine 

Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry by Jericho Brown

Harlem by Langston Hughes

On the D Train by Jacqueline Johnson

The Bees by Audre Lorde

Oil Sheen by Marc Vincenz

Behind the Bruised Peach  by Kitty Jospé

Praise Them by Li-Young Lee

The poems selected brought up the question of a poem’s purpose… what makes a poem, (or a date, or a number) iconic; 

The poems contained so many rich references, from the idea of “social contract” (and my mind leaps to Rousseau  'man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains’  which challenged the traditional order of society), (Rankine) to Dunbar’s “We wear the mask” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44203/we-wear-the-mask

Feminism (Lorde), the role of humans in our eco-destruction (Vincenz) and ending with Li-Young Lee’s encouragement to see into the soul of things…

Thank you Dave and Bernie for jiving alive Shango on the D train; Jan, Jim,Emily, Susan for voices the 6 ways Hughes elaborates on a dream deferred.  

Thank you Kathy for bringing up The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser https://www.amazon.com/Muriel-Rukeysers-Book-Dead-Dayton/dp/0826220630

(1938) and the asphyxiation by acute silicosis …

Pandemic masks, how to unmask racism bring up plenty of points!  

Several people mentioned American Masters Filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ new documentary “Toni Morrison:  The Pieces I Am”  which profiles the life, work and recurring themes of the Nobel Prize-winning storyteller. Angela Davis, poet Sonia Sanchez, writers Fran Lebowitz, Walter Mosley and Hilton Als, and Oprah Winfrey, who produced a feature film based on Morrison’s novel “Beloved,” are interviewed. — Apparently this will be rebroadcast tonight. 

I appreciate the input from everyone.  Sometimes a comment may feel like a “conversation stopper” — but that in itself can be a trigger for a deeper conversation.

It is interesting to ponder whether a poem written now, will be around 100 years from now… and the “how” of understanding it.  

It is valid to question how as white readers of a poem by a black poet, we are responding — and I would say, to go further— find black readers and discuss—

go beyond black and white to the poem and how and what it lays out for any reader.   

With Kathy’s permission, I share her comments: 

"I've been thinking of Elaine's comment about the Audre Lorde poem and the idea that whites just couldn't really understand blacks. And Dave H's reply that we CAN relate to a poem by a black poet. These are not opposing points of view.   I think Dave was responding to a specific poem and Elaine was responding to the Huge issue of race in general. I think we can agree with both.

 I find this  keynote presentation by Audre Lorde a very specific, nuanced  message to Elaine's point of whites efforts, sometimes clueless, to understanding black experience.  Near the beginning Lorde gives powerful "Examples". 

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1981-audre-lorde-uses-anger-women-responding-racism/  

**

In Brief:  listen again to Rankine and Jericho brown reading their poems.  

Weather… umbrella— what is covered, what it means to be “without”… what lies on the surface and 6 feet (apart) and under in the underlying conditions.

The language, line breaks, sounds are masterful, and call us to truly go beyond “talking about weather” as metaphor for avoiding important issues.

Say Thank you Say I’m Sorry:  again… polite words tossed off… but how are they used?  How is Brown telling the reader to look at “us/them”, those working, and those in the pandemic who don’t;   note the shift in point of view… the washing of hands… for you… vs the dismissive washing hands of taking responsibility in a situation.

the leaps in the poem challenge:  what does it mean to be a nation : the hint of “under God”  and “in God we Trust” on American bills when Brown says “I have PTSD/About the Lord.”  Ironic overtones of God Save the Queen, applied to “God save the people who work/in grocery stores.”  

John brought up “smile wars” and the stress of keeping yourself hidden… 

On the D Train: Shango, god of thunder and lightening… love of justice… “wearing an applejack” — apple brandy… drunk and “rhapsodizing”?  great contrast w/ hollering’ and singing the Blues. Poet-tential… Peace dance… that hope of love.  Like the Li-Young Lee — loving… the state of mind that allows a change — allows us to see “what singing completes us”.

The Bees: “what the children learn/possesses them.”  What stings us to destruction?  How to understand what destroys — and what being destroyed means

and the “could have” alternative of studying honey-baking.

Oil Sheen: underlying returns, but this time about the body of Earth—  the desolate landscape of industrial waste and cynical context for the final couplet about “fresh water” —

Praise them:  Thank you those who stayed.  Bio of  Li-Young Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Young_Lee.  We thought in the 6th line, a “that” was missing— but the versions of this poem I find don’t have it.  “It is our own astonishment that collects… “ The barer tree" —  not bearer… (with the 3 birds) , but how in winter, one sees the isolation of one tree more clearly, accentuated by birds we might not otherwise see.  We are the nervous ones.  The echo of being in a collective of “violent number”,

reminds us of  the girls in Audrey Lorde’s poem.  It is the untroubled, untroubling gaze, like Shango “doing a peace dance”… that allows us to praise the singing.

poems for June 17

4 we didn't get to from June 10:

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

supply and demand by Evie Shockley

After a March  by Abby Murray

Ö  by Rita Dove

Midsummer by Louise Glück

Passive Voice  by Laura Da’

And someone wrote it down by Christian Wiman

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[1] In the Seneca language, ö is used to represent [ɔ̃], a back mid rounded nasalized vowel. In Swedish, the letter ö is also used as the one-letter word for an island, which is not to be mixed with the actual letter. Ö in this sense is also a Swedish-language surname.  The noun, å means creek, (small river, stream).

Below, the visual the American Academy of poets chose to accompany the Laura Da' poem.

If you google Cherokee Indian Memorial Sign you will find even more.

With all good wishes,

Kitty

Small Needful Fact… so many ways to turn these three words…weave them with “perhaps” and “in all likelihood” …  to the grim irony that Eric Garner, with large hands working in the Horticultural department,  encouraging all that should grow, like plants, the metaphorical “easier to breathe”, is dead, like George Floyd, unable to.

Supply and Demand: Many different tones could be used to read this poem.— Bernie’s comment about “plan-fully thoughtful” is perfect for the double entendres of each line.

After a March: Do correspond with Martin to follow up on his idea of our breakdown in society.  Good discussion on all the sleight of hand involved to avoid what needs attention.

I believe it was after this that Bernie thought of the song,  Some Humans Ain’t Humans?

https://genius.com/John-prine-some-humans-aint-human-lyrics]

Rita Dove: We all practiced our imitation Swedish, imagined the round island suggestion of O… some went to fantasy, others to seeing the “glass forehead of the present” as spyglass, in the containment of the present surrounding one’s own backyard… the leaps from enjambments between stanzas… how one letter with a diacritic in one language can become one word,  in this case, island…  However she came to the Swedish, I love that one word gave her a poem which I hope will change neighborhoods so we go beyond “keeping things going” in our own backyard to indeed move forward. 

I would like to share here in my neighborhood Shawn Dunwoody’s murals — one is “run, walk, crawl… moving forwards” with  words between the verbs in tiny script… and this one again, with little words in tiny white letters.

Note in the body of Martin Luther King, a concave mirror.  The blue reflects the sky.

Midsummer:  I loved all the discussion this poem brought up!  Nostalgia… the prosy long lines, rhythmic changes, evocative, intimate… midsummer not just for the season but a turning point in an adolescent’s life.  Perhaps in ours too.

Passive voice:  From whimsical trick to using the passive voice in the 5th stanza where the perpetrators of massacres are not mentioned.  The zombies become the dominating powers that steal truth from history.  The final stanza… I love that the last line elicits both inferences of cutting out tongues and the pinch to get tongues to tell the past.  We all agreed, powerful.

The final poem by Wiman:  I am amazed how 10 lines contain so much.  a  bomber. a 3-line sentence about destruction. A clipped sentences followed by how imagined it said in 3-lines.  4 someones in 4 sentences.  Reading about a bomber whose favorite fruit is dates… how a brother said he loved them.  How many ways can you understand such words?t We know nothing about either man, but sense a funeral… not just for one man — the anonymity of someone guides us to be in the midst of it somehow.  

God withdraws.  How do understand the withdrawal of His withdrawal.  We didn’t come up with answers, but were richer for the sharing of possibilities.

As ever, I thank each and every one of you for your voices.

June 15 poems

We did not discuss the Wiman.

We had a lot of fun with the first poem — isn’t it remarkable that a word can be composed of only one letter?  And that ö be an island — one word represented by one letter!  

We enjoyed very much the images, especially the “glass forehead” the present extends — a window-- or perhaps a spyglass.   We agreed that the meaning of a word depends on its use in a sentence.   Linda brought up Wittgenstein  whose comments  in his time were not in line with the prevailing analysis: the tendency was to understand meaning by looking into the origins of a word, not its use.
Each of the stanzas is like a little island.  If you notice, stanza 2 and 5 have enjambments (the word strides from last word on the line, through a stanza break to the next line) which connects it.  Indeed… one starts out with one thing (the shape of the lips, and then sound), the house into a ship, sounds of the neighborhood… 

from Geri:

I think Rita is talking about the magic of words and how words are related to the uncertainty and variability of everyday life ("You start out with one thing, end up with another...")

Both Rita Dove and John Donne choose to write in the present about universal themes.  

No Man is an Island by John Donne - from Geri:

This poem was written during the time of religious persecution in England and the war with Spain. I think the author is trying to remind us that we are all a small piece of the large fabric of humanity and that we should try to avoid tearing it apart.

Breathe by Lynn Ungar - 

Lynn also wrote Pandemic which I love.

Ironically, Pandemic talks of connecting with one another through love and compassion while Breathe talks of connecting with others through anger to create turbulence ("We're going to need a lot of air to make this hurricane together.")-- Geri

Lynn’s poem Pandemic is a beauty.  Thank you for bringing it up — She indeed believes in connection… and I love when she uses the marriage vow to promise the world your love, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.  

What I particularly love in Breathe  is the conversation between wind and the other and the surprising connection with the personnification of the wind — who tells us it NEEDS us to breathe — and then to be part of the storm that will change things. I don’t think she implies we have to be angry… but the idea of working WITH the wind, not to destroy ourselves, but to shake up what needs shaking up seems to be the direction. 

Spiderweb by Kay Ryan - 

The author compares a spiderweb to life. Both, at first glance, might seem delicate but the survival of both requires strength.-- Geri

For the Kay Ryan, we admired the “skinny lines”, how each word seemed to count, as if making a long “coarse rope,/

hitching lines to the best posts possible.”  It could also be a poem about poetry.  Her poem gives renewed respect to Spider’s work and underlines in the last sentence again not to make assumptions.  “It isn’t ever delicate to live” is a marvelously ambiguous conclusion. 

And someone wrote it down by Christian Wiman - Geri

I think the author is saying that, although we may see the bomber as an impersonal being, he is a fellow human with human characteristics (his "favorite fruit was dates"). The bomber reminds me of the descriptions of some of the people who have committed mass shootings. In the eyes of their family and friends they are often described as "ordinary" people who you wouldn't think would commit a heinous act.

We ran out of time to discuss the Christian Wiman.  I love the emphasis on the final line — part of what makes us human is recording what happens…whether it be art, music, or word.  His clever use of the word “date” which we associate with history…

but also the emptiness of word if we don’t pay attention to warnings.

A Poetry Reading At West Point by William Matthews -  Geri

I think the author is telling the cadet, the rest of the audience and us that he is trying to write about experiences in such a way that they don't need translation but that he recognizes how difficult that can be. I think the last stanza illustrates that the cadet and the rest of the audience finally understand what the author is trying to do and that they appreciate his attempts ("Sir," he yelled. "Thank you, Sir.").

Imitating the cadet’s voice is fun… and Suzanne’s question at the end was whether the cadet got anything out of the poetry reading.  We all know the kind of poems that give us headaches… we also know there is room to have poems which are

not all serious, and can forgive a poet who tries to write about being human, even should he fail.   Why is it we think truth is hard? Can’t you see the picture of this reading?  I’d love to know which poems Matthews read.  Could put myself there!

June 8 + June 15 -- Valley Manor

Poems included the June 3 line up of : 

Here by Grace Paley
And We Love Life by Mahmoud Darwish

In Perpetual Spring by Amy Gerstler

Summer Cottage by Anne Porter
(paired with painting from the MAG, View over Meaux  by Jane Freilicher)

Dharma by Billy Collins

The Way We Said Goodbye  by Ted Kooser


**
See June 3 discussion for the first three poems.  With only half an hour of zoom, and small participation, the reading aloud and sharing of these poems is a small breath of delight.

Summer Cottage : delightful poem, drawing out the senses, makes you feel at the seaside.
Paired with Jane Freilicher painting, "View over Meaux" -- which is in NE France,not by the sea.
However, Jane (1924-2014) was closely associated with the NY School of poets, such as John Ashbury, Frank O'Hara (who has many Jane poems), Kenneth Koch.

We enjoyed Billy Collins sense of humor... how he is having a lot of fun, gently mocking the "master".  Suzanne mentioned the problem of poets writing too much, and many of the poems are not worth keeping.

For the Kooser, we discussed the double meaning of "wasting" -- the end of something, but also,
the sense of what a waste of time, sharing an ice cream cone with a dog... except, without saying so,
it is the end for this old dog, all the sweetness of the years spent with her, "slowly disappears".
Beauty elegy.

There was a bit of time at the end, so I shared Jim Jordan's Villanelle Why the Light is Different in Autumnthat appeared in 2020 Le Mot Juste anthology.
Robin's note for the follow-up email.

Thank you for sending the poem that was cut short as you read it...I had hoped you would.

And the link to the musical (and cultural) adaptation to M Darwish’s poem was amazing!  I like when poems stir memories and/or sensations in and around me, but I also enjoy experiencing how others interpret them.  I can’t say that I have a favorite book of poetry or even a favorite author.  For me, poetry has come through the books and music (CDs) that I’ve collected because of the art on or within.

Thanks again for putting this class together

**
June 18

Ö[1]  by Rita Dove (for 6/10 O Pen discussion)

No Man is an Island by John Donne

Breathe by Lynn Ungar ((for 6/10 O Pen discussion)

Spiderweb - Kay Ryan  - One of Suzanne Olson's "favorites")

And someone wrote it down by Christian Wiman (for 6/17 O Pen discussion)

 A Poetry Reading At West Point  by William Matthews  (One of Suzanne Olson's "favorites")

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[1] In the Seneca language, ö is used to represent [ɔ̃], a back mid rounded nasalized vowel. In Swedish, the letter ö is also used as the one-letter word for an island, which is not to be mixed with the actual letter. Ö in this sense is also a Swedish-language surname.  The noun, å means creek, (small river, stream).

June 10

Mr.  Jackson by Doug Curry

Breathe by Lynn Ungar

Tell them I'm struggling to sing with angels by David Meltzer (on Poets Walk)

Widening Circles by Rainer Maria Rilke - Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

email sent: 

"We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” — James Baldwin

On Wednesday, we will have a special guest, Doug Curry who will read aloud a poem he penned on 6/4.   I am so delighted he has accepted to add his wise and gentle voice in joining the zoom session.

The format  Doug will read aloud his poem.  He welcomes any questions or discussion about it.  Afterwards, you will see other poems that address Black Lives Matter.  I ask your flexibility. For Zoom, you will see I have in mind a broad participation, where the accent is more on gathering  all voices present together rather than individual comments on each poem.  It may be the case that we not finish all the poems, or be able to give them the time they deserve.   There is no reason why there cannot be two sessions involved.  Note, Doug is only able to be present on 6/10. 

Scroll down  below, in case you want more reading material, prepared by Writers and Books . You will see the poem tile “Voices Rise Up” from  Poets Walk (on University Av. between Prince and Goodman).  The poem  is part of the selection on p. 5-6  of  the above poems. Tell them I'm struggling to sing with angels by David Meltzer . You will see the "poem tile words" on line 7.

Discussion of Mr. Jackson: 

Today was a special day for our poetry-loving group.  On the day of the funeral of George Floyd, we had a special guest,

Doug Curry, reading his poem, Mr. Jackson.

What a contrast from the daily news headline, "Today funeral in Houston of George Floyd served as both a national reckoning and a moment of personal mourning.”

Through Doug Curry’s poem,  our group was given the privilege to imagine how it feels as a black man, writing about more than inconceivable acts and brutal murders. 

Doug’s voice, his measured and wise patience fielding and responding to our questions, touched us so that his words allowed us to sense something very real, breathing through us.  As whites, Barbara comments: “ I am a white person who continues to be as Doug states in the second stanza, "pained" and "bewildered" by these repeated killings. George Floyd's name is last on Doug's list. I want it to be the last time we even have such a list. Mr. Jackson in the poem reminds me that we have been here too many times before for that to be the case, but I have to hope. I will do what I can to make that hope a reality.”

Doug explained he came to poetry at age 57, and normally does not write personal poems, but aims for the universal.  He has picked as speaker, Mr. Jackson, a 70 year-old man from Meridian, Mississippi, who has seen it all before, including the echoes of Sherman in the south,  lynchings like what befell  Emmit Till. 

Mr. Jackson looks at the faces… the repeats of what you could see in the 60’s, the lengthening lists…the ineffective attempts at change… all behind the mask of  “Covid 19” .

This is about a black man, George Floyd, dead in the North, in broad daylight.  The list of lives do matter, and are given to us. Barbara: “A powerful part for me is the list of the names of just a few of the many victims of police brutality, starting with Sandra Bland and ending with George Floyd. Two of the names on the list we know so well, Emmit and Trayvon, that Doug didn't even have to include their last names”  and George was not the only one who CAN’T /BREATHE.

 Although the poem is long, all of us were riveted to it. We concur  it sustains the reader.  As Dave H. said, it is an antidote against trite things. How can there not be cynicism, listening to “facile eulogies, graveyard talk funeral speeches, too florid, too fierce; pathos in words that are truly pathetic as precisely calculated …” and the battle of police vs. blacks goes on parade.  The tone changes as we imagine George begging for African brothers to help… Bernie mentioned how the words swelled up like a flood of the Mississippi, then subside.

Mr. Jackson… “another man done gone…” and racism as a parallel pandemic is part of the parade… we want to see hope as he leans back, head tilted, gazing at the spring blue sky…Kathy pulled on the multiple layers of his final sigh…  

The mention of leaders… the rhetoric of leaders, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and calling on the Lord with Old Testament fists shaking in the psalms asking, “where are you Lord”.  Lori brought up the difference between helpless and passive.  John spoke of the white exercises in futility to try to change things.  Doug explained that revolutions are started by Middle Class, not those in the underclass, whose murders make it onto the newspapers.  What good is it to be “right”, to be “righteous” if dead?  And Prayers?  Empathy is good, but that doesn’t change what needs changing.  The white people trying so hard to feel, it hurts,  can’t be compared to how a black man feels losing a brother.  

The metaphor of parade was perfect… There were so many thoughtful comments, I know I am missing many.  Please feel free to add. 

**
More comments :

Lori mentioned how she felt the fullness and epic nature of the poem was appreciated  She spoke of the silence that initially filled the space.  Sometimes no words and the reticent pause or absorbing and feeling speaks best.  

Doug's reading is powerful so he journeys the listener deftly. 

Breathe: We read this with one voice as the wind and one as the other.  Wonderfully powerful poem with (for me) an unexpected turn at the end, that the living breath that sustains us becomes revolution.  David S. was quick to point out the breath is spirit... and how Shelley used wind as precursor of revolution.  It allowed us time to breathe... think how to use our breath...

Tell them:  This is one of the Poets Walk poems: (stretching from Prince to Goodman on University Av. tiles and granite pavers of poems written by those with a Rochester connection.  David Meltzer (1937-2016) is one such, a well-respected beat poet who died in CA.  We read this with 9 voices for each "tell" : I'm struggling, I wrestle, I sit, tell them I tell them; I'm ravening; walk off; sing;
books get fewer, words go deeper.
The structure is engaging -- what do you struggle with?  Why would it be a struggle to sing with angels... ah... but not just any angel... they hint "at it" (his struggle?) ... oh... black words (and how does it mean here, black?) printed on old paper gold edged (is there a hyphen between paper-gold?
gold-edged makes sense -- but how does time do this?

You get the point.  This is not a poem to breeze through -- and we really did not give it justice. Each sentence is loaded.  Some saw advice being given:  it's OK to take time.  We wondered why tell WHO, what he tells WHO, and are the two who's the same -- or is it a different who, who will tell for me.  We did not discuss why all the "tell them" are followed by I with a verb until the last two which aren't about I at all, but observations:

Discussion included comments about a sense of despair; a sense of failure of words; and Maura
said it was how she felt reading, as "what she is looking for now, she won't find in books."
Jan wondering at the ending.  Some felt it was a way to end the poem without reinforcing despair.
I see deeper levels that make me wonder even more, who is the "them" -- and who is the I?
One idea would be someone who has just died, and is in heaven, with some sort of body called angels, perhaps sparks in space, perhaps space between  one pore (opening?) and another... but
that is confusing.  The parentheses of "terrible" reminds me of biblical overtones of "awe/awful" where terrible means all-mighty.

We ended with Widening Circles: We read this with 5 voices: I live... I may not complete... I circle... I've been circling and then the final piece after the colon the question:  Am I falcon / storm/ great song -- three metaphors for perhaps three stages of life (youth: focus/ middle age: finding solutions/ old age: world view) or three ways of looking at life.  As always, the group agreed on the complexity.

June 3

The Party by Jason Shinder

Here by Grace Paley

In Perpetual Spring by Amy Gerstler

ars pasifika  by Craig Santos Perez
Ode to the Whitman Line “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd”  by Kimiko Hahn

Trying to See Auras at the Airport by Angela C. Trudell Vazquez 

And We Love Life  by Mahmoud Darwish  Thank you Rose Marie for sending this musical and cultural adaption https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=and+we+love+life+mahmoud+darwish&docid=608052289457686469&mid=98C3FF7D960D953BFD6198C3FF7D960D953BFD61&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

 I usually do not hesitate about picking poems for discussion.  This week felt harder.  I received many suggestions of poems… and  considered  the community poem Kwame Alexander created in response to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery,  as well as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Dreasjon Reed: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/862339935/running-for-your-life-a-community-poem-for-ahmaud-arbery . And then was consoled by this line "She’d had little patience with darkness, and her heart/Held only a measure of shadow” from this poem by Ted Kooser about Mary Cassatt: https://evanstonpubliclibrary.wordpress.com/tag/ted-kooser/

and found delightful distraction by a Youtube reading of Emily Dickinson  and witty discussion about her  provided by Billy Collins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdH5u0yEJVk

(and yes, I did try, per his comment,  singing last week’s quatrains to the Yellow Rose of Texas and it works!!!)

The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling:  suggested by Judith

"confronts soft minded people with reality."    

https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/kipling-the-gods-of-the-copybook-heading

**

discussion:

The Party:  1) And that's how it is:  (opening line)  2) stanza 6, second line.  That's it.   That's how it is  3)  penultimate stanza:That's how it is.

I've numbered the repeated line from this poem which comes from a volume of poetry entitled Stupid Hope.   Although a brilliant capture of a party, small moments pieced together, the poem seems to hang on three scenes introduced by "And that's how it is"   Several people felt they wanted the poem to be a short story.  

1) The poem starts out of the blue  -- a sense that a big announcement has been made at a dinner  that stuns the group to silence... the clever details of glasses coupled with certainty, plates with forgiveness... The "breaking-blue-orange-lunging/forward flame" leaps not just as enjambed line to the next, but over a stanza break for coffee in the kitchen... the "glittering dark chocolate of the leftover birthday cake."

2) that's it.  Marie, Donna, Nick, everyone,  "shuffling on the deck of the present" -- and we now know the future holds a goodbye.  Not the end of the party-- this is something bigger... a goodbye that hurts.

3) That's how it is.  The verb throw... , is not "throwing in the towel" -- but throwing a jacket over your shoulders// stanza break,  "like a towel", tossed in on the next line with more specific names, Victoria, Sophie, Lili, sweetie with no punctuation, the usual phrases said before leaving, running after them to the end.  

It could be the final farewell party.. Quite an animated discussion ensued, binging up feelings of leaving a community, a heavy look into the future as well as the warmth of connection, concentrated in one intimate view of a moment.

People were reminded of :

Peggy Lee: "That's all there is"

Charlotte Gilman

Marie Howe: What the Living do.

Renoir's painting:  The Boating Party

Here: typos in stanza 3.  At last... no irregular spacing

We loved the self-assurance, the build up of who the speaker of the poem  is with a "nicely mapped face" and adjectives many women might not use or admit to ... stout for thighs, sagging for breasts, but laughing! And that acceptance of her "old man" -- with the lovely twist after the reader might  think his crotchety explaining must be a nuisance, to want to kiss "his sweet explaining lips"!  Totally delightfulful  and a great support for relaxing about getting old, and not getting caught up in criticism. The title, "Here" How fond we could become of each other's faults!

 Could a young woman have written such a poem?

"Today’s poem celebrates the joy, certainty and desire that live on past the love of youth. It signals a stage of love that waits ahead in the distance.” Tracy K. Smith for the 5/26/20 Slowdown

For more about Grace Paley: http: //.gracepaleyvideo/

Although the poem does not go into her activism, one can guess at it.  

Normally, the lack of punctuation would bother me, but not here, and I was glad that the 4 readers caught the nuances of "well, that's who I wanted to be// at last-- a woman in the old style..." where the here in the moment carries on with a personally genuine, natural freshness.

In Perpetual Spring

Normally, one doesn't think of going to a garden to sulk... and how unpoetic to think of leaves or birds "plopping" into the water!  The change of tone in the second stanza, combining the lion/lamb, snail, snake kissing, opposites combining,

the prick of the thistle-- (one feels it in the sounds!) becoming the queen of the weeds (that expansive regal "ee") leads

to what some might think is blind optimism that every hurt has a cure... which echoes a deeper truth of spring,

always at work.

Bernie saw an image of Escher-like morphings of animals, which is a perfect metaphor for the poem.

The poem is filled with surprises, so whatever sense of "Mary Poppins" or soothing platitudes about desire for peace will cycle, recycle...through spiky voodoo lilies, trip over roots, search for medieval remedies... and faith.

ars pastifica; listening to the poet read it is important to appreciate the deep space around each line--

mimicry perhaps of the great Pacific and small islands.  https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS8737071724.mp3?key=72bb030cc5a7add3c823656cfb3977e3
The  anagram of "ocean" with the hushed  sibilance of "silence", "rises", seems to physically speed up to the "paddle of the tongue" , like the shape of the wave cresting, then falling into final word of  "canoe".  Comments included mention of the amazing boats in the Pacific Island culture; perhaps a paean or tribute by a Pacific Islander poet, recognizing the shift of letters that in English provide the same five letters to spell  both the vast body of water, and the (small) boat  applied to sailing the Pacific or as the poet pointed out, a transformation of five letters which resonates as a lesson in poetics.

Captivating poem which indeed "contains multitudes" and triggered a lengthy discussion.

Ode:  Kimiko Hahn has much to say about her idea of writing an ode to a favorite line which sticks in her head.

This is not a new idea: TS Eliot :  “The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn;   

I usually do not go into the background of the poets, but encourage people to do this on their own after discussing what the

poem offers. 

Kathy, on doing more research suggests       https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2019-mayjune/selections/kimiko-hahn-656342/ 

 - Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems, Brown and Schechter, eds., Everyman Pocket Poets. 

Indeed, one could spend quite some time exploring this idea expressed in  Harold Pinter’s recent Nobel remark:, ‘Literary language, language in art, remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way underneath the author at any time.’  

The poem brought up many comments about Whitman, his homosexuality, about Lincoln, who never pretended to perfection, the strange interruption in syntax in the title which does not at match the second stanza reflecting on the meaning of last.  It is a fascinating concept that one line, taken out of context of the original, hangs on to some of the 

undertones, into something quite different.  Kathy brought up the question of why the second stanza set up an "either/or".

where the title does not lend itself to the meaning "to make something last."  Bernie picked up on the quality of the alliterative "w's:   the repetition of without,  like a reverse echo of "to hold" as in "hold fast", the last word of the poem.

For sure, the poet's love of words, her permission to just love words, to allow them reverberate, is part of the draw

of the poem, even should the "meaning" seem to withdraw.

John brought up he idea of doorway where, in the  case of a cemetery, each grave a door to another world and also

an aside to Lincoln and  the Log Cabin Republicans!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans

http://www.logcabin.org

Back to the poem: 

 who is "you"?  Is the poem in two parts, the first exploring the loss of a personal "you" who died or has gone?  The pivot to the title, cutting it short to  "when lilacs last" which meaning cannot be reconciled with "when lilacs last bloomed"  with the double meaning of "fast" as both the speeding Dickensonian em dash, which interrupts, dashes beyond ending,  after the word "fast" (is it held tight, as if glued in place in spite of this contradiction?).

We all agreed, in the feeling of the importance of this line  to Kimiko Hahn which "lasts".  You can read more about her, to find out how she uses ithe Japanese punning technique of Kakekotoba  “I often select words that suggest several meanings in an attempt to burst out of a linear experience.  The word acts as a kind of pivot,"

The more time with the poem I spend, the more I love it.  It is a wonderful invitation to the reader to find delight in

exploring and embracing ambivalence, ambiguity. To quote Gertrude Stein: "double meanings are an absolutely essential way to make the most out of economy.” [of the concision of poetry]

Trying to See Auras: 

We read the poem with two readers, although the poem does not have any stanza break and is one long sentence threaded over 24  lines of irregular length.
How do we identify the who of each of us, especially if "recycled" material?  Comments included the appreciation of the play of assonance, the role of the title, the comment from Tracy K. Smith who chose the poem on her site, The Slowdown.
Indeed, a poem which "contemplates our far-reaching connection to one another."   The discussion included questions of mortality, what is handed on from each generation, what moves us to the selfish considerations of "I".

We ended by reading the Darwish, Rose providing the voice of the repeated line, "We love life if we find a way to it."
It had been a long and intense hour and a half, and zoom echoes started... so a perfect place to end.