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
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."
**
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.
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!
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.
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