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
[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).
Note in the body of Martin Luther King, a concave mirror. The blue reflects the sky.
As ever, I thank each and every one of you for your voices.
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?
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.
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.
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