Subject to Change: Marilyn L. Taylor
Transcendentalism: Lucia Perillo
The School Where I studied: Yehuda Amichai
When the Time is Right: Tammi J. Truax (poet laureate of Portsmouth)
Elegy in Joy [excerpt] : Muriel Ruykeyser
little prayer: Danez Smith
Rally: Elizabeth Alexander
Summer Meadow: Tomas Tranströmer
So… I stumbled on this quote from GK Chesterton and loved how it uplifted my spirits and opened by session by sharing it.
“Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.
Nutshell summary:
Taylor: If, as Wordsworth argues the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, then Marilyn Taylor provides it for us in this poem published in Poetry in August 2002. As poet Barbara Crooker notes, “she mutes her exact rhymes
with slant and half rhymes, increasing the music, and doubling the delight.
Not only the pleasure to the ear, but to the heart, as the reader identifies with the universal theme of how students grow up and move on; the aging process perhaps as well; and pleasure for the mind, watching how the form, which relies on the same words of a line, by changing position, and particularly in the 4th stanza, changing the verb and punctuation, also does not “remain the same”. Most of us concurred that the final stanza presented more than a few puzzles. vertical direction, as possible
“grow up, grow taller” or perhaps the ups and downs as innocence travels through experience; Does the delusion of beautiful and young include the flowering personhood we prize in old age? why blackmail? We enjoyed headlong
remembering perhaps our own youth. A meditative invitation on the fleeting nature of and transformative power inherent life, (and here, I think of the proverbial “the more things change, the more they remain the same” with the
paradoxical constant of “change” itself).
Perillo: I liked John’s idea that perhaps the professor satirized in this poem could have been the one writing “Subject to Change”. It softens the overblown parody of the student describing the teacher. David brought up how often Emerson has been parodied- see illustration here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_eyeball
For the poem, the self-absorbed student, transcends from a personal insufferable past the view of Emerson as insufferable to the person who writes the more confessional final stanza… revealing how it takes time to understand how we’ve been influenced. Perhaps there is a flash of awareness in stanza three, just before quoting the opening stanza of Emerson’s poem, Brahma https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45868/brahma-56d225936127b
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Perillo knows her literature. Her metaphor for postmodernists as wolves, where self is dismantled for the sake of text.
The work is hard… I wished the last line had been the penultimate one — “from his yard into my life— remains a mystery”.
Amichai: Changing countries, a different school experience. We read the poem in three parts, not that any stanza break demanded it. The school… what is said in the heart… the loving in vain of all “I didn’t learn”, which could be,
all that wasn’t taught, or all that the student was not ready to learn. We noted the particular details that make
learning a living “currency” — not just the names and phylems, but shapes, functions, pests, parasites of plants.
From there to the “botany of good and evil” … and the metaphor of windows. Transcendental twinges… as everyday
we are learning, understanding — these open windows to the future you cannot pin and label, this school will yet
allows us to view the past yet continue to grow.
Truax. This is where I found the poem.
Other poems quoted in the NYT article:
To nursing school graduates in Nichinan, Portsmouth’s sister city
As you finished your formal studies
the world has demonstrated
what an enormous responsibility
is being pinned upon you
along with a pretty white cap.
and Transitions
Today I find the mask useful
along with sunglasses
to hide my tear-streaked face
not wanting to scare the barista
who has enough to deal with
behind his own mask
Even though we thought a line or two missing, we discussed “When the time is right” as a concept… the choice of how to look at the world… the waiting involved… not just with a tomato… the vintage linen… the idea of a gift
you want to send, understanding, perhaps hoping, it will be unwrapped “when the time is right”. We did not mention the sprinkling of salt or grace. These same details, found in the poem, speak more deeply to all of this.
A recurring theme in the poems: “The best time to climb a tree was 20 years ago.” Ah… but the realization of that…
takes a long time to catch up.
Rukeyser: Her poem is words of nourishment… we noted metaphors, images, assymetry… how beginnings are what we must nourish… how flesh, nourish, blest, are echo together.
Danez Smith: A little prayer.. How we respond to a plea for love and peace will depend on how we “hear” it.
Some felt it needed to be more fervent; some felt it lacking in other ways… the ending line
& if not let it be not strong enough
Alexander: who penned the Inaugural poem for Obama and speaks of a rally for him in 2008 in Miami, when it was not sure he would win. We all concurred 2nd stanza first word should be jog.
12 years later, this poem encourages me still — to listen, dream, hope for a human tilt of we.
Tranströmer: We didn’t really discuss, but had a good feeling . Yes, reality does wear us so thin,
And yes, Tomas, thank you for your refreshing fantasy!
And thank you everyone present — please add comments.
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