In Envy of Cows by Joseph Auslander - 1897-1965
When the Virus Comes by Angelo Geter
The Children of Beslan (To My Children) by Irakli Kakabadze
Nostalgia by Joyce Carol Oates
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka
Choose by Carl Sandburg
By the Stream by Paul Laurence Dunbar - 1872-1906
we did not discuss: Climbing China’s Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver
Nutshell summary:
In Envy of Cows: Joseph Auslander
Written in 1923, hence, at the age of 26. We remarked the lush sounds, the variable line length which helps disguise the end-rhyme, the complexity of image and the fun of “poetic register” with words like kine (archaic word referring to cows collectively) and pellucid, and poplar trees referred to as frieze. It is a healing poem both in subject and sound. Ah! Cows! From the first line, we feel each movement— as if we too are cow, swinging our head, plunging into a decadent Roman feast which in 5 lines swells from “web-washed grass” to wine… David S. prompted us to think of Keats, Ode to Autumn — commenting on the “substance in syllables” (density of sensory detail)…Indeed —the delight of the poem is that a Cow is the subject written in the elevated style of an ode!
David H. shares this thought and Lazy Afternoon: "The poem "Envy of Cows" immediately brought to mind the exquisite lyrics below to a ballad called "Lazy Afternoon," from the 1954 Broadway musical "The Golden Apple." The lyrics were by John LaTouche (with music by Jerome Moross). The imagery in the lyrics captures the same relaxing feeling as those in "Envy of Cows." The song has become a standard in the Great American Songbook.
Song lyrics are often simpler than poems, relying on the music to elevate them, but I believe that these lyrics stand on their own. Many of the most famous popular singers have recorded "Lazy Afternoon," including Barbra Streisand Shirley Horn, and Tony Bennett."
It's a lazy afternoon
And the beetle bugs are zooming
And the tulip trees are blooming
And there's not another human in view
But us two
It's a lazy afternoon
And the farmer leaves his reaping
And the meadow cows are sleeping
And the speckled trouts stop leaping up stream
As we dream
A far pink cloud hangs over the hill
Unfolding like a rose
If you hold my hand and sit real still
You can hear the grass as it
Many people have sung this tune : Tony Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8syJ9kwje4
Shirley Horn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh5yakbQXLQ
Barbara Streisand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nmeiWp2OpU
When the Virus Comes by Angelo Peter
On the surface, the poem allows us to consider what we have been experiencing for 5+ months…yet plays between present and future which indeed could contain a “last time”. I wish we had a “spoken word” delivery of the poem for if we could hear his voice, perhaps that would confirm the level of satire we detect in the style, the linebreaks, the “cleverness” factor in 2nd and 3rd stanzas… the implied play on empty shelves/emptying shelves; empty selves. Perhaps the most enigmatic part of the poem is the lacing of things that should be good— a lover’s kiss; dancing, singing, laughing — not frivolous laughter— but the laughter that understands the depth of joy. I hope he is not toying with “who has the last laugh”… at the end… but I prefer that than to think, knowing what joy feels like, this is the last time to feel it.
If anyone can help with the last line, I’m all ears!
The Children of Beslan (to my Children) by Irakli Kakabadze Translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs
I wish I could read the original to doublecheck the tense. Why the switch from present tense to past (16th line: “We left toys…”) then return to present until the penultimate line —?
I like that people found parallels between how the Russian government dealt with the 2004 massacre and how governments (especially ours) now are dealing with multiple issues of unexplainable murders coupled with a resurgence of racism, the pandemic, not to mention ignoring ecological causes of natural catastrophes. I appreciate also that Rose brought up how easy it is to forget… and that if without knowing the time or place of the poem, one could read it in a much different light.
Wilted smiles…flowers for the dead… the children who “were supposed to open the door of life’s wisdom”— not for them — but for us — as if the older generations in charge have not learned the necessary wisdom to carry on… join with the ironic “flowers have chosen a better fate” . Yesterday was September 1st. I am haunted by this poem to ask myself, just as a date, September 1, starting the traditional school year, the month of the Jewish New Year… (and a few days before my birthday, so yet another yearly anniversary) what is it I hide behind— and those in my culture?
Nostalgia by Joyce Carol Oates. The Poem we heard included two lines that are not in the July 27, 1998 published version of Nostalgia in The New Yorker.The printed copy does however, have a different spacing, which changes how you might read it, although the reader did seem to pause … Here is how it looked judging from the New Yorker ( I couldn’t copy it) with the additional 2 lines:
Nostalgia by Joyce Carol Oates (rural district school #7, Ransomville, New York)
Crumbling stone steps of the old schoolhouse
Boarded-up windows shards of winking glass
Built 1898, numerals faint in stone as shadow
Through a window, obedient rows of desks mute
Only a droning of hornets beneath the eaves,
The cries of red wing blackbirds by the creek.
How many generations of this rocky countryside grown & gone
How many memories & all forgotten
& soon to be razed. & goodbye America
The flagless pole, what relief!
I love it, the eye lifting skyward to nothing
Thank you Elaine for mentioning FOXFIRE. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/193917311.pdf
She is a prolific poet and complex for sure. In the above link the idea of nostalgia proposed by Svetlana Boym is different than the desire to recreate a (usually positive, often sentimental) version of the past. It is an interrogation of the notion of truth. I am fascinated by all the levels and tones we could find in the second part of the poem. Indeed… just like a haiku technique of turn as Marna pointed out… “an ironic twist” of multiple turns… different types of punches.
How many ways can you understand the “hand over my heart, as if I had one”? A critique of those who do the gesture when saying the pledge, or a personal statement? And “lifting skyward— to nothing…
The razing of America, as in removing all traces of old towns and ways of life to make room for new suburbs and replacement of community with shopping strips comes to my mind.
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka (former) LeRoi Jones)
The title itself deserves volumes! If writing a preface to something so large, which will end in death — indeed, one feels the ground open… and the desire to count stars… just to get some fact in the enormity of what is dismissed as countable… and count the holes they leave when you can’t… leaves me exhausted…
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to see the ending line as not the same kind of despair… There might not be answer for the daughter… but she is finding her way to cope…Of course, the isolation, the possible futility of praying, peeking into one’s own clasped hands is scarcely uplifting.
Choose by Carl Sandburg (skipped discussion)
By the Stream by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Such a beautiful, formal poem, but as David S. pointed out… knowing who wrote it and when, helps to understand the layers and see actually two very different poems. If we read it as a timeless “White Western Canon” poem, we might come to some sad social truth… but reading it as an expression of a young black in turn of the century America changes our lens. Snowy-hued… white-robed… even the armored knights with silver helmets… are part of the Western White way of reading clouds. So what sparkles (verb used twice)… and what things are mirrored?
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