1. Ode to the Head Nod by Elizabeth Acevedo
2. I Sit Outside in Low Late-Afternoon Light to Feel Earth Call to Me by Tracy K. Smith
3. won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton
4. Directive by Robert Frost
5. be careful by Ed Roberson
6. one of the many Haikus about scarecrows by Richard Wright: #543.
This poem is too long for our short once-a-week session, but I highly recommend it : Runagate Runagate by Robert Hayden. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52947/runagate-runagate
(Hear Tracy K. Smith read it at minute 52
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9aU_MUcVME&feature=youtu.be
#2,3,4 are also part of Tracy's given on September 30, at the Philip Roth Lecture:# 5 and 6 : come from Black Nature, poems edited by Camille Dungy to illustrate "The Nature of African American Poetry”. Camille gives us a thorough and varied lens both in her 15 page introduction and selections for the 10 sections. Available in the library and for purchase at Writers and Books. If you wish to view the excellent seminar with guests Dante Micheaux and Allison Meyers, on Saturday 10/17, let me know.
Nutshell:
1. Acevedo is writing a series of odes on small gestures...She points out in her Dominican culture, they "point with their mouths".
Our discussion brought up other aspects of using heads... for instance in Greece and Turkey where an American vertical nod meaning yes, means no. How a nod can be a civilized sign of respect to a passing stranger.
Her note about the poem: "This poem is very much based in the literal situation: can a piece of text hold the friction of a writer writing specifically about such in-group gestures being edited by a well-meaning outsider who ‘corrects’ the language? I wanted to sit with what it means to not only have language lost in translation, but being told even our embraces, our greetings, often color outside the lines of the literary stylebook.”
We noted the 4th -5th lines -- how beautifully she captures the nature of respect -- the "gilded curtsy", and indeed, a beautiful definition of a human being, as "sunfill in another// (stanza break) in yourself". (big space)" tithe of respect"
Her use of white space both horizontally and between the couplets, breaking into an extra vertical space before the "you"
placed solo to the far right, another stanza break for the final two words, even further to the right "are here" has multiple possibilities of understanding, like the layers of what is often missing in translations.
Some felt she could have developed more about the head nod-- as an ode to it, she paid "curt" attention to it before bringing in
the copy editors cut. We all could relate to that censorship of meaning. We didn't go into the play 5th stanza of "means"
with the underlying "means" by which an editor corrects meaning-- accentuated by the enjambment, which in turn leads to
how the speaker of the poem understands the editor as being fluent in only one language of gesture.
We spent a good half hour discussing the visual effect, including how it mimics the use of positive and negative space in art, and in calligraphy where the white spaces set up the words inked in black with their own (unspoken, unmarked) expression of what words cannot say. Her use (and lack of use) of punctuation is similar-- no capitals; one semi-colon, followed by a question mark which does not end the question; two ampersands (& maybe// (end of the line) and starting the last (indented) couplet, & find the color.
Is it a satisfying ending? Perhaps she is asking us to call on our imagination, how our subconscious is working on what happens when you take out "the head" and only leave the nod. A haunting poem... with many layers to ponder, with no "final copy."
The name of prize-winning Jhumpa Lahiri, (author of The Namesake and translator of Italian came up. She commented in 2018,
“One can read something so closely that it's only by translating it that you really do feel you've gone through the looking glass, that you are on the other side and you're in that other world,” she says. “I would wish that pleasure and education and marveling — that sense of amazement — for any writer.”
2. We listened to the link of Tracy K. Smith reading her poem https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/05/i-sit-outside-in-low-late-afternoon-light-to-feel-earth-call-to-me. It is in the Oct. 5 issue of The New Yorker and I showed the cover: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2020-10-05
To commemorate her, the artist Bob Staake said, he “needed to think of a graphic metaphor that embodied Ginsburg’s life and legacy.” He wanted something that was “honest and no-nonsense,” like Ginsburg, and he landed on her lace collar, a symbol not just of Ginsburg but, in Staake’s drawing, of women everywhere.
As discussion unfolded, many started to comment on her form -- an arc of A-Z; (5 stanzas) to Z-A (5 stanzas) but with subtle changes. The title suggests a meditation on perhaps a time of life (low-late-afternoon light) or sadness of the times. Her questions are both universal and specific to being a black woman, part of a "we" of being black, being American, being woman.
Is the world intended for me? Not just me but/the we that fills me? (4th couplet)
She turns the repeat "what if" which ends in question, (following the statement about blood) to statement, (starting with the blood, leading to a new and different question repeating the one of the 4th couplet --
(Our blood swimmers, stirred back. What if
the world has never had--will never have-- our backs?
The world has never had-- will never have -- our backs.
Our blood simmers, stirred back. What if
he we that fills me, our shadows real and dark,
is the world intended for me?
To use "recursive" as Bernie put it... the effect of the repeats leaves us with haunting ambiguity. John thought of Fellini's film 8 1/2... The couplets slow us down... and as she reads, in a calm, steady voice, the tone is at odds with a sense of desperation. Plenty of shadows (subconscious, unconscious, unpinnable) in this low late-afternoon light... and a wish to feel Earth, be grounded...
3. Clifton: Tracy K. Smith had included this poem and the Frost in her Newark, NJ library reading. In her introduction, she speaks about how poems help readers build a reserve of perspective... strategies for living... Indeed, Lucille Clifton "brings us a dynamic, rich voice, invites us to view life as mysterious-- to let go of allegiance to an individual self."
David brought up the reference to Babylon as a place of exile and summed up Jewish Holidays this way: Here we are, they tried to kill us. But failed. Here we are, let's eat. The tone of self-sufficiency is reminiscent of Maya Angelou's "still I rise" .
This poem is an invitation to the reader to "know yourself"-- but also to understand we all "make it up" as we try to figure our the missing pieces. The "star shine" reminds of me fo "sunfill" in the Acevedo... Oh, yes! I say each time I read this poem,
oh yes! I celebrate with you, thank you for this invitation!
poems help build in readers a reserve of perspective even… strategies for living
help us think of life as dynamic, instead of static, mysterious and rich instead of not flat… life as
mysterious — instill in us a sense of our own private participation
long history of human joy, sorrow and hope… level of self, ego…
this speaks to me… helps me… private engagement… what possibilities for insight —
let go of allegiance to individual self…
narrative of race in America… incomplete and inaccurate… black not white in charge of the missing pieces…
OK to let go…
4. Frost: We are grateful that David Sanders was present to help us navigate through the complexities of "Directive".
Tracy had picked it calling on the first line -- "Back out of all this now to much for us...." saying, the poem's subtext is that it is OK to let it go. Where does Frost take us as we follow the road he presents-- suggesting a guide who "only has at heart your getting lost"? We discussed a sense of comfort in all the confusion... starting with taking a step away from whatever "now" is.
For sure, everything has an end -- we know we all will die... we have plenty of stories with the moral, "nothing lasts forever"-- and Frost provides us with a catalogue of echoes of times past, of villages no longer, even the make-believe houses and worlds of children... echoes of Indians, the shrinking of field as nature takes over, the "firkins" (small casks) eying you from a cellar hole now filled with lilac. We spoke of the Grail, of the innocence of children, and parable of the Seed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower
As David summarized... it is a pitch for metaphor... what stays are the words, that language is a source of sanctity.
We all will die... but the "momentary stay against confusion" rests in what children instinctively understood, creating out of a broken goblet the very vessel by which to drink the essential water-- provided by imagination.
5. Roberson
Ah the sounds... the warning of not being tooooooo wildly elated by nature -- "not to jar/ the fragile mountains against the paper far-// ness... A brilliant jewel of a poem... ending with the powerful metaphor both for living and writing --- "set the precarious words like rocks, without/one snowcapped mistake" in this gentle wilderness...
6. Richard Wright has written many haiku about scarecrows.: http://carolpeters2013.blogspot.com/2014/11/richard-wright.html
So simple! Two sentences! The "exuberant" wish -- and the consequences -- like those precarious words...
As usual... so much more to recount from the fine contributions. Thank you all. Elaborations and more responses to these poems are welcome!
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