September 30, 2020

We spoke about touch in the 9/23 discussion.  This reminded me of this beautiful poem by Stanley Kunitz: https://billmoyers.com/story/a-poet-a-day-touch-me-by-stanley-kunitz/

What keeps the engine going?  Sometimes the smallest thing reminds us of the desire-desire-desire Kunitz paints in this poem.

**

In Passing  by Lisel Mueller

Metamorphosis   by Frank C. Modica

Things I Didn't Know I Loved  by Nazim Hikmet - 1902-1963*

A Pile of Fish by Tomás Q. Morín https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/still-life-with-golden-bream-francisco-de-goya/_wF25zyWxL0HNg?hl=en

* from Emily

This poem moved me as I sometimes rediscover things I’ve forgotten or did not realize I loved.  In this unusual time, hovering before an unclear future, it’s easy to lose these things.  What would you remember?  

Written from a train after he was released from prison-

* from Paul: A suggestion from Paul: “I was reading Pope’s Dunciad , some would say for penance, but, no, there is in it the best iambic pentameter and heroic couplets to please.  In 1723, Alex, (I always called him thus because it got his dander up about so many things including criticism of his poetic endeavors) decided to set things straight by attacking various figures in his literary world and historic time.  As I ploughed on, it                                                                                                                                                             struck me that his satire could easily be shifted to apply to the shameless buffoonery of today's presidential campaign and those characters contained in that slow-witted stage show.  I suggest to our O  pen minded brothers and sisters  that you/they might be entertained and even educated. 

Nutshell summary:

I started by referencing an interview of the poet, Mar Ka, an indigenous right attorney and poet, Mary Kancewick. http://www.radiofrepalmer.org/2019/04/16/what-can-poetry-2019-4-15/.    When the subject is dark , when something is "rotted, wormed by greed" , poetry calls out the beauty of life experience, calls ou the profound in the unusual.  I agree with her  think there is a kind of desperate hope…to say everything there is to be said about the things we love while they are still there.  Poetry helps us to imagine -- to counteract what tempts us to “disbelieve, discount, deny”.

In Passing:  Rich Wilder sent in a comment by email admiring its classic shape, the "strained honey" and "shrugs off" ... and will memorize it so he can carry it with him. The second stanza "break into blossom" reminded me of James Wright's poem, The Blessing, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46481/a-blessing where indeed, blessing which rings in French, as  blesser which means to wound.  (La Benediction is the noun.) We are blessed when wounded... just as losing allows us the awareness of what is precious.  

John mentioned Damascus Gate by Robert Stone: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196337.Damascus_Gate

The title reminded us that nothing is permanent... how beauty is fleeting. Barb illustrated the idea with her love of her poppies.  Dave was struck by the image of the closed bud--

I brought up the French view of enjambment, which has a name (le rejet) for the next line which receives the often surprising completion of the idea -- a landing so to speak of the stride from shrugs off to 

mystery which underlines the alliterative "break into blossom".

Joni Mitchell and the Big Yellow Taxi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

You don't realize what you've got... 

Metamorphosis: published in this lovely online  magazine: https://theraconteurreview.wordpress.com/issue-2/

All so much fun heard in the apple's voice!  We had much  healing laughter that  especially peeled out at the end.   As Barb put it.. the poem started out in such a pedestrian fashion but  the last line delivers such a great punch.  I loved the pile-up of all that goes into "readying" the fruit, and all the poet intimates about  consumption or the parallel with human appearances and what prepares us to be consumed (reference to cartoon "Does God Eat Us" with the premise that we are a farm to develop a new complex DNA).  The Fall... the original tree... and all sorts of overtones and references to Malus domestica and  Genesis, (Elaine delivered Martin's comments about the Garden of Eden: "The last line tells me read the poem with a sexual overtone in every line in so she plucked me is dramatic, also creates me, carries me, hauls me, and distributer sends high voltage to spark plugs, displayed me in my polished perfection, examines my -- flawless skin. I'm bagged -- lost all resistance. And consuming a delicious piece of pie is like what human activity? "  Martin adds: ( First line "pluck", my "pick" as in she is a pick).  

John told us of his amazing apple tree with over 200 apples,  and his amazing grape vine and Dave H. told us of his!  

Things I didn't Know: 

This poem has been set to music -- this is a particularly lovely video with a stained glass window background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPxWOYRqWzE

Written the year before he died, I imagine indeed, on a train.  As Susan remarked, the setting as he is rolling on a train, looking out a window is a perfect match to his roll of memory.  It is a poem in translation, so it is hard to judge from the original.. but this idea of reviewing all that is so precious to us, to rediscover things forgotten, or that you don't realize you loved, is an invitation to celebrate the power we have to cherish, no matter if emprisoned (in the case of Nazaim, 28 years of prison, in our case, the restraints of COVID).  By the middle of the poem, "my heart was in my mouth, looking at them/they are our endless desire to grasp thing" the poem has whirled and whorled in this stream-of-consciousness life journey leading up to questioning the why of it all... is it because... ?

Very hard to summarize the poem, just as it is hard to summarize the discussion.  Pete Seeger and Joan Baez both were mentioned.  

Please help with comments.

A Pile of Fish

In our discussion, we started to better understand the poem, looking at the title, and how a painting of a pile of fish (which as title sounds so unpoetic) is transformed into a pyramid  of fish (with association of funeral pyre); the association with the poet's son, where the fins resemble his curly brown hair, the transformation of the poet into the golden fish watching... allowed us to

see how the memory of an intimate moment of two friends visiting a  painting resurrects the friend for whom the poem is dedicated.

Here is the painting: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/still-life-with-golden-bream/_wF25zyWxL0HNg?hl=en

John a painter, explained that the Spanish use black, unlike most artists… it heightens the intensity and gives an intimacy, as our eye seems to draw us quite close. The fish look as if they still might have some life in them.  (Parenthesis: in the MAG, there is a wonderful Sorolla painting : http://mag.rochester.edu/hotspots/hotspot-100.html

Also you can visit the Sorolla museum in Madrid. http://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html)

This site gives marvelous close-ups of the fish and I think a reasonable history and background of the period when Goya painted this: https://letsexploreart.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/raw-goyas-golden-bream/

The poem starts with counting how many fish are in this painting  uses this painting that Goya left untitled, like his other 11 still lifes.  The poem is dedicated to his friend, who loved this painting, and recalls  a special moment with him…  the  scurry to find it before the museum closes… the fact that he leaves out “golden” to describe “still life with bream” …the  comment of his friend that one fish stares at you no matter where you are in the room…  and a second metamorphosis, where the poet,  becomes the fish…  a new father — who sings to his son about Sun, sun Mr. Golden sun— please don’t hide from me in Spanish… 

The fact that his friend died, turns this poem into a tribute, a memorial… Just as Goya was starving**, and makes the fish seem alive, so the still life, (naturaliza muerta) the art form which has the message momento mori— remember you too one day will die, the shared moment of observing it, gives the poet the eyes of the fish to follow the setting sun… watching for his friend… his hunger for his friend…

It is complicated to explain all that clearly!  I knew I loved the poem right away, but am glad to have spent more time researching the painting see if I could  confirm what I was suspecting!

**Linda followed up a bit on Goya's bio, and saw no indication that he was hungry—though he certainly depicted scenes of starvation and death. What a painting!  As if to say, Maybe it’s too difficult for you to stare death in the face if the death is a human death, so let’s work up to it, starting with fish. 

A distinctive sign is the golden band between his eyes and a golden spot on the cheeks, features which bring thisfish its name of "golden bream".  costiana.ro

Un signo distintivo  es la banda dorada de por entre sus ojos y una mancha dorada en las mejillas, de estas características también viene su nombre de tales como 'pargo dorado’.