November 19, 2020

 On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran (excerpt)

How will it feel months from now by Mary Jo Bang

excerpt: to believe in things by Joseph Pintauro

Long Live Everything  by Joseph Pintauro 

Singularity  by Marie Howe

The Moment  by Marie Howe

Part of Eve's Discussion by Marie Howe 

Twilight by Louise Glück 

The two Joseph Pintauro poems were inspired by https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/11/10/to-believe-in-things-joseph-pintauro-corita-kent/

Without really paying attention to it, it appears the selection of poems allow the reader to imagine and wonder about what the "it" is all about..."  After the session, I was reading Glück's essay "Ersatz" which delves into "incomplete sentences" as the aborted whole and the sentence with gaps... a finger pointed to the nonexistent... and the unspoken becomes the focus... A sort of strategy of incompleteness... 

Many thanked me for this selection... especially for the links to the Pintauro which included the poem about his mother's star blanket... 

Nutshell:   

Mary Jo Bang:  We enjoyed the beautiful images and feelings in her poem which left a sense of hope--

with confirmation in the 3rd stanza:  It's so beautiful/when it sinks in.  Hold me, closeness/says.

Discussion included the notice of the "cart overturned" and "I fold myself away"... the juxtaposition of

short sentences and longer fragments and use of sight and sound. The sound of the word "sink"...  For me, a sense of ink penetrating slowly, making whatever "it" is real... whether it be the sky, and whatever color of sky... or perhaps the line before of the piano key.   What a great idea to start off with her title... How do you imagine it will feel months from now?   

Pintauro:  

In the beginning... some say, it was the void...  but Pintauro invites us to imagine nothing as

perfect, restful, about to vanish... and the sudden arrival of something. All alone.  Discussion included views about religious stories of creation, big bang theory, and the admission that they we will never be able to answer the question of how life began.  What is consciousness? 

In Long Live Everything... the pivot word, "somewhen" startles, but is also welcome... everything is not attainable... and never has been.  It reminds me of how with an overdose of  information... we often face uncertainty... polarization.. and seek to focus on things in our "control", and soon, that failing, settle for meditation and empathetic understanding.  Pintauro gives us such empathy as he presents big questions.

Marie Howe:  The first poem, "after Stephen Hawking".  We touched briefly on Stephen Hawking, his scientific contributions, his amazing coping with ALS, as well as some autobiographical detail about Marie Howe.  We appreciated the pondering, peppered with her precisions, how she balanced the personal with the vastness... The is,is,is,is,is has such an impact of sound, the opposite of the  six No's it follows -- and then the final line allowed to resonate.  3 words:  All.  everything.  Home.  Although there are no periods.  The middle line that hit us all in the gut:  "nothing... before we came to believe humans were so important/before this awful loneliness."  Enigmatically pleasing.

Her poem The Moment picks up the same theme... 

Part of Eve's Discussion:  Before the apple... but "It" starts the poem.  an unspecified moment... perhaps intensifying the moment before it all falls apart.art.  art.    Eternity... The end line words work well... still... and drop... about to say... The repetition of "it" at the end... "like that, and after that, still like that... only all the time."  

Louise Glück: This poem appeared in an October 2020 issue of the  New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/louise-gluck-whisperer-of-the-seasons.  She received the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."But what does that mean?  Here is a February 2005 recording https://lannan.org/events/louise-gluck-with-james-longenbach

which starts with a wonderful  introduction by Jim Longenbach.   Although her voice really turns me off… it’s good to hear what she has to say.  

Yes, you can read plenty more about her, her poetry.  We enjoyed  discussingTwilight without it.  Do not confuse this poem with her poem "September Twilight" and 9/11.  I felt an ominous quality to the poem and was glad others did too, although not all.  A sense of anxiety...

with a non-identified "he"  about whom one only knows he works at his cousin's mill... The one window, the squared-off landscape... the slow diminishment, the arrival of sleep which removes sight, sound, smell... and then "I" we presume to be the poet.  Passage of time, life... what diminishes... rather like a modernist "tone poem" in music which is more about mood than melody, an invitation to a transition time, with the last line sounding like a prayer.  

**

Bernie had mentioned this article from The Sun  in response to the general lean in discussion toward everything being screwed up.

Pat Schneider, "If I were God", originally published 1997: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/539/if-i-were-god-pat-schneider-issue-539