The first two we didn't have time to discuss last week (10/29). The day after elections, perhaps it is good to be challenged by poems which present more puzzles than comfort.
A Noun Sentence by Mahmoud Darwish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs9qBXq5_hI
This is the recording in Arabic. To understand the title, “It’s a nominal sentence” you need to take Arabic 1. https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/arabic-sentence-structure-nominal-and-verbal-sentences/
The translation below is by Fady Joudah and comes from the 2007 book, The Butterfly’s Burden.
This article will give you more background: https://aashiqepakistan.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/28.pdf
Night Migrations by Louise Glück
The Long Boat by Stanley Kunitz
Daffodils by Henri Cole (
What There Was by Janice N Harrington
Wind Talker by Frank X. Walker (not discussed)
First Snow, Kerhonkson by Diane di Prima
To Dorothy by Marvin Bell
Sent out Nov. 11 poems with a link to hear "To Dorothy" read by Marvin Bell (last poem of today’s discussion) go to minute 12:17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-__g7iXlEk
It is followed by a poem for next week, Poem After Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
Nov. 11 poems sent with this poem from Judith. Nutshell discussion of 11/4 follows.
This is a poem that I turn to often in times of uncertainty. Maybe for me it's not even a poem now, but a prayer or hymn. It's titled "Great Things Have Happened" and it's by Alden Nowlan
We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, “Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time.” But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn’t mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I’m sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together
“Is that all?” I hear somebody ask.
Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you’ve never visited
before, when the bread doesn’t taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.
Nutshell discussion 11/4
Helpful to read about Darwish, and the difficulty of being exiled from one's homeland. The structure of the Arabic language has either nominal or verbal sentences. In the case of the nominal sentence, there is no verb, and the verb "to be" is not considered to be a verb... hence, each image is static, cannot be displaced... cannot be moved in time/tense. Displacement, with a foothold only in the painful present. Almost haiku-like...
Night Migration: The poem came from her 2006 book, Averno, the place Romans ascribed as entrance to Hades. The title leads one to think of movement at night, not just of birds, but perhaps the soul, navigating from waking reality to dream, what belongs to life, this world, a “next” world. Susan mentioned a “verbal thumbnail image” of the first stanza. Whether this is
related to the story of Persephone or not, the poem provides a meditative space about what seems
to bring solace for the soul— both living and dead. It would seem to be a nightly recurrence. What do the dead see? Perhaps like the Zen admonition, this poem asks the reader to imagine
living as if you are dead.
The Long Boat: Metaphor of letting go… a comfort to balance the two “Peace!” with the two “as if”. June mentioned the story of the nurse telling her father as he was dying to “imagine you’re in a boat and floating out.” I love that the poem includes the idea of mottoes we stamp on our name tags.
Daffodils: It is the daffodil speaking in this surprising poem which takes a turn from yellow dust to talcum and tranquilizers… from erasure to trust in one sentence. Is the woman dying? in a mental institution? The similes are both intriguing and elusive.
What There Was: Another intriguing poem with 10 denials of specifics belonging to general categories: 4 couplets concrete: tree, bird, flower, stench. Silence, distance, music, continue with a quatrain and two tercets. The longest stanza hints at stories. A tercet hints at secrets… but here it is true, “the fire burned all evidence but not death”. Finally, a poem, the hair of the dead, the connection with the dead, clothes passed down but not memory. Comments included appreciation of the spoken rhythm of the poem, the "noun sentence" feel, the internal rhythms, what feels to be autobiographical detail, perhaps an undercoat of anger, that whatever was, had an element of negation.
First Snow: enigmatic poem... nostalgic, but is the end line good or not? She is free to go...
To Dorothy: the power of love, makes me want to cry each time.
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