Self Portrait as retratos de cosas locas y de locos (stolen) by Patricia Spears Jones
for Papo Colo
The Wall by Anita Endrezze (Yaqui)
Shaking Hands by Pádraig Ó Team
Breath by Adrian Rice
Sometimes by Herman Hesse (translated by Robert Bly) (paired with Crow in Shadow, by Peter Jemison)
Barter by Sara Teasdale
His Master's Voice by Carl Phillips
Rejection Letter to a January Crocus
We will start with Bernie's poem from last week, "Medina on the Mississippi.
What hats do we wear and how does this reflect who we are?
And if you painted portraits of crazy things, crazy people, what would you paint? Perhaps graffiti on a wall... and what walls do you face? If only we could just shake hands and move on... understand that the breath blown into balloons will also come out when their time is up... and wonder about questions, barter for answers... look at what is called "truth"... well... and why not write a poem about it, hope that eventually, some ragged remains will struggle up after winter to be reconsidered.
Ken Nash highly recommended this movie, Mango Dreams -- wonderful movie and skillful telling of the horrible repercussions of the Partition…the power of memory, bonding through story… Ken's summary: A Hindu doctor with dementia and a Muslim auto rickshaw driver form an unlikely friendship as they cross India in search of the doctor's childhood home. Issues of loss, denial and division mix with cherished memories, sacrifice and respect.
On Netflix.
**
Nutshell: 2/24
Medina: Bernie opened the meeting with his poem, written in 2006, which he remembered after discussing “Healing Improvisations of Hair” by Jay Wright https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42740/the-healing-improvisation-of-hair discussed Feb. 10. As Wright puts it in his poem…
in remembering a head of hair…
Indeed, Bernie’s perspective of the back of heads, leads to a deeper truth of our human condition but he adds a sacred overtone. Hegira (Islam marking of year 1 of the Muslim calendar, in tribute to Muhammad’s exodus from Mecca to Medina) becomes a shared experience on a 21st century airplane traveling to Mississippi. (Indeed, unbeknownst to Bernie, there is a Medinah, MS with a Musliim community in it!) The hair is “bondaged”, and we are given strong visuals of hair do’s, caps… The ending is hopeful, with a yearning to imagine unity despite our individual hats, hair, selves. The mention of a possible shepherd in charge of all is comforting indeed. From the poet:
Self-Portrait: One intriguing question that came up was how to read the poem without its note.
Certainly the poem itself is filled with lovely brushstrokes of alliterations, repetitions, sounds of words, like a painting. The four stanzas appeal to our senses giving a visceral feel both to something universal like the pandemic which touches us all and the more personal portrayal of the poet’s friend and the trigger of their meeting on Mercer Street in early 2019. We had the sense of a mosaic, not yet assembled. The final stanza reminded Emily of Leonard Cohen,
and many recalled the passage in the Bible about Elijah and the “still small voice” as conscience. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%2019%3A11-13&version=NKJV
The Wall: Adjectives for this poem: fabulous! amazing! powerful! Jan brought up the trauma that a wall creates, and how the poem ressembled the horror of the story of the India/Pakistan partition in Mango Dreams. Memories spackled together, build, like the semi-random-seeming possibilities of what one could use to make a wall. A touch of humor makes the distress and devastation inherent bearable. (avocado seeds as Aztec testicles! choices of “adobe or ghosts” next to lego or bubble wrap; wallets on life support; the bigly block party; xocoatl motar, etc. )
A touch of surrealism to offset the seriousness such as “Dreams will be terrorists” and the memories of what was. The poet’s father is Yaqui , and I put that next to her name, as
she writes from her experience as a Native American woman. Like the previous poem, a mosaic— but in this case of congruent angles of stories that are part of the border.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anita-endrezze
Shaking Hands: to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4psKIf-_fi0
Pádraig reads the poem at 2:20 but tells the background in those first two minutes.
We loved the anaphora of Because, which also feels like the reasoning behind the unspoken question is larger than just the Irish troubles, or the examples given in the poem. Susan mentioned how it felt like a proclamation and Bernie and Jan remarked on the ressemblance to the tolling of a bell. Particularly in this time of pandemic, it is a timely poem. How will we deal with each other when we can touch again? Shake hands? How do we convey empathy, good will without the basic courtesy of the handshake or this metaphor for whatever cultural touch it represents?
Breath: The Guardian gives a nice summary — but out group picked up on death/breath/womb-tomb of the idea of breath entering a balloon… We picked up on his reading, which didn’t give space between the tercets, which give an air of a children’s story. We could sense the personality of the father, admired the seamless way his mock-cursing transforms to the balloons mockingly bobbing about… The wife’s anger at his death… her love for this man… the violent burst of life-giving air she receives… A touch surreal, and works without the story. Elaine told the tragic story of a father-to-be blown up preparing a prop for a “reveal party”. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-state-father-be-killed-when-gender-reveal-prop-n1258554
This too could be made into poem. We reminisced about how we remember… how if a casserole is left over, made the person who passed away… how this becomes a “rite” part
of the memorial.
My mistake about the story behind the poem (go to minute 43): He and his wife Molly had gone to Walmarts to pick up bread and milk (and Adrian says, “never underestimate the temple that is Walmart— I’ve had so many poems inspired by this place…” The story is that a working class couple with some children were at the checkout, and the kids were crying for some expensive helium balloons. Adrian told them, ah… you’ll be missing out on all the fun — get a packet of 100 of them and ask your Da’ to blow them up — it will kill him, and give him a squeaky voice…”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZxE3QejLas&feature=youtu.be
He reads it at minute 44:44
This is one of his poems that came to him sitting on a porch —what he calls “a secret poetry machine”. All it took was remembering this incident after writing the title and immediately the first stanza comes to mind.
Sometimes: I found the original German, a rhymed translation and link to the Bly here: http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/10/hermann-hesse-sometimes.html
With the Bly translation, which lacks rhyme, we still had a sense of a unified treatment of feeling fortified by the images. It is an enigmatic poem. What are the questions asked? We as readers cannot participate in the reply, but rather must seek our own questions, join in the universal conversation with "soul" in this way. I shared the link to a work of art by Peter Jemison, Crow in the Shadow http://magart.rochester.edu/objects-1/info/24389
paired with this poem for the docents at the Memorial Art Gallery.
Barter: An older form poem, beautifully crafted… … and we are reminded as well, it is quite a privileged perspective. It had been recited for the teen Poetry Outloud competition by Sofia de Bitetto.
In her recitation it felt that she latched onto the infinite optimism of the poem. The speaker, arguably, could "have" nothing. life's loveliness is in nature and experience, interpersonal connections. yes, one is urged to "spend" without limit on this loveliness, but therein lies the barter. one is not spending their trust fund on it, but rather "all [they] have been, or could be."
His Master’s Voice: The image of the RCA Victor [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipper]
came to mind, as well as possibly a slave recalling a master… perhaps doing something he regretted to another slave…
The ambiguity, and impossibility of knowing the details allowed us to look at the message about truth. We enjoyed the language — that “dust-bath thing” of “indistinguishable brown birds”,
the “fake-looking posture of half collapse” of those bedraggled dahlias… and the heat (compared to the way facts behave with a “truth more difficult/to touch than usual) haloing… —
the style, language, overlay of images ending with the sea anemones rooted in something we cannot see, all adds to an elusive experience. Well, in case you don’t get it… go back to the beginning… honesty as bruising and bruisable… and perhaps you too will go back to making
your inventory…
rejection letter: Perfect metaphor all writers understand, expressed in a delightful, heart-warming manner.
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