A Song for Myself by Melvin B. Tolson
part 7 of Rendez-vous with America
The Healing Improvisation of Hair by Jay Wright
O Little Root of a Dream by Paul Celan
Inauguration by Lorenzo Thomas
My Office by Lorenzo Thomas
Nutshell:
A song for myself: Tolson, (1898-1966) a contemporary with Langston Hughes does not figure in the canon the same way, which makes me want to know more about why he was not accepted by either black or white critics. Why the long skinny poem? Laden with rhyme…a flavor of folk sayings and yet clearly something by a learned man setting forth all sorts of oppositions, and much “meat” “of all that’s writ”. I had to look up Chladni, an 18th century German physicist and musician who contributed to the speed of sound, accoustics… and Selah! used in the Hebrew Bible after psalms meaning “Forever”.
One way of reading the poem is idea by idea… or try to make sense out of the 22 sections…
What is his creed that he hopes it “span the Gulf of Man”?
Written a year before his death, perhaps indeed, he questions if he has done enough?
What and how does the mind work? How is it starved thin for truth?
Rendez-vous with America: I only gave part 7… so some of the discussion wondering about
the relationship to the rest of the poem, I leave to those scholars who read the whole thing.
It is a wonderful title, and indeed, seems as timely now as in 1944 when it was written.
The first stanza makes it sound that Uncle Sam has fallen asleep at the wheel. The anaphor,
“and” piling up horrors in the second stanza… ending with the “tribulum”— a threshing machine… which as metaphor for how people are “processed” is gruesome. Copperheads is the name of Northern sympathizers with the Confederacy…
3rd Stanza introduced by Then…
Sometimes/// and… /then… only four things listed: civil war… the corruption and scandal of the Teapot Dome, Wall Street Crash… Thunderclap of bombs at Pearl Harbor! Why the exclamation point… is it the surprise attack?
What do these four things say about America?
The Healing Improvisation of Hair: Such a fun title… Our hair is part of our identity…
we felt a sense of life affirmation— and grit… wonderful texture of verbs… sounds and juxtapositions… contradictions both allusive and elusive… water as perhaps baptismal… a sense of rebirth… perhaps a tinge of regret… remembering water as caress, to stress beauty in a head of hair… witness of his dance under sorrow’s tree… we discussed also the stony woman and at the end, carrying his life, “like a stone” — which made Marna remember this poem we discussed: Green Stone, by Richard Hugo
http://carolpeters.blogspot.com/2006/02/richard-hugo.html
O Little Root of a Dream:
What is it to feel condemned by one’s birth blood, the color of one’s skin? What saps the life out of us? How can we feel the reassurance of a tiny trickle of life despite all the world does… where dream takes on perhaps the guise of the world, and yet… sustains as otherworldly dream
as both measure and standard came up as we tried to reconcile otherworldly
Inauguration: The opening lines remind of Frost’s reciting The Gift Outright at Kennedy’s inauguration. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53013/the-gift-outright
In 14 lines, to be read slowly, carefully, “us” shifting to subject but yet still object
(the bombs us have… )followed by capital G God, and capitalized Us.. as perhaps USA
and fancy names of manifest destiny (particular set of regulations based on undisputable acumen… etc.) and my favorite, “and (of course) other irrational factors…
Masterful irony and tone.
My Office: brilliant sketch of what the “suits” do to earn money…
learning the alphabet of nods and eyebrows/and pursed lips straining fo the purse”…
The juxtaposition of “for certain” and “possibles” as slight as handshakes… “firm as agreement of subjective verbs… Indeed, how could you end up anywhere but “no where”?
We had the distinct impression he traded in that office for his dream corner office of a bar… and yet the pretense goes on, pretending to wait for that important call… handshake laughter…
We explored the idea of country music… Charlie Pride…
I’m still haunted by “hope’s frozen green peas” — not only are the peas far removed
from how they grow, but how they are packaged, preserved.
In None of the Above ("New poets of the USA" edited by Michael Lally, published in 1976)
Lorenzo Thomas (author of the last two poems) says this: "Poetry is a spiritual, social & political revelation. A force. An effort to welcome a better world. I see things & write them down & call it poetry, though they used to teach us this was "fantasy". It's not." He goes on-- worth reading:
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