On Time Tanka by June Jordan
& Later, by Adrian Matejka
Realization by Marilyn Nelson
Manistee Light by Samiya Bashir
Faithful Forest by Alberto Ríos The blue nightgown by Toi Derricotte
Medina on the Mississippi by Bernard Shore
Tabula Rasa by Tyler Curtis
Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
Nutshell summary of poems 2/17/2021
June Jordan: On Time Tanka
7 tankas (31 syllable short songs following 5-7-5-7-7- syllabic pattern) with repeating sounds, rhythms, rhymes… What is time? measured by clocks, by seasons, all our expressions about the timing of things. How is time related to choice — and what choices does a black woman have in a patriarchal society? How to understand “neither one of you” (black or white,
one cheating, one beating the wife) or “you both” (big power, big power dude, or police creeps)…
The rhyme confirms a sweeping conviction.
The first three tankas (stanzas) abaab rhyme shift in stanza 4 where the long oo of
choose, refuse, echoes in fruit; slant rhyme of hero and rolls and every word rhyming on the last two lines except for (Black- capital B) and (white- small w). The first word of each line capitalized. Stanza 5 starts with the “real slime”, the eye-rhyme of mouth/uncouth…
Stanza 6 piles up play/day/say/spray carries on with double exclamation points, Okay!
laugh away! and two enjambments that accentuate “you” and “choose”—
The blues, indeed, is the blues… and black and blue news, means hurt and lose.
As Lori puts it: This poem speaks of life TIME— it feels of contemporary relevance and points to the relentlessness of this sad song in the life of a black woman.
I really admire this poem — the relentlessness perhaps lies in the 7… like days of the week…the repetitions for instance of the opening line, “I refuse to choose” ,broken in the last stanza —
I accuse/you both: I refuse/to choose. How she repeats “lose” from the second stanza; the black and blue news of the third stanza”… the truth that it “withers the heart of her hand” and confirms the meaning “I hurt and I lose”.
Trumpet by Jean-Michel Basquiat
http://www.jean-michel-basquiat.org/trumpet/
Adrian Matejka : & Later,
to find out more about the poet: https://poets.org/event/2020-2021-blaney-lecture-adrian-matejka
to find out more about Basquiat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX02QQXfb_o
Just as the painting might be difficult to interpret, so is this poem— more like a jazz improvisation, where indeed, you see the 3 keys, the red, a black crown (both as crown and head)
perhaps the skyscraper smile…
We discussed poetry... as sounds... meanings beyond words— both
harsh, difficult words, (broken scrawl, villanous, complaint shapes, 3-triggered agitation, angry-fingered fruition, suspicious) and words taken from positive contexts to unexpected negatives
(brass instrument… thin throat like a fist… where the “instrument” is not a trumpet, but a weapon; the flat declinations of pastors/& teachers at Christmas… but it is not holiday cheer
but a holiday choir of hungry/
paints
We sensed a feeling of enclosed anger…. Although we did not discuss the title, which leads into the first line… it is worth noting it starts the poem in media res… what is relaxed (line and stanza break) explanation of lateness: ? The colon is followed by a fragment which refuses to say. We noted the disjunctive, the unexpected, the irregular indentations, line breaks. Oh yes…
below words crossed out/— in the painting you see the breath of the trumpet, and the unseen
potholes, ashy elbows that come out in red light.
Even without the painting, this poem captures a painful tune, like a trumpet riff triggered by, but not recognizable from its melody, filled with unsettling disjunctions… The poem captures the sense that the paint has become more than paint, and both poem and painting prod us to re-think
beyond lines attempting to draw out the feeling-experience.
To see… yes… that is the greatest gift of life…to paraphrase Rilke… Which leads to the next poem by Marilyn Nelson:Realization
The title prepares us to think about what makes something “real” both as a completed idea, sculpture, and bringing something alive, which leads to greater understanding.
”Gussie” and her statue “Realization” described in Marilyn Nelson’s poem, of the same title. https://gailtanzer.com/2020/07/26/augusta-savages-sculpture-realization/
As Lori mentioned, this ¾ size work, 8X10 inches… and thousands of the ¾ sized-works depicting such scenes would not begin to “measure up” to equal all the statues of confederate generals… The size of Mount Rushmore (Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, each about 60 feet (18 metres) tall, are carved in granite on the southeast side of the mountain) is no protection either.
The opening lines of the poem… a fragment. Three-quarter size. Full size would break the heart. Even if this were not an ekphrastic response to a specific statue, the first 17 lines give
us a fully rounded picture of real human beings at a slave market. The absence of a child,
auctioned separately… the helplessness of the man (father perhaps of the child, husband),
the humiliation of the bare-breasted woman, “perhaps realizing what/will happen to them next.”.
We are offered several “realizations”. The next 16 lines start with harrowing questions that share the realizations of the poet and underline historic discrepancy between “all men created equal” and the inhumane and dehumanizing practice of slavery…
What words are there to describe hopelessness? How can they believe (in God) while the blue sky/smiles innocently, pretends nothing is wrong. (no question mark.)
All of us had images even without the sculpture— the reduction of human souls/lives to parts: their naked feet (the couple); her collarbone (harkening to her bareness); the vein/traveling his bicep. The punch of the closing line — all those “monumental generals whose stars (as in their karma perhaps) /and sabers say (present tense), black pain/ did not then and still does not matter.
Powerful poem, where the reader cannot escape the realization of how this must feel.
Samiya Bashir: Manistee Light.
I found a different version here: http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2013/02/poem-of-week-samiya-bashir.html. Regardless, what does this lighthouse represent? One reading could be strictly ecological… how the land once produced real crops… Although the light was not “land mined” the image of that possibility— what is destroyed and is no longer haunts the poem.
For history this site discusses the fire that destroyed the first light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manistee_Pierhead_lights
The closing line, “I wish I knew/how she did it. It was almost enough” speaks of survival against all odds— both from weather, but also economics…
Alberto Rios: Faithful Forest
Four parts, where the first line guides a narrative repeated as ending. David Sanders was reminded of David Attenborough, “Resilience of Wildness, (if we allow it)” https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/david-attenboroughs-witness-statement-for-the-planet-commentary/
and a book like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Lava-Life-Universe-Tells-Earth/dp/1584690429 and the Richard Powers book, Overstory. http://www.richardpowers.net/the-overstory/
How wonderful that we have in a relatively short poem, an uplifting view of the forest, as living, breathing, story-telling record— and reminder of resilience, and the importance of its role as keeper of memory.
Toi Derricotte: The blue nightgown
Ah! Even the men appreciated this feminine example of how to cope! The note gives the
“meta-aspect” of this poem, finding sustenance not just in that ice-blue that allows a glide
through all the rooms of the house, landing in the kitchen as if on stage, to sing!
An encouragement to practice like so many of us pretend, singing opera in the kitchen!
Bernie’s poem for next week:
Tyler Curtis: Tabula Rasa
Lovely poem… filled with hopes. Even had we not known it was written by a High School senior, it is a refreshing reminder of innocence, a reminder of what can sully it.
Robert Hayden: Frederick Douglass
An eloquent tribute — and reminder of the importance of transmitting this “beautiful and terrible, needful, usable” thing called freedom — that indeed… it belong to all…
that we carry it onwards.
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