Underwear by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The Owl by Joyce Sutphen (poetry pick from Jules Nyquist)
The Ragged and the Beautiful by Safiya Sinclair
Anthropocene: A Dictionary by Jake Skeets
Nimbawaadaan Akiing / I Dream a World by Margaret Noodin
Dirt and Light by Aria Aber
Mount Auburn Cemetary by Robert Pinsky
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Underwear: you can hear him read it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jz6gDVHa7Q It’s a rather long poem so you may prefer just to read it: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42871/underwear (Thank you Gretchen!)
As this was not on the list, but a poem suggested by Gretchen who was visiting the group today, I wanted to be sure her "Poetry Month choice" could be shared when she was able to come. We enjoyed her
reading of it, watching how masterfully Ferlinghetti takes the reality of underwear into the metaphorical realm replete with political ramifications..
The Owl: Susan gave a perfect "owl-like" "who cooks for you" call which dovetailed with the spirit of the Ferlinghetti. Owl is more than owl, and the call, more than call, just like underwear, delving into what lies under... what is worn... She calls on Brecht's question about dark times... and the answer. Sutphen shares her take on bitter by embracing a paradoxical smile which becomes even more believable wondering
as does she how it is we can still "leap to our feet; clap our hands together.".
The Ragged and the Beautiful: This poem very much picked up on the Sutphen, where dark and bitter are the "ragged". The language is beautifully poetic whether the image of storming bull of doubt, the garden of good days... the blue-wide windows of myself...
The crafting with an on-going flow of tercets, weaving syntax like a seamless dream, even the one-word, "Yes." ends with a half-line of a couplet, indeed, flown "perfectly away". The poem captures the inner world of the outcast-- whether by economics, social status, race, gender, mental health. And the saving grace of "good days", No body is wrong. We are all bodies.
"enough/of ourselves to catch the wind in our feathers, and fly so perfectly away."
Comments: truth has its own beauty; the poem is a universalist invitation.
She does not label doubt as "self-doubt", a destructive force... but rather all the unanswerable storms of
being human... and the amazing ability of living beings to survive, albeit ragged and sideways and always... (with line and stanza enjambing to) "beautiful."
For the Jake Skeets Anthropopcene: you might be able to find more words here: https://dictionary.nihizaad.com/dict/sheep/
Gretchen mentioned that often this is restricted, as many Native American tribes do not want unlimited access to anyone out of respect for these words and customs.
This is definitely a poem you need to listen to. The slow, deliberate cadence of his voice, the passing down of words in oral tradition where each word is explained -- and so if you took only the Navajo
Sheep corral... moonlight... its sails, wind, more wind comes up, evening...
they burned it... we did this --
there is almost a haiku-like sense of more being said. Language creates culture...
The space of both the spoken words and visual layout also has a clever use of colon Barbara pointed out.
At first, a Navajo word: English equivalent. The space between the Navajo word and English increases with each instance-- worth a second look. As the note about the poem says, it is a window on a Navajo-Indian dictionary as an anthropological act to show what is happening.
Nimbawaadaan:
Again, you must listen to this poem. Margaret Noodin sings the Anishinaabe first, then the English.
There is a definite rhythmic beat, and it feels like a prayer. We were all touched by the sound of the words sung even before we understood their translation. She could have put the two languages side by side,
but chose not to-- so that the visual and aural/oral do not line up. She references Martin Luther King
and Langston Hughes: https://allpoetry.com/I-Dream-A-World
(I have pasted that at the top of the poems for next week.).
Dirt and Light by Aria Aber:
the James Merrill poem referred to https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29216
It helps to know that the poet is Afghani, that her parents fled to Germany and she lived as refugee.
One feels the desert in the "salt-white music", a sense of mines and everything blowing up .
Lemony light is part of the culture left behind, felt graveside. We spoke of how the poem felt drenched in loss, sorrow, regret... that large wanting one can never have of what is lost. She weaves a poignant longing-- yes... the pigeon settles into the dusk, the wet pine... life goes on... and yet.. so does grief.
At Mount Auburn Cemetery
This was in the same issue of the New Yorker as Dirt and Light.
As Pinsky said about House Hour, “It can feel heavy with longing—and heavy with longing, in my mind, is preferable to hollow, which one also feels. If I’m heavy with longing, at least I have some idea of what I want.”
Here in the cemetery, meditating on names, lives...on what it is to be human, as you bury a beloved pet... there is nothing hollow.
Thank you Marna for bringing up Cary Ratcliff’s “Ode to Common Things” and e e cummings Madrigals. WXXI broadcasts. You can experience a 2020 performance of the Ode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBzLdeIdb8A
Ratcliffe: e e cummings Madrigals https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/1384445503732060160
3 links to Cary Ratcliffe: https://www.classical915.org/programs/classical-music-brenda-tremblay
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