Poems for May 26

Breaking [News] by Noor Hindi

and her poem here : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154658/fuck-your-lecture-on-craft-my-people-are-dying

(these both appeared in Poetry, December 2020)

Running Orders  by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

On Poetry… by Abby Murray

Poems are too often discussed as "techniques" or accomplishments or traditions, things for humans to aspire to, rather than what they are: the primal human trait of naming, of putting recognition to the lived world, whether that's in word or sound or touch, whatever. Poems call everything out, including poems and the people who make them. They tell us where food is and how we've died and what to do. When somebody's wounded, you don't need anybody to lecture on the importance of blood; you need to yell "they're wounded!" so anyone within earshot can start applying pressure, wrapping bandages, calling for more help, etc. Poems gather, and not just in a cliche-Christmas-dinner sort of way.

 

And yet. The bait on the complacency hook here is surrender: the "damned if I do and damned if I don't" resolution to give up, to not speak at all, to ignore violence because "there isn't anything we can do".  I do think there is no such thing as doing nothing. Not for the living. (Or for the dead, I guess, but that's another story.) Everything we do is a choice in response to the world we live in. Some are decent, others not at all…  

Blood Poetry  by Abby Murray

from Stray Birds [233—237] by Rabindranath Tagore 

Haiku by Etheridge Knight

Nutshell discussion:

Thank you Noor Hindi, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha for bringing us poems that ask us to take a hard look in the mirror.  We spoke of journalism, of how we "consume news", how we confront the tragic-- and the tragedy of seeing a coil wound up, and nothing will stop its lethal whip unwinding.  We spoke of guilt, and what overwhelms us which further stops us from finding ways to act to try to restore balance... and of the long chain of disconnection as we go through channels of representatives who in turn go through chambers of representatives-- and the power of people gathering in the streets all over the world to protest the violence of war... and of SUFRJ (Standing up for Racial Justice)-- and the reminder from Sister Teresa that we can do small things with great love... and how everyone can be a champion of something...

Todays poems may have offered a sharp slap, and all that Abby says in her comments above on poetry---

but in our small group, they also allowed us to share our multiple ways of understanding, and renew through our connection, a faith that not everything in the human condition condemns us.

Breaking [News]:

The original I believe was double-spaced, although I maintained the line breaks and indentation. 

Starting with the title... Breaking -- with News in brackets -- What/who is breaking... and what relationship does that have to news...? The matter-of-fact opening tone bleeds into knife-edged report--

the "desperate reaching" (line break) not just for each other -- but to maintain our humanity-- not become

mere "consumers" of words, which may not even contain "a plea for empathy". (And the double wound of consuming news as entertainment, or curiosity, as passive observers without taking action or feeling moved.)

There is no "breaking news" item... and a sense that even should the information in the last two lines

be reported, as "news of the day" nothing will remain-- nothing even for the words we count on to buoy us through to float on.

The rage and sadness is heart-breaking.  

We commented on the metaphors-- "we carry/ (line break) graveyards on our backs... and the lightening bug -- one would hope can shed light, in one hand, the pen in the other to document its death, (and make it "digestible to consumers"...   Such a play of first person plural, and singular, echoes in the analogy of the open and closing fists... Of what good a mechanical "transfer of information" which will not transform into action.

Fuck your lecture on craft, my people are dying:  This is not just addressed to professors, with craft as subject... how indeed, can we be happy, knowing about violent deaths?  We admired the underlying 

critique of the routine indignities of occupation...  and the irony of children "becoming daisies"... and the non-metaphorical picking of flowers for the dead father, who serves as witness.  How do colonizers write about flowers?  Which ones?  the ones nourished by the graves?  And is there cynicism in that last line about "ownership"?  We all agreed the explosion of raw feeling is powerful.  How can the friend say

Happy Ramadan as the killing continues... and how could anyone write about beauty... behind bars, or not seen at all...  Hindi addresses the importance for a writer to leave behind a legacy that matters-- and already, this poem indeed, haunts us, will stay with us.  I want to see how she will write about those flowers.

Running Orders:

Although written in 2017, this poem felt like it was written this week with the horrors of the bombing in Gaza.  Again, the title... running as in running through the usual status quo of how to do things, or how to run... The irony of being ordered to run after being warned... "It doesn't matter" is repeated at an accelerating rate after "it means nothing that the borders are closed....  and everything that matters is

discounted.  Powerful.  This poem too will haunt with the overwhelming imbalance which seems unstoppable.

Blood poetry:  a brilliant blend of science and poetry... details accurate even in the metaphors! 

Lori brought up the power of sharing poetry -- which she does with her neighbor -- a true balm for the heart!

Stray Birds: Lori was reminded of this Rumi passage: 

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”

(back to the first poem-- holding the lightening bug in her fist...)

We spoke about the difficulty of reading an excerpt, and to boot, numbered nuggets that could well be better off  as independent pieces.  David shared his suggestion to students  of enjoying poems like Blake's Proverbs,

or Wallace Stevens Adagia as islands to visit... stay a while on one and then hop on to another... an on-going process that allows several repeated visits!

234: It could be political... and how to understand "spots" -- the visible marks on a white surface, or 

those moments of waxing and waning?

235 we discussed the problem of "checking off" an experience when we name it... perhaps like identifying a bird in the wild by name, but not knowing much more.  If we are lucky,

we know our friends by more than name... 

 

Haiku:  Apparently Gwendolyn Brooks told Etheridge his poems has too many words, and he should try haiku!  We each read one and shared the one that struck a note in us.  For sure, the sounds, the rhymes are powerful. David mentioned that he met Knight apparently shortly after he was released from prison.

(An invited guest speaker at Goucher where David was teaching).  He would swing his body... then start to speak... The sedate stillness of haiku, is a challenge to jazz swing!  (see Haiku 9.). The more time you spend with these, the more there is to admire.

 

May 19/May 24

  

My choices of poems for this week started with remembering quotes from William Carlos Williams: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/15435.William_Carlos_Williams

I think these days when there is so little to believe in——when the old loyalties——God, country, and the hope of Heaven——aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in——someone who seems beautiful.” ― William Carlos Williams

mercy by Cameron Miller

An Old Story By Tracy K. Smith

Starting With an Old Photo of My Mother and Ending on a Hill  by Sarah Freligh

New Year’s Eve by Tomás Q. Morín

Dear Giant Squid  - by Peter Sears. (in his chapbook Luge: he wrote several versions!)

Long After I am Gone -- by Peter Sears (first poem in his chapbook, Luge )

For What Binds Us by Jane Hirshfield

"It is not true that the heart wears out — but the body creates this illusion. 

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness."-- Camus

Nutshell

mercy: The 5/19  group just absolutely RAVED about  poem.  We loved the perspective of mercy as a small spot growing… the opposition of mercy  as something which flows like lava from a volcano  --and the unspoken glacial flow of justice… how clearly the institutional, systematized version of justice (including for-profit prisons!) needs

to be steamrolled… We discussed how mercy is in the expression “to be at someone’s mercy” as in

an unjust system of justice… and mercy has a side we might not recognize when it confronts injustice,  

frozen in institutional guises… None of this gentle, compassionate heart stuff— there’s an important fire

in mercy, sort of biblical roll down the mountain, that has nothing to do with logic, the brain.  It’s a powerful and provocative poem!  I reminded that “Poems aren’t about logic” and “Poetry at it’s root is song”.

The 5/24 group picked up on the tempo that starts out slow for "mercy" and certainly picks up in the third stanza with the wider, wider and/// hotter, hotter and/// steamrolling.  Justice arrives slowly as well, frozen with "glacial", "rigid", "brittle" contrasting with the "motion of mercy .  We discussed at length the last line -- some found it difficult, not fitting with the poem; some felt it put an accent on monetary, not belonging in the justice system.  It came up that for-profit prisons came about the time of the failed "war against drugs".  So many threads from just one poem....

An Old Story

Which old story?  We were reminded of Noah's Ark. What is the oldest story we know?  (Gilgamesh). 

History certainly repeats... and whatever story it is here, the form winds it as if blown by the wind,

pegged by the initial capital letters, blown off course, in the third stanza.  Many might feel she is describing the current story -- "the worst in us having taken over... "-- or that feeling of what the media would have us believe.  I find it ironic that the first three words sound like a creation story, "we were made"... but it is a different fashioning here -- made to understand...

Hope arrives, mid-line 11, introduced by "And then our singing"...  

The pronoun "We", as first word of the first and last two sentences underlines a powerful collectivity in being human.  The weeping... in all the powerful range of joy, regret, sorrow, relief... As Kwame Dawes says, "a beautiful anthem to the singing".

the 5/24 group:  Paul and Martin noted the awkward nature of the poem.  Judith supported the deliberate choice of the poet not to have anything uniform, harmonious.  As for the "something large and old", Marna and John thought of conscience, a deep Jungian archetypal subconscious at work.  What  metaphors do "weather" and "color" elicit.  The jaggedness prompts a more acute attention to possibilities.

Starting with an Old Photo... 

Sarah had posted “Starting with an Old Photo of My Mother ands Ending on a Hill” — on facebook for the anniversary of her mother’s passing .  It is the first poem in her book, Sad Math,  which I have and know, but this time, like stumbling over the Peter Sears poems because of the memorial of his passing,  immediately fell in love again with it again.  I didn't think how beautifully it would pair with “When I am Gone” by Peter Sears (one of my mentors at Pacific, and Oregon Poet Laureate) where the speaker in the poem is the father  talking to his daughter which contrasts nicely with the daughter remembering her mother.   The poem gave us all shivers!

Everyone LOVED it!  The discussion delved into so many layers 

It’s such a tribute to her mother, and also to the power of a mother… she steps right out of the poem as real as life… one participant was reminded of her own mother… the juxtaposition of physical and psychological hunger… that empty belly of the whale ash-tray… the unspoken mother-daughter biology — yes I want to be just like her, and no, never do I ever want to be like her, I am me… the “cradling” of hills and another memory— the comparison of her body to that lone factory… where boys break and enter… and that brilliant turn:  “Listen to them and you can almost believe their hearts will never turn bitter and quit”.  followed by another brilliant turn of the daughter shouting a love poem, not to the boys, but to her Mom, — followed by another brilliant turn of  yelling it to those bulging masses of cows chewing their cud — and that’s not enough, “blank as grief can be” — she throws in that empty parking lot, that dandelion in the trail of exhaust… Another participant said,  that contrast of 10 minutes before — the metaphor of presence…  people showing up for the shift, no matter the reduction of hours, the decrepit building… made her think of  the mention of the brother on your mom’s hip.

5/24: Yes... the age of Sarah's mother... Judith brought up the role of women in her time... John, the non-judgmental tone--

indeed, an imperfect time magnified by imperfect people.  Maura came to the defense of cows who gravitate to her when she plays her harmonica, which prompted Paul to do his imitation mooing.I can't attach the file... ask me if you want to heat!

New Year's Eve: Whether a Western Civ New Year's Eve on Dec. 31 or an abstract eve of a necessary New Year and Order, this poem calls on the sparks and fireworks, the garlands, plastic trees of both.  How do we use maps?  Color?  What does "blue" mean when assigning political colors and thinking of who belongs to the Democratic "blue"?  How clever to assign color to nationality, and include a dismissive "brown to Native Americans and everyone else."

John brought up Woody Guthrie singing Pretty Boy Floyd (they'll rob you with a 6 ft. gun... with a fountain pen... : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4YKUJZI5Bg

(lyrics: https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Pretty_Boy_Floyd.htm)

Another powerful poem asking us to think outside of any normal box.

We didn't discuss the William Carlos Williams quote, which originally came to my mind:

"It's a strange courage/you give me ancient star://Shine alone in the sunrise/toward which you lend no part!"

5/24:We learned the name of the red-white-blue scalloped decorations of the flag are called "bunting flags".We too were stymied by the "garland" ... could see the little toy train (as opposed to the transcontinental railroad built by the Chinese... ) around a plastic x-mas tree... The poem calls on hope for a new start... year...  in that last loaded line.

Dear Giant Squid:  Not a face without a smile hearing this letter... Sears addresses the foibles of human beings, the disrespect we show to other creatures... the excuses for our bloodthirsty nature... 

5/24: Same reaction.

Dear Giant Squid #2.   Also fun, provocative... is it a poem?  Certainly good to have a mirror of what humans are:

how we get excited when we "capture something on camera"... "gnash on an idea... " -- and especially "go nuts". 

That can indeed explain a lot of things...   as for illusions of grandeur (no matter the test scores)... one feels the speaker of the poem is not one who has them, but calls a spade a spade... understands the damage done to our planet... 

Long After I am Gone

I love the conversation between father and daughter, the way one can converse with a parent long gone... but no... Peter is not gone, but knows his cancer will call him away from the daughter he loves so much... and we don't even have to have the real words of the daughter... except that thought of an extra long bit of time indeed, projected into the future, helps with the little time left in the now.

For What Binds Us

Indeed, what  makes things stay together?  What makes connections between people-- whether talking of parents/children, spouses, feeling bound to fellow countrymen.  Until I read this poem I didn't know about "proud flesh" -- and had to look it up to know it applies to humans too.  I like that the poem encourages an inspection into the word "proud"... 

We discussed the metaphor of "black cord"... perhaps the mark of the wound, perhaps part of a noose to tighten -- a negative that closes up... or a seam so solid, nothing can tear -- 

perhaps their is a sense of "nothing can alter" in the verb "mend."

5/24: Ties that Bind Us -- couldn't think of reference, but we remembered... 

going through pain with another makes us stronger… 

keloid:  proud flesh… 

Perhaps paradox is the intention of the poem.

Marna mentioned the black cord as part of the weaving technique to help guide to make straight lines.

May 12 / May 17

Take the I Out by Sharon Olds

“Someday I’ll Love Roger Reeves” by Roger Reeves 

Eve Remembering by Toni Morrison - 1931-2019

Asi  by Claudia Castro Luna

Tending by Elizabeth Alexander

Virtual Living At its Very Best — Steve Coffman

Comments shared with 5/12 group:

Sharon Olds:  How to read "I" in line 22-- ?  I or "one" to continue the idea of Roman number I.

Jim found a perfect solution reading both!  We noted the alliterations, the technical terms for construction-and feats of association!  Discussion included the metaphor of Sharon as "I beam" between mother and father, the surprising undertones of conflict.

Roger Reeves: I read aloud the 7-line O'Hara poem, "Katy"  which has has the prompt in line 6:  

"Some day I’ll love Frank O’Hara."  What a lineage for a continuing conversation with Roger Reeves, Ocean Vuong and Dean Radar... Although we did not discuss each one, it is fun to compare and contrast.

For Reeves, the repeated "our" brings up the struggle we all face on understanding love.  David brought up  the message of Paul in Corinthians, about our desire to be known and accepted -- which does not happen without a lot of pain.  The lower g "gods" the obligations, on up to speaking "with tongues light as

screen doors clapping shut on a child's fingers"... back to two more mentions of "obligations"... 

More biblical overtones with "need for beginnings, /ends/blood... " and the closing couplet that

"we were once made of flesh" -- as if a small hubristic reference to ourselves as gods. 

This poem invites a discussion about Agape, about Love as the greatest fulfillment we can achieve... about the elements of sacrifice, faith, hope, charity .... 

Toni Morrison: the three stanzas perhaps like 3 parts of Eve's life...  It would be hard not to note a parallel with slavery, emancipation... 

I enjoyed the  end rhymes "caressed/kissed" in stanza 2; "again/been..." set against "sail, gale, scale" with the final unrhymed "to be" -- both in the sense of "being alive" and "what is to come."

Claudia Castro Luna: 14 lines where many of the multiple meanings of "asi" are explored-- 

Barbara mentioned there are 19 different ways to understand this word:  so, even if, just like, just as, 

like this, etc.  We admired the splendid metaphor of the untamable side of Claudia-- her hair-- each

"shaft an electric tendril vibrating its own, humming life". I especially loved the non-adjectival ways 

of describing the different aspects:  the quick and slow of me; the I'm afraid/I can't of me; it's beyond me side of me... Do we know where this city is that allows this?  Although we didn't discuss that, I love

that one volatile world allows an entire metaphorical city, replete with seasons, a tree, branching out, containing all -- the coming and going the root, the trunk... all of it!

Elizabeth Alexander: Lovely to hear her read. Another layered poem filled with the question,

"or was it..." leading up to this utterly convincing love of a grandfather tending his grandchildren.

  

Steve Coffman: 

May 5-6

Japanese Hokku by Lewis Grandison Alexander

A Habitable Grief by Eavan Boland

I Know My Soul by Claude McKay

Kissing in Vietnamese by Ocean Vuong

Numbers by Mary Cornish

Extraordinary Rendition  by Paul Muldoon 

This write up reflects comments from the "zoom" group, on Wed. 5/5 and two groups that met at the Pittsford Library on Thursday 5/6.  With gratitude to Joyce, as Pittsford resident for arranging this,

and to the library for allowing small groups to assemble in the large Fisher conference room.

What joy to reunite in person!  Three more dates have been scheduled.  Note, even if vaccinated,

a limit of 10 people, masks required, and wingspan of 6 feet apart per regulations.

Nutshell:

I wish to thank the curators of "Poem a Day" who continue to provide so many "new faces",

including in April, the fine work of Lewis Grandson Alexander, born July 4, 1900.  Part of the Harlem Renaissance, in his short life (died Nov. 25, 1945) his work reflects excellent mastery.  One of the magazines in which his work appeared, "The Crisis: Opportunity and Fire" was endorsed by the NAACP. 

I would be interested in reading the other anthologies mentioned in his bio: "The New Negro", "Caroling Dusk", and Ebony and Topaz.    

Hokku: 

The western world became more aware of Haiku in 1905.   It is clear from his 20 arrangements of  syllabic 5-7-5 tercets, that he captured the spirit of this form in our non-syllabic English, but also is not shy to experiment with form.  In that spirit, we enjoyed "playing" with the haiku as if rearranging them like checkers.

1) Hokku, technically, is the name of the first haiku that starts off a renga...a chain of haiku. Elaine suggests reading: livinghaikuanthology.com

We examined  meanings by "playing" with rearrangement, somewhat like moving checkers.   What happens if you re-read the sequence, starting with I, going directly to the last one, XX...?  It certainly works in terms of logic. 

Reading in different order sensitized us to find different kinds of comparisons: Where are the questions? (VII, (2 of them!) XII, XX).

Where does it feel like a love story between "I" and "you"-- perhaps between the poet, and the moon,

as Goddess as poetry (VIII, X, XIII and more)?

2) Some had seen in the opening, a "zenistic ambiguity", like the symbolic lotus, where the beauty of the flower is linked to the roots in the mud...  The "chain of moods" like a chain of haiku, leads to the repeated word "moods" in VI.  The sense of universal is present in the mention of XIV, we are all "units in a parade" and can relate in XV to those w's "within... weaving... web".  

3) Some felt a love narrative, and in IX and XIX felt the poet was speaking to someone who had died.

There is a sense of emptiness in XVI -- the heart a shell, moans... and yet, contradictorily, is too full to sing... only to "wrap the song" in XVIII, which some felt was a little "Hallmark" in sentimentality.

However read, everyone sensed great depth in the simplicity of the haiku form.  We did become more sensitized to spotting colons  (II, III, IV, [in line two], V [last line]) . (Later, we noted their extensive use in the Mary Cornish poem, "Numbers".)  How seamlessly he addresses the soul, winding it as  sound of wind, and yet, silence within.  

What a gift to have such a poem which can provide endless inspiration and subject of meditation!

A Habitable Grief: Paul, our resident Irishman, was present at both the in-person sessions on Thursday,

and alerted us to the inner workings of the sadness one lives with.  (Indicated by the title.)  I couldn't find an Irish song on this theme, "How can there be a second Elizabeth, when a first had never been?" But Paul cited the reference for us.   It relates to this line:  "what had never been, could still be found".  The three fragments in stanza 6 underscore the grief of the divide imposed by English as "lingua franca" as the common tongue in Ireland, the "lost land". How do you live with "a contrary passion /to be whole"? 

 Kathy brought up the importance of Boland's work to bring credence to women, also put down, especially in Ireland. (Object Lessons: Life of the Women and Poet in our Time- 1995).  She was reminded of the Hirschfield poem "What Binds Us."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52468/for-what-binds-us

Judith cited Robert Graves' The Crowning Privilege  and the long ago tradition of the great Irish bards who had to pass stiff exams in language and poetic form-- and there were women among them.  Perhaps the most noted: Liadan of Corkaguinney. Graves tells her story, which is probably legend. (See Lady Gregory's English translation of the Irish girl's lament for her unfaithful lover. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/apr/19/poem-of-the-week-lady-augusta-gregory

We discussed the repeated "just enough" at the end... A scar is no superficial mark...caused by abrasion, loss, and yet, healed  "just enough to be a nation."  Yes, back to the title... where one lives, with a palpable grief.

The poem elicits  concern for the difficulty of immigrants, and our growing awareness of how in the US we stamped out indigenous culture, and Western powers doing the same elsewhere.  It begs the question of how to be "whole", beyond artificial boundaries.

I know my Soul:  Beautifully crafted sonnet-- and yet another lens to better understand being African-American, as well as to revert to what dangers are involved in regarding the soul. Mention of Adam and Eve came up, where that fruit on the "tree of knowledge"  is forbidden.   

 The adjective "awful" line 7 can be understood in both senses as  key to "awe" and way to confront a painful (awful) situation.  I was struck by the undercurrent of /k/ sounds, perhaps like a narcotic, a numbing strum for the ending line, which repeats the title.

Judith remarked the feel of a Shakespearean conceit (rather twisty).  Indeed, the more you study and read it, the twistier it appears. Socratic "know thyself" does feel comforting... but  I'm not sure I feel confident in comprehension without a sense of control.

Kissing in Vietnamese: We are immediately transported to the Vietnam war... and can feel the productivity in this Grandmother marked by trauma.  There is a sense she conveys that she will not be here later, but can protect her grandson now...". There is an intensity of purpose in her kisses.   It came up that Eskimo kisses also involve inhaling.

The alliterative B's in the second line might change how you feel about our national anthem-- I know for me it did.  The imbedded "as if" contrasts between the first and second sentences, the first, laced with the Grandmother's past trauma, the second the way her kisses feel.  The final sentence breaks down the

5th line into three separate lines. as if somewhere, 

"a body is still"

(still) falling apart.

How do we take in each other?  This poem works on so many levels to remind us we cannot undo 

the violence of war... nor the intensity of love.

Numbers:  We needed a breather!  I love this poem -- that something as "calculating" and calculable as numbers can be infused with humor, and like good nursery rhymes, hold you in the comfort of imaginative  alternatives.  Generosity of numbers!  Subtraction never loss, but addition somewhere else...

and those odd remainders... The last stanza I believe has an echo of Giro, Giro Tondo, or the sailor who went out to sea. Judith immediately recited the Emperor's Rhyme (A.A. Milne) https://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=3&poet=685&poem=3358

We noted the "piles of colons"!

Extraordinary Rendition: Ah!  this poem really started to come together for me after THREE groups batted it about.  Sure, the title, implies transfer of prisoner... But Paul filled us in with more Irish history,

and how Part I, speaking for the Irish in Ireland makes perfect sense knowing what the English did in the mines at Allihies on the SW tip of Ireland.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allihies_Copper_Mine_Museum

One arrives at "the rich vein" by elevator... the "cage" ... the landing stage would be the pier and dock,

as Allihies is atop a cliff by the sea.  The "you" is English... 

I do like that the poem came from his book A Rooster in Tepoztlan --  about 46 miles from Mexico City, and is a place  that means abundant copper or broken rocks.