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
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.
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