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.