March 9

 O, in the Sour Cherry Tree Orchard Ukranien folksong translated by Hélène Turkewiecz-Sanko

My Father, The Astronaut  by Warsan Shire

It Bruises, Too by Kwame Dawes

Egrets by Kevin Young

Time Passes  by Joy Ladin

His poem, After the War went viral: See  https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/interview-ilya-kaminsky-poet-ukraine.html "we lived happily after the war" by Ilya Kaminsky.  His poem  on Poets Walk: Marina Tsvetaeva https://mag.oncell.com/en/poets-walk-she-awakes-as-a-gull-59520.html

Discussion:

We listened to the virtuoso skill of the Nightingale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlIbNrki5o

a perfect backdrop for a the love poem...

I interspersed a few thoughts from  5 poems by Kim Stafford about Ukraine: https://www.rattle.com/five-poems-for-ukraine-by-kim-stafford/

Sunflower seeds... just one... can spiral into 1,000 in a halo of gold... Where will you hide it so every seed may declare peace for a survivor's knees at a brother's grave?

Top hit:  You can kill a man.  Someone will make a martyr song.  And it will become an anthem in the streets, theirs, ours... in persons and soon children sing it.  You can kill 1,000s of men, but a song?

two poems by Ida Kiva https://lithub.com/february-get-the-ink-and-weep-contemporary-poetry-from-ukraine/

Both Marna and Judith filled us in about the shifts of borders, shares of language in what is now 

called Ukraine.  Book recommended by Judith: Lost Kingdom by Serhi Plokhy,

It made the first excerpt by Iya Kiva make more sense...

... and when it came my turn to be killed...

btw, Yanukas, are defenders of Sofia -- 

For the second poem, the first group discussed the image of "sewing the mouth shut"... the invisible of

white thread on white fabric (and the "disappeared" in Argentina)... the images are haunting.

What defines identity?  With such a cross-stitching of heritage and history, what is kept, mended? what discarded? what new aspect adopted ?  This poem allows us a more sensitive understanding of the difficulty of a war where people are forced to kill people who look like themselves. 

My Father... This poem appeared in the Atlantic on Sunday 2/27/22, but I am not convinced it was written for the Ukrainian invasion, although the first line seems that way.  Powerful images and extended metaphor.  Why astronaut in the first line, then Black cosmonaut on the 4th?  The spacesuit, which should protect, is slashed... the failure... the forsaken, dead astronaut hurtling through space... his eyes weeping blood... These are unforgettable images that underline the "vast desolate".  The turning of the adjective

into a noun reinforces the sense of a dessert of no opportunity.  It makes sense that Shire, born of Somali parents in Kenya, transported to London should feel Europe as removed as the moon.  One senses the perilous journey fleeing an unstable country.  Angels, who are messengers, have drawn back their wings... the sense of abandonment, hopelessness also confirmed.  Kathy felt there were two directions for the longing that slashes:  on one hand, longing for the home left behind... on the other, a longing for the journey to end...

This young poet is certainly deserving of her recognition as laureate in London.

It Bruises, Too: We don't know what the haunting is... but that stone, heavy in the bowels is indisputably real.  There are so many pronouns... us, we, I, you, back to we, etc.  In a way, I feel removed from the poem, only able to observe a part of a scene-- trying to imagine how silence bruises.   What is the penance to which he refers?  The note about the poem helps place it in the pandemic, and the silence we become used to, the awkwardness of meeting again after two years, after being used to isolation.  We had a sense of the meeting as a chance to break into blossom--  

Why in this crossing does the speaker cross into the gloom of the other and not towards the light?

We mentioned the guilds, from apprentice to journeyman, to master... but a journeyman is also he on a road, peppered with lovely King James language reminiscent of Psalm 23.  

We noted that the way Kwame read it, he gave no space for enjambments but read as an uninterrupted script.  This changes the feel of it. 

Judith felt it was his "letter to the world" -- unlike Dickinson, we are allowed to see it.

Egrets: Is it too clever to parallel birds, profiting from the paths of cows who rustle insects and frogs and the like into ready prey for the egrets, to horses arriving like "regret"... ? We definitely felt the James Wright poem, Blessing, here, the soul bursting into blossom. https://poets.org/poem/blessing

What does epiphany feel like? There is a dark undertone in the cows sensing slaughter... 

an appealing use of clear language, yet elusive.  The Poet starts with observing, rejects birds as source of soul... and an understanding of connection that creates the spark.

Time Passes: We enjoyed the personification of time... and loved that the last 4 lines do not have a subject... it could be time speaking, or the speaker of the poem.  Many of us felt we could substitute ourselves for time.  

Needing the Dragon:  indeed we do! Judith says: "On dragons:  in her book of essays The Wave of the Mind le Guin wrote:  People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons.  From within."

We wondered if Ostriker had a series on the Old Woman, and this was one of them.  (The Old Woman, The Tulip and the Dog.)

We were running out of time... but would have wanted to wax philosophical...  What is real?  Has humanism replaced gods?  How do we deal with dragons?  Really as toys?  how as masks?

 Line breaks: 

A woman sits in my armchair and speaks:
We have slain the many gods
they were unreal
the one god in whom we say we believe
is also unbelievable
Humanism keeps the dragon
as a kind of toy
no
as a mask

Pear:  Not a particularly friendly pear tree -- nothing good comes from being so self absorbed!!! 

The details are so outrageous -- and yet we all have a dark side, and recognize it here... and admit...

failure is indeed part of being human... let's try to make better fruit!