5/26 was the last session of Rundel until October. Note, NO session at Pittsford July 27. The group will self-moderate from September 7 through October 19. Both groups will resume October 26/27.
To Be in Love by Gwendolyn Brooks
Sonnets from China by W. H. Auden
Where it Begins by Abby E. Murray
Wrap by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend' by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Pi by Wisława Szymborska
Could this be me? by Charles Simic
Nutshell: To be... in love... to be, as opposed to "seem", with a multitude of wraps, a caravan of unending decimals, and a 4-liner of who we might be after all...
Brooks: She always pegs it! What is it to be in love? Usually an emotional roller-coaster, which she skillfully paints for us. We don't touch in the same way... we adopt someone else's way of seeing things,
and "everywhere, you see the other's face"... What is overmuch? Perhaps that is what the pulse must not say when you are with that other... and that if not-- you are left limp -- and the oxymorons kick in: ghastly freedom; golden hurt. In love, the other seems to be gold... but there's a downsize to this -- and reality can kick in to reveal the problem when that magical mesmerization wears off. Wonderful variety of long and short lines, and all the senses at work.
Auden: He gives us three perspectives about war: the false simplicity... the monument that says nothing of the horrors, the orders (note, it is a telephone speaking to a man), the passive markers on a map that show "troops were sent". A child is witness. The enjambed last word of the first quatrain, "there is a plan...."
which brings us to the actual men... how they are pawns played by time, (nine or noon...and that dry mouth feel of thirst) again that passive voice "can be lost", and curt reality, "and are", the tragedy of real people killed unlike the ideas that sent them. Auden delivers the truth with bitter overtones. War is so often justified, defended, to protect what people want to believe.
Judith brought up this Millay sonnet... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46464/time-does-not-bring-relief-you-all-have-lied
Murray: The "she" in question is the poet's 8 year old daughter. Although the poem was written in January, It is frightening to those of us with grandchildren, some even with great-grandchildren, to think that a parent now has to warn his/her child of the monstrous terror that lies "down the street" -- that the answer a child wants to hear to be reassured, cannot be given. On this 145th day of 2022, we are witnessing the 213th mass shooting. As one participant stated, how can action not have been taken after Sandy Hook to prevent this? Will there be an effective reaction now?
The discussion spoke of the horror of such shootings... and indeed, it felt that the poem had just been penned. I can't imagine as a parent having to give blood to check the DNA of the massacred to see if my child were one of the victims...
I mentioned the powerful photographs on view currently at the Eastman Museum by McFadden. https://www.eastman.org/mcfadden (on view until June 19). The Father/Son, hand-written testimonies speak of the powerful love and difficult lessons of being black in this country, a father tries to convey to a son to protect him. It is sad to hear the story of a child in a family who immigrated to this country who says, "Mama, please, I want to move to a safe country". We are the only country in the world with such a record of mass violence.
Stevens: In two carnivalesque stanzas we enter a puzzling surrealistic scene filled with marvelous sounds and images.
Is the Emperor of Ice Cream time? What kind of power, if it is fated to melt? The key line,
"Let be / be finale of seem" cries out to call a spade a spade. The first stanza does not sound like a background for a funeral-- but it would seem that it is with pathetic details of flowers in last month's newspapers and in stanza two, full details of cheap coffin, the sheet over the dead woman she had embroidered. Perhaps like the "Emperor with no clothes" -- what is "real" about an emperor of ice cream, and what kind of ice-cream which normally is served in Havana and Key West (where Stevens would visit) at festive events?
Nezhukamatathil: How many different ways can you use the word "wrap" (as noun and verb)? This delightful poem "wraps" us up indeed with a visceral, highly sensual world of Southern India. Hurray for poetry which raises questions and inspires wonder. The opening sentence takes a moment to realize the title is the last word, but unspoken! Only to move on to food, a present wrapped in curl and furl of ribbon, the wrap of a sari, wrapped... perhaps the speaker of the poem is a small child, wrapped in it, close to her
grandmama's face and that "hush/of paprika and burnt honey".
Manley Hopkins: Perhaps known as innovator, for his sprung rhythm, and in this sonnet, difficult inversions of syntax, and as Paul pointed out, banned by the Jesuit order to write... indeed, this piece might give an example of why! Poor man imploring God please, please, you grant others a sense of success, please let me do what up to now I have not been able to do!!!
Judith thought this sonnet one of his more workable ones.
Szymborska: With her inimitable wit, we are given a poetic version of this most important mathematical ratio of circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle. Math can be, and should be, a wonderful philosophical tool that allows the human spirit to ponder beginnings and lack of endings... (address real problems as opposed to "drill and kill." to quote Doris, married to a Mathematician.)
Starting with actual decimal places, Szymborska goes on to explore imagination, "by comparison with the world" -- snakes, fairy-tale snakes, to demonstrate length, caravans of digits... rays of starlight...
and a "meanwhile" 2,3, 15, 319 -- her phone number, your shirt size, ending with a code a songbird (trostle) sings! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-pi-and-how-did-it-originate/
Simic: The title... at first glance challenges us... who are we indeed, if an alarm clock, no hand, ticking loudly on the two dump? What parts do we have ? what is our function as alarm? Hard not to think we are being used as a bomb with all our ticking... and just who threw us in the dump and why?
Mike mentioned the fun of finding useful things others throw out in the Blue Mountain dump...
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