Update on Oct. 19th poem, "Before I was a Gazan" by Naomi Shihab Nye

 I wrote to Naomi Oct. 20:

Her reply about the poem:

Your thoughts on this poem (which is a very precious poem to me) are so astute, I don't think you need my help in any way, but I would surely give you my applause for such a close, caring reading. 

Why I used a boy instead of a girl - I don't know. I raised one boy, and we now have one grandson. I feel very close to boys and girls both, but I'd been Zooming with some kids in Gaza and the little boys, so often the victims of the violence,

really caught my heartstrings. 

**  My initial email asked about Before I was a Gazan

I don’t know if you remember me, but I thoroughly enjoyed attending one of your workshops, and am an ardent supporter

of your poetry!  Thank you, thank you for sharing your insights and craft in such an eloquent, unpretentious and heartfelt way in your poetry!

Today, in a poetry appreciation discussion group I lead, we discussed Before I was a Gazan… 

We admired the “economical” understatement set up by the title and first line, the juxtaposition of something ordinary missing, like homework,

with the brutal subtraction caused by war… how the measures used for  math homework, the pride of additions made, multiplied…  become 

unsolvable problems.

We related so much to this boy, this “I” which brought up this question.  Why did you pick a boy, and not a  “child” or “a girl" as the speaker of the poem?

We were curious, and don’t want to make assumptions! 

Was it easier to write imagining a boy?  Is a boy’s perspective to be taken more seriously perhaps?  

We all concur, that the poem is so stunningly executed, the surprises deftly dealt… that small enjambed addition about the baby sister / “who couldn’t talk yet”.

One of the readers was reminded of the passage in Job, “And I only have escaped to tell you.”  Indeed, this poem is given to the world… like the one remaining voice,

and we all become the “I” who must resolve to find something, that can find answer to the situation, not just in Palestine, but every place  where a child is at risk, school is not a safe place, and everyone suffers from the heartbreak of genocide, of murder.

 

I hope all is well with you.

May you continue your work which so gently and compassionately reminds people of the importance of caring for fellow human beings and working to ensure

ways to bring out the best in all.

With heartfelt good wishes,

gratefully,

** What was uncanny was finding this out in her Nov. 26 reply:

On Nov 26, 2022, at 4:56 PM, nshihab@aol.com wrote:

Hi Kitty, Please forgive me for taking so long to reply. We were stunned by the shock of our own son's sudden death on Oct. 5 (he'd had Covid 5 times, it was brutal to him) and I barely glanced at my emails till now.

We've been in a nightmare. I'm so sorry.

+reply (above) + I just really appreciate you. Gratefully, Naomi 

My reply 11/26: Dear Naomi,

Please know how shocking this news is to hear.  Thank you, that in the midst of grief you could answer such a small question.

I know I am not alone but all the people this poetry group join me with heartfelt condolences.

We so appreciate you.  I am glad you have a grandson and can share your precious spirit with him.  I  cannot imagine the brutal shock of losing your son.

Grateful to you and wishing you all the courage it takes to continue,

sending gentle, healing thoughts,

Kitty  

11/27

Deepest love for your consoling, tender reply. I am grateful to you.  Courage is needed down here! 

It's been very strange, since we were speaking of poems, how the Kindness poem keeps replaying line by line in my own head,

as if to say, see? I really meant it.

love, naomi

Elaine Richane also wrote her a heartfelt condolence on 11/30 

May I convey my deepest sympathy to you, your husband and loved ones.  My heart cries and aches for you and yours.

Your poetry has blessed and enriched me and our poetry group, O Pen, for years.  As an Lebanese-American, I identify closely with the essence of what it means to be of Arabic heritage and have found  so much comfort and familiarity when I read your work.   May you and your family find comfort knowing you are on our hearts and thoughts.

Warmly,
Elaine Richane

to which she replied.

Elaine, I appreciate your remark about being Arab American too. A close Mexican friend, whose own son died at the age of 3, told me he prayed to

his ancestors who surely survived worse things in harder times, to help him get through the pain. This has helped me. Love and good health to all of you, naomi

 

Poems for Nov. 16-17-- NO MEETING NOV. 23/24 BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING.

Happy Thanksgiving all.  This week's poem help us reflect on larger ideas and ways of giving thanks.  As ever, I am grateful to all for the wonderful weekly discussions and sharing.  Feel free to comment, should you wish to add to the commentary below.  

We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had  by Franny Choi

Many were intrigued by the poem and looked up more information about the poet, a Korean-American, gay, slam-poet.  Bernie provides this u-tube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=We+Used+Our+Words+We+Used+What+Words+We+Had++by+Franny+Choi

(Note:  in the American Poets Journal, the lines are triple-spaced.  https://www.frannychoi.com/the-world-keeps-ending .  It makes it harder to see right away there are only 14 lines, so technically a sonnet form, and yet, one would not read it necessarily to draw attention to the form.  As one participant put it, there is a disconnect between the visual disposition on the page and traditional expectations of a sonnet form, as the reading doesn't line up with the lines which has an effect of disconnect.  It was good to read one line at a time, one per person to allow space.

The 8th line end word, "yawp",  conjures up Whitman's "barbaric yawp" in "Song of Myself", but there is no "volta", only another ampersand, a repeat of "tried" and a fizzling flow of f's.  Note the f's continue line 10, adding a past tense "ed" at the end of each verb, arriving at a repeat of the verb "felt" with an enjambed reference to Wordsworth (felt/the words' worth stagnate", which beautifully illustrates with sonic finesse the fatigue of the failure to fix, affix any point of the brilliant word play to either feel or understand.  Indeed, what is the message of the poem?  One person thought there was a bit of yearning in the tone; certainly the verbs are hard at work, and the poem seems to be a demonstration of urgent effort to use words -- perhaps line 4 explains... to use words "to want ourselves"... line 5, "to want (enjambed to 6) the earth we mouthed".  What is the "it"?

The difficulty in English of needing to know whether a word like "wound" is a noun (with an oooh sound) or a verb (with an ow sound) compounds the intricacy of the word play.  The "ow's" of wound, mounted, roused would indeed ward off any sleep. The uncapitalized "meanwhile" in the penultimate line starts a fragment stopped by a colon.  Does a tide still a tide?  Is the tide still a tide?  What is "still washed" for sounds to mark.  Graehm suggested that the use of ampersands de-emphasizes the role of "and" which perhaps supports the idea of the tide coming in to mark, going out, both the tide and sand marked.   The tide as "time" bides in place perhaps, repeatedly rolling. This supports the title of the poem collection The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes on from which the poem comes.  The overtones of old anglo-saxon roots give a sense of history along with all the past tense endings.  Judith thought of the weaving in the song, "The Foggy, foggy dew".  This is a lovely rendition of this old folk song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toWv2u10U7Q 

  Reactions to the poem: readers found it clever, intriguing, captivating layers and sounds.  Some found the poem irritating, annoying, others, fascinating.

A Poem of Thanks by Wendell Berry

Who is I, and who is You?  This engaging, yet enigmatic poem allows the reader to imagine different guises of reciprocity, whether the poet or another, and his/her mate or an abstract relationship with body/soul; physical presence/love.  Perhaps we cannot put the understanding into words, but there does seem to be a religious overtone, almost like intoning a psalm.  Interesting that the repeated first two lines have a more informal iteration from "I have been spared" to "I've been spared".  We spoke also of the unusual invitation to "come into this night" with a mutual casting aside in order to rise into a temporary joy.

Our Prayer of Thanks by Carl Sandburg

Written and published in 1916, it is a curious poem, where title is repeated as closing line of each stanza, except in the case of the final line where it is a separate and final fragment.  The first four stanzas seem like typical subjects of prayer.  The two stanzas that begin with "God" are fragments.  There is no sequel to "if you are deaf and blind, or the various dead", only an implied "we offer" before "our prayer of thanks.  It is jarring and hard to imagine such lines uttered without sarcasm.  It could be that we will never "get the game" and however it is played, so be it, and yet still.. even then, this "prayer of thanks" goes on.  Judith brought up the Hassidic story of the uneducated man who only knew the alphabet, who said to the Rabbi, it would be enough for God to create the words of the prayer. This Mark Twain poem came to mind: https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/19-american-empire/mark-twain-the-war-prayer-ca-1904-5/

Friends  by William Stafford

Much as we might not like to admit the truth, friends who live far away do forget you.  "They have to", is not a matter of argument but solid fact of truth and circumstance.   The double meaning of "hand" as the handwriting, as well as what holds the pen, touches things as last word is effective.  How many of us take the time to write, especially "handwrite".  On Wednesday there were a few chuckles at the line about it being "the phone/itself is what loves you, although it isn't the fact of the line that is funny.  Touch confirms us however as do objects.  Such a short poem, poignantly touching.  Comments brought up other aspects of Stafford as "quiet of the land",  his poem, Travelling through the dark, and his quiet wisdom.  Indeed, the process of writing feels good, and in many ways brings us beyond ourselves.  Martin brought up ESP and  other ways we use to draw near to those far away.  

Although we ran out of time to read the next two poems, at Rundel we did read Give-Away Song by Gwen Westerman, a contemporary Native American writer which is a perfect sequel to the Stafford.  When we sing in a group, it is like a prayer of thanks, for living, for the fact that we can touch what is good in each other and around us, and have a sense of connection.  Wopida ye, means "Thank You".

The other Native American poem, " Let There Be  by Manny Loley for his nephew calls on the power of poetry, which like story telling, lives and breathes, reminding us of who we are, where we come from, where we are going.  Hooghan, the space of a home, can also be the space of a page, a dwelling space we can fill up with song singing in all directions.  No matter if it is raining, or sunny in summer, the voice we use is not ours alone.

This is the spirit of the final poem by Jane Hirschberg, The Weighing.  You can hear her read it here: https://youtu.be/XyqXGL7ArKM  Elaine brought up the importance of listening to others, as she spoke of her work of Pastoral Care.  Others were reminded of the message in different guises:  "Keep Calm and carry on" (Winston Churchill) or as Judith said her daughter put it to her, "Suck it up and deal!".  Joyce at Rundel mentioned the importance of forgiveness.  How it is not just that we need to forgive others, but, we all face the possibility of needing to be forgiven.  Nature teaches us lessons, for instance, in times of drought, if the starved lion did not eat the eland, that is not necessarily good for the eland.  How is it that the scales balance?  The importance is not the answer to the question, but the proof, over and over again, that they do and we are asked only one thing: to give all of our strength to the world and each other.  

I included in the weekly send-out a lecture by Robin Kimmerer  (author of Braiding Sweetgrass) at the Institute of American Indian Arts in California.  https://iaia.edu/event/talk-with-author-dr-robin-wall-kimmerer/ Thank you Maura who shared it, and reminded us of this concept of "ki" that active energy that binds the universe.  She says the first 5-8 minutes are just about seeing people come on and sit down etc. but worth the wait and thinks it can be close captioned.

  

poems for Nov. 9-10

 There is No Word  by Tony Hoagland.

Last week, we discussed Hoagland's poem, published in 2012, The Word. It is interesting to compare the above poem, published a year later.  Certainly, the same signature style is operative, the same skillful enjambments, the seemingly innocent threading in this case, of the function of a plastic sack, and a word, only to move on to larger considerations of how we treat friendship and language.

Judith provided us with this:  Hottentotenpotentatentantentintenattentat  or the aunt of a Hottentot potentate ink attack  She explains she was brought up on Saki and this story of a stationery store proprietor and Prioress involving the hurling of an ink bottle and just this one word.  She also included in her note to me, "the inimitable Clovis who remarked on the death of the fellow who taught Tobermory the cat— he was slain by irate elephant at the Dresden Zoological Gardens-- "if he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast, he deserved what he got."

How do we hold the weight of painful situations?  Well... humor is one way.  Hoagland goes beyond a certain wry irony as he describes in 3 tercets the stretching of a single plastic bag, replete with enjambed suspension  between them.  That comprises the first of only two sentences.  The remaining 8 tercets and final couplet of the second sentence demonstrate a different "elastic capacity", first with the rhyme between the single "plastic" sack, and the fact there is no "single, unimpeachable word" in the next 2 tercets; 3 tercets about the friend, the awareness he has become an acquaintance,  and a sense of relief they have reached "the end of pretense", and "to tell the truth" what he is really thinking about is gratitude for language.

What does language allow us to "hold"?  When we say of a feeling "there are no words for it", indeed, there cannot be just one word.  No word by itself can be part of a bigger connection, and can only plod the circumference of its island.  Two bags would have held that milk.  As for "it", how language moves, gives back hours, days, love, faith, misunderstandings, secrets... and that brilliant touch, all poured into it.

How to Hold the Heavy Weight of Now by Dana Levin:  We don't know who "she" is, and perhaps the specifics don't matter, but without "the other" the transformation would not have happened. Poems that require a second reading, because something intrigues us, make us want to spend time with them to go beyond surface meaning.  Indeed, the carrying leads us to let go, which contradicts the  title's promise to show how to "hold the heavy weight of now".  Some imagined the theatrical gestures, perhaps like yoga poses.  The four em-dashes (first three stanzas and final line) resemble both lift-off platforms and landing places.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour  by Wallace Stevens:  The title sounds pompous, and indeed, the poem has a dense and ponderous way of making pronouncement.  What is it really about?  Who might an "Interior Paramour" be?  How do we blend interior and exterior, body/soul,  become one whether individually or collectively?  What brings light?  Indeed Light opens the poem, repeats as a power, miraculous influence.  Judith pinned down the nouns: room, shawl, candle, dwelling.  Alone (single thing, single shawl) we are poor.  If knowledge arranged the rendez-vous with light, there is still the fact that the highest candle is so high, as it lights the dark. 

For me, I am intrigued, as I am sometimes with a modernist painting, where the pondering, questing, wondering is indeed a sense of a powerful imagination at work.  I love the complexity of the title… and in this crazy world we live in, indeed…  the idea of “inamorata” (being in love…) with goodness, with light,

with what makes us feel alive) as part of our interior, doubts, buoys my spirit so as to better deal with other interior darker voices of fears and doubts.

Park Benches with Teeth by Mohammed El-Kurd:  We sensed a carefully worked form for discordant and troubling times and brutalizing circumstances in Palestine.  What transforms an anguished howl, into a powerful polished, honed poem ?  The anaphors "I live by"... the repeated "not a... ";  the imagery, the hiss underneath "tessellated under bridges and into performative priorities/ with hooded identities; the slice, scar, leash of wrists; 

The poem seems to be making a plea for those so cruelly treated, for people in pain.  Hopefully we feel like the daughter who heard this poem and said to her mother, "I feel sorry for their families".  We agreed, whether abuser or abused, when there is abusive behavior everyone suffers.

At Rundel, Mike shared his poem, "Orb", just published in Rundelania.  It fits perfectly-- how things come together because of gravity to make spheres. 

Orbs

by Michael Yaworsky

Is it because there are three dimensions
and gravity
that there are spheres….

or is it because there are spheres
we say that
there are three dimensions
and there must be gravity?

Link is here: www.rundelania.com If you go to Verse, you will see Mike Yaworski’s poem “Orb” (it does not repeat, only 2 stanzas as printed above) and five of mine.  I invite writers to consider submitting for the next issue! https://rundelania.com/about/
 

Poems for Nov. 2-3

 The Word by Tony Hoagland.

If you need an uplifting, humorous poems with a satisfying sense of craft, "The Word" will not disappointment.  A Biblical association of the title with the appearance of the word "sunlight"on a shopping list  is a delightful contrast!  The slant reference to   "In the beginning, was the Word"  is reinforced with "kingdom" appearing in the last line of the 3rd stanza.  

What do you put on your to-do list?  Imagine the power of "sunlight"... and pleasure, as reminders of something that "is done"!  The enjambments heighten the surprises about what needs accomplishing, and "Do you remember?" spills on about the fact that time and light are kinds // of love, and he threads on love with the practicality of a coffee grinder or safe spare tire.  

I'm not sure if in 2011 when this poem appeared, people still used telegrams, but it works for a mythic time, when a heart in exile can proclaim whatever needs proclaiming about  a kingdom to a king, queen, their progeny.  The catch, rather like the simple complexity of love, is finding time to sit out in the sun and listen.

Nature Aria by Yi Lei:  We spoke about translation, and the complexity of understanding 8th century Chinese poetry, vs. contemporary poetry.  There are lovely lyric moments that indeed reinforce an operatic solo...but is it nature who introduces the autumn wind who then sings imperatives? It would appear to be Earth singing to the wind to scatter new seed, but it expands to "Living World".    We had a sense of yin/yang as the poem went on, ending light and dark with the fire and mud, and the fabulous laughter "like a cloud in trousers".  But who is the "me" that entreats the earth to bury her?  Is nature not also the poet and has it been her all along?  The poem is lush and one feels a chaste damsel, chased by an insistent wind, preparing for the next season.  This article sheds some light on the translation process  https://lithub.com/tracy-k-smith-on-translating-the-world-of-yi-lei/. Sadly the poet is no longer with us.  It would be so helpful to have her voice explain the sadness of "small gifts/laden with love's intentions" .

The Wise by Countee Cullen:   This site gives a lot of background to Countee's short life and role in the Harlem Renaissance. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/countee-cullen. How to understand the anaphor in the first 3 stanzas, "Dead men"and the change in the final stanza where it is not an adjective, but rather a play on "Strange" as commentary on men.   Should men flee the company of the dead, with their wisdom of how to bear the seasons, any emotions?   Or is it strange too long for their immunity to this?   On one gravestone in Mt. Hope cemetery, it is inscribed, "Now I know something you don't."  There is also an anonymous gravestone with only one word, "Then".    

Some One: Walter de la Mare.  As it was a few days after Halloween, I couldn't resist yet another mysterious poem, this one not as ghoulish as Cullen's The Wise.  The cadence, rhythm is something irresistible and reminded some of "The Night Before Christmas".

The Listeners: Walter de la Mare.  This poem stimulates and evades simultaneously the urge to impose a clarifying interpretation, leaving the reader as haunted as a lone house.  Who are the listeners?  Who is the traveler and where is he going, or is he condemned to navigating the world with no answer? What role do they play?  What is the story of the traveler that he came back to this house, and goes away because there is no response?  One feels a prior connection with the "phantom listeners", as we hear the "knock" become more forceful, as the traveler "smote upon the door" a second time... and even louder the third crying out "Tell them, I came, no one answered, /that I kept my word".  Who is them?  You need to read a few times the next 4 lines.  The one man left awake is the traveller.  

If (an extract) by Rudyard Kipling.  I felt this summarized our times... and a good conclusion to our discussion!