In the email with the poems, I wanted to include this:
Burn Ovid with the rest. Lovers will find/ A hedge-school for themselves and learn by heart/ All that the clergy banish from the mind,/ When hands are joined and head bows in the dark. - 'Penal Law' by Austin Clarke Irish Poet mentioned by Paul 12/14/22. I should have copied the site https://poetryarchive.org/poet/austin-clarke/
but continued on this site https://poetryarchive.org/explore/?type=poets where I hurried along, picking a poem by Alfred Austin for discussion confusing sir name, Austin with Christian name of Mr. Clarke.
To follow up on our discussion on what poetry is, just in case you don't have enough material, I discovered this marvelous site where each of the 561 poets (included "Anonymous" ) gives a window of a sentence onto his/her view of poetry.
https://poetryarchive.org/explore/?type=poets
more "Favorite poems": Louise Glück's "The Wild Iris, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wild-iris/Jane Hirshfield's "Da Capo,"https://gladdestthing.com/poems/da-capo Galway Kinnell's "Wait" (below) and, Naomi Shihab Nye's "Gate A-4 https://poets.org/poem/gate-4 (and contrast with this one https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2022/03/02/622-selfportrait-with-woman-on-the-subway
Discussion 12/21/22
The Lonely Sleep Through Winter by Kemi Alabi:
We had difficulty navigating the four couplets, each suspended with a stanza break which seemed to accentuate the mix of metaphor, which one confessed made "the teeth vibrate" and another brought up the expression of "cows clothed only in horse shoes". Another started a comment this way: Full disclosure: I do not like this poem. Another provided a passage from Mark Twain writing to Mr. William D. Howell to whom he referred as, "Howells" and how he carried his vowels in his head...
except, of course, the corrected spelling of vowels would be to replace the V with a B.
Is it the Lonely, and sleep is the verb, or is it a noun qualified by lonely? The repeat of the opening line still mystifies at the end. Indeed, we learn "boneseed" is a woody shrub, but it's hard not to think "bitten to the bone" with an accumulation of aliterative B's... There are as many suggestions for
"a mouth" as people reading perhaps... is it a grave? is it promise of land to till that will provide food? is it just a physical mouth? a lover?
"I say hunger and mean... (without saying hunger) heaves. I'd like to believe there's no such thing/as nothing."
What is more hello than amen? The poem seems to reach for connection everywhere. Perhaps
it is someone suffering depression, psychological hunger, and the advice to get out into the world,
get out of your bare room and "self-vacancies."
The repeat of "really" is confusing. What is really happening here in the tongue-twisted night-spun-savage-spaces where hipthick spirits moonwalk?
Perhaps the message is "don't 'give up." But who is you? For whom is this poem intended? And how does the title help us tie it all together? We are left with so many questions.
The Old Land by Aleksandar Hemon:
It is sometimes helpful to know something of the poet... This American-Bosnian poet in his 50's knew Serbian snipers as a child. The visual images are strikingly powerful and quite original. Have you seen a sky "shallow and piebald" in the fall, striped and shiny when it rained or snowed... ? It's hard to know if there are not missiles involved here, especially with the unsettling image of cars running on blood, melted pennies, bones.
Several thoughts about "no need for explanation, let alone hope". We might want an explanation, but we will have a hard time finding it. We think "this is because that is" and a chain of cause and effect.
Suddenly we had opened up the philosophers' anonymous chapter, citing Eckert Tolle, David Whyte, Buddhist thought, and much more. How does a person interact with circumstance? How can one escape the insanity of group thinking? The theory of original sin might help some out of the morass, to quote Judith. Sarajevo, the assassination of the Archduke followed by the First World War is evoked. Indeed, destruction of "all the wrong distant lands" cannot be the answer, until we understand one person's wrong, zig-zag after zig-zag like those streets, like startled antelopes... is another in the eye of a beholder who perceives it that way. Sure... love. Nice word for strangers, dogs.
How can you be "just as you are", while the "scared elsewheres" bang on your door?
An Autumn Homily by Alfred Austin
So, my mislabeling might lead you to look up Mr. Austin, Poet Laureate in 1896, but of rather uneven reception both for his poetry and support of the position. We enjoyed this pleasant, rhymed sonnet, which is not overly preachy as friendly homily, (where "edification", not doctrine is delivered in religious discourse). Although not sentimental, some found it sappy. When you realize it was written during World War I, it becomes clear that indeed, it is a memorial for someone's life. The sounds and metaphors corroborate nicely. About those acorns "fitfully falling", indeed, they clunk one on the head in quite unpredictable fashion... and should you survive, can provide a hazardous slippery condition. If the heart is understood metaphorically as well, this is what allows us to keep alive the "soul's clear lamp".
Shoveling Snow by Kirsten Dierking
This was perhaps the top hit of the offerings: striking imagery, unusual associations, where the rhythmic shoveling, whether imagined or real, creates a sculpture of loved ones. At first it may seem the title does not correspond with the couplets... but there is a feel of immediate meaning, although not entirely clear at first. The opening word, If exposes a mood one is pulled into, and observations accumulated, introduced by "how". Beautiful and powerful juxtaposition of what might be a routine chore implied by the title, with all that could possibly not be noticed, but which thankfully, is, sculpted into that "marble of drifts."
The Good Son by Jason Shinder
Another poem starting with if. One person described the poem as a "wake up call for the reader", and we enjoyed exploring the many different, rather ambiguous, possibilities. Guilt comes to mind immediately...And should we sanction or excuse attention to one's own suffering?
Interesting that we live in a time period where popular advice advises that "we take care of ourselves", and yet, indeed, if not taking care of others, we neglect the benefit reaped by doing so. (One feels energy returned when sharing kindness and compassion.) In the poem, God is at the wheel in the forgiveness department. Perhaps a child can never do enough for a parent. Another thought at the end might be, "sure, she thought I was wonderful... but she didn't know the all of it".
Apparently the poet died young, ran a program for underprivileged kids.
I had written this to my children: How close “forget yourself” and “forgive yourself” are… It’s strange how easy it is to misread what is “unforgiveable”. I find there is something very honest in the way this poet is speaking -- admitting we want others to pay attention to our suffering! I'm not sure most people could say, “sure, I can forget myself”.
Three for the Mona Lisa by John Stone
If you want a good example of an ekphrastic exercise, this is an excellent one! Delightful humor, and why not imagine all the possible mysteries in the thrice-repeated "not exactly". And however that motion was stated.
The Faint Shadow of the Morning Moon by Yone Noguchi (this is the father of Isamu Noguchi, 1904-1988. We have one of his sculptures at the MAG. )
Interesting to have what seems to be an overheard conversation. Unusual for a poem to have an answer to a question. And yet, whatever it is, shadow of moon, snow, mist of blossoms, we feel a gentle smile of poetry at work.
Places (III). Winter Sun by Sara Teasdale.
Lovely imagery -- but who is "you"? The overlay of bush with berries, hemlocks heaped with snow, sound of surf all work to "take the wind and let it go."
The poetry is at work in this first stanza. Not sure the second stanza lives up to it.
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