A thank you to Jim Bird for sharing winter halos around the sun: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231220.html
Year's End by Richard Wilbur
Solstice Litany by Jim Harrison
OCEAN ANCIENT AND EVOLVING by Kat Lehmann
Emily Dickinson: I'll tell you how the Sun rose
Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993 by Jane Kenyon
Sestina: Like by A.E. Stallings
With a nod to Jonah Winter
Poems:
Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele 1948 –; Family Secret by Nancy Kuhl; Next Time Ask More Questions by Naomi Shihab Nye; Christmas Gift by Jim Jordan; Wonder and Joy by Robinson Jeffers 1887 –1962; The Coming of Light by Mark Strand (1934 –2014); New Year's by Dana Gioia; The World by William Bronk
Nutshell:
Towards the Winter Solstice: We loved the sounds, effects of alliteration, rhyme, the sprinkling of holiday words in Christmas carols -- but transformed with new associations: boughs (not to deck the halls, although deck does come up with necklaces; here it is "the cord among the boughs so that the bulbs will accent the trees elegant design"); UPS vans are compared to the Magi; Valets replace shepherds tending flocks of cars and SUVs. The poem gave rise to many fine memories of Christmas trees and decorations, but the title reminds us of the Pagan tradition way before such traditions. This is the Janus-faced hinge moment. The pith of the poem: "we enjoy some festival that mitigates the dwindling warmth and compass of the days".
Family Secret: Without the title we might not know what's going on, or appreciate the navigation through territory where secrets lie. We enjoyed the use of all 5 senses, and a certain playfulness. The pith of the poem here had a haiku-like moment: "familiar and confusing". Many associations including the book and film, Foster, by Claire Keegan.
Next Time ... The poem felt uncharacteristic of Naomi, with a scolding tone that starts in the second stanza with an increasingly staccato delivery. Life doesn't revolve around YOU... (the pressure you share is a misplaced hinge, a fantasy.). We felt the final line a bit odd and difficult to fit in with the title. Bernie shared his 3 questions used in his practise: 1) Do you really need to do that? 2) Do you want to do this? 3) Do you really want to do this?
Christmas Gift: We could relate to the opening feeling pressure of making a gift... The poet explained the poem came from reading AE Stallings's poems in her collection Like where he encounters the word "widdershins": "With scything hands you hasten through the week/Clockwise, while widdershins, the fair hours drain." (I posted her sestina in the Solstice poems) c We appreciated the overtones of the journey of the Magi, transformation of "measures" of time to that of variations we never see coming and music. For sure, "It helps if we sing."
Wonder and Joy: We enjoyed the apparent contradiction between title and first line and discussed tone at length. How might you say the first three lines? The tight rhyme scheme, the formal choice of sonnet, punctuation helps the reader choose. Jeffers loves birds, and indeed, the only animal mentioned in the poem is a bird. Be careful... do not take anything for granted... and ask yourself why you might tire of certain things...
The Coming of Light: Beautiful example of a short, circular pearl. Long poems, according to Graves are simply real pearls in small packets strung together. We discussed at length the last line-- different ideas about "tomorrow's dust flares into breath": for some, cremated ashes, for others metaphor for the work of a poet, others, association with Omar Kayyam's potter.
New Year's: We enjoyed the sounds and images! And what is it we want? For Gioia, is seems this: "To be brought along to see everyday uncrossed and waiting... a field of snow without a single footprint."
The World: Another pearl. This was cited by Christian Wiman in the broadcast below. How is it that we think someone is an anchor? Such a skillful handling of he question: three times, the word anchor but on the 4th line, it has disappeared. Three times, but no: (followed by colon, starting the second line); Oh no (ending the 3rd line) Oh no. It separates the first line, replacing "an anchor". Brilliant sense of fragmented drifting. I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.
We joked about the idea -- this is the way it is... or not.
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1218953700/christian-wiman-zero-at-the-bone-cancer-religion
Poem to be finished: Postumous Finish: This is a participatory poem -- it needs YOU to finish it.
Only
had been one,
but lost it's e replaced
by ly as if its unique
self were adverbial
at most, at best,
as little as
only last year, no longer
ago than that.
It had entertained
wanting to be
a conjunction, but not
in the way of
except that.
It had a talk with lonely,
doubling the l's adding
back that e wondering
what to do with the y.
If you ask Only how it feels
when put in a position
of just one aspect
of anything
you will see a slow
tear slide down its cheek—
it wants more than
to walk only with if
and its wishes
or to be placed
with only one side
** Polly's ending Paul's ending
But Only (finally admits)...
One (quite simply)
needed 1's and y's
love, ah
(yesss!...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Aw3ZnqQrY
Do check out the November 2023 issue of Rundelania: https://rundelania.com/verse/
The Three Goals by David Budbill; Duties of the Spirit by Patricia Fargnoli; Dootł’izh by Esther G. Belin; Just Delicate Needles by Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994); After Reading that Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year is Authenticity by Dante Di Stefano; Looking at the Stars by Robert Bly
About this O Pen... ... I bet those passing by the room saw a little golden glow." -- Kathy
"This group is worth coming to see" -- Martin. (quoted by Bernie)"
About Poetry Oasis: small... but take a look at the November issue of Rundelania: Check out Rundelania: https://rundelania.com/verse/ You will see a short story and two poems by Mike Yaworski, poems by familiar names, Gail Hosking and yours truly --
Nutshell:
The 3 Goals: Bernie filled us in on David Budbill's Buddhist background. You might have guessed that Budbill was having fun with Buddhist pronouncements and those who are seeking answers! Note for instance how he does not follow the expected lineup of one stanza for the first goal, one stanza for the second. It's as if we are invited to overhear a discussion in the Sangha in the white space between the first and second stanzas. No symbolism please! AND, then to suggest a little wine helps a lot, which produced quite a bit of laughter! We see the game by the time we see the 3rd goal is to grasp the 1st and 2nd... His humor at the impossibility underlines something refreshing about "goals". This is not to say no serious comments came up such as appreciation of particulars which help us to get to the larger view of things and Bishop Butler's, "A thing is what it is and not another" and a few puns from Heinlein, including to "unscrew" the inscrutable and kick the F out of ineffable.
Some of us read the 3 goats. Others, the 3 goads, which fit beautifully in its own way.
Duties of the spirit: more things in 3's: An interesting meditation on spirit which for many of us is not association with "duty". Joy, serenity, grief, seem to mirror stages of life, with the longer expansion of lines about grief. Note the typo of salthingyer which gave rise to more jokes about a thing being what it is. We wouldn't have guessed "salt water" without Kathy who provided the poem. The poem came across as quite rational, but also emotional, intensified by the repetition. The 3-note whistle in the first stanza could be a bird... We brought up the difference between the self-help attitudes and "Science of Happiness" unlike the happenstance of surprise, connection. Grief and joy are not mutually exclusive. The third mention of the duties has joy leaping, and serenity slowly strolling, followed by two weighted couplets about personified grief. We feel how it bows us down, weighted, and that rawhide necklace hung with a stone around the neck. But the first duty? Slippery joy.
Dootl'izh: This Navajo word is not exactly turquoise, blue or green but the quality of things that contain this color. Beautiful poem which blends natural elements with emotions and like the ocean repeating, the chantlike repeat of the Dootl'izh, now this, now that, combined yet separate has the final word. The note was helpful to point out how an ocean's waves can be both mirror to and erase emotions such as anger and sadness.
Just Delicate Needles: the needles could be truth, light, pine, or delicate things overlooked. Nothing much is needed... except light, and to cherish it (like Joy, Serenity). We thought the final "We hope" an odd ending, unless said softly and not connected with hoping for light to return in the morning. Kathy saw it as a pagan prayer, before organized religion. She highly recommended the bilingual book of Jacobsen's poems: The Road has come to an end: 839.821
After Reading: The title mentioning the word of the year as Authenticity never develops in the poem. Rather we have quite the tedious reminder of what AI does with too much information and recognizable, yet scrambled parts of poetic canon drop into the stanzas. Perhaps this cleverness could be put into a movie. We didn't think anything was meant by it... and felt too much tedious mish-mash to feel it had any charisma "cut, rizzed up" to deal with the scurvy dark.
Looking at the Stars. Well... I feel like Budbill, call me if you get it. I got the first 3 lines. Understand references to constellations and we had quite the discussion about what happened 6,000 years BC.
1. It was the end of global deglaciation 2. Hunter gatherers were becoming farmers 3.Winemaking began 4.It was the end of the Holocene sea rise 5. Gregory of Tours declared that God created the World then.
ONE:
I had mentioned the Maine Media conversation with Mark Burrows, translator of Rilke, Poets Padraig O'Tuama and Marie Howe. This is the recorded zoom -- you can fast forward a bit as it takes a minute to get started. In this link to a discussion of Rilke, Marie Howe explains why she is absolutely taken by this poem. https://www.thepoetscorner.org/events/reading-rilke-today-a-conversation?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=656e09b9ac24aa6f308f9410&ss_email_id=656e3df992fa2218c1d6f24f&ss_campaign_name=Follow+up+to+Reading+Rilke+Today&ss_campaign_sent_date=2023-12-04T21%3A01%3A30Z
at minute 24 she speaks about "refuge from externality." at minute 27 she speaks about discovering "Journal of my other self." Below, left, translation by J.B. Leishman, Hogarth Press, © 1960. On right, transcription of Marie reading the Franz Wright translation (starts at 29.18). The last two lines belong to the Franz Wright translation
Annunciation to Mary by Rainer Maria Rilke Franz Wright translation:
The angel’s entrance (you must realize) It isn't just that an angel entered—
was not what made her frightened. The surprise realize, this is not what startled her.
he gave her by his coming was no more She might have been somebody else
than sun or moon-beam stirring on the floor and the angel some sunlight.
would give another, — she had long since grown For at night, the moon occupying
used to the form that angels wear, descending; itself in her room, so quietly, she
never imaging this coming-down accustomed herself to the form
was hard for them. (O it’s past comprehending, he took, she barely suspected that
how pure she was. Did not one day, a hind this kind of visit is exhausting
that rested in a wood, watchfully staring, to angels.
feel her deep influence, and did it not Oh if we knew how pure she was.
conceive the unicorn, then, without pairing, Didn't a deer catching sight of
the pure beast, beast which light begot, — ) her once in the forest lose himself
No, not to see him enter, but to find so much in looking at her
the youthful angel’s countenance inclined that without coupling, it conceived
so near to her; that when he looked, and she the unicorn the animal of light,
looked up at him, their looks so merged in one the pure animal.
the world outside grew vacant, suddenly, It's not just that he locked in, but that
and all things being seen, endured and done he placed the face of a young man so
were crowded into them: just she and he close to her, his gaze, and the one
eye and its pasture, visions and its view, with which she answered blended
here at the point and at this point alone:- so much suddenly that everything
see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew. else vanished and what millions saw
built and endured crowded inside of her. Only her and him seeing and seen, eye and whatever is beautiful to the eye. Nowhere
else but right here. This is startling And it startled them both.Then the angel sang his song.
Sonnet of Orpheus #3 transl. by R.Temple transl. by Mark Burrows
The last two lines, I combine both translations.
A god has the power. But tell me, shall a man
Wring the same from a slender lyre?
His senses are awry. And there stand no temples of Apollo
At the crossings of two heart-lines
Song, by Your example, does not concern desire,
Nor pursuit and attainment of its object;
Song is - to be. Trifling for the god; Song is being. Something simple for the god.But when shall we be? And when does He But when will we finally be? and when will he turn
Alter the earth and the stars in our being? the earth and stars towards us?
This is not, my lad, a matter of your passions, though It isn't this, young man, which makes you love, even
Your voice throw open your lips, - learn when the voice forces its mouth open for you. Learn
To forget that you sang out. That is fleeting. To forget that you sang out. It passes away.
True singing is breath of another kind. But to sing, in truth, is a different breath.
A breath that aims nowhere. Pneuma within the god. A zephyr. A breath around nothing, aiming no where. Pneuma within—a blowing in god. A wind. A zephr.
I transcribed the Franz Wright translation of Rilke's "Annunciation" from Marie's reading... with another one available and two versions of one of the Sonnets of Orpheus. This is NOT perfect and I don't have time right now to try to make it so. However, if you are interested hopefully this will whet your appetite to make time to listen to the discussion and form your own ideas.
TWO:
" I would feel less a friend if I did not send this timely reminder.On December 7,1921, James Joyce sent his Linati to a friend who was giving a lecture on the uncompleted Ulysses. It was explanatory outlines of what some say were his 18 chapters ( I find subsections to 24 chapters to match Homer) of wild Irish humour. An old, odd, word comes forth from the darkling depths....Mytheme.Richhard Ellman's, Ulysses on the Liffey, is what makes me start to think of half-blind Stephen Dedalus pretending to be James J.
THREE AND FOUR : sent by email: Judith's poem "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and Bernie's Poem, "Bread"
O little town of Bethlehem can we see thee at all?
When winds blow north and also east th’art covered by a pall
Of ash and smoke and fragments from murderous lust to kill
The echoes of the drones and bombs rebound from hill to hill.
Not silently, not silently, those winds of hate do blow
But with a horrid resonance malevolence do show.
Whatever gods rule over this poor distracted land
Can neither stay nor yet assuage hate’s raging heavy hand.
Thus in thy dark streets shineth no glimmer of a light
But everlasting woe and pain with no relief in sight.
No glint of hope is shown us this winter’s frosty night
Appeals fly up but are they heard?--just gripping, aching fright.
Bethlehem is just 64 miles north and east of the Gaza strip.
I will be eighty-nine years old in January and I am effing fed up
with this nonsense!
bread
this poem is bread
not cake
made of simple things
no cinnamons, caramels or whisked dreams
it is bread
flour, water, salt, yeast
no four days watch and worry
just mixed and set aside
pounded
then a touch of patience
baked sliced eaten
no bread for the ages
it's bread of one day
this day
like a friendly jab on the line
or a beer after work
too ordinary to be humble
too smooth
to accumulate meanings
it asks nothing
it has no voice
it joins us for this meal
any holiness
wholly unnoticed.
-Bernie Shore
Words by Pauli Murray
Nostalgia by Matthew Minicucci
Said by Perie Longo
Winter Grace by Patricia Fargnoli:
Moon Child by Ann Weil
The Need Is So Great by Jim Moore.
In The Need is so great, I love how he cleverly repeats the title in the 4th couplet, introduced by "But". Indeed, we all could make a list of "needs that are so great"...
but we've had time in 4 couplets to put on his shoes, look out the window, listen to Bach... and finally he clues us in: It's the need is for the way light looks/as it takes its leave of us. But even then, he's not really going to address what this leaving is... this passing. And then the last stanza, look how he repeats
"The way light falls on the last//of the stricken leaves --" The stricken sounds so brutal... and yet... the light, "is something to behold"...
We all felt reassured... sure, we all know this familiar scene, Fall to Winter... life to death... But we all can feel that awe when the light strikes a certain way. The discussion confirmed what Jim Moore says: What matters, has already happened -- and will go on happening.
Many of us find comfort and release in that. All one needs to do, is be on the lookout for beauty. Hug the friends and dear ones.
Why We Make Bread by Abby Murray
Summons by Aurora Levins Morales
pitter/patter by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
Study Electricity, etc. by David Kirby
Bread by Abby Murray
Without Name by Pauli Murray
Nutshell of discussion:
In this series, the poems use daily, simple, mundane things to weave the stuff and staff of life.
What better start than to start and end with Bread?
The two poems by Abby Murray remind us that in the end, our job, to survive, requires that we eat,
no matter that it be the end. In the first poem Why We Make Bread, the accent is on the prime ingredient: flour. The list of what is doesn't do, becomes a mirror of how humans hold grudges, draw borders, defend dictators. It might be helpful to see how it is needful, how it blesses, reminds us to listen to the voice in our gut. We did puzzle about "flour different outdoors, "cooked up like a cloud over /burning paper"... and yet, the idea of bread rising into a cloud-shaped naan, cooked in over an open kindled by paper might "rise to mind". In Italy and France, bread is the metaphor for kindness and goodness, and as the ultimate,
as opposed to America's "good as gold". The poem takes us away from the insanity of the world, kneads in the essential, universal element that feeds us all.
For Bread, the repeated anaphor never tires out and although the poem is lengthy, the common denominator of bread becomes the thread that weaves religions, social classes, memories, traditions, the sick, dying, the nourishment no matter what cost or measure of suffering. We had quite the chuckle of the Wonderbread of the 50's spread with PB and J as opposed to today's gluten-free, nut-free, oat-free, trans-fat-free, etc. earth-brown bread... Fairy tales, mice, are included as examples of uses and recipients; strings of adjectival phrases such as "eat-it-outside-where-the shopping-carts-are-kept" bread, and "dip-it-in-anything-and-it-will-taste-better" bread, "you and me bread, soft beneath the crust bread."
No matter what bread... indeed, the last words, "lick it off your palm/crumb by crumb if you have to"...
Not just bread, but all that nourishes. Richard remarked the role of bread as continuum, whether on the communion wafer on the tongue of the living or dying.
Summons: Nothing legal about the title, but quite a summons to activism! We agreed that there may be some leaders who dare to "say every life is precious" -- but not enough. A novel idea to send out a dream to call grandmothers, mothers, all people who care about our earth, care about living in peace with each other with empathy. Perhaps could be shortened. Distracting "You who are reading this, I am bringing
my bandages and a bag of scented guavas... the tunes" -- and yet, an invitation to the reader to think what to do, what to bring, what tune...when we "Meet me at the Corner".
pitter/patter: the poem could be read as a series of haikus... full of sensual sounds and immediacy.
The repetition of "relish" -- three times... relish the silence... tomorrow... the memory. Tomorrow repeated three times at the end, reminded me of MacBeth, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. It's all just another day, one after the other. A succession of tomorrows."
If we say, "another day"... usually it is not cause for hope... but here, we have energy of children, the welcome contrast when they sleep... and yet we miss all they were once gone. "Every generation a temporal fugitive/running from the death grip" has an undertone of refugees, victims trying to flee;
the continuation, "yesterdays/we weren't meant to make it through" has an underlying hint referring to those deemed unfit to survive, yet do. It helps to know the poet faced many closed doors as both queer and disabled.
Study Electricity, Etc. : I don't recall Gatsby's "self-improvement schedule" mentioned in the title and epigraph. However, a very clever poem exposing the essential glue provided by "et ceteras". Interesting that the poet doesn't talk about himself, but his wife and all she does. For him, "etc" is the hundred unrecorded daily ways in which we care for ourselves and others with patience and love."
We discussed what makes a poem valuable... for sure an emotional hook and something which grabs our interest. A lovely "Et Cetera" of poetry perhaps.
Without Name: Call it... or call it X or Y or Z -- this is not an oppositional either/or but an expansive list of options for a powerful feel of love, of deep connection. "Let this seed... be without name" reinforces the vulnerable fragility of strong emotion, which nonetheless persists in the repeated echoes.
Some saw guillotines and revolutional times in the "plough blade" -- I don't think the earth trembles for it,
but we immediately sense the bursting of the clasp of too long winter.
The biography of the poet reveals a complicated and painful past, a struggle to be accepted as trans, as African-American, and a remarkable history of activism and practice of law that made an important mark.
To Be a Person by Jane Hirshfield
I was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail
The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur
Hamlen Brook by Richard Wilbur
Bread and Butter by Gayle Brandeis
In the forest
a man sits
a tree stands high
Only a pair of boots,
a man’s only pair of boots.
Leather aches into a stiff lip,
chafes the space
mangled laces
barely close —
peasant boots —
artist’s boots —
mute mates.
One pulled up stark
watching the other
lip folded open
as if ready to speak.
A painting of boots,
one with a cow-thick tongue
hanging in the bleeding shadows
of a barn,
the other kicked off,
crumpled in fatigue.
The caked spring mud says
one man has been out
in the world, walking.
One flung to the bare floor,
empty of sinew and bone,
the other standing upright,
a sentinel
watching over its mate.
I was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail
We enjoyed the powerful recitation by Dunya in Arabic and English to the sound of the Arabic music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPCXnL_AQiA Note, she says, "glittering with dreams" not "scattered like".
Thank you Rose-Marie who mentioned she found it, recommended by Ilya Kaminsky and his sense of loss of country as Ukranian.
We all look at the current Gaza-Hamas-Israeli horror, and the complexity of "homeland". As for our own country, are we not also grieving how it seems "like a broken branch" -- that we haven't been noticing the need to help it?
Dunya's images paint images of refugees, the urgency of fleeing and this deep ache of longing for what had been home. Even if bad things happen in it, even if we are not in agreement with its leaders, it is still home.
Richard Wilbur:
“Wilbur’s poems matter not because they may or may not be stylish at any given moment but because they keep the English language alive: Wilbur’s great poems feel as fresh—as astonishing, as perplexing, as shocking—as they did 50 years ago.” -- James Longenbach
Wilbur also was an accomplished translator. I find poets who are fluent enough in other languages to be able to translate poetry, tend to be rather fine poets in their native tongue.
The Beautiful Changes:
What a pleasure to see such deft craftsmanship, the play of the word "changes" as noun and verb and the implication of "beautiful" as adjective applied to the fact of changes, as well as becoming the abstract noun of The Beautiful. The liquid l's create a swimming of sound, wading through this summer scene. The use of the verb TUNING, not turning, for the chameleon. The surprise of "the beautiful" which can change in "such kind ways", bringing in a human element of hand holding something that is not just for oneself... "wishing ever to sunder/things, and things' selves for a second finding" prepares us for the oooo sounds of lose,preceded as they are by you, blue Lucernes, tune, prove.
As Graeme put it, a nature poem on steroids-- but so beautifully more, plunging into a satisfying depth of thought and feeling.
Hamlen Brook:
We reveled in the inventive use of language, the rhymes which dart out and about like the trout, without being overly apparent. We all agreed flickèd should have been written with the è to indicate saying it as two syllables, suggesting flickered. Was it Elmer who said about rainbow trout-- "don't quarrel about the colors". Indeed a "flickèd slew of sparks and glittering silt... does the trick, along with the burnished dragon flies.
Jim called on his experience as canoe/kayak enthusiast who confirmed that indeed, especially on a blue-skied day paddling coming up to a stand of birch, it will seem to be a "white precipice."
How to take it all in??? I loved that Wilbur uses the word "trick" -- with Joy! The poignant ache of it,
like the Portuguese saudade or fado is beautifully told... something we recognize as common, but told in a beautifully uncommon way.
Bread and Butter:
It seems as if there are two poems here. The "how did anyone think of this" and know how to do it...
and then a slant love poem ...
