Wednesday 2/22 -- Special Speaker, Miriam Lerner

 

SPECIAL EVENT FOR WEDNESDAY 2/22 !!!  We will still be meeting at noon but instead of our usual reading and discussing of poems, we will have a special speaker, Miriam Lerner. I know her as one of the most awesome ASL poetry translators who can “work on the spot” hearing a poem for the first time, capture the feel of it and translate into ASL.   She no longer does translation work, but has accepted my invitation to come tell us about ASL Core.    http://aslcore.org/  (you’ll see from the site, this is a Deaf-centric project which honors and celebrates Deaf culture and ASL.)
  She now lives in Vermont but will be in town this week and has accepted my invitation to come.  This is all inspired by the library’s involvement with the Big Read of Deaf Republic. 

Miriam Lerner (L) and Yours Truly (R)

 

This is her description:

"As the world continues on its breakneck trajectory of technical innovation sometimes language lags behind in its ability to express these new discoveries and inventions! If a language and the people who use it have been deliberately tethered and ignored, how does the language "catch up" in a deliberate and responsible way? ASLcore is a translation project which attempts to create suggested, linguistically accurate American Sign Language lexicon in order for Deaf students to have commensurate access to academic content. 

Explanation about the inception of the project as well as examples from the site will be provided.” 

Miriam shared as well this site https://www.spreadthesign.com/en.us/search/

 which shows how different languages sign differently!take "being" :  in English: two hands parallel tracing top to bottom as if making a tree trunk.  In Russian: Hands start the same, then one taps 3 times into the other hand; Italian: cup the RH.  LH picks up energy from cupped RH, spreads 2 fingers then directs to chest, then out.  (always the back of hand showing!) 

Please keep  the poems sent out for 2/22 however, tabled for March 1.

As extra: she thought people might enjoy this piece exploring how to sign philosophy: (excerpts from "Signing Hegel" by Miriam Lerner)

How do you take an abstract concept with no image to hang your hat on and create a picture in the air, accompanied by linguistically appropriate facial expressions to accurately representing the idea ?  Iconicity is to signed languages what onomatopoeia is to spoken ones.  You have to see it in your mind first before you can paint this canvas, just like you’d have to hear a dog bark to howl a convincing, “woof!” 

Cogito, ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am. 

 I interpret this stuff.

 Therefore I have to think.  Harder than I want to, and possibly harder than I can. 

 

What is thinking ?  The sign THINK is both index fingers describing vertical circles at the side of the temples. But from what I’ve learned, this isn’t really what “thinking” is in Philosophy.  I tend to use the same sign for “reason” as “thinking,” “reason” being the ability to plan ,predict, consider, analyze, make informed decisions. There is a sign, REASON, but it’s a noun, produced by the dominant hand “R” making that same circular motion at the temple.  But that’s a “reason” for someTHING, not the verb “to reason”.  We interpreters are becoming infamous for nounifying verbs and verbifying nouns, and it’s a slippery slope to slide down, because it’s convenient and seems to work so why stop if it makes life easier?  And why does it work ? Because the students we interpret for are, for the most part, getting well-meaning but crappy sign models their whole lives because 95% of them come from hearing families where no one signs and they learn sign from – who ??? The well-meaning interpreters. Who reinvent ASL grammar and infamously nounify verbs and verbify nouns. But that’s another story. Just take it on faith, I don’t use “R” reason for “reasoning” or using the faculty of reason to understand something.

I think, therefore I am.  How to sign Descarte’s basic, yet foundational concept ?   ME CONSIDER (eyebrows knitted together in thought), MEAN( eyebrows raised in realization) ME HERE ( or, another choice, ME LIVE).  

It took me a long time to feel confident interpreting just this one idea.  And if I was to sign CONFIDENT in this context, the facial expression I would use would look sickly, weak, and unconvincing, thus inflecting the sign to mirror how out on a limb and completely tragic it is that I’m doing this to the poor deaf students. 

Sigh. 

And you think you’ve got problems. 

**

Signing "Allegory of the Cave" : you set up walking along and seeing a hole in the ground or the side of a mountain, and you walk in and descend into the dark, enigmatic depths, and discover the people all sitting in a row, chained and constrained so that their faces are forced to forever look forward at the cave wall. There is a fire behind them, and between the fire and the captives there is a pathway traveled by people and animals, which cast shadows on the wall which is the only reality the captives know.  That is their world.  Until one day, one of them escapes, finds her way to exit the cave, and after her eyes adjust to the glaring brightness, her senses are overcome by a new reality, THE reality, which she had never known before. She realizes her duty is to awaken her cohorts of deceived and deprived back in the cave and rushes back to do so.   But when she attempts to describe the real world, and to entice them to accompany her to the surface and start really experiencing all life has to offer, they are angry and obstinate in their insistence on utter loyalty to the shadows of their lives. 

The Philosopher’s heartache. 

I can sign that !

**How do I love thee, Jean-Paul Sartre ? Let me count the ways. Existentialism rocks for so many reasons, and not just because I personally grok the message. When a professor explains its underlying precepts of the liberation of choice, the freedom of self, the incredibly daunting yet  invigorating responsibility of self-directedness of our lives – all of that I can embody, and I have the privilege of experiencing the thrill of the hour of consciousness every time I interpret it. Even though it isn’t self-generated I get to make it look like it is, it’s like tripling your SW Airlines Rapid Rewards points! Vicariously experiencing someones else’s hour of consciousness compliments of interpreting a lecture about it is just as profound as having one myself, and it was good for me, too!  Someone just bought the next round!  I get the same joy out of signing explanations of the word “sublime” in aesthetics classes.  Mmmm, mmmm, mmmmm, to show the heart-stopping, jaw-dropping awe and wonder which the sublime evokes, the translation more on my face than on my hands as in my mind I picture the Grand Canyon, a gorgeous sunrise, the first time I saw my children’s faces… 

Oh, come with me, and together let us adore Jean-Paul.

“Existence precedes essence.”

 Fasten your seat belts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride…

First of all “existence.” Isn’t it more than just the sign LIVE?  That sign is a state of being, a verb, although it seems to nounify well and I can still respect myself in the morning if I use it for LIFE.  When we speak of “existence” isn’t that more than my very prosaic life, my everyday interactions, my conscious being, my sentient, corporeal presence on the planet?   Let’s just leave well enough alone and pretend that the sign LIVE will suffice for now, I might change my mind later, but I do think I have to sign BORN FINISH ( FINISH  indicating past tense, otherwise it is present tense BIRTH) to show how I got here in the first place. And then sign LIVE…..

Now on to other, bigger fish to fry.

Like “essence.”  Well, hell’s bells and little fishes,( my mother’s favorite curse.)  I think “essence” is that kernel inside, the thing that makes me who I am, if you distilled all my me-ness into a drop, that would be my attar, essence of Miriam, which, when put on a slide and viewed on 10x magnification would show how much I love movies, blue corn tortilla chips, dogs, my husband, my children, travel, the Beatles, Tom Petty, the color purple, and bras that fit right.  As well as my life force, my aura, the nightly somnambulant gallivanting across the universe in my dreams, my low thyroid condition, and my new and expensive but wonderful orthopedic inserts. Etc. Pretend that at this point in the lecture. 

everything in the room freezes in a game of “Swing the Statue” and I am the only one who can still move.  The professor is posed with arms outstretched, brow furrowed, mouth still configured in a sibilant “S” after asking, “And what is our essence ?”  Students are frozen in time, taking notes, checking Facebook on the laptops on which they are supposedly taking notes, the real-time Captionist’s fingers are poised over the keyboard, someone is picking their nose, someone is asleep, others are looking thoughtfully out into space. I see it all…and now with the luxury of a parallel universe, it is time to play. 

Thanks to the amazing properties of ASL, I can take any or all of my attributes, as well as my past, my present, the way I was raised, one from column A and two from Column B, put them into a container, and then smash/crush/condense them down even smaller than those coffee tables people use to make out of old VW Bugs. I can show my hands squeezing them until one drop falls into the my left hand, and my right hand can take a delicate sample with my middle finger ( the one used for ideas like TASTE, PREFER,FEEL,LIKE,HATE) and then put a little on my tongue. And then happily declare, MYSELF. 

In existentialism, I am here on earth, I am born, I live and exist, before I have my hour of consciousness and begin the steady march towards essence accrual.  My essence will formulate and shift as I undertake the perpetual process of renewal, of constant re-realization and re-commitment to creating my own path and meaning in life. And so, “essence” is what I discover and build as I willfully and consciously “become” myself.

So I sign, ME  BORN FINISH HERE ( signed large and encompassing much space, so that HERE means not just this geographical location, but here on earth), BEFORE ME BECOME MYSELF ( signed two hands signing the honorific ME or WHO-I-AM). BECOME BECOME BECOME CONTINUE

  I am born and live and am present on earth before engaging in the continuous process of becoming the person whom I ultimately will claim as myself.  Or something like that. 

 

Whew. I sometimes think it would be fun to show up to classes in an old 1980’s Jane Fonda workout leotard and leg warmers and after doing a few sentences of class yell out, “Feel the burn!”  Although these days all of the students on campus -and most of the professors too, come to think of it, are too young to get the joke. 

 

 

There are reasons for the lack of standardized signs describing such concepts as “existence,” “essence,” “nothingness,” “ knowledge” “consciousness,” not to mention “epistemology” “ontology”, etc etc. The state of education for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the US is far from standardized, varies from ASL being allowed and encouraged,  to artificial codes and sign systems incomprehensibly and sometimes arbitrarily being mandated in some school districts. The ages of diagnoses of a hearing difficulty vary from child to child, as does the family’s willingness to adapt and accept the fact that no matter what kind of technology you drill into their heads, (a la cochlear implants), or affix to the inside of their ears ( a la hearing aids and molds) their child will never be “hearing.” An inordinate amount of time is spent on teaching lipreading skills and pronunciation of spoken English.  So after a few years of being pulled out of classes for repetitive and often uncomfortable speech therapy a child might be able to say “ice cream” “hot dog” “baseball” and “airplane” but not talk about what other kids in class are talking about or what their folks discuss around the dinner table at night.  The deaf kids who make it into college generally aren’t learning Philosophy (although, to be fair, neither are the Hearing kids these days) – and where I work, at Rochester Institute of Technology – they are more likely to engage in expert discourse about covalent bonds or photo voltaic epitaxy than Mill’s Least Harm Principle. 

But are their unexamined lives still worth living? 

(SUPPOSE WANT MIND-ELEVATE, MUST ( open up chest like opening a coat), ANALYZE  while looking down and inside myself),  2 hands alternating FIND FIND FIND FIND (expression of excitement ).  SUPPOSE DON’T-CARE, JUST-GO-ALONG,  2 hand alternating ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ( expression of passive complacency)LIFE WORTHLESS.

 

Knowledge. The sign KNOW is, again, a verb.  You have to take that sign and then provide something to hold what you know, a repository for those factoids, names, numbers, information, pie crust recipes, whatever.  I can sign KNOW and then in front of my forehead GROUP. Then I can point to it, I can add to it, it can grow, it can shrink. I can examine it as if it is something separate from me. I can doubt it/not trust it when I discuss Skepticism. I can add to it by empirically experiencing something with my senses and through experimentation.  

 

You get the idea.  Make something into a picture if you can.  With Philosophy, it’s like interpreting non-imagist poetry, the kind that is all about playing with words for the sake of the words and no one seems to be concerned with a hard, clear, translatable image as Ginsberg purported. Interpreting is like playing Pictionary in the air using everything you’ve got, face, body, hands, and some good grounding in ASL grammatical features. It helps to have an idea of the language skills and background of the deaf person in front of you. Deaf parents, hearing parents ? Deaf siblings, hearing siblings ?  Did he go to a school for the deaf and ASL will probably make more sense than a more English rendition?  Did he go to a mainstream school with other hearing kids and perhaps have a more sophisticated curriculum but less exposure to a full language ? If I don’t know any of these answers, which way do I jump to make this stuff clear ? AND WHAT IF THERE ARE MORE THAN JUST ONE DEAF STUDENT WITH COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANSWERS TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS, EACH WITH HIS OR HER OWN KALEIDOSCOPIC PATTERN OF LINGISTIC DEAF “STUFF” FOR ME TO ATTEMPT TO MATCH ? 

I haven’t mentioned how much I love dry red wine, have I ?

 

Being. Nothingness. Totality. Time. History. Negative and Positive polarities. Solipsism.The Infinite. Eternity.  All of it simultaneously in a continual trajectory of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. 

 

TIME

 2 hands NOTHING, NOTHING ALL-AROUND

BEFORE 

FUTURE

NOW

APPEAR

DISAPPEAR

FOREVER (signed 4 times, once in each direction)

Left hand IDEA, spell T H E S I S  

Right hand IDEA OPPOSITE , spell A N T I T H E S I S

CLASH (into each other)

FIGHT (each other)

Then they calm down and, BLEND, CONSTRUCT, spell S Y N T H E S I S

NEW

Move SYNTHESIS to the left

BECOME  left hand NEW IDEA

Right hand IDEA OPPOSITE

Repeat the whole process…

 

Consciousness…… I’ve been avoiding this one, but it’s what we need to stop running from, else we will never examine it, have it examine itself, negate it to create its opposite with an UN, and then have it mingle and become part of others’….so Jung can suggest that it become collective.

Can’t escape the music, so here we go.

 

Descartes succeeding in persuading the church to get its meddling mitts out of science by separating “spirit” or “mind” and body.  So, abracadabra and hava cadaver, go forth and dissect, it’s all good.  When we become aware of ourselves as thinking entities ( back to cognito ergo sum, again), it is that process of self-talk, self referential awareness, the soundtrack with no mute button that just won’t stop and ruins any attempt at meditation I’ve attempted for the past umpteen years. Of course, that’s for hearing folks – do deaf people see signs in their heads as their internal running commentary ?  Some say yes. Others I’ve asked mention a parade of ideas, but with no exact language forming them. There is a sign, used for two concepts, TALK-TO-SELF  and ISOLATION – formed the same way, 2 hands I, fists facing in towards the body at chest level, the pinky fingers flush together tapping each other. Actually like saying “ I I I I I I I I I” and another  “ I I I I I I I I” talking to it.  Internal monologue, all alone. Hmmm…. 

 

Wiki says that consciousness is aware of things internal and external.  I sense that it means concerted “noticing”, that whatever sign I use will strongly rely upon my head moving side to side, with my eyes seriously scanning the environment.  If I don’t think too much about it ( Ha ha – I crack myself up), the first sign that comes to mind is 2 hands, B shape, palm orientation inward, fingertips touching both temples and then widening outward, the chambermaid entering and throwing open the French doors of my mind so I can admire the pedestrians on the Champs Elysees. I feel that I need to add that CONSIDER sign as well – that adds some machinery to the experience, it shows that my perceptions are causing what’s inside to constantly shift and percolate.  Oh, wow ! And then when it regards itself I can turn the hands in towards inward, the sign for looking inward or being SELF conscious. 

As for UN – it’s a bit easier.  If something is unconscious, the sign is usually formed as the sign KNOW tapping the back of the head instead of the front, we know it “back there” where it is not accessible to our conscious mind.  For emphasis, we can add OVERLOOK, a hand swiping downward in front of our expressionless faces, truly showing how clueless we are as to what the hell’s going on back there in the cranium. 

And “collective unconscious” ? 

 WORLD (make a sphere) PEOPLE THERE THERE THERE THERE ( point to different places on the globe) MIND TRANSMIT-TO-EACH-OTHER ( like ESP),  THINK BLEND WITH, BECOME HANDS CLASPING.

Of course, that would still need all kinds of fleshing out by the prof, what it means in terms of similar myths, symbols, the notion of archetypes. 

Not my problemmo. Yet. 

But this all begs the question – wouldn’t the notion of “consciousness” vary across philosophers ? Hardly any of this stuff is one size fits all.  If the prof doesn’t specify, my own ideas are, of necessity, going to dictate where I go with the translation.  In this form of communication, perhaps more than any other, the medium truly IS the message. You won’t get it without looking at me and getting a glimpse of my own heart, soul, and mind. You also might notice I forgot to tweeze my eyebrows lately, and that I have a habit of pushing my hair back behind my ears even though it’s cut short now and I don’t have to do it anymore. Visual clutter juxtaposed with the profound.  Olympian thoughts conveyed in sign language, ephemeral images give way to each other, dissolve and reconfigure into another idea, through me and off of my face and body, to mingle in the infinite void into which all previously spoken and signed communication disappears.

 

Hegel – contradiction/opposition integrated and united.  True infinity. And his symbol for “infinity” was not a figure 8, but a circle, for the end is the beginning is the beginning is the end. The old man in the last scene of “2001” looks up from his deathbed and points out the window to the starchild floating through the ether in his embryonic sac. 

Life in the fast lane, everything all the time.  I’ll drink to that.  

I have to get to class and attempt this seemingly impossible task, class after class, year after year. 

 Eternal Recurrance.

Because thus spake Zarathustra. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems for 2/15-16

 It is Black History Month! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101640/celebrating-black-history-month  There are so many WONDERFUL poems from which to choose... I was sorry to see Lucille Clifton was not among this  selection... BUT LET US CELEBRATE POWERFUL VOICES THAT HELP UP BECOME A KINDER PEOPLE! https://www.salesforce.org/blog/8-ways-to-honor-black-history-month/

In my email I included an excerpt from her poem My Girls  https://aaregistry.org/poem/last-note-to-my-girls-for-sid-rica-gilly-and-neen-by-lucille-clifton/

i command you to be

good runners to go with grace

go well in the dark and

make for high ground

my dearest girls

my girls my more than me… 

As one commentator put it, "Her poems on race, motherhood, history, and even the self are always, always about more than her."

Line up:

Sunday Dinner by Lucille Clifton

Migrating North by Kitty Jospé

Picture This by Jiordan Castle

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard by Kay Ryan

From the Stone Age, by Alice Corbin Henderson

Not everything is a poem by Maggie Smith

February Augury by Sarah Ghazal Ali

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke

You could almost make a poem out of the titles... and titles in each poem made us pause...  What associations do you have with Sunday Dinner?  ritual?  a gathering together? Migrating North  and what that meant and means now; Picture This and a snapshot of a circumstance embedded in a semi-confessional/commentary on life in contemporary times; Things shouldn't be so hard with perhaps a pun on "abrade" and scraping... not away, but leaving a mark... From the Stone age... and imagining one of those stone statues speaking to us now about what it is that humans have created... 

and thank goodness, Not everything is a poem, and yet we have an eloquent poem that allows a mother to paint the love for a child.  It IS February, so I picked February Augury where, instead of a ground hog predicting 6 more weeks of winter (given global warming) an indirect warning that should indeed give us pause... 

and for comfort...  the Rilke.  I think I've shared it before.   Here is a man, born in 1875 in Prague (but known as Austrian) who died at age 51.  He wrote about subjective experience, disbelief, and here, offers advice for how to live in unsettling times.  I don't know if this was written after WW 1, but for sure, this war ushered in a deep questioning of what history had been about, and the nature of man.  These questions continue, looking at technology providing warfare with increasing efficient methods of mass destruction.

So... here we are ... and how to make sense of it all? I have tried my best to find words to pin down the discussion, but in no way is the nutshell below a "definitive" analysis or scholarly take!   Poems help us.  I treasure each observation everyone makes.  I hope the following allows you to further wonder about this set of poems.  

Nutshell: 

Sunday Dinner:  Well... it's great to see the words "certainty" and "truth" and "heroes"... but also this edged-sword word, "fantastical".  What melts? and how does this melting over all take effect over what pops in grease, steams in the panes. Bless Lucille for her fantastic invitation to look at our times!

Migrating North. I thank Ekphrastic Review for publishing this poem on Friday 2/10 https://www.ekphrastic.net/ You might enjoy seeing some of the other poems this fine journal publishes.

Picture This:  what's the title about, is a good question. The first line doesn't fit. We discussed at length fonts like "comic sans" and the intricate implications of type... And why feel badly for the inventor of Comic Sans?  That is not the question.  But this controversial font, intended to do one thing, used for another is an important subtext.  How do things get so out of hand???? If the stranger had only locked the door of the bathroom... but the adjective "rag-dolled" makes it clear the stranger was in no shape to do so.

Embarrassment is a powerful emotion... but who's at fault?  This provocative poem invites discussion about life and what it's all about.  Indeed, what mistakes (granted they will happen) are ours to make?  And just what do we invent?   Panic by definition is not accidental; doom? something invented???? ah... but repetition, we are good at that with history.  

Wednesday's group heard the recording: poem read way too fast.  These are issue worthy of discussion, but the tone seemed dismissive.  A sort of cascade of stuff that was going on that we don't know about, spoken by a 20 yr old:   fast, disjointed... 

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard: perhaps a bit of New England humor here?  The Em dashes, contribute to a Robert Frost flavor of New England perhaps. That the last line is the title is a clue.. The word "should" resounds and repeats. One idea about abrade: the metaphor that all that physical work, which in life "scratches the surface" goes deeper.  The slant rhymes : erAsed, abrAde, and that damaging parAde and others drive the message home. Really, things shouldn't be so hard -- becomes a whole new idea.. how do you leave your mark???

From the Stone Age : (written in April 20, 1918)  Perhaps one could read a self portrait from stone.. and one thinks of Michelangelo liberating what is inside a stone to become a magnificent sculpture. Does this poem ring universal, although written over 100 years ago?  Southwest flavor? Some felt a flavor of ancient sculptures such as those in  Aku-Aku.  Humans have forever tried to "get at the truth", tried to "do good" , created religions, made statues to venerate what's important.  Like the Kay Ryan poem, there is a sense that there SHOULD be abrasion, like water carving stone, and here a voice from the past, speaking to the space and time which we try to define....The discussion was rich including references to Oxymandias, to Robin Hobbs' story of the king's assassins, and perhaps some Navaho flavor.  The title, gives a sense of pre-historic, and second line probably does not refer to the iconoclasm practised by taking power away from a statue by disfigurement, as the statue is speaking, and "forgets what it was meant to represent".

In some ways, it feels like a description of alzheimers... the body there, life moving through, "space, volume, overtone of volume" with the curious comparison to "taste of happiness in the throat" (associated with chords of music in line before?) which you fear to lose, though it may choke you. 

From the parenthetical comment on,  the stone has let go of any need to remember and just is. 

Polly's comment is that the next poem with its catchy title Not everything is a poem is lighter, makes you want to read it, whereas the enigmas in From the Stone Age weigh you down.

Not everything... but here, everything seems to be poem and the couplets point to a story bigger than any poem of almost losing a son.  Dr. Bernie confessed, he started trying to guess the diagnosis of the illness, and all the mothers in the room could relate to hearing a child call out for them... and how of course, no poem can cure bruising.  The transition of using color for the bruises, corresponding to spring, the invention of "mother-softness" that enters, to describe the poem, elicited by the wilted dandelion in the son's pocket... and going full circle, why she is suspicious of flowers, laundry and not daring to look for poems in Spring... all bound up in controlled couplets to end up with the son's pockets again filled with petals and stones.    

February Augury: Here, the use of couplets doesn't support the poem.  It would be helpful for the reader to have the first sentence put into a stanza for instance.  The powerful image of a dead bird, bent like a comma evoked global warming for many.  Are we as readers also in the mirror of the window, witnessing?

Let this darkness: apparently I've used this poem before, but it is a comforting reminder to return to nature, and as if Rilke is speaking to all of us as friends needing reassurance.

**

Thank you entry 2/15/23

So... February 15, the day after valentine's day, I received so many gifts from faithful attendees of O Pen. You have it all wrong-- YOU are the ones who make it all work.  I just provide the poems.  Moderate and appreciate the wonderful diversity of voices in those present.

My most special friends!

I am touched to the quick by each one of your heartfelt notes!  It is I who thanks YOU.  

Here’s to another terrific year of sharing!  

Mirror mirror on the wall

tell each O pen-er the call

that they are essential to all!

The Wednesday share of humor, thoughts, emotions

provides such a welcome diversity, a perfect ocean

crew to help navigate paradox, enigma, and all

that calls between the lines with or without a squall.

You are each inscribed in indelible ink. Please accept one group note for providing me such

ASTHORE !!!!  (Paul tells me this means “Treasure”.)

He hastens to add, this means "heart's treasure.......Money is ok, too...used to be punts and pingins, now Euro and Cent ( not euros and cents).....harrrumph!  

I am SO touched by the song and the hearts… it’s only right to send a valentine poem back.

However we all feel about poetry, what is so special is the weekly sharing which uplifts our hearts!  thank you all! 

Love Column, Take 5

 

Before you start with how,

what it is to be 

examine to and in as added pow

shaken or ground, to how to be

in love:

 

review Will's sonnet on steady,

unshaken, fixed star variety,

not to mention varieties ready

(one for each weekday). Satiety

BTW, not part of the deal, in love.

 

Understand the arrows of Eros,

layers of friendly, protective,

selfless, playful, even the terrors

of unrequited (immediately rejected)

in any committed love.

 

How to be human without it,

how to be in it with heart?

Time may turn love on a spit,

but who takes the leading part?

Love.

 

(that each one of you shares so generously each week!)

Thank you!

**

And what does Paul say? I like that Eros and Terror connection. One can lead to the other, so I'm told. And that rascal, Eros, is a Roman Cupid, a putto . Isn't that a great word, putto ?  Almost a Yiddish putz.

-- and just in case Judith is around you will have an entire encyclopedia about Putto in art... I sent her a cartoon about two Valentine Putto to which she said: The little putto left out “basically”….did you ever notice how BORED the putti in that damn syrupy Sistine Madonna look?  There are some paintings by Rafael that are, you should excuse, rather vapid…On the other hand, the putti in a painting in the Louvre by I forget who look downright apprehensive—they are the ones watching the nice old mohel in a Circumcision of Jesus…

So I looked up this :  https://useum.org/artwork/Circumcision-Giulio-Romano-1525 but that wasn't it.

her reply:  

Oh NO that is grandiose and slithery and after Rafael but looking more like a bad Venetian—look at that damned twisty column and all those robes blowing artistically around (like those singers and dancers—male—who have “I do good cape” on their resumes) and the lovely wenches side-eying the watchers.  No no no!  The mohel LOOKED like a mohel, a nice grandfatherly type.  It was a domestic painting.  I saw it on my first trip to the Louvre in the year ‘3, in that long hall on the way to that boring female with no eyebrows that we are supposed to go all ga-ga over.

Poems discussed Feb. 7-8

I'm not faking My Astonishment, Honest by Paige Lewis

It Must Be the Supermarket In Me  by Major Jackson

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith

The Sun, Mad, Envious, Just Wants the Moon by Patricia Smith

Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air—  by Ilya Kaminsky

The Ants' Road by Constantin Abaluta

I started the session by sharing a poem I had written inspired by the play of light on stained-glass windows  echoing on stone... 

 

In the Silence of the Cathedral at Tréguier

 

Chance

            light, shadow

magic colors ground in glass—

 

                        Here, a chance 

            moment in the cathedral

            of Saint Tugdal, as if

            the Welsh monk himself

            decreed that the stones 

            must carry on the stories

            broken in the stained glass

 

and I say,  a chance

for chance angels to dance 

with echoes cast by the sun—

ruby,  cobalt, trace

of antimony.

 

and Elmer shared a newspaper clipping announcing the passing of the poet Linda Pastan Jan. 30 (aged 90)

As she puts it, "Reading poetry should be an emotional experience".  

Elmer had also shared on Jan. 22 the NY Times obituary of Rehman Rahi, a celebrated Kashmiri poet who restored the Kashmiri language, as he put it in his 1966 poem "Hymn to a Language" : you are my awareness, my vision, radiant ray of my perception, the whirling violin of my conscience.

He refused to take sides in the vicious cycles of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Kashmir.  In 1995 these words seemingly justify his detachment saying, Looking at that state, I only desired madness and silence.  / I was told your fate, dear, is madness and silence".   And yet, looking back on his career, he expressed regret:  We stood with pen and paper on banks of a river filled with blood... and chose not to see the pristine water had turned red."

To link to the poems discussed, Patricia Smith and Ilya Kaminsky, the newest elected chancellors of the American Academy of Poetry indeed choose to use pen and paper... As do Ross Gay and Major Jackson.

Indeed, all the poems this week provided an intense emotional experience, and hopefully for many, an inspiration to join in writing and sharing words that address the difficulties that beset our current time.

Nutshell:

I'm not faking: The first thing we noticed  in this 14 line poem was a sense of doubleness in this collection of disparate sentences, many of which hung on lines as if inviting the reader to finish them.  For instance:  we're overwhelmed and 4th line, we don't care... or line 8 I just have more space... or line 9 I don't want to give...

Are readers surprised by overwhelmed/by a sky that seems to heap danger on us ? Or surprised that this detail is not given any particulars?  What is it that astonishes the poet?  Astonishment usually elicits our emotion.  Why does she add "Honest" in the title, as if she needs to defend it as real? 

She admits "I don't want to give/particulars." But then jumps to the crazy comments of the hiker who "found it for only $9 (although not her size").  Perhaps as reader, we join the poet in wanting to see (or at least know) what it is, and like her, will never know.  How fitting to have "the future refuse/ to happen",

which of course, once it does is no longer the future.  She seems to be playing with the reader… dropping heavier stuff into the fluff, but with no explanation, and each sentence starting another distraction in what feels to be an endless jumping,  rather like reading an article on the web filled with hypertext links.  

Whatever is astonishing refuses to be pinned down, exposed.

It is puzzling, but not convoluted.  The paradox of some danger next to mention of white fluff... or the huff of the hiker and sudden unscrewing at home of patio furniture which apparently triggered the poem is compounded by the mention of her sadness, (probably not connected to the continual loss of screws on the furniture) or is that just the perfect metaphor for an ineffable and unscrutable randomness that surrounds us?

It Must Be the Supermarket In Me: What a fun metaphor for self-examination, although the expression, "It must be the devil in me" is usually pronounced as defense.  I love the adjectives for the bright, modern supermarket:  thoughtful (shelf-stocking) and cheerful (baggers).  We noted the contrast with the "old-world butcher shop/fish market" also part of the "inner supermarket" which evoked an idea of slaughter, and as one person remarked,, with "yiddish sounds".  

We all come to a "supermarket" with hunger...  and what a cool way to parallel how we seek freshness, vitality, value in others, not just in stores.  The whole poem allows the poet to present his feelings to the world, and to reveal his personality.  And then the turn, the sudden mention of no longer being connected to community, family.   How perhaps he once was not so accommodating, and no "supermarket" to help loss of faith, mother and anger.  But even supermarkets have no guarantees of protecting what is so carefully constructed, or keeping the shelves stocked to meet this hungry world.  

A Small Needful Fact: interesting the echo of feed in needful, and what is so essential to our survival.  Plants are not just sources of food,  but house and feed "small necessary creatures". The final word in the poem refers to the final words of Eric Garner, "I can't breathe".  The illegal choke hold which killed him 

and the whole story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner was part of the Black Lives Matter movement.   

We noted the acceleration from "perhaps" to probable with the play of "in all likelihood", most likely and contrast of repetitions of similes using like.  This poem appears in Ross Gay's  Book of Delights.  

It reminded Rose Marie of Kenny's poem "Wise Old Corn" which we saw last week.

Incendiary Art:  This poem is a tour de force both with form, interlinked rhyme, sound and mesmerizing management of metaphor.  When din leads to thinner, hearts whittled by the chomp of heat, 

indeed, who can dare dismiss life on the streets, men outlined in chalk, blacken, curl apart... 

Indeed,  the entire poem writhes in fumes, up to its necks in fuel.

I was reminded of the street dancers in the first episode of Move, a TV documentary on dance.  https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=move+(tv+series)+episodes&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8  (Jon Boogz and Lil' Buck) speaking about their world. 

The Sun... Just how does the sun want the moon?  Does it want the moon, or want it out of the way?

Is the I a homeless person?  Is the moon, its lunatic luster where every angle is exquisite, not the peace to the glare of reality?  Things will not look better in the morning.  Strong and vibrant language filled with uneasy and enigmatic images.  A very unusual way to describe the sun, who sounds like the dominant power: bursting with bluster; backslaps... gilded clutch... besieges with bright. spits light. 

Such is the story...  you can imagine a person near madness shouting (Mike)... The poem prickles with contradiction (Bernie).  We discussed the biblical referencee to "borrowing light from the blind" and how to understand light... evidence.  Like the first poem, there is no explanation of circumstance.  

Do you need to know the entire book to understand this poem?  For some, it might be helpful, for

others there is plenty within the poem itself.

The Ants' Road

Rather metaphorical idea of moving through time, place... and that mysterious mirror.  There are three possible endings:  The ants, on their mission disappear. Do they escape; What is real?  Did they ever exist?

 

 

A few thoughts on ASL signing, theatre, dance-- and Dacher Keltner on Awe

Film... like dance, allows the telling of a story from many angles as it moves... We felt this watching Peter Cook's signing... every muscle in his face accentuated emotion (indeed, as emotions are wired in humans this way and can connect us to feelings of awe-- see  Dacher Keltner's book  “The Thrilling New Science of Awe”To me, what [this science] says is, this capacity for wonder and beauty and sympathy and kindness … is in our genes. It’s in our neurophysiology — very robustly so."- Dacher Keltner

Thanks to Judith, you may enjoy "Discovering Devi" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpxj7CyxEM and Judith's notes:

Looked up Rukmini Vijayakumar on YT and she has many many dances which are stupendous but the one I had in mind is called Discovering Devi—and that is when she transforms from worshipper decking the goddess image with jewels and garlands to incarnate all aspects of Devi—THE Goddess in all her forms.  (you can hear one of the singers mention “Lakshmi,” patroness of wealth and family at one point)—but also the dancing battle between the goddess as Parvati, and her consort Shiva Nataraja, deity of meditation, dance and also death.  You also see the baleful side of Parvati or Durga as Kali, goddess of death and the burning ground.  When the face distorts and she thrusts out her tongue you can see she IS Kali, just as the Voudon devotee can become, in trance, the loa of Maitresse Erzulie…and in this dance she wears the simple draped sari with almost no jewelry that she prefers, although in the much shorter Kali Kautvam dance she is wearing a more “modern conventional” outfit with the draped skirt between pajama, although with much less bling than most.  And in the short Kali Kautvam you can REALLY see the marvelous formal technique and her amazing jump, which is not much used in Bharata Natya.  Kali Kautvam is a dance of a devotee, and does invoke the goddess in the same way.

 

She had brought up the “new name”—Balasaraswati was the last in a five or six generation heritage of court musicians and dancers in South India, a part of the subcontinent with a long heritage of matriarchal transmission.  (just google the name:  Here's one sample: https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/610t467xvhj6bfbkwig5off6p07dvg

Also Carmen de Lavallade reciting—one is under a TED talk.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpZhkNG1POU

We brought up mimes... like Marcel Marceau

Bernard Bragg (mime) wrote this poem:

The Sign Language as I Know it” 

Give me back my language the way I signed it when I was young.

 Give me back my language the way it used to be– before linguists “discovered” it and conferred a new name on it. 

Give me back my language the way I learned from my deaf parents, from their deaf friends, from my teachers, both deaf and hearing. 

Give me back my language the way I remember how the deaf storytellers role-modeled it to me.

 Give me back my language without any of those rules, restrictions, impositions, or fixed boundaries that the linguists established for it.

 Give me back my language that has a great potential for change and growth. 

Give me back my language which is very much part of who I am. – Bernard Bragg

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/obituaries/bernard-bragg-dead.html

NEA Big Read: NTID

 Big Read DATES!

 March

Friday March 10,  10:30-11:30 

book discussion at Pittsford Library (interpreted)

Gates Library will have book discussions at these times:

Gates Public Library, 902 Elmgrove Road will also be having two book discussions.

One of them will have an interpreter.

Wednesday, March 22 ; 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Saturday, March 25 ; 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Monday March 27: 7 pm at Pittsford Library and also via zoom.  With Interpretation

Sarah Katz, author  of Country of Glass (2022) will read from her book and discuss her work with the Deaf Poets Society in this special Big Read event. The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Registration required.

 

APRIL

April 1:  5-6:30 pm 

Kick off of BIG READ at Gates Public Library. 902 Elmgrove Road 

April 2: 3:30-5 pm, RIT Webb Auditorium

Ilya Kaminsky will do a reading.

2 Sessions with Eric Epstein on ASL Poetry and Wordplay**

April 12:  6:30-7:30 Central Public Library, Kate Gleason Auditorium

April 15: 1:30-2:30

April 14-April 16: Play performance at RIT Inn and Conference Center

April 26: 7-8:30 at RIT Webb Auditorium

John Lee Clark DB Poet

** For a prelude, of Eric's work you might enjoy this clip below.   Make sure you click on the  closed captions button next to the sliding play bar on the bottom.  

ASL Poetic Devices | ASLCORE Literature aslcore.org

His April presentation will have totally different new info (an evolvement of his 8-yr research on sign language poetics — see signplaying.com) 

Poems for Feb. 2 at Rundel

 THREE-PART CELEBRATION OF POETRY! 

 Preparing for the NTID Big Read with Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic 

I: Pittsford Library:  special guest Kenny Lerner  at the Pittsford Library February 1, to talk about ASL techniques. I sent out these links with other poem choices.

 a)  4 arms/snowstorm: (3:45)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nMqYym4Mws&t=1s

b). Old Wise Corn #1 (metaphysical poem focussing on wisdom growing from an ear of corn into the universe, as at the same time, a reminder of our humanity.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqcUqTke7u8&t=198s

He also performed the ASL Version of this poem by Constantin Abaluta, The Intruder

**

II. poems/poets mentioned in this interview: https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-with-ilya-kaminsky/

Every Day by Ingeborg Bachmann (Translated from the German by Monika Zobel)                           Factory of Tears by Valzhyna Mort (see https://www.valzhynamort.com/)

III. Black History Month

For the City that Nearly Broke Me by Reginald Dwayne Betts- he reads it here: https://www.pbs.org/video/reginald-dwayne-betts-for-the-city-that-nearly-broke-me-1459471572/

Rundel: Feb. 2:

A Toast  Ilya Kaminsky 

Every Day by Ingeborg Bachmann (Translated from the German by Monika Zobel)

https://www.pbs.org/video/reginald-dwayne-betts-for-the-city-that-nearly-broke-me-1459471572/

Factory of Tears by Valzhyna Mort (a poet from Belarus, who lives in the US. https://www.valzhynamort.com/ 

 For the City that Nearly Broke Me by Reginald Dwayne Betts

You Reading This, Be Ready – William Stafford

If It Was a Snake by Louis Jenkins

Comments on the poems:

If you knew the first poem came from Kaminsky's book, "Deaf Republic", does that help better understand it?  What makes a poem?  As Joyce put it, "A Toast" is not a poem for beginners.

For the Valzhyna Mort:  Both poems are laden with sarcasm and show a world we cannot guess.

Every Day: If you wrote a "poem" about American society in 2022, 2023, what is no longer "declared"

but continued?  Which heroes do we want to return?  What does our "uniform" ressemble? Perhaps indifference rather than the patience Valzhyna describes as the nothing that comes to pass, continues,

and yet is filled with "unheard of".

 Do we also award "sorry stars" of hope over the heart as solutions? 

A most depressing poem and commentary.

Factory of Tears:  As metaphor for the broken system, including the "Dept. of Heart Affairs", economically advantageous technology recycling of the wastes of the past (memories mostly) and the physical abuse, it is hard  to believe the last line, "Happy with what you have"

  The contrast of Reginald Betts take on America, is a different take on "Every Day"-- but his last line is haunting -- as if asking us and just what are you going to do about this? How does a society "strangle itself?"

This is definitely an "oral delivery poem" so do listen: https://www.pbs.org/video/reginald-dwayne-betts-for-the-city-that-nearly-broke-me-1459471572/

The fact that he uses real names, "Malik" and Sal, confirms "real people".  His "toast" as opposed to Kaminsky's rather odd and scathing irony, is to those buried too soon.

"You know the truth /of the talking, of the quarrels & how/ history lets the blamed go blameless for/the blood that flows black in the street."

You can hear those "b's" .

Stafford has more uplifting language... even the verb "lift" rhyming with the noun, "gift" of what paying attention -- even a glimpse, makes possible.  I love that the title engages, invites... it is simple... "Be Ready"... he offers sight, sound, scent, in the opening stanza, calling on us to be open and mindful of the possibilities in each moment, indeed, associated (if we choose) with "breathing respect" for this.

Jenkins looks at loss, equating the everyday, more anondine version of misplacing keys, to the implied bigger sense of loss -- and irony of the cliché started in the title:  "If it was a snake," it would have bit you.

Perhaps a different take on the importance of mindfulness, taking a different look.  Those liquid "l's" at the end, slide just like a snake... "everything you have lost is lurking there in the dark, ready to strike."

Not sure, if this is a comforting thought, but, there is a certain wisdom knowing whether good or bad,

nothing we experience is ever "gone for good". 

**

Since there was no internet... I read aloud:

Reading Symborska at Friday Harbor by by Patrycja Humienik

Poem #53 (EE Cummings