A little extra... March 31

 At the end of the month, I look at the long list of poems that would be so wonderful to post for discussion, and often sigh.  

On Wednesday many poems dealing with Stone and Monuments were mentioned. Forgive me for  including them, in hopes you understand there is not time/room to discuss everything. 

The Museum of Stones by Carolyn Forché - 1950- https://poets.org/poem/museum-stones

Shelley's Ozymandias: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

Nemerov's take:  https://allpoetry.com/Ozymandias-II

 

The New Ozymandias by Kip Williams

 

I met a farer from a far-off strand

Who said, “Two giant feet of bronze, gone green,

In water sit, bedecked with broken chains

That show their maker well did understand

That bonds of former slavery, still seen,

Convey defeated servitude’s remains.

 

Near by, a broken torch lies, dead and dark

In grimy water’s tide that, fitful, passes,

And on the base, these words my eyes did mark:

‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free.’ Here ends the poem,

The rest is eaten by the restless water.

Along the shore, starved, feral humans roam

Whose brandished weapons offer naught but slaughter.”

-- March 10, 2018

 

Wednesday:  With 21 in the room, there was a buoyant vigor in the room!

Poems:

 

3 from Musical Tables  by Billy Collins:

Headstones, Poetry Collection and Dictionary Wanders

At the Market  by Lori Romero

Retirement  by Monica Sok

Fanny Linguistics: Nickole by Nickole Brown.  I wrote the the PoemHunter to tell them to fix their site which attributes it to Patricia Smith.

From the Stone Age: by Alice Corbin Henderson  : see February 15-6: discussed then

Carmel Point  by Robinson Jeffers  (see : https://www.torhouse.org/)

The Moon Is in Labor  by Gail Wronsky

** Discussion:  

Billy Collins:  light-hearted humor regarding his short poems-- and immediately, there seem to be so many stories to tell... whether "gradual starvation" mean loneliness, or as advice before marriage to be sure one of the couple knows how to cook and teach the other... or s in Poetry Collection, to wonder just what is being muttered and by whom.  Without the title, it could well be a commentary on those passed over by society.  With the title, the question of who collects what and for whom becomes equally complicated.  As for the Dictionary Wanderings, this prompted Judith to share Ogden Nash:

The Lama by Ogden Nash

 

The one-l lama,

He's a priest.

The two-l llama,

He's a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn't any

Three-l lllama

At the Market:  the wonderful stanza break after And suddenly

was filled with "I'm hungry"!  Indeed, the description of vegetables and fruits, the verbs "planted" for vendors, and that growers" forest" the pathways with greens and lavendar, customers compared to bees give a vibrant life to a market scene.  In contrast, the second stanza with the "bag lady" captures a small act of kindness (small man, large slice of Ginger Gold) and the "rest of us" seem to shrink like shrink-wrapping the freshness and their selves.  How to understand the "bawdy/salute" in the ritual is as "outside" the scene as the lady...  The unexpected turn at the end unearths a truth about the sweetness that often lies hidden.   

Retirement:  The note about the poem is reassuring and offsets the shock of the threat of estrangement from the open line.  The play on the word "temples" as both the father's head and the projected pursuit of monastic life underlines the skill of this poet to look at what is involved in the intimacy of a father-daughter relationship.  It reminded some of us of Li-Young Lee's poem, The Gift.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43010/the-gift-56d221adc12b 

Fanny Linguistics: Nickole:  We had quite the merry-go-round on Wednesday imagining that Patricia Smith wrote this as a persona poem.  Patricia who is black indeed is a gifted and powerful writer and I can't wait for her Blaney Lecture to be available!  https://poets.org/academy-american-poets/programs/blaney-lecture.  So is Nickole who wrote a collection of poems published by BOA entitled "Fanny Linguistics. Fanny is indeed the Grandmother of Nickole, and there is nothing about butts involved.  What fun to give a letter arms, legs and a "broom-handle spine".  If you google the names,  Latonna Lee et all, you will learn they are real,  Southern gals.  Many  of us struggled with the /k/ of cold, coal, coke, scoop of coco.  Sure, possible reference to drugs, but that comfort of sweet cocoa, and the safety inside is the inner essence of Nickole, beyond the K in her name.   A great poem and as Judith reminded us as we debated,  "Don't let theories get ahead of the data" quoting Sherlock Holmes: "I have come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data."  Let's hope that PoemHunter answers my email to explain their misnomer!

From the Stone Age : was discussed on February 15-6:  Reading it again, since it was posted again, not just as a worthy poem,  but on the teacher site, "Teach This Poem" we were struck by the persona of the rock.  Being one with the universe... Maura brought up Robin Kimmerer's suggestion that we not call an animal with the pronoun "him, her, it" but "ki".  The plural:  kin!  The discussion included mention of Navajo stone monuments, a sense of astral connection.  Again, Maura mentioned looking up at the current "parade of planets" and how distressing to see so many blinking lights of airplanes at the same time. The notes from February follow at the end of this blog.

Perhaps it was coupling the poem with Carmel Point that the discussion felt an inspirational pull in the lines:  "It does not matter how small te space you pack life in,/That space is as big as the universe."  What is it to be stone?  to speak as stone crafted as a God?  What matter the name?  That K in Nickole? 

The first line of the Jeffers poem throws us into a stone age!  The extraordinary patience of things.  Interesting to see how he uses the pronoun "it" -- does it care? It has all time... It knows the people are a tide... as opposed to "us".  If only this poem had been heard to help un-humanize, un-center from ego, profit and greed.  It is hard to see over-building and encroachment on the wildness he loved and was once part of  Carmel Point.  Jeffers was an important prophet for "Ecopoetry"  (how curious prophet sounds like profit... ) and Kathy brought up a recent volume of such:  Can Poetry Save the Earth https://www.amazon.com/Can-Poetry-Save-Earth-Nature/dp/0300168136  The discussion included information about Adrienne Rich's reaction to Jeffers and the very wise advice to us all:  "A writer writes about what is important to them.  Leave off all criticism about it."

At Rundel, we spoke about ambivalence-- how many of us truly would give up the convenience of our gas stoves, our warm houses?  And now a good century into roads and cars, how can we organize ourselves ? 

The Moon is in Labor: Perhaps we were tired on Wednesday and felt this was one of those "interesting poems", but no cigars awarded.  Rundel enjoyed it.  Interesting way to think of the moon... and lovely use of pretending (3 times), often associated with the moon.  Two meanwhiles bring in the contrast  (friction?) with male energy.  A hint of a molotov cocktail... lip service about caring about injustice, and I'm not quite sure about the "curved horns growing out of my ears".  As for "furious", totally not convinced.  Can we trust the poet? 

FEBRUARY ENTRY ABOUT 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. 

Poems:

3 from Musical Tables  by Billy Collins:

Headstones, Poetry Collection and Dictionary Wanders

Poems for March 22-23

Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition by Wislawa Szymborska

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind by Carl Sandburg

Cricket Song by George Kalogeris

How  by Heid E. Erdrich

Summer Day by Mary Oliver

I love the idea of Poetry as  an attempt to understand fully what is present... what is feeling real, but might not be. The preamble of conversation as we gathered on Wednesday started with Judith reciting her mother's dramatic rendering of this "joke":  I acted all the Russian tragedies, and they all died; then I acted all the Russian comedies, and they all died, but at least they were happy.   I didn't know about the "Little Audrey" and "Little Willie" stories with such strange twists for endings but those also came up.

How to understand them in the light of their times?

I shared the difficulty of much of modern poetry and in particular, the poem "Torture" by Sarah Katz in her book Country of Glass.  There, the words are suspended so one need feel them hanging, falling.

Sharing such a poem outloud and talking about it underlines the power of a group dealing respectfully with words. She will talk about her book, deafness, on Monday by zoom.  https://calendar.libraryweb.org/event/10291823 

This set the scene well for an "non-existent expedition" as announced in the title of the first poem.

Only "notes" and what implications of these mountains associated with sacred heights?  At first sounding like a travel-logue, Bernie confirmed from his travels that indeed these young mountains indeed thrust up

"punch holes" in a desert of clouds... a ripped canvas of sky... Intriguing start as if she is speaking to the reader, only to shift to speaking to Yeti directly.  What is there relationship?  She seems to be introducing this "imaginary" snowman in this imaginary expedition to ordinary school-like things a child might learn in kindergarten.  The next stanza, she addresses Yeti as someone old enough to understand the sadness of crimes, death.  Midway, it could be the Yeti or the reader with a general statement about hope and how we cope with the yin and yang of life.  The next stanza, a little tongue in cheek.  A different dark/light response. In the penultimate stanza has she reached the heights of the Himalayas?  Is she warning the yeti?

Asking it to think about its past?  How to understand the final stanza?  

The poem was written in 1957 and although Szymborska would refute that the Yeti symbolizes God or Stalin, she plays with the forms of address so that the reader is challenged to think of looking at his/her own life, or how to address something unknown. 

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind: This has been set to music, but also it is a treat to hear Sandburg read it himself

Each prélude could be self-contained, but the thread of repetitions and increased force of them as the story grows demand that all of them be read together.  What are playthings of the wind?  Things man creates?  Everything? If the past is a bucket of ashes... does this mean not just the bucket, but all the ashes of the past?

If Grandmother "yesterday" is gone, where is mother?  Who is the woman named tomorrow over whom we have no say?  The sharp tone of her "what of it" sends a shiver of fear.  

Prelude 2: cedar and gold are symbols of incorruptibility-- and yet the second stanza of this prelude, the cedar doors are twisted on broken hinges... There is mockery in the repeat of "we are the greatest city" .

It will be repeated twice in prelude 3 by "golden girls" reduced to the caw of crows and the  only listeners rats and lizards.  Prelude 4, those words only  hieroglyphs seen in the footprints of the rats  and this sense of wind dispensing everything, now reduced to dust... How to understand "Nothing like us ever was".  Perhaps these words  had been bragging before,  and now they give a sense that we are a mistake that shouldn't have been and a  critique of modern urban life in the 1920's. 

Set to music by composer Michael Tilson Thomas who feels it describes a party atmosphere in spite of the sobering  text.

At Rundel, I loved that Trisha shared that these preludes were telling her very own story.   

Over and over, participants in these discussions confirm the power of good poems to engage us, invite us to embroider the possibilities of meanings with examples of our lives, experiences, thoughts. 

Cricket Song:  This is a marvelous intro to this poem by Major Jackson -- a poem in itself

https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2023/02/27/822-cricket-song

First and last word...  Discussion included many marvelous associations with dictionaries, their importance, and role to help us understand etymologies, meanings.  What is in a word is no simple question in response to the complexity of language and thought!  From one word to the the unfolding of an unexpected song at a simple, ordinary sink to a line and stanza break -- "a song about what the crickets...// //could be Sing.  And the dripping faucet joins in, its gleam like the river source and back to days when poets sang their words... and indeed, the gods worked transformations so their song, no matter how tiny,

was part of the fabric of life. 

How:  One word and a stream of consciousness engages a headlong flow, where no matter if incomplete, disconnected, the questions about "how" mirror in myriad ways the "how" of being human.  How special for me to hear Trisha share how she reassures her daughter that thinking like this, having a mind so full and busy with thoughts is a perfectly appropriate use of the mind.  (Reassures me, remembering my father saying to me, "You do like to think" (as if I were in danger of thinking too much)

or my mother reprimanding me that I think too much.)  Indeed, if you recorded the hour and a half of discussion each week, you would hear this amazing river of thought unleashed.   And how!  we said.  Maura suggested we try the poem replacing "how" with "why".  Marna suggested the poem was like a theatre exercise, inviting completions, substitutions.  Kathy picked up on "absurd", "inane"... "ridiculous" how "bleak" our need... We all were moved by the emotional impact of this rush of how "how loves" and how we come to a "this".  Martin added his Jungian training with thoughts on the difference between the "how" of psychology vs. physics where understanding of the total person is enhanced by the putting together of all the experiences how they combine in each person, as opposed to a scientific analysis used to predict behavior.  

Summer Day: This poem is a beautiful reminder of possibilities when we allow mindful attention space to appreciate all about us.  As Mary D.  put it,  Mary Oliver does know how to get our attention!!

"I don't know exactly what prayer is."  So she says, but offers an example of how to kneel, how blessed we are with our one wild and precious life.  

Both the Sandburg mention of "Tomorrow" and this poem, stress the Zen wisdom of being present in the moment.  Resting is not wasting time, but is also necessary for the fullness of life.  This brought up small jokes about "yawn-demics" and how contagious a yawn can be... and Judith recited tedium-tedium-tedium, tee, di di um where the rhythm of "di-di" makes the word anything but.  

 

Bernie's share after the 3/16 discussion

 In the midst of our reading, discussion and reactions to Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic poems, we or at least I was struck by the intensity of grief, horror and fruitless repetitiveness of war and violence, each person playing out their roles, their identities: soldier, victim, resister, parent, child, man, woman.

Feeling much, I was reminded of this beautiful video of Andrew Solomon about the formation of identity and the ways we  have of "othering" people.  He describes the personal, family and social/cultural responses to "difference", people who are different in some way.  It's powerful, fascinating and deeply moving.  He  discusses his book "Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" It's about an hour long, and the first 8 minutes or so of introductory stuff seemed skippable to me.

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

Here's his wiki entry, for more information on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Solomon

There's another powerful video that speaks more directly to the impact of war on individuals, one of the Oscar-nominated short films for this year. About 30 min long, it's a remarkable example of the power of people who embody Martin Luther King's "Beloved Community".

"Stranger at the Gate":     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbbl1S6foM

March 16: Reading Guide follow-up to March 10 discussion of Deaf Republic

From Deaf Republic : It is interesting to listen to the entire book (audio - libby) although helpful to follow along with the physical text. Although I will not be here in person,  March 16/17) these are some of the points to further discuss at O Pen:

Background

We discussed We lived Happily During the War on January 26.    The video is a must see with each word appearing as he speaks it. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/video/151644/ilya-kaminsky-reads-we-lived-happily-during-the-war 

 How would you define happiness? What is your reaction to "so-called happiness" ? to  living in ignorant bliss with our backs turned?  How do you understand "war" ?-which one? -perhaps some of the invisible ones

In this poem, the repetitions, enjambments, are powerful as is the parenthetical (forgive us), like Elizabeth Bishop in her poem "One Art".  "The Art of Losing is not too hard to master/ though it may look like (write it!) /disaster. What tone does this opening poem establish  and lead us to expect in the pages to come of this little book?  What helps lead you to pin it down?   Alone, by itself, the poem is a powerful commentary on America, the Vietnam War, but also about human nature... how it is, we can live "happily" (well-enough, in spite of circumstances) while others suffer. 

Kaminsky writes, "Deafness, here, is an insurgency, a state of being, a rebellion against a world that sees deafness as “a contagious disease.” There is also humor, or at least a profound set of ironies: “each man is already / a finger flipped at the sky.”

 

 We discussed Feb. 8-9 Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air (P. 47)  How would you read this poem out of context of the book?  As final poem in Act I of the book Deaf Republic?How do you "borrow light from the blind"?  What kind of light/insight?

Poems from Deaf Republic:

Gunshot  (first poem)

That Map of Bone and Opened Valves  (p. 16)

Discuss different tones and directions of the not-quite parallel endings of these two poems. How can a moment convulse?

What does silence do to us? to soldiers?

What is "silence" to someone who is deaf?

3 Questions : 28, 46, 66

Yet I am (p. 67)

Eulogy (poem p. 45 (before second question)

Firing Squad p. 65 (before third question)

Deafness, an Insurgency Begins (p. 14)

And While Puppeteers are arrested (p. 61)

What We Cannot Hear ( p. 32)

Checkpoints (p. 22)

In the Bright Sleeve of the sky ( p. 41)

(the above poem follows "A City like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck".  The poem after:

To Live p. 42

In a Time of Peace p. 75-6

Question Poem:  Quiet the World

 

Poems for March 8-9

Preamble:  about the choice of the McKay sonnets ...  

One of poetry’s great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music and image — things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why — is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.”-- Tracy K. Smith Staying Human:  Poetry in the Age of Technology: https://fourteenlines.blog/category/tracy-k-smith/

I was fortunate to attend the Folger Education series for High School teachers, looking at Sonnets and trying to connect them to students interested in social justice.  At first glance this doesn't seem like a natural fit, but Donna Denizé (poet and award-winning English teacher) showed how the sonnet has been used not just in the early 20th century but contemporary times and new and powerful ways to engage students in the analysis.  

She started with he 1919 sonnet of Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay, "If we must die" written with the backdrop of the story of 12 year old Eugene Williams, a black boy who didn't know how to swim who drifted into "white territory." It is a response to mob attacks of white Americans upon African-American communities during the "red summer". 

In discussion:  the question came up:  Just because there are 14 lines, is it a sonnet?  We noted the difference between McKay's work from 1919 and Robert Hayden's free verse 14-liner written in 1966.

Reading Szymborska at Friday Harbor by Patrycja Humienik

because it is "after Aria Aber, I gave the link to her poem. America 

America; If We Must Die; The Lynching;  by Claude McKay

Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden  (published in 1966)

October Sonnet by  Adrian Matejka

Whipping  by K.D. Harryman 

Rose Colored Glasses by Kenneth Rexroth

Nutshell

Reading Szymborska:  If you don't know the "Friday Harbor" in the title, the poet does hint about

where it is (San Juan Island,  Washington State).  The mention of Szymborska's poem about the Yeti

also comes in handy, as "the everlasting/snow" as the final words of it are turned to current events of

climate change. 1996 is the year of  Szymborska's acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize.

The opening line is an interesting question.  Whether or not it is about the poet's concern about Szymborska or in general, wanting more music from language doesn't really seem to be the point of  the poem.   Instead, after seven lines which hint at someone thinking back about her high school self, it feels like what I call an "overloaded diary poem" with an assemblage of thoughts punctuated by what the poet sees.

 Does the poet still not like to admit how little she knows?  Unanswerable. The poem moves us to the present,  amazing scene, and unusual image of an eagle as white-headed metronome.  Poet, rapt... as she watches the raptor.  The next question, "how can I trust myself when I am so seduced by beauty?" also melts into the jumble, unanswered.  Perhaps there is something about missing homeland?  I referenced Aria Aber's poem America, and the haunting line asking "who am I becoming here with you?"  The reference to "Sweet Pea Lane" and whoever Gabby is, saying it makes her teeth hurt, is

perhaps a clue.   

   We weren't sure what to make of "muscle of petals" although Judith gave it a whack.  Here, there is plenty of individual association ripe for application.  

At the same time, it all seemed to be making perfect sense in the spirit of a collective complicity.

3 sonnets by Claude McKay

America:   : alliterations, add punch to a cauldron of terms better suited to a monster than a country. Not/ a shred/ of terror.  The line, "I love this cultured hell" brought up a comparison with unrequited love... and indeed, as another put it, America, giving hate, also gives strength to fight it.  What does it mean to look at the worst-- and wonder if that the best there is?

The last 4 lines give dark prediction indeed.

If we must die:  In the context of the 1919 tragedy of the drowning of Eugene Williams whose raft drifted into the "white" shores of the river and mob attacks during Red Summer, the effective use of a short form where meaning is compressed also suggests the constraints beyond the form.  The capital O's, the play between long and short o sounds in an emotion-packed roll of sound act as a call to action. The constrained form of 14 lines... the idea of a stanza being a room, and the idea of  being "pressed to the wall" -- and fighting back-- not to be "penned in like hogs" while all around the mad and hungry dogs, is highly effective, with the sounds of O (O let us nobly die; O Kinsman) contrasting well with hogs, inglorious spot, accursèd lot... It is a call to face the common foe.

The Lynching: (written in 1920) Here, with three sets  of abba (no stanza breaks however), the first, establishing the subject; second, its development; third, a rounding off (in this case, the crowd coming to view the hanging body without any sorrow) and the uncanny and unexpected conclusion in the final couplet:  "little lads, lynchers" clearly formed and ready to carry on...ironic rhyming of "to be" with their "fiendish glee."

Frederick Douglass: We were struck by the repetitions of "when" in the first 6 lines, broken by three semi-colons to a colon ending line 6.  And then the continuation in 5 more comma-filled lines with 6 demonstrative adjectives (this)  before man, Douglass, slave, Negro, man, man.  As Judith put it,

where lacking in rhyme, the rhythm and music flow; the phrasing propels the liquid of legends to lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream.  We had read a while back Ross Gay, "A small needful fact" -- which echos Hayden's ending words:  the beautiful, needful thing.  Hayden creates compelling proof of what humans can do to overcome odds, but more.  How do we remember legendary figures such as Douglass?  Not rhetoric of statue, wreaths-- but that carrying on of the work for freedom so that it continues to live. 

October Sonnet:  It's called a sonnet, and indeed, has 14 lines.  Since the epigram says "after Ted Berrigan" this snapshot of Berrigan's Sonnets   might help: https://poets.org/book/sonnets

We had fun with the halloween flavor, the 13th floor (which superstition would say to avoid), the playful

"wind winds" which could be both a verbal wind or a winding.  Enjoyable unforced quality, but a rather enigmatic ending with reference to  "autumn of my reproduction" gusty apparitions, untethered things.

I loved the wind's singsong, fine-tuned, perfectly pitched and humor in the 2nd and 3rd tercets.

Whipping introduced us to the technicalities of rope and how to twine it.  Without the comment, we were lost and would have been far-fetched to find a mother's advice to a daughter on being female. 

Raw, fierce.  Knotty. One of the associations and references that came up from Judith.

https://www.longbranch.k12.nj.us/cms/lib/NJ01001766/Centricity/Domain/762/The Wise Old Woman Story.pdf

Rose Colored Glasses:  we loved the visuals... went straight to Venice, how a song about love cannot be locked up-- and why not 100 pure voices of pickpockets and prostitutes singing "La vie en rose"

hopefully remembering the feelings that polish those glasses that see the world that way.  What's lovely is the polishing of details of daily life by its infiltration.

** 

As ever, a rich and rewarding discussion-- I hazard the guess, that it's not the poems so much as the desire of everyone to collaborate in the effort of  making sense.

As ever, heartfelt thanks.

poems discussed March 1-2

Your Song by Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981)

To Lovers of Earth: Fair Warning  by Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

A Statement form No One, Incorporated  by Justin Phillip Reed[1] National Book Award: 

Daffodils  by Becky Holder

One's Ship Comes In  by Joe Paddock

What was told, That  by Jalal al-Din Rumi

The Largeness We Can't See  by Tracy K. Smith

What Was Told, That by Jalal al-Din Rumi    video Coleman Barks reading (second 32)  

A Statement from No One, Incorporated by Justin Phillip Reed  author reading

How did Americans write at the turn of the 20th century?  Judith introduced us to the term "derivative" as in conventional, highgrade sentimental tosh" of rhymed romantic poetry.    What makes a poem powerful?  

Certainly the first poem, Your Songs was on the edge of "tosh" with  a set of three properly rhymed quatrains and not very strong. This elicited expressions such as, "even a blind squirrel can find an acorn" and "Even a bad poet can give you a good line'!

However, in its defense, speaking the poem aloud improved it and most were quite intrigued with the last two lines which are unusual.  How do you understand  "silence as a sounding thing/to one who listens hungrily"? We didn't get to the bottom of understanding these lines. Indeed, we say "silence is deafening"... and silence in the case of Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic takes on very different directions (one of which is that it is an invention of the hearing...).

  Perhaps the poem is an elergy?  But what are the circumstances of the silence?

To Lovers of Earth:  Here, enjambments perk up the rhyme and there is a lot of "unspoken meat" of the racial tensions in the 1920's... red, indignant cross...(Joyce thought of the Red Cross, trying to bring aid to those who should not have been harmed; perhaps an image of a burning cross?  How does this fit in with not having such a cross?)  white scar of wrath... perhaps a hint of treaty of Versailles in "peace too dearly bought".  The overall sense was one of density... not just from the sound, the strength of the pentameter, but also the thinking behind it. 

What is the warning?  Perhaps a call to "Give over to high things" (the opening line) before you too vanish.  "Rare" we agreed means "unique" -- which each human being is, and yet... we all will disappear.

This is a poem written before awareness of climate change.  Jim showed us what an exploded, dead star looks like.  Emily brought up the belief of a UR astrophysicist who believes our planet will survive once we are gone. Judith called on the eleventh sonnet in  Millay's Fatal Interview sequence—

 

          …. Love in the open hand, no thing but that,

               Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,

               As one who brings you cowslips in a hat

               Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,

               I bring you, calling out as children do,

               “Look what I have!—And these are all for you.”

  It is good to imagine how this would have been read almost a hundred years ago, and think

how much has changed to color how we might describe Earth.  Gaia still?  And time "crowding

 bloom to dust".  What a gorgeous image in and of itself... but haunting as "lengthens out your shrouds

follows... and we know this is written by a young black man of the Harlem Renaissance.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/countee-cullen

What do we "waste"... ignore... while Earth goes on?  How to understand the final 4 lines?   One senses a criticism of those who do not challenge convention (for you, "not a single star chime out of tune).  Perhaps one could infer that good poetry, like life requires passion.  

A statement from No One: Kathy played the recording of Justin Phillip Reed's powerful poem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRINtcig0lA

As she put it, we hear the rage and tone of a black man, but it is speaking in the voice of the white man. 

The repetitions of "we"... "not".. the spiteful, answering machine quality put-down, the deadening "d's"

in "without your damage the world is difficult work to live on." (the damage in the line above, blamed on the deficit associated with the Black dead president).  Insinuated accusations.. 

It ends on a colon.  It reminded Judith of 1066 and all that and how a period is called a "full stop."  

You need to say it to finish this sentence from 1066 and all that.  History came to.

I hope you can listen to Justin read his poem-- it is powerful and well worth coming up with your own reflections.  How would you respond??? 

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[1] https://theadroitjournal.org/2018/10/04/nothing-is-ever-itself-only-a-review-of-justin-phillip-reeds-indecency/

Indecency, asks, What is sayable? Isn’t propriety just oppression with a smile? Reed then makes space for the truth white western culture asks marginalized people to keep to themselves and demonstrates how it attempts to conscript them into protecting the privileged from the reality of what is done in their name to maintain that privilege, as in “They Speak of the Body and One Sits Up Straight.

Daffodils: contemporary, non-sentimental love poem and welcome relief after the first three!!! What works is not so much that repeated rhyme of hills/daffodils, but the realistic details from promises to the first bouquet of daffies 5 years later; that "day we thought we might divorce"... and the ending on promises kept... not the 1,000 hills, but the actual 500 of them.  

One's Ship Comes In: 

Another valentine pick from a different friend. Pardon the cut-off of last word:  should read: how one’s ship comes in/with each such breath. Good advice to live in the moment, reinforced by the spontaneous style which seems to come from the heart. Judith's comment:  "Goody".  A nice poem to remind us that in the drift of thing,  effort indeed can shift to joy... I offered "Joy in Nancy" as in Nancy France... but of course it is the quality of Nancy the woman, pretty in pink... 

What was Told, That, (Rumi):   video Coleman Barks reading (second 32) 

https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/04/jalal-ad-din-muhammad-rumi-what-was.html

We discussed at length the difficulty of knowing "who" Rumi was, and what his exact words were.  Since his writing dates from 800 + years ago, the "flavor" of translation will carry the century in which it was done.  Coleman Barks did not so much "translate" but as Bernie put it, "renders" words of this Sufi sage, taking liberties in contemporizing the theme of personal/particular love to universal.

We enjoyed batting around the term "render", which Judith reminded us can mean "tear apart" as well as "melt down" as in rendering fat.  This was countered with the biblical quote of "render unto Caesar that which is Caesars" and Bernie explained that Ursula LeGuin called her "translation" of the Tao te Ching a rendering.  (Indeed, as a child of two anthropologist parents, seeing an edition of the Chinese side by side with its translation, her understanding of the text is far beyond mere word-for-word translation.)

Listening to Coleman barks read it allows the ear to capture the spirit of this mysterious "that"--

this essence that makes the cypress strong, the jasmine sweet, inhabitants in Chigil so handsome, the blush of the pomegranite blush...whatever puts "eloquence into language"... All this enigmatic "thatness" that fills us with desire to embrace everyone and everything.

English has fun with "that" and we too enjoyed a little theatrical  word play:  Did you get that?

That art thou...  How about that!

The Largeness we can't see:  Here, we could substitute "that" with "what.

We commented on the flavor of the child's prayer (Lay us down...), the weaving of sounds, the beautiful 

accumulation "our voices pooled on sills./We hurry from door to door in a downpour// (line and stanza break) of days.

I appreciate Elaine Olssen who always find a theme to the poems (she says "curated")-- how we looked at what Earth offers, and doesn't, from different perspectives.

Martin confessed his opening comment about who and what is spirit, was  intended for the final poem--

but even there, by looking for spirit in the first poem, as we spoke about word association, we were able to sense it there as well as the "largeness" some imagine as face of God, others, as manifestation of spirit.

At Rundel, Mike pointed out the negatives:  how "can't" in the title echoes in the violent description 

of the beads, "yanked".  Saw-toothed breath is scarcely reassuring, and "leaves" echoes the verb,

of "leave behind... so a bed of leaves might imply an empty bed... What waits?  "feeds/with ceaseless focus on the leaves"?  And what does that mean if the "Largeness" is spirit as some interpreted it? 

The final  word with "less,  deathless (cannot die?) give an insistence to "heft", like an active, unrelenting push.  And yet the sound is a quiet liquid flow: all we live blind to/// Leans its deathless heft to our ears...  Might that be regret?  All we don't want to or refuse see?

The poem ends as the first poem began,  with song.   But like the second poem by Countee Cullen, leaves the reader with an unsettling sense of density.

A look at the second line, following the unusual verb "skid" with “laughter"… with a simile to beads from a broken necklace skittering across parquet  … “like beads yanked from some girl’s throat”  spins an ominous angle to the meaning. Re-reading the poem for the 5th time,  largeness includes losses… 

 a stanza is a room— so the 4th tercet could be talking about writing  poetry… drawing on an image  some of the sonnets written by black poets in 1920 used… we’ll see that next week.

What is clear is the urgency of "the hurry" and foreshadows “deathless” at the end, colors it.

 

As ever, it takes a group to animate and embroider understanding of poems!   Thank you all!  As you can see, the discussion isn't over!