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!