Rock me Mercy: by Yusef Komunyakaa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4mp3fjl16o
The Encounter with the Goddess Alice Ostriker (from Project 19)
Voting-Machine by Maggie Smith (from Project 19)
In Flight by Rae Armantrout
Nomenclature by Clint Smith
Hope by Lisel Mueller
Serious People by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco
How much information do we need to know about a poem? How does it change when we know certain circumstances? How much does it communicate without this knowledge. If the line is difficult, might it be that it is not a good line? And just what might a "good line" be? As ever, it is a joy to share the process of
reading a poem, to "slow down"... linger, observe and wonder and share multiple views by bringing in our experiences.
Rock me Mercy. If you didn't know the poem was written after Sandy Hook, how does the poem read?
The middle line, "Guardian Angels, wherever you're hiding/we know you can't be everywhere at once" communicates a tenderness of understanding similar to someone who is able to forgive someone who
has done them great harm. Do we need to know the harm? We feel the pain. It is the river stones
who listen... not other people. The woods have gone silent, whether they be telephone wires, the lightning of a storm over a forest... The image of sleeping ants in flowers waiting leads us to the repeat of the river stones, listening.
Such a powerful poem. The title is plea: Rock me Mercy. Indeed, we have something to say.
Whatever that is isn't shown, and yet one senses something has "entered" and registered. The slight change in the repeat, after the ambiguous tone of the question to the guardian angels and what is meant by the "pretty wild horses" -- as in adverbial "pretty wild", not adjectival pretty and wild... is not "we have something to say" but rather a conclusion, "all we can say now" -- Mercy. Mercy, please. Mercy, please, rock me.
The poem washes over you. However you understand it, however you know or don't know the personal tragedy in the poet's life. Does he look for a reason? Some thought so. Others not.
Marna was reminded of Pete Seeger and the refrain of "where have all the flowers gone". when will we ever learn?
The Encounter... If you didn't know this poem was part of Project 19, you might wonder what is going on.
It is "off-putting" to put it mildly, for most to see an epigraph stating "There is one story and one story only that will prove worth your telling". Granted, one can look up Robert Graves, with a little more to go on after the first stanza refers to this story as the "ancient tale of the encounter/with the goddess". Small g.
One suggestion was to leave off the epigraph and first stanza. Maybe just call it "Encounter". Replace "goddess" with "her". This statue called Liberty. Listen to what is inside of you that responds to that abstraction, this possible "daimon" or inner spirit.
Voting Machine: This one, also part of Project 19, stands on its own. Clever juxtapositions, and the humor makes a serious point. Love the injunction to "listen for the click/and turn —levers and gears" the repeat, having introduced the idea of "partial" and "whole", of "whole" // coming. Listen
break/big white space until the final/
for the turn.
In Flight: Does the title refer to the magazine on airplanes? imply flight from something to something else?
In the two parts: part 1 a mockery of self-help and ads; part 2: fashion... killer line "Once I was saved from monotony/ and hate/
by a square of sun
Wonderfully witty with lots of room for response.
One idea about the side-by-side "saving grace" of monotony/hate was the mindlessness of watching the squares of screens which do not dispel ignorance, but rather placate any curiosity, empathy, and encourage negativity towards others and life. The sun, giver of life, only partially present, defined also by the square
perhaps of a window, or perhaps metaphor for a patch of light (in designer colors) to read these "instructions, coded on the fly".
I had mentioned at the beginning of the session how each poem invites us to observe.. connect to meanings unique to our experience. A perfect example: Martin shared this response to this poem: This spring he was not feeling the joy he used to feel at the sight of the first tulips. He decided to try a system that slows the breath with a conscious count of 8 to breathe in, 4 counts of holding, 7 counts to release. This provokes an autonomic nervous system. Lo and behold -- instead of feeling dried out, he was saved, and able to feel joy again.
What happens to us "in flight", out of rhythm, metaphorically "ungrounded" ? There was mention of Saki, mention of the soul as drawing room... D.H. Lawrence, "Things" and much more.
Nomenclature: the poem is "after Safia Elhillo". We did not talk about her, or even question why on Wednesday. A thank you to Joyce for bringing it up at Rundel on Thursday. She is Sudanese-American,
and for sure an interesting poet to read. In one interview, she mentions that "precision" is one of her obsessions, and she feels powerful when she can say exactly what she means. Sudan is a complex country,
and I didn't know about the friction between being arabophone and black.
One thought on the word "or" -- perhaps for the grandmother, her sense of "n'anya" is both sight and love,
but we are the ones trying to isolate one meaning as separate from another. What is home? What is it to be present?
How indeed, do we trace "the shadow of someone else's tongue" -- someone else's language, culture, what is or isn't passed on; how to understand the possibilities and emotional implications of words.
we reversed the order reading the last two poems.
Serious people. Sure. One of "those poems" ? Couplets that make no logical sense and the poem could have been arranged differently. If "serious people" set it all out -- what matters and where do those "tips/of teeth" fit in. The poem ends in a fragment. How to link back to the title? What is failure? Who says? "Like/ the people on the street would somehow/
know." Sure, is anything but.
Hope: We have read this before together. Is it too "goody two shoes"? Someone brought up the song, "Is that all there is". Is hope really "the singular gift/we cannot destroy in ourselves"?
Thank you Polly for adding that hope indeed has feathers, and can fly away.
Possibly back again too. Is the last stanza necessary?
Well... however you want to believe... wouldn't it be wonderful if indeed, hope leads us to want to promise
not to betray one another.
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