Mother’s Day, “Saints” is not a bad place to start. You can tell the second poem is written by a mother with a fierce love for her daughter. As she puts it, "I wrote the poem below because I remembered poetry loves a good, simple truth, even one flattened by language that has no reason to show off to anybody.” This week’s selections look at different angles of what poems offer. In that light, I invite you to explore the poems in the new issue of Rundelania, a fine journal put forth by Rundel Library downtown. https://rundelania.com/ Should you wish to submit to Rundel: send in Microsoft Word compatible format, subject line "Submission" to Andrew Coyle: andrew.coyle@libraryweb.org
Although lacking the impressive wit of "Saints" above, my first two poems address show the surprise these sacred beings apparently do not have, but which causes such wonder in us. https://rundelania.com/decem-poemata/
Saints by Louis Jenkins
Of All the Qualities She Could Have Inherited by Abby Murray
In Memory of His Memory by David Wagoner
Man Carrying Thing by Wallace Stevens
Never Asking by Madelyn Chen
People Like Us by Robert Bly
Reasons Not to Hate Us by Abby Murray
All That We Have by Stephen Dunn
Poetic Closure by R.G. Evans
Nutshell:
Saints: What makes a poem ? What is a prose poem? There are endless discussions and countless examples of possibilities. Louis Jenkins has the deft touch of a poet where the "sound of sense" makes one glad to read it both silently on the page and out loud. It starts with nature observations...(by the way, "popple" is a midwestern term for poplar). Immediately, we thought of our weather this May in Rochester... We also enjoyed the flow of the first line without a comma... It's not that the "snow melts the grass", but there's a sense of hurrying along: as soon as it melts the grass begins. A short sentence, then a long one, and the poet rethinks... not only to jump to a comparison to saints... but a life without complaints, suspicion, surprise... just life going on... one continuum...
Suspicion jumps out as an unusual response... (and uncomfortable if that's part of living!)
Of all the qualities: the small details, the long list of of dignified names of plants labeled (decried by internet) as weed. Industrious, misguided as adjectives for our erstwhile attempts to understand love.
The delight of an 8 year old... "who can't believe her luck that nobody fought to collect the beauties"--
indeed, hard not to agree with her that "the world must have lost its mind". This poem won everyone over! Whether or not you want "existed" to be in the present, little Mae, the girl in question, is for sure
living proof that good is not impossible! *Apparently, according to something Barb read online, in Vastu Shastra (an Indian system of architecture based on ancient texts that describe principles of layout and design), the purple fleabane brings good luck and other blessings, like mental and emotional balance!
Memory: whether an hommage to his mentor, Theodore Roethke, a gentle poke at how we remember and how poems deserve to be memorized by heart, unlike the collected tidbits frozen into place in our mind.
The end slyly turns the mirror on the reader to examine what we have as memorable purpose, on which
we sit listening to a bonafide tribute to a man who actually had one. Clever and allows many different interpretations.
Man Carrying Thing: whether you imagine a man, with a "carrying-thing", or a man, carrying a thing,
(metaphorical or not, inside or out), or a thing the carries a man, the title is enigmatically expansive.
The repeat of resist, secondary parts, obvious;
the move from singular thing to plural things;
the sounds, including the marvelous adjective necessitous and the French brune, evoking a brown
women in an impressionist painting, combine to create a mysterious background against which
Stevens suggests what really goes on with creating a poem, or art, including the "horror of thoughts that suddenly are real..." This is no frivolous affair. The poem reminds me of Archibald MacLeish, "a poem must be equal to,
not true... not bothered with "meaning" but "be".
Like an impressionist painting... we can enjoy the paint, texture...a mood...
and as our privilege, complete our understanding as we see it.
Never Asking: For the Stevens, Judith quoted Robert Graves on his thoughts about details: "if contrary to known fact, they can do harm; but when does it matter and when not?"
Perhaps those who criticized the mother's hot-water bottle procedures which didn't sound sensical, or possible, and in fact quite dangerous, focussed too much on rational. The poem is poignant, and certainly
the second line is poetically graphic to show the cold. We were reminded of Hayden's "Winter Sundays" with a similar ending.
People like us: This poem had a surprising randomness, often funny, and yet, gave a comforting sense of "us"-- we all
could be as confused as the others mentioned, or confused with them. Like the first one, (Saints) there was an underlying message of "accept life as it is".
Reasons not to hate us: A great example of good things people do. I love the last word, the mother teaching the child, gentle.
All that we have: Indeed, we could real "marital arts" as martial arts. "Silent slippages" seems so promising a thing to develop, and yet, somehow the poem never completely reaches conclusion.
Poetic Closure: by quoting Stephen Dunn, we can look at the preceding poem by him... yes...
Dunn subverted my expectation... But is there something that goes on in spite of it? That hope that
hand and voice will naturally coordinate... and, again, life going on as it does, "day visits us at night--
happily or otherwise."
Polly was reminded of TS Eliot -- the 2nd quartet, East Coker:
first line: In my beginning is my end.
last line In my end is my beginning.
http://philoctetes.org/documents/Eliot%20Poems.pdf
A wonderful and warm discussion. At the end, Jim shared this delightful piece from July 1994 from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/07/25/how-i-met-my-wife You can click at the bottom of the link for more I believe… but this gives a taste. A perfect read for a less than consolate day with swerving peccability!!
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory char- acter who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.
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