Poems for Oct. 25-6

Crossroads by Louise Glück

Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman

Childhood by David Baker  

The Shoes of Teenage Boys by Tim Nolan  

The Chambermaids in the Marriott in Midmorning by Maxine Kumin 

I had included And The Beautiful by Paul Celan which inspired my powerpoint shared last week-- contact me if you want to see it.)  We ran out of time to read it.  I appreciate Mike's comments at Rundel:  Celan sets up a pattern of past tense followed by present (tore/tear; heaped/heap) but that wind is in the present, sweeping, and caught in the final question, as if to carry it to the next generation.  How do we face a violent and brutal world?  Note how the poem starts with And... as if there is a whole story that included the beautiful... and in our grief, yes, we understand the tearing out of pages, hair as we bury all we loved.

It reminded many of the movie Life is Beautiful.

I stumbled on this quote from Louise Glück:  Everything is change ... and everything is connected. Also everything returns, but what returns is not what went away—

Crossroads:

I had mentioned  thoughtful quotes from great writers on the nature of death on Maria Popova's blog:  https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/02/07/you-cant-have-it-all-barbara-ras-emily-levine/ : Here, from Rilke: Death is our friend, precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is nature, that is love."  Popova's comment seems to sum up  "Crossroads" and  contemplating death as "the most difficult and rewarding art: "befriending our own finitude".  

 Where to start to pay homage to the discussion this poem sparked?  I think the timely sound of the "cricket" on Maura's phone as we read "a new tenderness" was perfect... 

Crossroads:  crossing from life to death; a point where one contemplates which direction to take, and what choices to make.  As Maura put it, there really should be a lemonade stand there... 

Poetry is not about "answers" and this poem demonstrates the power of unspoken, perhaps implied

possibilities.  

In this article from the Guardian  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/17/louise-gluck-a-poet-who-never-shied-away-from-silence-pain-or-fear I loved the sentence about her "clotting diction with dashes-- semi-colons, odd breaks.  Indeed, in our discussion, this came up.

The semi-colon after "My soul has been so fearful, so violent;" is arresting-- the idea will be continued, without any "and, or but". There is something contradictory and unusual introduced.... and then continued with asking the body to forgive "its brutality".

How is a soul fearful?  violent? Brutal?  Does the soul desire substance?  There, she stops you short with a colon:

delivers the final couplet:

it is not the earth I will miss,

it is you I will miss.

We discussed "earth"... something external to a self... something to which we return. We discussed at length this "you".  Is it the body?  and this poem a love-letter to it?  Or is the you, someone the body has loved-- not just her body, but anybody reading the poem thinking of a loved one?  Is you the blend of body and soul as one?  

The tone of the poem is tender, indeed, as we read the words, our hands moved over them cautiously,

(last word of stanza 4) -- as if these words could allow the soul to achieve "expression as substance". 

I didn't bring up William James: "Spirit worn of sinew, mind of marrow" and how the body experiences time... how without soul... some sort of seat of consciousness... there is nothing... 

Cold Solace

https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/02/24/immortality-in-passing-lisel-mueller/?mc_cid=93f7af5baf&mc_eid=2e713bf367 :  The quoting of Lisel Mueller's

poem, "In passing" works perfectly with the "honey cakes"...

 

Perhaps a lot could have been left out, and some of us were struck by the heavy dose of alliterations describing the honey cakes. Judith thought Marna's response to the discussion of poets getting a bit above themselves technically or with wordplay,

quite good:  it is as if the writer is so into what he is creating that sometimes what seems like ego excess jut boils out--like the ending to Nemerov's poem--Somber November amber and umber embering out.  He simply could not help it!

 

Jan mentioned how she was overcome having her partner read the poem aloud to her.  The ending lines

could not have been written without the "long thaw" and time spent describing the flavor, the taste, 

proustian effect of these cakes.  The last fragment, "Leave something of sweetness/and substance/in the mouth of the world" could be both plea, and also connect to the "It", that will end, that in turn is connected to the cakes, the memory of the love when the mother was living.  Beautiful, inexplicable mystery of our feelings, grief, that feels complete without any further "messing".

Childhood:  poem in the New Yorker.  We enjoyed the sensory effects and sounds and that the poem opened and closed with "I miss the cold, but curious about the last line as the singing is not "set up".  Unlike "Those Winter Sundays", there is not a sense of presence of a person placing the hot water bottle, or making the fire.  Judith was reminded of Purcell's Aria, "Cold Song".  We all could relate to the relief  when coming in from the "icepick cold" and leaving the howling w's in the 3rd line, that no tucking tight of scarf can keep out! 

The Shoes of Teenage Boys:  just delightful and perfectly captures adolescent boys!

Famous:  Equally delightful and unusual position to address what "fame" means in terms of relationship.  

The couplet about the photograph is not just about a picture in a pocket... but bent, implying both that it traveled long with the person, inevitably suffering from being placed close, not matter how carefully.

Each item allows something else that would other not be without the other.  The brevity of the length of a tear staying on a cheek, how an idea held close to a bosom, puts a different spin on both idea and bosom,

and the boot changes function depending on where it walks.  Perhaps the least obtrusive and humblest thing is a button, which also requires patience to manage if opening and closing the clothing on which its found.  And you?  What is it you do?  Can it be as simple as smiling back?  Let's not forget the simple.

(cf. 10/26/22 poem:  I always wanted/to be famous.) 

The Chambermaids:  Such a cheerful snapshot -- rather like a soap-opera moment as the chambermaids are indeed cleaning, sharing their banter, their own opera... listening to the tv soaps!

The importance of small things -- performed with Rabelaisian vigor (understanding this is a reference to Gargantua and other giants Rabelais invented for our pleasure in the 16th century!) 

 

Poems for Oct. 18-19

The Meaning of Simplicity  by Yannos Ritsos

Utopia by Wisława Szymborska (with map by Maria Popova!)

A Common Saw  by Howard Nemerov

While Shaving by Alfredo Aguilar

A Cut-up Mango by Stephanie Qin (age 12)

What words in poems leave you with a sense of being "stuck" and unable to fathom ?

in the poem by Ritsos, with such a beguilingly simple title filled with a promise of clear definition,

indeed, he shows us the complexity of simplicity.

Is it Simplicity speaking in the first stanza?  The next two stanzas provide us with observations,

and we carefully shared what we noticed and wondered.  The August moon... not a spring moon,

or winter moon, but a ripe summer moon, perhaps one of the rare "blue moons" that occur in August, which sometimes has two full moons.  Regardless, it lights an empty table... and silence kneeling.

The gleam is compared to one provided by a tin kitchen kettle.  Not a fancy kettle, and perhaps some have association with tin as a thin coating, once used to prevent corrosion. How is the parenthetical comment like this gleam?  

Of course, the power of such imagery allows the reader to feel the space in the stanza, the sense of waiting, with the repeated "silence is always kneeling" underlining a quiet quality of attentive reflection, listening.  

We struggled to understand how a single word is an exodus -- a mass departure -- the line break further

confuses the meaning of a meeting cancelled many times.  One thought is the power of a single word,

its intent to be saved... and what needs to be saved and said?  The final line, sums it up... 

one true word, insisting on its meaning.

One thought was that poems often gather meaning that becomes clear in a final stanza.  Indeed, it could stand by itself, but without this idea of "hiding", and implied seeking, in the first stanza, the patience 

of the kneeling in the second, the "singularity " of a word coming to meet "meaning", the chance of

its truth insisting would not be the same.

Stripping down to essentials in this day and age filled with "too much" is a challenge.  Sue mentioned the

advantages of dispensing with social media and technology.

Simplicity?  It is not about ease, but rather a desirable coat of clarity that allows what is essential to shine.

 

Utopia:  Paul reminded us of the Greek Ou-Topos (No where) which puns on Eu-Topos (a good place.)

Many contributed titles of  literature about the "ideal", including the popularity of the late 19th c.  Erehwon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon in the 1970's, mention of Thomas More, and Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (for more reading: https://academic.oup.com/policy-press-scholarship-online/book/21118/chapter-abstract/180715160?redirectedFrom=fulltext#)

Szymborska's wit and punning are brilliantly translated by (prize-winning translators) Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranaczak.  We had fun making fun of the "perfect world" which no one really wants, because of the nature of man and his attachment to Ego.  (Eckert Tolle: read The Power of Now). 

The most paradoxical of the "evident benefits" of this Utopic Island seemed to be this stanza:

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: /the Valley of Obviously. Not only did we appreciate the alliterative V's for their sound and shape, but the delightful suggestion that  "being lost in the woods, unable to see the forest for the trees" might allow vision. This led to entertaining comments about how boring life would be without the interest of complexity, and indeed, how the idea of Utopia for EVERYONE is impossible!  (enoyreve!!!! -- "everyone", backwards:   looks like an attempt to say in French,  annoying dream!)

A Common Saw:  I'm not sure you know how many saws are out there (hundreds), and quite the choice of "common" one... all with teeth.  A fun expression for a commonplace, and perhaps practical truth.

The epigraph comes from Act. 2 of King Lear -- In contemporary English : "Good King, you're just proving the old saying that everything goes from good to bad".  This is following a hilarious bout of insults, and followed by taking out a letter from Cordelia, who is away ... "  Go lines 170 if you wish more: https://www.litcharts.com/shakescleare/shakespeare-translations/king-lear/act-2-scene-2... 

I wish I knew Nemerov's thinking, taking King Lear as starting point to arrive at his reflections on religion!  Bernie provided this humorous joke among Jews:  You know how it goes, 3 Jews?  5 synagogues.  Poor God scrambling around to perform... "no possible way out/but my salvation".

The ironic wit is superb.  We have discussed in other poems how replacing "Love" in the commandment, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" with "be kind", would make for a better world.  Indeed, Nemerov gives us

another spin, with "Dame Kind".  We agreed that the use of the word "dumb" here refers to "Mute".

Back to Ritsos and silence kneeling.

While Shaving: A most tender portrait of a father and son.  It reminded Emily of Li-Young Lee's poem

The Gift, where the father's hands remove a shard with tenderness:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43010/the-gift-56d221adc12b8

We discussed briefly the end of stanza two, and the description of the wife/mother "leaving like light--

"All at once, leaving no trace it had ever shone there."   The detail later, that mixture of "pride and sorrow"

becomes the poignant.  The final stanza gives us a surprisingly beautiful conclusion, opening a reflection 

on the healing effect of the passage of time.

A Cut up Mango: We were in awe of the skill of this poem!  How could a 12-year old write so amazingly well, capturing the difficulty of not only adolescence, but being outsider, not know language or culture.

The metaphor of a mango is "milked" to full capacity.    Sprinkled in the poems are words

most 12 year olds would not use:  nostalgia; autopsy; empathy;  The timing, pacing, the cleverness

of the mango metaphor (once cut, its secrets exposed;  veins popping out  which make it taste terrible... sticky... ) The poet asks if she ever changed and gifts us with a mirror of ourselves.  No, not really.  I do the same foolish things over and over again.  We join her, as she repeats, Did I change?  Her "maybe 

 yes" and ending provide the mango's answer. 

poems for Oct. 11-12

Walking Down Westgate in the Fall  by Howard Nemerov

The Statues and Us by Yannis Ritsos, translated by Martin McKinsey

To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew  by Bradford Kimball

Juggler by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles; translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim

Spell Against Indifference by Maria Popova

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens

The Dying Garden by Howard Nemerov

A thank you to Judith who provided me with 4 Nemerov poems two of which we'll discuss this week. Apparently we already discussed   For Robert Frost, in the Autumn in Vermont and Walking Down Westgate... She also suggested An Ending https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33197  and this poem by Amy Lowell, Patterns which indeed follows last week's discussion.  

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42987/patterns

Nutshell:

Walking down Westgate

The first thing that strikes me is the assonance of O... the somber sound of O's... those overtones of soul responding in resonance! How the end line, in the midst of the playful bang and bounce of acorns, also

includes their rOll !  As one person remarked, October is one kind of fall, November quite different.

So it is with the opening and closing poems by Nemerov who captures both moods.

The coupling of weather changes to "private rites/secret celebrations of the soul" prepares us to delve into the mystery of spiritual leanings... Does the soul exist?  The third stanza aside, "if the soul did exist" follows the vivacious description of chrysanthemums with their lion's manes, sun face ruddy with gold,

flower associated with All-Soul's day in November, and visits to cemetaries.  

As for place, Maura shared that she knew Nemerov as professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where indeed, there is a Westgate Av.  

The Statues:

Delightfully different spin on ancient Greek and Roman statues.  No Oxymandias here, but rather, an enviable indifference to Time (with a capital T, as well as time's ravages, where it bears a small t).

A fun exercise:  How would you complete the sentence:  The ravages of time...

line break.  I love the surprise Ritsos provides -- The ravages... don't concern them!  Good lesson for us... They seem to surrender themselves to "some infinite// act of love-making" as opposed to us... unaccountably " tired and depressed, given such adjectives as shabby for hotel, and lumpy for the bed.

Emulating?  Not imitating... but there's a hopeful note of salvation in the choice of verb, which gives a sense of something indeed worthwhile  for which to strive.  What are statues about after we have made them?  This poem helps us look with good humor at ourselves.  To quote Katherine Cecil Thurston: “It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation!” 

To the Child:  We read first the comment by the ekphrastic series editor for the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge of Aug. 2023.  For many on Wednesday, the image and sound of a sewing machine elicited multiple memories and associations.  The feeling in the poem of the quiet tenderness which helps a child feel safe plays a gentle music.  Paul enjoyed  commenting in jest, that a needle doesn't hum..

The sound of the work, the wait, the creation of a feeling that will last as a first love song, is beautifully crafted here.

Juggler: Hard to know if the original Filipino uses the same dynamic line breaks -- gap/

anticipated/ brink of hesitation.  We discussed at length the verb choice, "hurl". For metaphorical juggling, perhaps it emphasizes the effort and strength... and coupled with rehearsing either alone, or the practice of being alone, the combination of motion/emotion, it brought to mind a conversation with a difficult person, trying to catch another's words, while yours are hurling up.  We all appreciated the last line, how the "they" could be the balls, the metaphorical balls dropped, or the actual audience.  As Arthur Sze says about this poem, the mention of implied motion, emotion, isolation, connection in this lean translation is arresting... leaving us with stillness at the end, still reverberating.

Spell Against Indifference: 

This poem, rather like a magical spell, was hard to fathom.  What does the title imply?  Why would one need a spell against indifference, as in the case of Ritsos' statues where it might be useful?  

Does Popova mean indifference as apathy, commonly attributed as the opposite of love?  We noted how the first stanza "hurls" everything together, with three mentions of "fall", two things rain is not,

and several things it causes us to remember.  There is a sense of "in spite of it all", arriving at "we are still here, and the almost absurd paradoxical juxtaposition of our love songs and wars; space telescopes and table tennis.  The second stanza arrives with  a totally different tone of  what we could see in the wet grass.

If we were indifferent to the small things, like a half shell of a robin's egg, the possibility of new life,

indifferent to the implied fragility, perhaps this too would be, in need of a spell to help us...  

Perhaps the rain is delivering what we have to deal with?  

One person remarked the second part could be pronounced like a High Priest delivering a proclamation.

The House was quiet:  The repetitions establish a peaceful atmosphere.  Calm. Night. Book.

A zen-like leaning into pages and being.  

The Dying Garden:  The zodiac, the turning of seasons, and the beautiful sounds of alliteratives...

great gyroscope... spin of steepled shapes. crimp... claw... cartwheel and sketchy Orion

and twice, first after "when wealth and death are one" and secondly after "time of turn":

When moth and wasp and mouse come in the house

the first time, for comfort if they can;  the second time, to die as they may.

He is almost cheeky with "You know, All Saints, All Souls, and Halloween,/

the killing forst, the end of Daylight Time.

The lively penultimate line with its mention of bright colored summer flowers, (the specificity of all that is lost, all rhymed with an axe-sound: 4 o'clocks, phlox, hollyhocks) is silenced in the final line filled with rich, long-Os and muted in the M's shivering (brrrr)

Somber November in amber and umber embering out.

Dense, intense, exquisitely composed as we enter the "ember days", so called as we go into winter.  

 

 

Poems Oct. 4-5

 So good to be back and see everyone!  Wonderful discussion per usual, especially meeting the challenge of Jane Hirshfield's poems!

A note from Ken:  Several  tackle the question What is Human Freedom.  Am I really free to do what I want when I want?   We had a nice sharing of individual personal “habits" we have but don’t even know  we that we have them.

Habit by Jane Hirshfield

Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist by Jane Hirshfield

A Cedary Fragrance by Jane Hirshfield

Rock by Jane Hirshfield

 You're from Nowhere by Abby Murray

October by Helen Hunt Jackson

Speech — is a prank of parliament-- by Emily Dickinson

Nutshell of discussion:

 Habit: How reassuring to read a poem which offers examples of habits without judgement and asks how it is we believe "these small rituals' promise /that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,/tomorrow will be".  The scrambled syntax of these words in the 4th stanza requires re-reading.  It has an otherworldly feel of something true that needs to be wrung out into view.   In all of the poems, we remarked on Hirshfield's way of challenging us to investigate more deeply the discomfort of what we often shrug off -- and try like her, to "make the unwanted wanted".  

The benefits of uncertainty, or surprise, of what might at first seem unbearable, is juxtaposed with  habits-- "to acknowledge/how much they are themselves our fated life." The final stanza holds up a mirror so we look at ourselves, and how habit chooses, and we, "its good horse, open our mouth at even the sight of the bit."  

Our discussion revolved around how rituals and habits can be helpful, as well as be a defense.  Habits as both inhibitors and expanders.   Some felt the first examples were stern, or don't apply to us, or wondered about how we relate to those we love in spite of their habits, or wonder how she could possibly know how we have a habit of "touching our pockets for wallet, keys before leaving".  This allows the universality of habits to be placed on the table.  How do we re-examine them? examine our yearning for positive habits? find a non-judgmental stance as we look at how a habit has become a habit?

Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist:  How to understand this title?  What is the "heart of a poem", and how is a heart held in a fist... is it clenched in a protective way? It could be the poem, personnified is sharing what it is like to explore what is hidden... the uncertain.  Even though at the end, the poem is described washing its breasts, hence, exposed, with trembling hands, "disguising nothing" we do not know what it really reveals.   It is up to each reader to complete. Hirshfield seems to deliver a truth in the first stanza. How do you understand "Each pebble in this world keeps/its own counsel" ?  Do pronouns make a difference to each pebble?  When she says, The concealment plainly delights, "plainly" could be understood to mean "simply" or "clearly".  How so?  How to understand the leap from pronouns, to half-crumpled papers, to olives to potatoes?  (We all loved the olive image, "adrift in the altering brine-bath/etch onto their innermost pits/a few furrowed salts that will never be found by the tongue".  WOW.)

"Yet" arrives with three examples of a comfortable usual.  You might not cook potatoes with butter and parsley, but someone does, and finds it delicious; we all know the usefulness of buttons, the reassurance that a dinner guest will have the civility and manners not to stay all night. 

She does not tell us what the poem is revealing... what it is she could reveal about herself... just the idea that the poem, started perhaps, thinking why it is so hard to let go of concealing, and yet, it seems to be part of nature.

A Cedary Fragrance:  Starting with the adjective "cedary" allowed a sharing of associations with cedar chests (which safely preserve and store away woolens), its strong and lasting scent, association with healing as well as use in cedar soap, and imagining the very primitive setting of a zen center all set about with cedar trees.  Bernie brought up an interview with Ezra Klein and Jane Hirshfield in which they talk about the difficulty of the training-- including "hating" the icy slap of cold water, and how the practice is to try not to be bound by discomfort. 

The "unwanted" is a large territory.  I find it paradoxical to practice choosing to make the unwanted wanted when this is usually to protect us.    How can you possibly want  murder? injustice? disrespect?   Those are not desirable things.  And yet, what she is doing, from title on, is to look at what we "store". She invites us to think about what "wanting" is, what makes us shirk away from something because it is unwanted. 

Yes, it is huge territory to let go of the parameters of a self, and as in the preceding poem, to examine how it keeps "its own counsel".  

Rock: One could spend an afternoon easily talking about all the possible associations and metaphors we attach to "rock".  A compliment for the one who is "rock solid" and dependable;  the translation Pierre in French, which leads me to think of St. Peter as the foundation rock in the Catholic church, or precious gem;  There is the rock to climb, against which one is stuck, or blocked and then the verb rocking, positive in the case of lullabies, and unsettling used with a boat.  

I doubt I could say with such assurance such words that at first seem to imply that a rock has only one thought and is happy with its privacy to keep it.  The art of Hirshfield is to make it look that way... just as a rock can appear to have qualities of stubbornness, refusal, interruption... 

I love how she carries on in the next stanza adding mosses and lichen "listening outside the locked door"! We're back to that "delight of concealment" -- something about our curiosity sparked about the nature of things and how they are in the world perhaps.  

How can she say these statements about rocks "filling their own shadows without hesitation", or not "questioning silence" or "experiencing discomfort"?  It feels as if she is putting herself into the rock's position. It is her work to "ponder whatever is"--  and pondering looks "singly" (only, uniquely) like prayer but (of course) is not.  She carries on with a boulder whose  "meditations are slow but complete", and that one day "its thinking will be worn out."  A sort of amusing fable about that ant carrying it away.

The discussion centered around change, shape-shifting, how we honor the earth and all it supports by paying attention to it.  We want to believe in permanence, and try to make things matter.  Again, Hirshfield is inviting us to do difficult work: in short, with concise slaps, she presents an idea, a thought that at first seems jarring, but if you stay with it, you find, like a moment of meditation, your mind feels lighter by dwelling on it.  

Rock, paper scissors came up -- how we have these conceived notions of each, until we see how what is victor in one case, is victim as circumstances change.   The film "Everywhere, everyone, all at once" came up.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Everywhere_All_at_Once

You're from Nowhere: Back to recognizable form... the relief of following the anaphor of "if" to describe what being from a place means by describing what it means not to.  Abby opens the door on what it means to be "long" enough in a place  so one has a sense of belonging.  I love poems that push beyond the original conceit like this one.  What is that flavor, how do we taste it, that sense of "knowing where you are"-- and what goes into knowing how to leave it?

October: perhaps one of the best poems I know about Fall that totally refreshes, intrigues, paints the glory of this season without tedium, over-sentimentality.  This little sonnet from 1870, skillfully uses enjambment to conceal the rhyme... the adjective choices... "spicy" for woods, "arch" for skies, "freighted" for river-ways-- indeed "freighted with color"... Without using the word "amaze", she creates amazement with words that end-rhyme with it in the first 8 lines,  alternating with with sun/run/one/done, and delightful textures of long O's for gold, fo-rest, slow, clicking chestnuts, the long A of escApe burning with that of blAze, mAze, wAys.The alternating rhyme (chance/assail) flows into embraced rhyme in the final four lines.

Judith filled us in on Helen Hunt Jackson and her work as Novelist and activist, her book Ramona, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramona  A thank you to Kathleen who brought her personal memory of this poem she recited at her father's funeral. 

Because Helen Hunt Jackson went to school with Emily Dickinson, it only seemed right to add Emily's witty commentary that would seem to compliment the Hirshfield poems.  Speech?  You think you know what your words are saying?  (I love the pp, alliteration of prank of parliament, as if to poo-poo those who think they know!) And Tears? indeed, a trick.  The motion of the 3rd line, "heart with the heaviest freight on" moves like a speeding locomotive, then is slowed down with large spaces and em-dashes ---

Over to you dear reader, to tell me what you make of all this!

Thanks to all for a wonderful romp with these poems!