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
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
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.
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