Why We Make Bread by Abby Murray
Summons by Aurora Levins Morales
pitter/patter by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
Study Electricity, etc. by David Kirby
Bread by Abby Murray
Without Name by Pauli Murray
Nutshell of discussion:
In this series, the poems use daily, simple, mundane things to weave the stuff and staff of life.
What better start than to start and end with Bread?
The two poems by Abby Murray remind us that in the end, our job, to survive, requires that we eat,
no matter that it be the end. In the first poem Why We Make Bread, the accent is on the prime ingredient: flour. The list of what is doesn't do, becomes a mirror of how humans hold grudges, draw borders, defend dictators. It might be helpful to see how it is needful, how it blesses, reminds us to listen to the voice in our gut. We did puzzle about "flour different outdoors, "cooked up like a cloud over /burning paper"... and yet, the idea of bread rising into a cloud-shaped naan, cooked in over an open kindled by paper might "rise to mind". In Italy and France, bread is the metaphor for kindness and goodness, and as the ultimate,
as opposed to America's "good as gold". The poem takes us away from the insanity of the world, kneads in the essential, universal element that feeds us all.
For Bread, the repeated anaphor never tires out and although the poem is lengthy, the common denominator of bread becomes the thread that weaves religions, social classes, memories, traditions, the sick, dying, the nourishment no matter what cost or measure of suffering. We had quite the chuckle of the Wonderbread of the 50's spread with PB and J as opposed to today's gluten-free, nut-free, oat-free, trans-fat-free, etc. earth-brown bread... Fairy tales, mice, are included as examples of uses and recipients; strings of adjectival phrases such as "eat-it-outside-where-the shopping-carts-are-kept" bread, and "dip-it-in-anything-and-it-will-taste-better" bread, "you and me bread, soft beneath the crust bread."
No matter what bread... indeed, the last words, "lick it off your palm/crumb by crumb if you have to"...
Not just bread, but all that nourishes. Richard remarked the role of bread as continuum, whether on the communion wafer on the tongue of the living or dying.
Summons: Nothing legal about the title, but quite a summons to activism! We agreed that there may be some leaders who dare to "say every life is precious" -- but not enough. A novel idea to send out a dream to call grandmothers, mothers, all people who care about our earth, care about living in peace with each other with empathy. Perhaps could be shortened. Distracting "You who are reading this, I am bringing
my bandages and a bag of scented guavas... the tunes" -- and yet, an invitation to the reader to think what to do, what to bring, what tune...when we "Meet me at the Corner".
pitter/patter: the poem could be read as a series of haikus... full of sensual sounds and immediacy.
The repetition of "relish" -- three times... relish the silence... tomorrow... the memory. Tomorrow repeated three times at the end, reminded me of MacBeth, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. It's all just another day, one after the other. A succession of tomorrows."
If we say, "another day"... usually it is not cause for hope... but here, we have energy of children, the welcome contrast when they sleep... and yet we miss all they were once gone. "Every generation a temporal fugitive/running from the death grip" has an undertone of refugees, victims trying to flee;
the continuation, "yesterdays/we weren't meant to make it through" has an underlying hint referring to those deemed unfit to survive, yet do. It helps to know the poet faced many closed doors as both queer and disabled.
Study Electricity, Etc. : I don't recall Gatsby's "self-improvement schedule" mentioned in the title and epigraph. However, a very clever poem exposing the essential glue provided by "et ceteras". Interesting that the poet doesn't talk about himself, but his wife and all she does. For him, "etc" is the hundred unrecorded daily ways in which we care for ourselves and others with patience and love."
We discussed what makes a poem valuable... for sure an emotional hook and something which grabs our interest. A lovely "Et Cetera" of poetry perhaps.
Without Name: Call it... or call it X or Y or Z -- this is not an oppositional either/or but an expansive list of options for a powerful feel of love, of deep connection. "Let this seed... be without name" reinforces the vulnerable fragility of strong emotion, which nonetheless persists in the repeated echoes.
Some saw guillotines and revolutional times in the "plough blade" -- I don't think the earth trembles for it,
but we immediately sense the bursting of the clasp of too long winter.
The biography of the poet reveals a complicated and painful past, a struggle to be accepted as trans, as African-American, and a remarkable history of activism and practice of law that made an important mark.
