Nov. 1-2

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0OtWYNfXoWHEN THE NIGHT WIND HOWLS-- by: W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

After the Opera by Richard Schiffman

The Nature of Memory by Major Jackson 

An Ox Looks At Man by Carlos Drummond de Andrade translated by Mark Strand

The Listening World by Hannah Emerson

The Creative Drive by Catherine Barnett

The Sentence by Nathan McClain

A thank you to Judith for her choice of Halloween spirit  in the Gilbert and Sullivan opener and wonderful costume!

We all seemed to be in good spirits and were trading quotes and quips such as this one:

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.  It is good that we can poke fun at ourselves!

After the Opera:  More ghoulish  flavor in this one, twisting funny with an underpinning of perhaps a quite serious message about our part as "actors on the stage" of this world.  The description of the various players and implied plots could indeed be headlines from the daily news... with the exception that there

is no "end of the play", no curtain call.  The clever ending has an unusual comparison for the crowd,

and quite original idea of a God who might be "beyond the footlights of the world". 

The Nature of Memory:  Although the poem deals with memory, flashback, perhaps it could be a different title, for instance that line"If there is another world".  What a vivid and wonderful picture he paints for us of his children... which contrasts strongly with the  confessional first two lines which allude to "twice-broken, knife-scarred", and insinuation of a childhood that doesn't resemble the one his children experience.  The underpinnings of being a black man and facing the unspoken extra layers of struggle that implies are there.  "If there is another world," ... but he does not complete the thought, but rather stays in the struggle of "falling into the light", the "ping-pong", understanding the undersides of storm edging up the coast.  For sure, there is no doubt about the immense and powerful love he has for his children, his desire for their well-being.  It is a beautiful wish... and for sure, not a given.  The mention of

"a clumsy series of human foibles" has the very sound of the churn he has been conditioned to expect.

An Ox Looks at Man:  Why an Ox is a great question and started off quite a discussion which included  the Taoist paintings of an ox teaching a path to enlightenment.  Ox as beast of burden as well, shackled by man; Ox as present at the birth of Christ.  It is wonderful to read this point of view of the animal we call "dumb", who is given a chance to speak about his observations about man.  We do not come out well in such a description.  We wondered about the parenthesis:  (one minute) -- perhaps to show our changeability, our melancholy, one minute,  grace another?  (What do we know) -- who is "we"?  Is the Ox including itself

in the overall picture of living beings?  The "chewing away at truth" is a perfect ending, particularly after the enigmatic mention of the "sounds that scatter and fall like troubled stones and burn the herbs and the water"

The Listening World:  You might not guess that this brilliant poem was written by an autistic child.

Rhymes of prayer/lair --the one, a command to pray for little things ... the other  with its double meaning of lair as  burial but also den of a fierce, dangerous animal -- what is hidden, concealed. 

The sensitivity to what lives in deep hurt, the repeat at the end of "deep" but as question seems to imply her careful listening.     Is the ear deep or deeper than such hurt?  Mike (Rundel) brought up an anecdote of an autistic child commenting on "normal" people.  "How can you talk so much and miss all that is

happening in your mind." (Rather like the Ox commenting on people.)   We discussed "light", as enlightened but also the opposite of heavy, buried.  Let it signal:  the it could be the prayer for little things, or perhaps language (feelings language take to lair: an odd syntax.  Language takes?  Feelings take ).

A perfect example of a poem which leaves you moved, but also woven in a sense of mystery.

Some felt a perfect sequel to Major Jackson's poem.

The Creative Drive:  It seems funny, but it isn't...  What is it we value?  What else could you substitute for "poem"?  "We've created a system that is not healthy"... line break, stanza break  "for poems".

The celebration of poems which stay... "as a gorgeous marker of time" seems quite serious.

Why the title? 

The Sentence:  without the note, we might not understand the serious purpose of this poem.

What breaks us?  breaks the sentence? The "understood you" perhaps in the two word line,

You understand.  How do you say this sentence?  Where do you put emphasis?  What tone?

We agreed, the wry sarcasm certainly gets us thinking about jail sentences false accusation, the whole system of "justice".