Center of the Universe by Hannah Emerson:
To Be a Person by Jane Hirshfield
I was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail
The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur
Hamlen Brook by Richard Wilbur
Bread and Butter by Gayle Brandeis
In the forest
a man sits
a tree stands high
Only a pair of boots,
a man’s only pair of boots.
Leather aches into a stiff lip,
chafes the space
mangled laces
barely close —
peasant boots —
artist’s boots —
mute mates.
One pulled up stark
watching the other
lip folded open
as if ready to speak.
A painting of boots,
one with a cow-thick tongue
hanging in the bleeding shadows
of a barn,
the other kicked off,
crumpled in fatigue.
The caked spring mud says
one man has been out
in the world, walking.
One flung to the bare floor,
empty of sinew and bone,
the other standing upright,
a sentinel
watching over its mate.
I was in a Hurry by Dunya Mikhail
We enjoyed the powerful recitation by Dunya in Arabic and English to the sound of the Arabic music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPCXnL_AQiA Note, she says, "glittering with dreams" not "scattered like".
Thank you Rose-Marie who mentioned she found it, recommended by Ilya Kaminsky and his sense of loss of country as Ukranian.
We all look at the current Gaza-Hamas-Israeli horror, and the complexity of "homeland". As for our own country, are we not also grieving how it seems "like a broken branch" -- that we haven't been noticing the need to help it?
Dunya's images paint images of refugees, the urgency of fleeing and this deep ache of longing for what had been home. Even if bad things happen in it, even if we are not in agreement with its leaders, it is still home.
Richard Wilbur:
“Wilbur’s poems matter not because they may or may not be stylish at any given moment but because they keep the English language alive: Wilbur’s great poems feel as fresh—as astonishing, as perplexing, as shocking—as they did 50 years ago.” -- James Longenbach
Wilbur also was an accomplished translator. I find poets who are fluent enough in other languages to be able to translate poetry, tend to be rather fine poets in their native tongue.
The Beautiful Changes:
What a pleasure to see such deft craftsmanship, the play of the word "changes" as noun and verb and the implication of "beautiful" as adjective applied to the fact of changes, as well as becoming the abstract noun of The Beautiful. The liquid l's create a swimming of sound, wading through this summer scene. The use of the verb TUNING, not turning, for the chameleon. The surprise of "the beautiful" which can change in "such kind ways", bringing in a human element of hand holding something that is not just for oneself... "wishing ever to sunder/things, and things' selves for a second finding" prepares us for the oooo sounds of lose,preceded as they are by you, blue Lucernes, tune, prove.
As Graeme put it, a nature poem on steroids-- but so beautifully more, plunging into a satisfying depth of thought and feeling.
Hamlen Brook:
We reveled in the inventive use of language, the rhymes which dart out and about like the trout, without being overly apparent. We all agreed flickèd should have been written with the è to indicate saying it as two syllables, suggesting flickered. Was it Elmer who said about rainbow trout-- "don't quarrel about the colors". Indeed a "flickèd slew of sparks and glittering silt... does the trick, along with the burnished dragon flies.
Jim called on his experience as canoe/kayak enthusiast who confirmed that indeed, especially on a blue-skied day paddling coming up to a stand of birch, it will seem to be a "white precipice."
How to take it all in??? I loved that Wilbur uses the word "trick" -- with Joy! The poignant ache of it,
like the Portuguese saudade or fado is beautifully told... something we recognize as common, but told in a beautifully uncommon way.
Bread and Butter:
It seems as if there are two poems here. The "how did anyone think of this" and know how to do it...
and then a slant love poem ...
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