Words by Pauli Murray
Nostalgia by Matthew Minicucci
Said by Perie Longo
Winter Grace by Patricia Fargnoli:
Moon Child by Ann Weil
The Need Is So Great by Jim Moore.
Nutshell:
Words: last week we discussed a different poem by Pauli Murray (Nov. 20, 1910-Jul. 1, 1985) and her inspiring life, not only forging ahead as activist changing politics and laws regarding civil rights, but demonstrating the courage it takes to defy society and its prejudices against African-Americans, especially as women, their right to be Priests, Lawyers and on top of that Lesbian.
In this spare, beautifully crafted poem, the repeated "words" of the title are coupled with how we use them. Unusual words like squander, wrought, hoard add layers of meaning. We discussed at length the variations of definitions of the word "wrought",
which not only has several meanings, but varies depending on the dictionary used! Wrought, as in wrought iron, or fashioned, shaped, created... but also to cause to change shape. What adjectives might you choose to describe "words"? We noted arrogant, angry, cruel and finally something more positive: comradely, an unusual word; shy could be positive or negative.
And then the brilliant last three lines: you cannot say slowly wrought words of love quickly. The somber tones prepare the arrival of thunderous... how brilliantly heartbreak, breaks as last word... this, we hoard.
The use of adjectives prompted Judith to bring up a story about Magical Adjective Box. (She's looking for the reference.)
Interesting that there is no inclusion of gentle, or tender. We know how powerful words can be... as did Pauli. She confirms the power of "morphemes: sounds which convey a meaning" (as Jim quoted). The full definition google provides:
phoneme: an indivisible unit of sound in a given language;
morpheme: the smallest linguistic unit withini a word that can carry a meaning, such as "un", "break", and "-able" in the word
unbreakable.
Nostalgia: If you were lucky to have an English teacher in 9th grade assign the Iliad and the Odyssey, you would recognize familiar tropes, like wine-dark sea. Without the poet's note, you might not guess this is one of many poems all sharing the same title and examining relationships, and complications between nostos (a coming home) and algos (pain). This quite different from the definition of "Nostalgia" as a sentimental longing, wistful affection for the past.
The sounds and images of the poem are carefully worked, but the overall effect was overwrought, most of us felt. Of note: cauter mark: in the poem it seems to indicate a mark made with a hot iron on the boat that would line up with the port from which it departed and wanted to return. Good phonetic liaison with never-nocked arrow waves, as in the Odyssey, Odysseus convinces Penelope to hold an archery contest among the suitors, using his bow, which only he could string. Lots of words... to which Judith responded reciting Hamlet,
“What are you reading?" Polonius asked.
"Words, words, words," said Hamlet.
"And what's the subject?"
"Lesser than the king, but still not nothing."
It took Polonius a moment to realize he had answered another meaning of 'subject.' "I mean what do you read about?"
"All in a line, back and forth." said Hamlet. "I go from left to right with my mind full, and then must drop it there and head back empty-headed to the left side again, and take up another load to carry forward. It's a most tedious job, and when I'm done, there are all the letters where I found them, unchanged despite my having carried them all into my head.”
With an opening line "The worst part of it is that I've forgotten your face"... and an ending line
"it's the worst part of forgetting, all this remembering", it reminded many of Abbott and Costello: Who's on first? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZksQd2fC6Y
"All that forgetting is quite convenient..."
Said: a fun poem, as ridiculous as the Abbott and Costello repetitions, but also, sad, as we know people who sling words about this way and hurt each other... One person remarked, it was the woman who pointed the finger at the man with an accusatory YOU... Ah... we could go into the parallels between what we THINK we said, or WANT when the words and intentions don't line up for the receiver.
Moon Child: Using 1960's food, astronautic and space vocabulary, the perfect "model American family" at first you might think it isn't headed for dysfunction a child would want to escape. First clue: the Max Factor lipstick (electric pink) perfectly applied, "promptly at 6" the house, having been swept, dusted is also "martini'd . The family's crisp white edges curl..."
It is a sad sarcasm leading up the fact that what should be a well-ordered planetary system, ceases to rotate around the sun.
Rose Marie brought in the angle of the immigrant delighting in a bonafide BLT, not the healthy Italian sandwiches her mother made.
Winter Grace. https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/12/patricia-fargnoli-winter-grace.html Very much the spirit of Rilke.
The title announces a spiritual element... grace... and perhaps what is given but not necessarily deserved. The gifts of being truly present in the moment are gently developed, and then the poem drops this idea of "being barely protected from the galaxies"... a quite unusual image. I cannot see the stars from our apartment, only sometimes a bright planet or the moon, if no clouds. If you think of all this molten energy bursting into stars high around us in space, indeed, it is astounding that we can safely live on our little planet which seems so big to us... but in the grand scale of things, a tiny dot of happenstance.
Woah!!!! My mind is overwhelmed, trying to imagine all that. So I return to the quiet of the dark, grateful for the stillness. Grateful for a moment of solitude, grateful that among us human beings, are those who try to understand the cosmos... or artists, musicians, poets who interpret what "being held fast by darkness" could mean. Fargnoli invites us into a meditative states. So much of mass media seems to send the message that solitude is not OK, and here, we have the counter weight.
It was wonderful to hear many share experiences of the positive benefits when alone. Imagine a murmuration of birds arriving
to cover a naked tree, or again, snow on the same barren branches.
What are the duties of the spirit?
In The Need is so great, I love how he cleverly repeats the title in the 4th couplet, introduced by "But". Indeed, we all could make a list of "needs that are so great"...
but we've had time in 4 couplets to put on his shoes, look out the window, listen to Bach... and finally he clues us in: It's the need is for the way light looks/as it takes its leave of us. But even then, he's not really going to address what this leaving is... this passing. And then the last stanza, look how he repeats
"The way light falls on the last//of the stricken leaves --" The stricken sounds so brutal... and yet... the light, "is something to behold"...
We all felt reassured... sure, we all know this familiar scene, Fall to Winter... life to death... But we all can feel that awe when the light strikes a certain way. The discussion confirmed what Jim Moore says: What matters, has already happened -- and will go on happening.
Many of us find comfort and release in that. All one needs to do, is be on the lookout for beauty. Hug the friends and dear ones.
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