Poems for January 25

The Lifeline   by Pádraig Ó Tuama (pronounced Porig O Toomey); 

What's in My Journal by William Stafford; 

Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats  by Walt Whitman; 

Nothing is Lost,  by Noel Coward; 

The Power of Clothes  by Grace L. Park; 

Arabic by Danusha Laméris; 

Tying the Knot by Kathleen Dale

Nutshell of discussion: 

The Lifeline:  We all appreciated this take on what keeps us keeping on as we age, and many shared personal stories, like Polly's unpitted cherry pie made with very-rolled dough, and uncooked in the woodstove and how her brother still  ate it all... We enjoyed singing There once was a man named Michael Finnigan, he grew whiskers on his chin-igan, the wind came up and blew them in-again, poor old Michael Finnigan, begin again... which of course, one repeats, going faster and faster each successive time! Again appears at the the beginning... (when that bell tolls again) and waits until the last two lines, to repeat again  4 more times after he pulls out all his organs once/again.  Begin.  Again.  

We went on at length of examples of doing something... citing that something worth doing, is worth doing badly than not at all... to figure out as in Tarkington story The Conquest of Canaan:  the heroine (very poor at the beginning) has an elderly father who is trying to be a painter.  They come into money and go off to France where he learns "how they did it." (I believe he uses the same device in the Magnificent Ambersons.)   Blood eagle sacrifices... habits... the double meaning of terrible with an underpinning of "awe"in awful.   Many liked Marna's suggestion to start the poem with the last stanza first... but however the discussion went, it was clear everyone had experience figuring out a lifeline... and how easy it is to forget what you have learnst before... or compare your echoes with other people's happiness.  Who knows if what you think you see mirrors their reality?  As for the "self-operation" of pulling out the organs, stuffing them in again,  we enjoyed the loaded (implied)  metaphor of "pull out all the stops", or the Octo or Nonagenarian "organ recital".  

What's in My Journal:  a perfect follow-up of the odds and ends at our disposal that provide raw material to write again.  Maura showed her journal with the skillful drawings of an Eagle, a duck, a flower, and an Ass and her associations with each one.  Interesting that Stafford uses the adverb, terribly next to  inevitable life story... His writing practice, indeed,  his lifeline. 

Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats :  What a title!!!!  To personnify them and then, use the parentheses to carry on a little internal dialogue, is a brilliant treatment of how to cope with degredations, meannesses, broken resolutions...   It reminded Judith of Cyrano's final speech and last dying word, "mon panache"  the daring brilliance he insisted on that no one could take away from him.  For those not familiar with Rostand's play: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/cyrano-de-bergerac/themes/panache

Nothing is lost: Judith remarked this was not the typical Noel Coward we know, but shares the horrible loneliness of being a gay man, which could not be addressed.  The layering of meaning in "lie", repeated twice in the second line gallops into an enumeration of what is in our guts and deep subconscious in 11 lines.  There they all are, the legendary lies and he continues another enumeration of 11 lines.  The rhyme scheme is very present, but irregular and the sound palette rich indeed.  You need to read the whole poem before understanding what tone to adopt to read the title.  

The power of clothes: I provided the footnote given by this 15 year old poet about the Korean form Sijo.  People quite enjoyed the clever and fresh glimpses she shares of her life which lead to the larger universals of the power of appearances, choices of clothes dictated by circumstances.  We change our identities on the outside.  The last line puns on "skipping" -- both the playful child in us, but also the part of us that wants to "skip out" of the obligations those suits require.

Arabic:  Although she is not Arabian, she knows the culture and quotes the Arab saying, "Sad are only those who understand."  Lovely images of childhood in the first 13 lines.  An echo of "Those Winter Sundays", (Robert Hayden) "what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices."   Later, we hear a memory -- we don't know who the man is... perhaps one of those she lost... and the beautiful crux of the poem: how the bones of the language hold the beloved in our bodies.  Like clothes, we are different people with different languages.  

Tying the Knot:  Graeme summarizes: "Pure love poem" .  Beautifully laced metaphor of a cowboy rope and wedding vows.  Elaine was reminded of her own story of spelunking...

Indeed, this set of poems brought up so many personal memories. 

A good poem makes you glad to read it, because you want to thank the person for setting down the words... for letting you know you are not alone, because you too have had a similar feeling, no matter the details.