If I Should Come upon your house lonely in the West Texas Desert by Nathalie Diaz and 6 poems by Virginia Elson from her book And Echoes for Direction (published 1987)
-- Title poem; Admission; Everything Lodges with me Here; Thumbing the Scales; How Stars and Hearts Grow in Apples; "If Satan in Falling from Heaven Had Swerved Slightly"
Nathalie Diaz : I had footnoted this poem as one of the two shared in an interview with Louise Erdrich discussing The Sentence, a novel which addresses the plight of Ojibwa and Indigenous people along with a strange ghost story taking place in a bookstore and portrait of complex marriage. In the interview, Nathalie read from her book Postcolonial Love poem . Last week we discussed "Manhattan is a Lenape World". In If I should come across, she creates the feeling of the American SW desert, the wide, empty spaces, big sky and role of light. There is a physicality to the sense of hunt, and yet, the poem embraces the larger question of "loneliness" in the title: it could be the house that is lonely, the imagined lover, or the narrator as well. A sense of purpose, but understanding the risk of possible frustration.
To quote Neil Postman about metaphor: It is not an ornament, but an organ of perception. The "lasso of headlights" indeed, loops the light around someone who feels imaginary, wished for but with a strange tension of longing, the ache of yearning and perhaps fear of confronting such intimacy. A detail supporting this : the speaker describes being at the end of this lasso, wrapped "three times around my hips horned with loneliness", asks to be reeled in. Later after a sensuous, orgasmic description (I will enter the door of your throat..." lie down in you; eat at the red table of your heart) the speaker softens "pat your hand on your lap, lighted by the topazion lux of the moon" but then, surprise. Until then, where are you? She has imagined what she would say... sit here. Here I still am-- but there's a sense of abandonment... did it ever happen? could it ever happen to be so close to another? The poems starts and ends with headlights, but ends with her "riding the night/on a full tank of gas... and one senses the pulse of a horse's gallop, a sense of power, and then, intense loneliness... those headlights/are reaching out for something. The poem ends, conveying a feeling of power and loneliness.
Everyone was impressed by this powerful poem. The italicized words, of what she imagines this lover saying have a mysterious resonance: This is not your new house, but I am your new home. Then, after she turns the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off, on his bedside table, "There is nowhere to go if you are already here." Some felt a heart-breaking tenderness but also a sense of violent confrontation with intimacy in the line "break all your chairs to pieces". It could be overly energetic encounter, or perhaps the breaking refers to the heart -- a risk for both. Vulnerable, desiring to be lassoed together, reeled through the "bluestem prickly poppy, yucca bells -- dust-lit stairs of a desert in bloom. Her imagery is stunning.
Many interesting associations. Those who know the desert felt Diaz created it perfectly. Judith brought up dance connections and how important it is to know the indigenous culture to truly understand the rodeo dance as one of "going great distances". Also mentioned was the novel "End of Drum Time". https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60741781 and Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/
I shared with the group the epigraph from The Sentence by the Korean Poet, Sun Yung Shin, who also lives in Minnesota and knows Erdrich. "From birth to time of death, every word you utter is part of one long sentence.". (from her poetry collection, Unbearable Splendor).
Virginia Elson: Forgive my typos. Yes, it is Elson with an L. Two poems p. 4 had 3 errors: Line 10 in How Stars was missing the "L" in gnarled; Stanza 2 in If Satan: planing (as in plane-ing, not planning) line 2 and starting line not startling 4th line.
Polly Nelson, who did the cover illustration (was required by the editor, Judith Kitchen to change her original charcoal to pen and ink to make it clearer, ) had Virginia Elson (freshly graduated from Columbia) as English Teacher in 10th Grade at Brockport High School. A remarkable teacher, and as we admired in the poems selected, a remarkable poet. Some might have heard of the UR teacher Linda Allardt and a few other poets Polly mentioned. (One name I believe was Adrien Stoutenburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Stoutenburg. Many lived near Smith Pond, and in the year 2000, Virginia gathered them for a poetry reading. She was editor of the review "Yes".
Title poem: And Echoes for Direction: A title like this, isolated makes me think of metaphorical direction: We all seek to head towards a place that will be worth getting to. Unlike bats, we do not rely on physical echoes, but we have our own set of metaphorical ones.
For those who have grown up distrusting bats, it might be hard to believe the almost rhapsodic description. Others called on exhibitions of photos of bats which would absolutely support a sense of magical singing creatures.
I love how beautifully Elson uses enjambment: "dangling", dangles; "suspended animation" hangs in place before dropping to the next line to continue. The title is repeated, but this way: And echoes (line break) for direction. Moreover, memory//recalling not the wild fling of changes—// these they'd always fled in fright —// The And makes the echoes part of the list of what bats know. The rhythms, the alliterations, the use of "foil and lift" which both could be nouns as well as verbs are nicely crafted to invite us into the special world of bats, so often associated with dark, with death, negative, spooky connotations. As one person put it, we are given a perspective on what other beings offer.
No one picked up on my prompt about memory as metaphorical echo. What might now be a wild fling of changes have perhaps overridden the once long pure tone sustained. She leaves us with the welcome openness of "mouths of bells" -- and even if "head down in sleep" the bats understand the singing.
Many titles of books came up: again https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Wild-Snail-Eating/dp/161620642X and books about bats, like Bats at the Beach, or Bats at the Library, (children's picture books by Brian Lies. In the 2006 book, bats flock to the beach to spend a splendid moon-lit night on the sand and in the water, echoing what people do at the beach—but in a particularly batty way. The message of the book is that bats are not badand of course I thought of Randall Jarrell, The Bat Poet. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/285151
Discussion included the etymology of "bats in the belfry" (crazy in the head) and Judith gave a long description of the intricacy of the mathematical patterns involved in bell ringing and campanology used in Dorothy Sayer's mystery Nine Tailors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Tailors.
Marna commented how she enjoys poems that send her to science, and filled us in on the sophisticated language bats "sing" which has its own particular grammar.
Admission: Whimsical. Elson doesn't tell us what is "welcome to cracks" at first, but elaborates the nature of them as places for "cornered dust, in-between spaces a homeowner might want to fix in sagging insultation, but which provide nest-room. Indeed, "Flaws in the structure of things" may not be flaws, but provide possibility to "breathe and breed"-- for instance "eggs of dreams". We enjoyed the echo of children's song, although the words are not "come out come out" but rather, come in, come. The poem offers a generous sense of inclusivity to what most home owners might try to dissuade admission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olly_olly_oxen_free#:~:text=%22Olly%20olly%20oxen%20free%22%20is,is%20on%20the%20field%20or We liked that "feeding two hungers" is not specified: It could be in the sense of sharing between the homeowner growing the beans with the deer eating them. Or it could be a doe and her fawn, or any number of combinations of deer.
Paul was reminded of Yeats, "The Stare's Nest by my Window" -- Indeed, part VI of this long meditation: https://www.poetryascommemoration.ie/poems/meditations-in-time-of-civil-war-by-w-b-yeats/
Everything Lodges with me Here: We are prepared by the poem before, Admission, that a home on a pond may have unwanted visitors. As one person remarked, "She writes about trash in such a positive way!". Trash as "secrets"? lost tackle, foundered bait pails, tires, beer cans now "calculated jetsam— carelessness and guile both windrows for my rake. There's a "meaty feel" in the ending referring to some city cottager: "I'll net me soundings deeper than the roots he'll have to pull come June". The "soundings" in the penultimate line hints at a different kind of depth than measure of water. We liked that the poet identifies the neighbor's shortcomings, but does not chide him for it. As the title infers everything lodges with her, in perhaps the Rumi sense of a "guest house".
Thumbing the Scales: Elson uses metaphor so skillfully -- and incorporates music -- and if you know about the art of bell-ringing, the title might make you think of "musical scales" -- although probably refers to the expression used for cheating: (allusion to a butcher who cheats customers by surreptitiously using a thumb to apply extra pressure to the scale when weighing meat to calculate the price.)
"So much for fact, which has/trim ways of balancing equations". Lovely slice of an enjambment to land on "trim"! The verb choice and alliteration sleet sliding; (which would seem to be part of a very loud storm) are lashed free/to swing /in silent carillon. So, metaphorical bells, metaphorical scales, and commentary on Spring with her own tricks with metaphor! It reminded some of Tennyson's "Ring out Wild Bells" in terms of the resonance, but this poem goes further, richer with the closing image of wild ice-harps, glass wind chimes ending in the soft sibilance of singing/sweet in the first warm sun this year. The "Thumbing" in the title calls forth the sound of thrumming, as in strumming a harp.
How Stars: As Elmer said jokingly, all about "core values", starts the alphabet with A and builds up! A beautiful description of the 5-star pattern of apple seed. Judith commended on Robert Graves' explanation of five as the symbol of the muse who reigns our earth, and poetry. Many recalled the fun of "apple prints" . Perfect closing line, not at all sentimental, nor falling in the "bad pun" department: This is the grown granddaughter witnessing the apple orchard of her grandfather, his foresight and wisdom, and the new graftlings he never knew -- a deep dimension to "spit out stars/by the mouthful, eating the heart out."
If Satan... The titlefrom John Hollander's review of Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence. Polly told us they studied Milton and were exposed to the eye-opener that once the Devil was in Heaven, and selected because you cannot appreciate the good without evil. It is generally assumed Satin rebelled against God in an attempt to become equal to God, but was expelled at the beginning of time.
It is a curious idea that maybe it was his plan to fall all along. And just what if he had been able to "veer off into original vastness"? We admired the nautical vocabulary, the assonance. My typo plane-ing, rhymes with vane, rather like those batwings. We remarked that jib is the sail, but a jibe is tactical manoeuvre to tack.
Maura provided us with a quote from Bob Goff: We are all rough drafts of the people we are becoming. (see: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Always-Becoming-Setbacks-Difficult/dp/0718078136)
It was refreshing to read such an excellent poet who said she is interested in the "recalcitrance of inanimate objects". I looked up that expression and found quite a wealth of associations. I'm not sure what Virginia meant by it however.
We wondered what spurred her imagination-- what books she read, or which ideas sparked her words. They are imbued with the senses with a sense of meaty robustness, the sounds corroborating by rounding out meanings
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