Happy Spring, Easter and other Religious Feasts, and April Fools. It's also poetry month! I shared the poster from the American Academy of Poets: https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/get-official-poster
see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IakNtGqVIA Richard Blanco reads "Betting on America" The poem below from How to Love a Country, 2019. See:Mother Country: https://poets.org/poem/mother-country
Poems: blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton 1936 –2010; Hope by Lisel Mueller; Last stanza of Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop, Miami yet Maine by Richard Blanco, Complaint of El Río Grande by Richard Blanco, Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day by Delmore Schwartz, The Country by Billy Collins
Summary:
Blessing of the Boats: this is on the National Poetry Month poster! https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/get-official-poster Paul heard an echo of the Irish prayer, "May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be at your back, ending with and may "God hold you in the palm of His Hand". Indeed, but adds much more! Coupled with the young girl in her bright red dress ready to enter that water-- ah... in her innocence! may she... may we all, may you "sail through this... to that". Clifton starts with the tide entering, but then the wish is for action-- to kiss the wind -- then turn from it certain it will love your back.
A lovely choice for an uplifting poem for National Poetry Month.
Hope: I feel strongly we are in need of hope these days. It is the one thing we all can share-- and in sharing, feel stronger. The poem itself is brilliant -- the strong verbs: explode, sprouts, inflates; the delightful description of hope as motion that runs/from the eyes to the tail of the dog... the choice of adjectives. I had put the poem in columns which made a few words "dangle" -- which was not in the original. However, we did note that there is no indentation in the final stanza. Here, Mueller "tells it straight" where hope is gift, refutes death, invents the future, is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; Emily spoke of people who have given up on the planet, on efforts to make a more just world and feel there is "no hope". We agreed. They need to read this poem! As Mike put it, " Life is hope itself, gives us the courage to handle things as best we can... to create, to connect... Hope is close to trust as the only things that keeps us going." Neil was reminded of Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine. (If you want a quick brush up, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1627774-dandelion-wine)
excerpt from Questions of Travel: This is not the whole poem which perhaps might have helped the reference to "crudest wooden footwear". See: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/questions-of-travel/ I wanted to set up the Richard Blanco poems, since he referred to it in a reading from his latest book, Homeland of My Body. What does it mean "to travel"? How do we travel? What questions come up for you? In the last stanza we looked at, Bishop sets up a careful juxtaposition between clogs (for traveling) and cages; Susan brought up the amazing painting in the Memorial Art Gallery called 3 Fujin by Hung Liu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Fujins Here, three concubines are seated, unable to move, their faces like masks, the background dripping paint like "weak calligraphy" and bird cages come out of their knees. What connections can exist in history? For many of us, we have thought of travel as a physical choice. Judith brought up the New England attitude of Thoreau who said, "I traveled widely, in Concord" where travel is a opening of awareness to what is around us. "Is it lack of imagination that makes us come/to imagined placed, not just stay at home?" Such a curious question. We discussed the various angles implied. The choice is "never wide and never free". We don't choose where we were born, certainly emotions turn us to make choices, such as love in Bishop's case, (carrying her to Brazil). Our choices are shaped by society... and even with our imagination we think free, that too has been "whittled" and perhaps devoid of song, although the cage is for a songbird. The poem ends with the poet speaking, reading what she has written in the sudden golden silence after 2 hours of unrelenting oratory. Pascal's philosophy indeed contains the statement" "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone". Rather like Descartes, "Je pense donc je suis" (I think therefore I am). The big question is "what makes us real-- " and this balance between the heart and mind (The heart has reasons of which reason cannot know.).
We ended by discussing where we feel at home.
Miami yet Maine: I love that M, I A are letters that spell both places. The poem tugs lie a tide back and forth, the p's of the soft harp of snow plucking pine... lulling to peace... (Maine) and the bongo and rhythms of rain rapping rooftops (Cuba). In this intimate poem, Blanco does not hide his vulnerability, where "queer childhood" declares his homosexuality, prepares us for the English of his husband, he responds to in Spanish. It is a beautifully sensual poems filled with scents, and tastes of food. The tug of childhood, where lavender clouds swaddle mountain peaks... with his dying father, his head cradled in his hand... Although... still... Despite... Though... a thread pulls him through, birth to death, what lives, no matter where you end up, when you die.
Complaint: This is a formerly popular variety of poem that laments unrequited love, or tells of personal misfortune, misery, injustrice. See La Complainte Rutebuef (late 13th century) or Ronsard, "Complainte contre fortune (1559). Here, it is the River Rio Grande speaking. We remarked the flow of the poem, like a river, which carries the message -- "I was meant for all things to meet" -- both in the opening line and first line of the final stanza. Have you ever imagined what air a river breathed, the sounds it heard long before we were born? Blanco does not mention pollution, and I'm glad for the detail "the clouds pause in the mirror of my waters, to be home for fallen rain... " and its power to "turn eons/of loveless rock into lovesick pebbles, carried as humble gifts back/to the sea which brings life back to me."
Then, two stanzas of what mankind has done -- inventing maps, borders, defining mine, yours,/ us vs. them/ and disregard for life whose worth is relative. You can hear the pain of the river protesting what it was never meant to be.
We felt that Blanco is the river, his voice painting the natural world... for how else could he give it such voice?
Calmly we walk: Delmore Schwartz, 1913-1966, wrote this poem in 1937. This brilliant poem addresses the passing of time, like a piece of music, one senses the dynamics, the tones contained in the parenthesis. The first "that time is..." is a statement. The second time it is repeated, the emphasis seems to be on "that", where the pronoun changes from "we" to "they". Judith immediately recalled François Villon, "Où sont les neiges d'antan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_des_dames_du_temps_jadis.
Calmly we walk? We might look calm on the outside, but fully caught in time, that fire in which we burn. For Schwartz, bipolar, sadly, his short life ended badly.
The Country: We ended on a light note and roared at Billy Collins' wit. Very much the spirit of "Tout va bien Mme. la Marquise" (Tom Lehrer does a fine translation: https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/all-is-well.pdf . People recalled Wallace & Grommet and mice taking a rocketship up to the moon to taste the green cheese, ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5HmJaRhf4
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