Poems for May 22-23

 Your Blinded Hand, by Tennessee Williams; Duplex for the Sick and Tired, by Kay Ulanday Barrett; Conservation Status by Penny Boxall; The Silken Tent by Robert Frost; Wading by Jesse Wallis; Journey by Train by May Sarton; The 'Ode to Man' from Sophocles' Antigone  by Anne Carson

Nutshell:

Your Blinded Hand:  How can a hand be "blind"?   Is the hand a stand-in for a guide?  Often seers are blind, relying on insight and visions as opposed to physical sight.  We use "hand" in so many metaphorical ways,  such as "lending a helping hand", or praising the craftsmanship of work by hand.  But here, the injury implied by "blinded" perhaps speaks to some violence and maiming.  With the background of fire, the earth afire, flames everywhere, finding "the other's hand" is akin to hope. Then again, the poems points out, "this might not be so" and indeed, it seems against all odds they might hear the cry of the other. 

I am reminded by Archibald MacLeish of the power of a poem to do what a prose passage cannot, mainly, bring us into the territory of the heart.  As Pascal says, "Le coeur a les raisons que la raison ne connaît point".  The heart has reasons, Reason cannot know.  Blinded—by someone or something  so as not to be able to see? At first it seems it is only "your blinded hand".  The poem ends that "each would find a blinded hand" -- so the poet's hand too has been maimed.  

We discussed at length how pulled in we were by the repeats: The opening "Suppose", the insistance of "I must still believe",  the nuances of the repeated words "this moment". Some thought of atomic destruction; others thought of Williams' past, the horror of his abusive father, the lobotomy of his sister whom he loved so dearly.

Powerful, powerful.  We must reach for each other's hands.

Duplex:  The form, created by Jericho Brown allows a play of saying something two ways with the  end line of a couplet repeated as the first of the next.  The opening line is the closing line (with slight variation). It reminded some of the step by step story where "to do X, I had to Y... and to do Y, I had to..." There could be the literal "sick" and the literal "tired" or all manner of "sick & tired" that longs to be free.  We loved the idea of "salve"-- how it melts, is absorbed... has a biblical sense of salvation... allows us to salvage... This poem sings and salves!!!

Conservation Status:  cool cleave poem... the sparseness allows us to play with the form-- to express serious matters of climate change.  It came up that trees aren't the only thing endangered.  So is silence! Paul provided us with a philosophy 101 lesson about the first question posed in logic which leads to arguments for the existence of God...  "what is the sound of a tree falling" -- which requires details to avoid subjective answer. Judith was reminded of the tirade about Cyrano's nose -- you might enjoy seeing it here with subtitles: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Cyrano+%2b+tirade+du+nez&mid=5AD560AC0F0CB3A511E85AD560AC0F0CB3A511E8&FORM=VIRE

Marna recommended this children's book, Be a Tree: https://mariagianferrari.com/books/be-a-tree/

The Silken Tent: After Robert Frost's wife Elinor passed away, Frost wrote this beautiful love poem about his relationship with Kay Morrison, a married woman.  We had quite the discussion about ropes, tents and the importance of accuracy!  I love that this sonnet is only one sentence long. 

Wading:  Beautiful villanelle-- symmetric to the eye which is not always  the case with this form.  The poetic comparison of this perfect moment to a poem was not unnoticed in the 5th stanza, but everything about the poem feels natural as if there were no form involved. 

Journey: Great vocabulary but only here and there rhythm that lends a sense of traveling.  The rhyme doesn't interfere with the meaning as much as that intrinsic sense of rhythm. 

Ode to Man: Is it an "anti-ode"?  What is the "quiet customer" of man refusing to say?  Fabrications notwithstanding, there is this problem of how man "dooms"... speaks with thought "as clear as complicated air", which is no eloge to man.  Her translation is quite different from Heidegger's:

Poor Antigone:  She does everything right... but caught in the wrong circumstances. 

To compare Carson to Heidegger:  https://blog.we-imagine.net/2013/10/heidegger-vii-ode-on-man-in-sophocles.html

Other sites:  

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/08/antigonick-anne-carson-review

https://www.123helpme.com/essay/Analysis-Of-Antigone-By-Sophocles-Ode-To-FJ95FDKWADV

I enjoyed Linda Reinfeld's comments, who sees Carson’s Ode  more as a a poem inspired by Antigone than a translation. 

"I can’t say I understand it, but it gives me the shivers, it’s complicated, it confronts the hardest and least understandable ending we all face." 

I am deeply delighted br the way she writes about man subduing the earth.  The excitement! The specificity!  It’s easy to forget the joy human beings feel when they conquer nature. Not necessarily bad. Think airplanes. Think bridges. Think the power of healing! She gets the “high” of conquering, at the same time she sees the evil of it. 

It’s  Death who’s hilarious in high city, not man .  Man is quiet in relation to what he kills, not quiet in what he creates. Cities, laws, god, complications. Man has “utterance” and concepts of morality. Death doesn’t. 

I think one point of the poem is that the initial implication man is to earth as death is to man is only partly true. 

Actually, in this poem not true at all.  Death does not subdue man for his own use; Death has no reason; Death is not complicated; Death is a whole Other Thing.