Poems for June 19

 Poems referred to in Jane Hirschfield's lecture: Invisible Present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7ER2jmxt7E

Things That Might Have Been by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. A. S. Kline); The Other Tiger by Jorge Luis Borges; I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold by Janet Frame; Postscript by Seamus Heaney; One Train May Hide Another by Kenneth Koch; 

We did not go into detail about Jane's lecture, however, I introduced the Julia Hartwig poem she used at the end of it which summarizes the theme of the ungraspable, invisible, which gives us the promise of the possible and enables us to trust the world, even in a time of darkness.  

Feeling the Way by Julia Hartwig

The most beautiful is what is still unfinished

a sky filled with stars uncharted by the astronomers

a sketch by Leonardo a song broken off from emotion

a pencil a brush suspended in the air. 

(there is no punctuation, however, this does not mean you can't read it adding your own pauses!) 

Nutshell:

All the poems were used by Jane in her lecture.  Reading them outside the lecture, yet, imagining how they could support her thesis is a marvelous exercise!  I reminded everyone that as readers, indeed, we are participating in the creation of the meanings of a poem, allowing multiple possibilities and directions.

Things that Might Have Been:  We thoroughly enjoyed the possibility of turning tables on history.

It reminded Neil of a marvelous story in 1953, Bring the Jubilee  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_the_Jubilee

But there is more than naming of fabled Irish birds (you might enjoy reading about the Morrigan and others here: 

https://mythologyworldwide.com/the-mythical-birds-of-celtic-legends/#:~:text=The%20Morrigan%2C%20often%20depicted%20as%20a%20trio%20of,protection%20and%20the%20cycle%20of%20life%20and%20death

Borges makes no judgment about what is good or bad but rather entertains possibilities of directions.  That he adds a personal note to what might have been, makes the heart skip a beat:  "The child he never had".

There is no way to know how this child might have been, but it unlocks every wish and desire of wanting a child, loving this child, hoping and praying for the health and goodness of this child, and in turn, from this one particular, the same for the world.

The Other Tiger: Oh!  Poems about Tigers!  Blake, or Adrienne Rich and Aunt Jennifer's, or Amit Amit Dahiyabadshah:  "Tiger Poet" Founder of the movement Delhi Poetree 

 

Picture of Amit with Tiger paint on his face and for the book launch from November: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6R0HfUFSM  : go to minute 9:19 to hear him sing his own tongue. 

I thought also of TS Eliot and the Wasteland, "Who is the third who always walks beside you".  Judith was reminded of The Makers by Nemerov https://allpoetry.com/The-Makers.

Three stanzas, and three different tigers and themes.  Bernie noted the use of darkness.  Rose Marie reminded us of Borgès' appointment (1955) as Director of the National Public Library in Buenos Aires

(Library on line two could be this, but also a larger, abstract library).  The first stanza uses all the senses to create a tiger with no need for naming streams, remembering past, "only the vivid now".  Instead of saying nothing separates us from this Tiger, it is a richer nuance: "Curving oceans and the planet's wastes* keep us// apart in vain: (*wastelands : i.e. deserts) Such a clever enjambment on the part of the translator, landing on "apart" followed by contradicting the apartness!

Stanza 2, now evening fills my soul and we see the poet trying to transform it into a poem.  The very effort made to "fix the limits of its world" makes it fiction, not a living beast.  Many joined in remarks about language, our tool we have to try to express something, and yet fail; how as writer we feel the irresistible pull to write it down, knowing it is insufficient.  How it feels that living our experiences is the same way-- what are they if we cannot record them.. or worse, forget?

 

Stanza 3: we enter dream, subconscious.  Hunting the tiger... not just a third tiger, another and another, as Marna put it, an archetype of a tiger.  What beast is this that cannot be found in verse?

Janet Frame:  You can look up this New Zealand poet 1924-2004 and her troubled life.    Overall, we felt she shared her personal feeling of being unable to separate herself from "a devouring world" or master her life.  The "Yet, still", the in spite of it all, whatever the it, the strange incongruities of it, the final line repeats the opening line and one feels her circular trap repeating.

Postscript:  We appreciated Paul's gentle Irish inflection reading this.  The language is music and made some think of Yeats, the Wild Swans at Coole.  Jan remarked how the poem creates a scene that passes through us.  "You are neither here not there, a hurry though" is a beautifully apt definition of a human being.  Bernie filled us in on "buffetings", used by Zen practitioners to mean age, illness-- but given the softness of the f's "buffetings" are friends, messengers to help us deal with rigidities, let go of how we think we "ought" to be.

One Train May Hide Another:  Stream of consciousness, some might find annoying.  I thank Graeme for his honesty: it was laborious!  And yet, some found humor, pinches of wisdom. What stands in front of objects, feelings ideas... hides them... what's involved?  reputations, love, and ideas hiding each other which is terribly complex.  This as opposed to "Life is simple". I liked Mary's summary:  Think before you speak!   Somehow making things more complicated brought up Tristam Shandy and  Judith referred to James Joyce's ego, larger in conceit than God, which further brought up 16 June "Bloomsday".  

 

Poems for June 12

  

Something here about memory by Robin Walter ; Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C. Corral; Radishes by Ange Mlinko; (May 13, 2024 New Yorker); Mazel Tov by Jessica Jacobs; The Listeners  by Walter de la Mare (Also called "The Traveller" https://academic.oup.com/liverpool-scholarship-online/book/46324/chapter-abstract/405788807?redirectedFrom=fulltext); Watch by Robin Walter

Nutshell: 

We had ended the last session marveling at metrics which had Graeme offering the Walter de la Mare, and Judith wishing we had time to enjoy the Albert Noyes, The Highwayman. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman

 Since that poem is a good 3 pages long, I asked Judith to recite the first three stanzas to enjoy the beauty of the rhythms.

The poems seemed to have common threads to add to the weave of the theme of aging

Robin Walter:  The session opened and closed with this young poet from Colorado Springs.  She is interested in "inner knowing", well-connected to nature.  It was surprising to me that she is young, addressing "memory" which usually is a theme one finds in an older person.  

I admire her use of the em-dash, as if trying to start, to gather a thought, or later, interrupting it.

Her enjambments also have a similar "pause" before falling on the next stanza, but layering double meaning.  We enjoyed pondering "letter" as both letter of the alphabet, but also the epistle or message written... "body" both a physical body, but also the "body of a letter", and perhaps the collective body of all that goes into memory.  Some saw the poem as a way to address the difficulty of starting.  The clever

"letter that begins" opens up association with the sound of "b" repeated in begins, body, bearing, birth, and as Marna shared, a sense of  "to be" and "being" as a place of beginning.  We appreciated the reversal of the l and f in leaf, furl how they come together in itself.  

Mysterious, intriguing, and a poem where the overall feeling tone overrides any concrete "meaning".

The final poem, Watch, also uses the em-dash, and calls on a vowel, which could be the a in watch.

Beautiful music of the opening couplet "the faithful shadows/swivel around forest floor" and we discussed at length the adjective "threshing" for the sun.  Watch, as noun, as verb, perhaps as time-keeper, and a sense of dropping leaves and these "edges" -- tilting the "vowel skyward" to mirror the energy of the sun. 

Self-portrait:  Brilliant poem filled with movement, surprises !  It made many in the group want to write such a self-portrait!  How might you be as drumroll, watermark and fable... and weaving the snarls of a wolf through your hair like a ribbon! What an opening... leading to jigsaws and performing an autopsy on his shadow.  I might as well write out the whole poem!  Complex... as human beings are... twice a mention of black, once as fish, another as a piano melting like  slab of black ice as his touch.

We discussed Opalescent and how it conveys the shimmer of varying colors, rather like Seurat's "Le Cirque", and orphic with overtones of the musician/poet... the scraping sound of sk in skinned and scarlet--followed by threshold... then a ghost undressing.  It all works.  A sense of exhuberance, triumph, celebration, unconventional -- as Emily put it, a bit like the manic phase of bi-polar... but ever so appealing!

Radishes: more words... like camber (tilt of the road...) and what really worked in the read-aloud, 

were insertions by people reading:  "looks like my battery's low" in the 4th stanza that mentions "sensation wanes with age" ... and we all repeated clog my drain-stopper out of context to apply to losing a place,

to cheer "up with cucumbers" and celebrate the use of all the senses, the playful raw/war spell, repeat of rosy cheeks, snow... and the alliterative filial and feral. Definitely about aging... losing the taste of spice, the knife, whether intellect or physical prowess, duller.

We listened to the poet reciting the poem-- which sounded quite insipid.  If recited dramatically, it would be quite a different piece!

Mazel Tov:  We enjoyed the circular first word, and sense of beginnings and ends repeating.  What are constellations but imaginary lines to illustrate stories that give meaning to the stars?  We discussed "sentimental" and whether the lines about darkness were convincing.   The clincher lines, -- the space between stars... lines we draw to shape the absence... and  dying... and not knowing we are. I love the blessing.  May we find reason indeed, to open our door to the dark... notice the stars...

The Listeners:  Graeme had proposed this poem and read it beautifully.  Someone brought up that Robert E. Lee's horse was called "Traveller".  

We ended with a discussion about how a group of poems carries along poems we might not have noticed, adds energy to create a much bigger sense of a poem than if it stood alone.  

Like the collective power of memory.

We discussed as well the word "redemptive"... what makes a poem feel so?

June 5

Grace by Orlando Ricardo Menes; [ode to the water beneath Kapūkakī also known as Red Hill] by Jake Eduardo  Vermaas; Borrow by Sarah McCartt-Jackson; Parable by Nickole Brown; Perceptive by B. K. Fischer; The Land of Beginning Again by Louisa Fletcher

 I wish to thank "Poem-a-Day" curator for the month of May, No'u Revilla.  She is  an ʻŌiwi (Hawaiian) poet and educator, born and raised on Maui.  Revilla says that she gravitated toward poems “that do not look away” from the reality of our world, and, in that witnessing, offer a comfort that keeps “our tenderness alive. She prioritizes aloha, collaboration, and gratitude in her practice. Her debut book Ask the Brindled (Milkweed Editions, 2022) was a winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series.  The 2nd and 3rd poem were her picks.  

I wish also to call attention to more eco poetry:https://poets.org/poem/2022-2023-laureate-fellows-collaborative-poem and to the poetry collection "Ceive" from which the poem "Perceptive" is drawn.  https://shopthemarketplace.com/get-it-now/product/ceive-by-b-k-fischer-paperback-target-d81ceb   I love that Fischer uses just the root, Ceive, in the title (to found, get).  Note how it changes with the prefix:  re: again.  It can refer to both tangible and intangible things. When you conceive something, such as an idea or plan, you form, imagine, or create it. If you deceive, trick, etc.  To "perceive" means to become aware or conscious of something through the senses or mental processes. 

All of the poems discussed thoughtfully present the crisis we are facing because of lack of careful stewardship of our planet. One person brought up Birchbark Canoe: https://www.amazon.com/Birchbark-Canoe-Living-Among-Algonquins/dp/1552091503 and the fact that the Indigenous People in our country have always known how to work with nature for the good of all.

From another poet, Trebbe Johnson, who founded Radical Joy in 2009, responding to the grief of wars and destruction of the environment: “Imagine people all over the world taking time to pay attention to places that have become damaged or endangered… visiting them, sharing stories, making gifts for them, and even ‘adopting them’ by caring for them on a regular basis.” (See https://radicaljoy.org)

 

Nutshell

Grace: 

In 18 lines the poet explores Grace by contrasting it with money, legal systems, creeds:

you cannot buy it, swap it for gold or "hedge" it against bad luck. The poet describes it as

asymmetric, immanent, absolute, unpredictable.  Without using the word paradoxical, the poet shows it also as full/empty, to arrive inopportunely to slip under hope, upset earnest prayer, tease faith.  Elaine brought up the example of falling in love at the wrong time. We loved the marvelously metered "copious cumuli".  The poem ends with a comparison of grace with the power of rain to drench the drought-scourged earth.

 

Note, I have used the words in the poem, summarized somewhat.  What I find interesting about this poem is that it is an invitation to think about grace and its role.  Imagine the other poems in a collection called "The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds".   What might you write to add to such a collection?

 

We had the feeling of "grace" in our gathering of kindred spirits.

 [ode to the water ...

With the river dividing two sections, even if read, as Richard did, with a pause between, the poem imitates the struggle of water to stay clean.  One senses also the impact of colonial takeover and drama of the fuel leakage from the American base.  The Filipino words (the poet is Filipino) add an indigenous flavor, but this is Hawaii, not the Philippines.  There are no capital letters.

You might enjoy reading about Hawai'i's poet Laureate: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2011/04/on-brandy-nalani-mcdougalls-the-salt-wind-ka-makani-pakai.   She writes an article in the Spring-Summer issue of American Poet (Vol. 66) "On Puka and Portals" -- many many openings, but none to go out through. Puka, as door, window, portal; verb to emergy from.  She shares other Hawai'ian words, such as kinikini -- a word that describes something plentiful, and the fondness of the language (ōlelo) for riddles. (nane).

Borrow:  Interesting opposition between humans and the harm we inflict and nature.  The first sentence points out the "misuse" of the verb "borrow" of all we cannot return after taking.   Who is "we", and why does the poet change switch to commands (Tamp down... listen)?  Certainly, after reading one feels more sensitized to the negative impact of humans.

We spoke at length about ecology.  Two examples:  Elmer brought up  the impact of the grain trucks and ruined ecology of the prairies. Kathy brought up the very visceral impact of the cottonwoods with their root systems, searching for water, the mountain stream the way it used to be now gone. 

Parable:  It starts with jumbled proverbs, idioms and one senses that the poet knows horses very well.  

At the 6th stanza, the poem introduces the word, cicada and the problem of words which lead us away from understanding through our body and senses.  The wisdom of the horse to listen to "the confused rooster stuttering", the sounds of winter coming goes beyond mere words to deeper meanings/contexts.  We found it curious that it is the deafening wing-scrape of the Cicada that seems to cry out,  confirming all living things want the same thing:  let live, let live, let live.   You could ask if  humans do, given our behavior.

Perceptive:  One person summed up the poem as the sea's complaint about all that is thrown into it.

We enjoyed the couplets and "interruptions" of stanza enjambments.  Brilliant play on "psalter" and salt of the sea, with book of psalms.  We discussed the idea of sea as "crone" as one of the three stages of womanhood— a certain crankiness with the wisdom of an older woman.  

The Land...  Beautiful rhythms reminiscent of Walter de la Mare, A.A. Milne in this poem referring to the hardship of this late 19th century/early 20th century woman (married for a spell  to Tarkington).

As final poem in the set addressing ecology, it seemed fitting to fervently wish for a land "of beginning again", and have things such as "colonialization" done away with-- and try to live quite differently.