Poems for July 24

This week's selection, starts with three poems used in a workshop I attended 7/13 called "How to Sing in the Dark" led by the inimitable Abby Murray.  I referred at the end of the 7/17 session to a quote she used from Louise Glück:  "We live in a culture almost fascistic in its enforcement of optimism". from American Originality. 

The workshop material encouraged participants to find hope and joy in poems that seem to be "writing to the dark".  She also shared this quote:  "... What happens if joy is not separate from pain?  What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?"-- Ross Gay, Inciting Joy

I want to thank Polly for sharing the other  three poems she considers her favorites.   She was introduced to the Lowell and  highly original E.E. Cummings  in High School by her beloved teacher Virginia Elson.

 Poems: 

 Affirmation  by Donald Hall; Without by Donald Hall; For Warmth by Thich Nhat Hanh; Patterns by Amy Lowell; The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry Stinging  by e.e. cummings

I opened with a quote from one of my poet friends who is facing an incurable disease.   "Poetry is what helps you take the straight jacket off the heart.".  Reading poems by Donald Hall, hearing him speak them aloud, you sense his heart has taken in both joy and pain and has considered carefully the paradoxical title of his autobiography  "Carnival of losses " like the last lines of his poem Affirmation ( to affirm that "it is fitting/and delicious to lose everything").   Kathy brought up the fact that this poem from 2001, written 6 years after the death of his beloved wife, Jane Kenyon,  is from his book White Apples and Taste of Stone, which contains poems from 1946-2006.  They are organized thematically, not chronologically.  This is the title poem of the volume about his father.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155942/white-apples-609ab9389476c

We discussed at length Affirmation which both drew us in, and repelled us. It indeed contains a summary of Donald Hall's life, not just mention of his undying love for his wife Jane.  At one point, for fun, Mario asked those who would prefer to remain "young, ignorant and content" to raise their hand.  Neil felt Donald was egotistical in the lines about "our wife will die", and Paul went on about the pleasures of love, albeit temporary which indeed should be experienced as "delicious."

 Initially, in the context of the workshop, I saw the poem as an affirmation of acceptance of life as a roll of yin/yang, but still struggled to understand the word "delicious" at the end.  It is one thing to accept an understanding of  the danger of simply focussing on optimism or by ignoring sorrow, knowing this reduces the nature of joy.  It is quite another to say with conviction (like Graeme) the sum total of living is "delicious".  What other word could be used?  Bernie came up with "outlandish".  How does each reader convince him/herself that "fitting and delicious" indeed belong together and are "earned in the poem"?  This is a not an "answer once" kind of question.

Bernie shared his Buddhist perspective, that when loss is accepted as no longer having what one is used to, it involves fully embracing life without what is gone, hammering in the truth of it.  Then it is possible to bring out a new aliveness.  Instead of using energy to fight loss, whether physical or emotional, fully accepting it, learning to live with it allows a new world to open, while at the same time closes the old world.

Without:  In Abby's workshop, we had started with this poem, Without  first, followed by Affirmation.  I wanted to challenge the group with the later poem first, before the comma-less, relentless repeat of without and no. 

First, I read aloud a series of nouns without the negations:  seagulls, palm trees, barnacles, moss, snowdrop, crocus, peony, woodthrush, (even mice), maple leaves, parrots.  As Abby had stressed in the workshop, these things exist in the world.  Hall can only write about the reality of the chemotherapy, the battle against leukemia, how it effaces everything, and even silence has no color, sound.  Bernie provided the definition of the medical  term "petechiae" -- the bruises.  

And then...in the penultimate stanza, there is one moment... the one moment in the poem when it might be possible to pick up a pencil, and unwritten stanzas and take up and touch "beautiful, terrible sentences unuttered."  The group spoke about such "good days" in the midst of bleak despair.  We imagined the moment both for Jane, as well as for Donald.  I think every one of the 20 souls in the room felt the courage of Donald Hall describing what he was facing.  Mario brought up "the book he almost read" — everyone immediately understood from the title, the feeling of wanting to read something but not ready to face it: The Inheritance of Loss: by Kiran Desai, published in 2006.  He offers this quote:"... he retreated into a solitude that grew in weight day by day.  The solitude became a habit, the habit became the man, and it crushed him into a shadow." That is where he put the book down, hoping to pick it up again someday.  He retained the message that any loss small or huge contains gifts, lessons, "inheritances" that we carry, our unique possessions.

For Warmth: Thich, Bernie corrects me, is more accurately pronounced "Tick". Bernie generously shared  some time describing this impressive monk, his peace activism, his teachings and background as he is familiar with him in his Buddhist practice.  He and his group refer to him as "Thay" or "Teacher".  Bernie brought up one of his teachings about the concept of "enemy": A person is not the enemy, it's the delusion of one.   In this simple poem, that starts with a universal gesture, he leads us to consider all that hands can do in a positive way includes the surprising and poignant idea of "keeping the loneliness warm", and then how to meet grief.  This is a poem to memorize, ponder. 

Graeme read a sharing from "The School of Life", The Loveliest people in the world. "They are the ones who long ago shed their pride, who can tell you frankly how lonely and sad they are, who can face their self-hatred and accept their regrets..."

I can't remember who quoted this from Donald Hall's Distressed Haiku (published in the Atlantic in 2000)

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead. 

Patterns: Polly remembers this poem her teacher, Virginia, presented to her class during World War II. 

In the discussion, we marveled at the rhymes, repetitions, the patterns woven and broken, the metaphorical weight and stiffness of the brocade, the could-have-beens, but will never be rendered even more powerful by the stiffling effects of not only the dress, but of war itself.   Indeed, what are patterns for????  We discussed pattern as societal conditioning, how we respond to patterns,  whether defined as traditions, structures, strictures, or habits.  How do we become aware of them, get rid of them, live with them, avoid them, change them?  We discussed Amy Lowell's feminism, replete with a portrait by Judith of a large buxom lesbian, smoking a cigar.  Judith doubts she had the cigar coming to speak to an audience in Milwaukee some time in the late 'teens or so mentioning how cold it was backstage waiting to appear after the short play "The Ice Maiden". 

The peace of wild things: We were grateful for this offering which reminds us of the importance to be connected to nature.  The line "I come into the presence of still water" reminded Jan and many of the comforting rhythm of the 23rd psalm.   

Stinging: Polly thought her teacher, Virginia Elson had put this up on the board, to grab the attention of some of the boys in the class, who had no interest in poetry.  For her, the "tall wind is dragging the sea with dream S" is the echo of the bell, with the final S the final whisper.  This brought up Arizona Arcosanti bells  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti , a haiku, “The temple bell stops…”  

 by Basho, (to be shared next week) and Bernie shared that a "Guided Meditation" by  Adrienne Marie Brown* led him to this "On Being" podcast:  https://onbeing.org/programs/adrienne-maree-brown-on-radical-imagination-and-moving-towards-life/

**adrienne maree brown, is an American author, doula, women's rights activist and black feminist based in Detroit, Michigan. From 2006 to 2010, she was the executive director of the Ruckus Society.

Much of her work as a writer is based around the writings of Octavia E. Butler Brown has worked extensively with numerous organizations on social justice. Following college, Brown worked with the Harm Reduction Coalition in Brooklyn, and started working as a social justice facilitator. She would go on to facilitate the Social Forum and work with social justice organizations in Detroit.[4][5] Of her work in Detroit, brown wrote, "Our actions have to be towards the world we want. We need to be guerilla gardening and turning people's heat and water on. We need to be the guerillas putting up solar panels in the hood. That's what Detroit has taught me."[7]

 

Between 2006 and 2010, Brown served as the executive director of the Ruckus Society.[5] She described the Society's work as prioritizing "directly impacted communities - folks who are impacted by economic and environmental injustice and are angry about their situation. We help them determine how to strategically take action, so they can reorient them- selves to the long-term vision of self- determination and sustainability."[7] She was cofounder and director of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters and has worked with the Arctic Indigenous Youth Alliance

A Guided Meditation* by adrienne maree brown** - 

            -  (modified for BLS use - Bernie Shore)

 

1.    breathing in my contradictions

         breathing out compassion for the contradictions in others

         BREATHING IN - my contradictions

         BREATHING OUT-compassion for contradictions in others, and in myself

 

2.  breathing in complexity

         breathing out space for complexity in others

         BREATHING IN - complexity

         BREATHING OUT -  space for the complexity in others, and in myself

 

3.  breathing in all the reality I can handle

         breathing out my own truth/fears/love

         BREATHING IN - all the reality I can handle

         BREATHING OUT - my own truth (fears, love)

 

4.  breathing in humility at my humanity

          breathing out I recommit to humanity and kindness

         BREATHING IN - humility at my humanity

         BREATHING OUT - I recommit to humanity and kindness

 

5.  turning my awareness to gratitude, 

          turning my attention to life, relationship and learning

         BREATHING IN - turning awareness to gratitude

         BREATHING OUT - turning awareness to life, relationship  and learning

 

6.  turning my awareness to mindfulness in the body     

         increasing the integrity between my thoughts, words and actions

         BREATHING IN - turning awareness to mindfulness in the body 

         BREATHING OUT - increasing integrity between thoughts, words and                                                              actions

 

7.  BREATHING IN AND OUT - turning my awareness toward liberation, turning                              my awareness toward being free

 

 

* Underlined sections are my small edits to the original meditation

 

 

Poems for July 17 + poems from Richard Blanco workshop

 Naive by Tim Seibles; Mother Country by Richard Blanco, From a Photograph by George Oppen; Papá at the Kitchen Table by Richard Blanco

Apologies:  on the hand-out, there were two lines from a Claude McKay poem at the end of Richard Blanco's poem, Mother Country. The poem ends on "that's your country."following it: a list of "Photograph Poems" Blanco asked us to pick from: (We have discussed some of these): We did end the discussion with the William Carlos Williams poem (which we have discussed previously).  It seemed timely to bring up the trope of the world's indifference, whether to myth or to real instances of tragic misfortune.  Several poets have written wonderful ekphrastic responses to Brueghel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus".  This site  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus mentions Auden and others.  Nemerov has two Breughel poems, but neither specifically about Icarus. This one comes up with the Fall of Icarus:   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47698/the-war-in-the-air

The Portrait by Stanley Kunitz : https://poets.org/poem/portrait

This is a photograph of me:  by Margaret Atwood: https://poets.org/poem/photograph-me

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus:  by William Carlos Williams: https://poets.org/poem/landscape-fall-icarus

History Lesson  by Natasha Trethewey https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47538/history-lesson-56d2280d442a7

Yours & Mine  by Alice Fulton https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49241/yours-mineThe Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson by Irene McKinney[1]

Nutshell of discussion:

 Tim Seibles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Seibles

I wish Tim Seibles could have been in the group to explain the epigraph of his excellent poem, Naive.!  The Irish song,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_I_Hardly_Knew_Ye came up.  How Seibles encountered this saying by a Mennonite Woman, we don't know.  What does it mean to "love someone, but not know them"?  Examples came up of parents saying this to each other, and in the group itself, where 22 of us sat about discussing poems, we could say this as well.  Maura sums it up this way:  "we keep coming back to keep learning about poetry, and each other, and ourselves because we love this unique opportunity that teaches us how to understand what it is to love another."  Tim Seibles, in this poem does just that as well, recalling his childhood, and painting for us a picture so real, we can feel it, of two boys with their "snaggle-toothed grins that held a thousand giggles".  There is a celebratory note to the "astonishment" of this world, supported by mention of Mardi Gras, and "a child's heart builds a chocolate sunflower".    Of course this doesn't last... and who cannot relate to the fury that such "early welcome" to the world be sent away.  Is it "naive" to believe in the "unruined heart"?  Seibles does not judge but simply shows the way to a kinder city.

It was heartening to hear several stories about seeing soap bubbles -- whether between and a father and his children here, by the canal, or seeing them cranked out of a machine on a San Francisco expressway... It feels a perfect metaphor for being a child when you think all is well in the world, and much as you think you have lost that innocence, it is more than reassuring to think we are not constrained by labels, for instance of "naivete", as if that be a fault, for chasing the fleeting rainbows of bubbles made together.

Mother Country:  We shared ideas of why President Obama might have chosen "One Today" over this poem, (one of the three choices Richard Blanco was asked to provide for the Inaugural poem). Most of us present preferred the "real" picture Blanco paints of his experience as immigrant.  It is a wonderful character sketch which humanizes oft-misunderstood implications of what "immigrating to America" means.  

Kathy brought a beautifully illustrated children's book with large, colorful pages that reproduces "One Today".  Blanco's style, filled with sensory detail, his use of line-break (ex. one foot/  vs.  her other foot anchored/), his use of refrain (To love a country as if you've lost one),  the surprising leap from past to present with his mother, now old, hobbling) providing a new idea of what matters with a country.  Beautiful portrait of a mother, of the metaphorical power of country as mother, which indeed makes us think about what we would miss, should we leave ours.  Once you leave, it cannot be undone.  And where and with whom do we choose to die?

On line break:  interesting that Blanco used all the possible effects:  dramatic pause (3rd stanza, "as if/); double duty: sounding out words as strange as the talking/(next line animals); suspense:  the refrain followed by 1968: / allowing the reader to think about this year, what it means to him/her or in general.

From a Photograph: The poem comes alive for me when I hear it: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28951/from-a-photograph

Published in 1962, when Oppen would be 54, I hear a certain trembling sadness in the tone, describing what sounds like his mother.  I like that it could be an Aunt, Grandmother, different woman.  Who is the "father"?  It reminded some of "The Child is the Father of the Man." https://www.thoughtco.com/child-is-the-father-of-man-3975052 

There's a certain biblical inference perhaps with the apple.  The c's of the first part: child, rock, collar, coat progressively soften to b's of branch, bramble, brush, blowing.

Papá:  A lovely example of "reverse process".  This isn't indeed a photograph of Richard Blanco's father. It's definitely more than a photograph, where you feel the "real stuff" of him.  It brought up several stories of the effect of seeing photographs, the appreciation of an intimate look at someone from Cuba, and the value of making a photograph from a poem, where the photo comes after the words.  There is an immediate "thereness" that goes beyond "the black and white" we think to be proof. 

We questioned "pricing" in the penultimate line ... but that's what's on line.  

At the end of the discussion,  Richard brought up the choice of poems.   We  read and discussed briefly Williams' The Fall of Icarus . I mentioned this had been discussed before, and appreciated the comments about how what we all treasure about this group, where many have been coming weekly for 17 years. We indeed, travel a wide variety of poems.   An important part of the joy in gathering is to get away from the news and discuss and share what it's like to be human.    

I close, Garrison Keilor style: Carry forth, keep a corner safe in your heart for joy. 

 

---

[1] You can read about "The photographic Poem" and see this one with a photograph of Richard's parents, see his Mama and Papa poems here: https://richard-blanco.com/2021/05/poetry-and-photography-how-two-forms-speak-to-one-another/

Poems for July 17 -- supplement

 Last week, we discussed a few poems suggested by Richard Blanco for reading and class discussion (that the class never got to.)   We ended by reading aloud Since, Unfinished  by Richard Blanco.  It is the first poem in this link  (which has other fine poems by him and links): : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56063/the-island-within

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56065/el-florida-room

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56067/burning-in-the-rain

 

Queer Theory https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2017-11-27/never-take-a-bubble-bath-poet-richard-blanco-on-his-grandmothers-gender-surveillance

 

from City of 100 Fires: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57953/contemplations-at-the-virgin-de-la-caridad-cafeteria-inc-56d23be8d35dc Seventeen Funerals 

Once upon a Time: Surfside, Miami 

a hysterically funny take on Cuban "Thanksgiving"  https://parade.com/229213/parade/richard-blancos-poem-about-his-cuban-familys-first-thanksgiving/

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-blanco

You will see in the above link, on the right sidebar, poems about Immigration by other poets.  The one below is powerful. 

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me

Poems for July 10

The first two  suggested by Richard Blanco for reading and class discussion (that the class never got to) at Maine Media: The Simple Truth by Philip Levine; This Close by Dorianne Laux;   Originally I was also going to include What He Thought by Heather McHugh.   Here you can hear Robert Pinsky read it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJbiLikPsK8  Apologies for having sent that and the George Oppen poem to half the group.  We did discuss the McHugh a long time ago.  The Oppen is slated for 7/17.

The other 3 poems are all by Richard Blanco: Mamá with Indians: 1973, 2007;  Looking for the Gulf Motel   (Marco Island, Florida)  were part of the "responding to a photograph" part of the workshop. Birthday Portrait  was not, but a brilliant poem by him.

We ended the session by reading Since, Unfinished. 

Nutshell:

The pedagogic game we played, was to try to guess why the first two poems would be chosen for a poetry workshop -- and what "teachable" elements and moments they contained.

The Simple Truth: It is a simple cliché used as a title, but the poem demonstrates truth is anything but. The second stanza twists the delivery of "Some things you know all your life"  followed by 5 lines of quite complicated demonstration of  "simple and true". 

The fact that the poem uses simple words, disguises the tools of internal rhyme, predominant p's and s's in the sound, a surprising line break after 1965 and turn in the styory, and drawing on the senses.  

The poem invited people to share stories... not just about Polish grandmothers urging children to eat, eat, but the response after world war 2 and near starvation, of special insistence to children, no matter what nationality, to eat.  The undertones of loss, and sorrow brought up many more stories.  As one person put it: it is a deep and powerful poem without any curlicues.  Elaine brought up that when she heard Levine reading it, his tone was angry when he got to the part about his friend, Henri.

This Close: Carolyn gave a spectacular reading of this dramatic poem filled with unparalleled intensity and a sense of violence that goes beyond all bounds.  We are left curious about the speaker... whether it is two women, whether she is talking to herself saying "Crazy Woman...." Paul brought up that such writing has been done before and refered us to Mickey Spillane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Spillane and Judith recited Edna St. Vincent Millay, " I, being born a woman and distressed.  

By all the needs and notions of my kind,

Am urged by your propinquity to find

Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:

So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

And leave me once again undone, possessed.

Think not for this, however, the poor treason

Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

I shall remember you with love, or season

My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason

For conversation when we meet again.

The surprising last line of the Laux poem, "If I loved you, " gave rise to quite the discussion.  Have women come a long way in the last 100 years?

Mamá: this double portrait -- the same woman... seen once years ago in a picture,  and then in person 34 years later as an old woman is brilliant.  It also brought up stories, for instance Judith's mother, dying in a hospital, but sharing a room and sitting up like the school teacher she had been when her room mate tried to remove her own catheter and scolding her.   We all agreed Blanco is an amazing poet, bringing us along so we can imagine his mother, see the whole scene as in the next poem,

Looking for the Gulf Motel.   you can smell, see, hear, imagine the scene, and yet the poem balances on the repeated refrain, "There should be nothing here I don't remember"...  and the repeated "should" that one wants still to be, but isn't... There is a touch of ecopoem, about what happened to the Florida of 40 years earlier, the mangroves, uncluttered beaches... to add to the poignancy of what was lost.

You can imagine anger that the hotel wasn't there... then sadness... then a sense of how special it is to keep the memory alive.  Every poem is a metaphor in a sense.  As Richard said in the workshop, "if I didn't show you my family, you wouldn't think of yours".  

One challenge might be to substitute details:

What if the mother weren't in daisy sandals from Kmart squeaking on the linoleum... but in red stilettos from Neiman Marcus... ready to dance on the parquet floor... ?

Birthday Portrait.  Everyone could relate -- the desire of the parent to present to the world the "perfect child", the reflection of the parents' standards to help the child fit in.

Based on a picture of himself, staring into the childhood version of his own eyes, his questions are haunting, and he still doesn't know how to answer himself. 

June 26: Barbara; July 3:

Poems discussed 6/26/24

A Donation of Shoes by Ted Kooser;  The Empty Dance Shoes by Cornelius Eady; Funnel by Joan Murray; Depression Glass by Ted Kooser; Two poems by Mary Lou Kownacki; Words are Birds, Francisco Alarcon, 

Poems discussed 7/3/2024

Pink Suede Boots  by Alison Luterman; Autodidact’s Rabbits by Jonathan Everitt; Suicide's Note  by Langston Hughes; [There was a window that lived in a wall.] -- Vinold Kumar Shukla, translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra; The Hook of History  by Hadara Bar-Nadav; Returning to Fields and Gardens (I) by Tao Qian, translated by Arthur Sze; The Dream by a student in RCSD 20 years ago.

Nutshell:

Pink Suede Boots: This firecracker of a poem seduced us all!  Witness Graeme's "triumphantly sexy", Barbara's underlining of the sounds (clack-clacking over Cambridge cobblestones...) alliterations (resilient relics) and predominance of l's.  I'm at risk for misattributing the many wonderful other comments, but for sure, we all enjoyed the "flavor bursts" of sensory details, the unusual items and similes (sassy kitten heels like the Princess of Everything) and very different directions of "pink".  Using "the color of desire/and rue" brought up the definition of "rue" as both regret, but also a bitter plant and the beginning sound of "rouge" which made some think of Dorothy tapping her ruby shoes in the Wizard of Oz.  Judith set us straight, as in the book they are silver and shared a delightful story of her gold leather go-go boots.  

The poem addressed both aging, but also, passing on more than a pair of boots.  We didn't discuss the ending:  "before this burning world"/had its way with me.  Perhaps I am not alone in sensing this woman indeed was who she was destined to be... and yet wants more-- and passes that torch as well.

Autodidact's Rabbits: If you only saw the title, you might wonder just what direction it is headed! It's an unusual self-reference, and revealing.   In 12 lines, you receive a delightful lesson in how to tie your shoes. This  brought up several anecdotes recounting learning how to do this as well as Jim's story about teaching a seminar on how to tie knots.  Among the participants were some 10 year olds who observed and concluded they would never be able to learn.  A 13-year old then came along, shrugged at their dismay and demonstrated exactly how to do it.

I enjoyed the repetition of solo 4-syllable words (Inopportune. and mausoleum) and we all enjoyed the humor of "escaped lace" and that the shelf of shoeboxes contained a highly original reference to shoes as "animals that served my feet", and "tying up the poem" by referring back to the rabbit ears, "all so free, so tired."  A great prompt to write about.  It also brought up such rhymes as Peter, Peter/Roger,Roger/ double, double/Knot, Knot.  

Suicide's Note: We could have discussed this short 3-line poem for hours more.  My note about it being Jericho Brown's favorite:  because "it is short as a life".  More than that... some read it, independent from the title.  Some imagined changing the arrangement of line, so instead of the sense of a noun, The Calm, on the first line, stopped by the comma and obliged to stop,  to give it the sense of  an adjective attached to "Cool".  Do you see the river as a person? How do you see it asking for a kiss?  What kind and why?  We could see multiple tones and meanings and wish Langston Hughes were with us. You might like to compare with his poem, Suicide :https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=1739 

[There was a window...] The rhythm of this poem brought up quite a few "comic ballad" memories such as "There once was a woman who lived in a shoe" or "Six little devils jumped over the wall" or "there was an old man lived over the hill" : https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/thefarmerscurstwife.html  For sure, it is a curious image of a window living,  in a wall, granted, but because of it, there is a view... Almost contradictorily,  Everything lived in the window, but if no one around it remained shut.  Final line... to one side of it, in the wall, there lived a man.  

Some saw separation of man from the world, a feeling of trappedness, but however the way to solve a sense of enigma, for sure it elicited quite a few conjectures.  We wondered if the translation might be at fault.

The Hook of History: We all agreed that the opening couplet was intriguing.  From then on, the couplets gave no "hook".  The problem of bringing up Nazis, is that we have been so exposed to World War II history, the risk is there must be some fresh angle, or the reader might lose interest.  Where is Mike's Café? Is it near the Shalom Hotel-- and which one,  in Tel Aviv? Jerusalem, Manila?  Even "crumbs among cobblestones" has a ring of cliché.  Even the use of the double meaning of scream fell flat. A more interesting poem we felt was this one by the same poet: 

A Man Had Sat Down in Desperation

A man had sat down in desperation
I did not know the man
But I knew the desperation
So I went to him
And extended my hand
Holding my hand, he rose
He did not know me
But he knew the extending of my hand
We walked together
We did not know each other
But we knew walking together.

This link will take you to two others: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hadara-bar-nadav

Returning to Fields:  I gave an example of a different translation from 1970.  How do we read a poem written by someone born in 365 ?  What do we know of Chinese poetry and expect from "traditional Mountain Landscape" poets?  Traditional Court Poets?  This is pastoral, but did not pull us in. Thanks to Jan we caught the typo on  the 6th line before the end: it should read Dogs bark.  

The Dream: I apologize -- first stanza was missing:  

Where is it?

Did some CEO 

swallow it whole? 

Some Enron, Global, ImClone,

where vision is no endless horizon

but a barnyard of gluttony and greed.

It brought up the query of what students are writing about these days, and if there are still end-of-the-year poetry anthologies in High Schools.  Compare to Langston Hughes: Harlem: (A Dream deferred) written in 1951, some believe inspired the speech by Martin Luther King, Jr  in 1963 (just 4 years before Hughes' death.)  For background to Hughes' poem and the poem itself: https://poemanalysis.com/langston-hughes/harlem-a-dream-deferred/