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/
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