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.