Aug. 28

when it is August,/ you can have it August and abundantly so.  from YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL by Barbara Ras

 Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton;   What It’s Like to Wonder Whose Country It Was First -- by Abby Murray;  Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden; Blackberries by Seamus Heaney; The Rice Fields by Zilka Joseph; Wallpaper Poem  by Phillis Levin; stanza 1 + final lines of Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Nutshell: 

August 28: ironic that this day, 61 years ago, Martin Luther King delivered his iconic speech: "I have a dream". https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/this-day-in-history-on-august-28-martin-luther-king-jr-delivers-i-have-a-dream-speech-75404.cfm

Welcome: Is the title a command?  A private conversation between the poet and the start of a new day?  We discussed how quickly we can shift our reading of tone of a poem by a current mood.  For some, the poem felt like the manic phase of Sexton's bipolarity, unlike her usual confessional style.  Judith offered the opinion that the poem seemed to be an unsuccessful attempt at sounding like Mary Oliver; others felt it expressed a sense of religious rite, supported by the "chapel of eggs", the "godhead of the table", the "holy birds".  Contrived or no, annoying or pleasurable, the mention on the first line of "joy" with a small "j", ending the final couplet with the mention of unshared "Joy" with a capital "J" that dies young, invites reflection on the possibilities of finding it in the everyday ordinary details.  The "practical" such as the "outcry from the kettle", the repeated "each morning" couples with a sense of offering grace, as prayer of rejoicing.  As Kathy put it, one feels glad that the poet is experiencing "laughter of the morning" akin to a sense of God, and able to share it.  The final couplet invites us to tell a story.

I added the anecdote of my poet friend David Delaney, who prefaced a reading of a poem about an IV drip of chemo, with these words: "an infant comes into this world like his daughter's 4 month old son.  They want food, love, safety.  And after that?  Solomon Rushdie says, You give them stories."  I didn't mention in the video recording, he is holding a painting he did of A.A. Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh:  behind him a WW1 gas mask, and behind that is the burnt and ruined landscape once known as "No Man's Land." Milne was a soldier (officer) in British army during the "War to End All Wars"; he saw heavy action in the terrible trenches of France. And from all that horror came the 100 Acre Woods and some of the most endearing characters  Winnie-the-Pooh.  

Yes, welcome morning.  The dark hours of 4 am and yesterday have moved on to the present, the possibility, to imagining, dreaming, creating —.  Now, how do you imagine "holy birds" -- and what will come of that "marriage of seeds" on which they feed?  If you feel Joy, indeed, share it!  

What it's like: The title intrigues:  What does definition of a country involve?  "Who was here first" ? Judith recommended this short video: Nina Tayley + This land is mine

 We pricked up our ears at the mention of  "non-man" and "we, the non-men" as bigger and beyond gender identity and also  picked up on the importance of naming, labeling, claiming which led to wondering what language Adam and Eve spoke... how they referred to themselves and each other.  The poem triggered a sharing of ideas of ownership bumping out the idea of common good... tribalism, Darwinism, anthropology... fear, survival... the stereotypical "male" response of controling "it".   .Many saw "our mother" as Earth... but some men objected that they were excluded from naming if mother was not Earth.  

I wrote Abby to ask her to explain more about the stream being so perfect it broke a man's heart... was he thinking to call it "his" to deal with his grief?  How to understand that?    As one person put it, if we lose something, we feel hollow, and desire it even more.  And yet, trying to have it can result in more destruction. Abby replied: the man in the poem breaks his heart on beauty and calls it his out of grief, which is, I think, giving him the benefit of the doubt. (Many might argue it was out of pure greed.) 

Frederick Douglass:  Robert Hayden provided an unrhymed sonnet next with a preponderance of somber long O's  (diastole, systole, more, world, none, lonely, Oh... alone, ) oh so much more than the gaudy "mumbo jumbo" of politicians.  A beautiful example of weaving repeats:  beautiful, first with terrible (as in great, as in fearsome) then with "needful" on the final line (needful repeated from the second line, "this beautiful/terrible thing, needful to man as air).

Whether Frederick Douglass speaking or Robert Hayden, or the countless poets, visionaries, ministers, in their rhetoric, the voice carries conviction.

Blackberries:  Like Abby's poem, sometimes you want something so much, truly it doesn't seem possible or fair that it rot-- and ironic that you could hope so hard but yet know cannot do otherwise.  Kathy pointed out the word choice on the final line where Heaney does not use "but"... I year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.  The dynamics of expectation are reinforced by the momentum of the 24 lines, and as Claudia pointed out, the description was filled with color like a painting -- but also sound... the occlusives of clot, inked up, cans, tinkling... pass on the the b's and p's of blogs,  pricks, palsm, Bluebeard himself and smell that you can taste in the ff's of fermented fruit, sweet flesh.

The Rice Fields:  Clever metaphor and funny story telling combine in this delightful poem.  What do we carry that no one can see?  What do we hope to hang on to, and preserve?

Wallpaper: forgive my typo on the poet's name!~!! Not Philip Levine! but Phillis Levin.  (In July issue of New Yorker).  We enjoyed the references, the implied transcience of dust, and time's timeless print/ Gone now Here tomorrow ending with the word "still".  

It seemed appropriate to end with the opening stanza of Shelley's Mutability whose fourth and final stanza ends on that word.  It reminded Richard of Keat's tomb:https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2018/04/16/the-gravestone-of-john-keats-romancing-the-stone/ (Here lies one whose name was writ in water.)

  

Thoughts before leaving on a 7 week trip

 I am cleaning out papers... seeing in December 2011 I quoted this:

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. -- William Makepeace Thackeray

What a wonderful middle name!  I need to "make peace" with the fact that, true as this is... I am not making time for my own thoughts unless I am writing a poem.  I came across this note from 2007 in

The Seattle Japanese Garden -- no crutch of wiki or google, no doublecheck on etymology -- just a "crutchless moment" unconnected to anything-- and then I see the Striped Maple leaning on a crutch and write In the Japanese Garden, March 29, 2007.

**

Well, now for looking at notebooks.  No one needs to read them, but I like re-reading.  This one was given to me in May, 2018 by Jocelyn, the then mayor of Rennes on a visit to Rochester.  

Rivers... some braid their hair (Rita Dove, La Chapelle), some like yesterday, in Ellison Park, laze between muddy banks, licking all that springs up from the bottom -- and a series of l's appear... lapping, linking, and LOVE and doubLe -- no leaking away in worry.

Oct. 2020: water skaters rival solo drops released by leaves over Botheration Pond.  Eloquence of subtle echoes, as a raindrop pearls on a leaf... 

But there, in 2020, I have started a new journal, and remembering all that had happened since February and spelling out All That in seven letters.  (Joke my mother used to tell)...  and thoughts about our inner oysters negotiating thoughts and feelings.  

and today after a visit with my best belovèd daughter, and thinking of our best belovèd son, a conversation last night with one of my sisters who is writing her book of travel stories and her "charming Italian translations",  I receive a reply from a poet friend about my comments about John Ashbery's  poem "Myrtle" and how he leaps into naming a river after a long-lost girlfriend.  I coined a phrase:  "thinking management" evident in a poem.   

I love that someone came up with the germ Gregueria,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greguer%C3%ADaa one line poem which combines metaphor and humor.  Example:  Hummingbirds are quarter notes which have left the nest of the flute.   I was reminded of Francis Ponge and Parti Pris des Choses and the  French spelling of oyster.  huître where the I hides under the hat of a circonflexe. 

I suppose a Gregueria about the oyster might be this: Aside the impenetrable fortress in which it lives, the oyster's entire living world may offer more than a gastronomic delicacy in a pearl— the perfect metaphorical response to minor irritations. 

 He humorously portrays the disposition of "things"-- in small lyric paragraphs... In the case of an oyster, even the spelling confirms this small shellfish is nothing short of a miracle, for inside the impenetrable fortress (which, worse than stone, will cut your fingers and break your nails) is an entire world many enjoy eating and drinking... and unexpected dividend, the small halos it secretes around an irritating molecule of sand, turns into a pearl.   Were we humans even half as gifted.

Invisibles...in Portuguese Saudade and a nostalgia for something that does not exist. 

I return to this theme again and again.  The valiant effort of a spider to spin its silk; the way the sea cradles life, and wind cradles wheat, and the universe cradles limitless worlds-- this amazing embrace of something larger to keep us going.   Sun spotlights, bubbles rising to the surface of a brook,  a spill of light down angel stairs, 

Goodbye friendly reader.  Try not to use up your life in hating and being afraid. -- Stendhal

September 11

 special speaker, John Roche has an impressive CV of his accomplishments which includes involving community in poetry and using poetry as an activist for human rights, the environment (see his trilogy of anthologies: Water, (2017)  Walls, (2018)  and Survival.  You see I have used the introductory poem from Water: A Poets Speak Anthology, edited by John Roche: Water by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 as well as  a recent poem by another author in the anthology on September 4.  

(2018).  I first knew him as from his work on the selection committee for Poets Walk [1] that borders the Memorial Art Gallery campus from Prince St. to Goodman and as President of the local Rochester organization of Just Poets.  

I've asked Barb Murphy to be MC.  This special event coincides with the "O Pen" time slot, but is open to the public.  I do hope you will invite all your friends!!! 

His talk for September 11 : Light Verse for Serious Times: A Talk and Reading for Pittsford Community Library by John Roche, 9/11/2024

 

John Roche, RIT emeritus associate English professor and former president of the Just Poets organization, will be discussing the tension between accessibility and substance in poetry,

as well as reading from his new book Tubbables. (see press release)

 

Questions: How does a writer navigate between what Horace said were poetry's two purposes, to educate and to delight? Is it "barbaric" to write poetry in our era that does not directly address war, poverty, and climate apocalypse? Can "light verse" or children's verse or "trifling verse" also be a "poetry of witness"? Can poetry help keep us sane in these times? Is there a danger of poetry (or performance poetry) striving to be too explicitly "therapeutic." How does your poetry respond to such considerations?

Poems from Tubbables for discussion:

 

 

Prologue, or, A Defense of Trifling Verse

 

                        When the stars threw down their spears

                        And water'd heaven with their tears:

                        —William Blake, The Tyger

 

 

Because London Bridge is perpetually falling down

Because no one can put Humpty Dumpty together again

Because the cupboard was bare

Because the old woman who lives in the shoe still doesn’t know what to do

Because three blind mice

Because Mary is quite contrary

Because along came a spider who sat down beside her

Because the bough is breaking

Because the sky may not be falling

but the polar ice is surely melting 

 

Double Tubbable

 

                        Tubbable, 1920s synonym for washable:  tub + able (fabrics)

 

Whites and darks in the tub tubbable

Suds and spray and toil and bubble 

Pound on rock or play washboard trouble

Anna Livia Plurabelle gossips double 

Splashes and sprays and tells oh tells does lovely Annabelle

 

 

Heffalump

 

                        If honey's what you covet

                        You'll find that they love it

                        Because they guzzle up

                        The things you prize

                        --"Heffalumps and Woozles" from Disney's 

                        The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

 

The word “heffalump,” meaning “elephant,” was coined by British author A.A. Milne in the Winnie-the-Pooh books. The first appearance of the charming term was in the original 1926 “Winnie-the-Pooh,” with the fifth chapter titled, “In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump.” While the illustrations by E.H. Shepard clearly depict what adult readers would know to be an elephant, Pooh and Piglet only meet the Heffalump in their imaginations. The word “heffalump” thus became a childlike synonym for the giant animal, and a metaphorical term for an imaginary creature. Heffalumps became more popularized in Disney’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” depictions, beginning with a song called “Heffalumps and Woozles” in a 1968 animated featurette. --"Heffalump," Word Daily

 

An elephant in the ear of a child

penned by a man with the eye of a child.

 

My father used to read us

Winnie the Pooh and Doctor Doolittle

in between Bible stories

I still talk to animals 

but they seldom talk back.

Been a long time since I could decipher 

more than a bark or a hiss. 

 

 

Penny Ha’penny

 

Penny Ha’penny was a childhood friend 

who lived on Ha’penny Bridge on Penny Lane 

Penny, we’d say, a penny for your thoughts?

Penny would throw a penny o’er her shoulder in reply

Penny had too much sense to trade a pound for a pence 

Penny always wore a mac in the pouring rain

though it seldom rains on Penny Lane

Penny left a bike lock on Ha’penny Bridge

wouldn’t tell us who it was for

Penny Ha’penny left Penny Lane one morn

and her mum wouldn’t tell us where or what for

Hey, Penny Ha’penny, where’ve you been?

Hey, Penny Ha'penny, where’ve you been?

Where've you been?

 

Naptime

 

dust motes float

across universe

 

four years old

not sleepy at-all

 

dust motes float

prism on the wall

 

laughs and shrieks

kids playing outdoors

 

dust motes float

fireflies appear

 

four years old

a portal opens

  

 

In the Blueblack

 

                                    After Robert Hayden

 

Wake to sound of snowplow

dopplering down the street

notice scraping of shovel—

Dad out in the blueblack cold—

Aromas send you and your brother hurtling down the stairs

to the kitchen where Mom is making breakfast

Radio’s alphabetically announcing school closings—

first big snow of the year—

Listen impatiently as a thousand small towns report in

—delayed or closed—

But the tea kettle's hiss drowns out the S’s

so you’ll have to listen all over again

 

I Stole an Eclipse

 

I stole an eclipse today

Rode a snapping turtle 

all the way to San Luis Obispo

Climbed an agave stalk taller than an oak

higher than the campanile

Held up the sun with my BB gun

Put it in my back pocket

Ate a tangerine

Kicked a soccer ball to the moon

Listened to the Music of the Spheres

Watched as it ricocheted through the galaxy

Rode vampire fish sailing celestial seas

Hummed L’Éclair de Lune

and composed a sonnet

 

 

Eggs in a Basket 

 

Chicks may hatch

Hatchets may cleave

Cleave unto the Lord

The Lord of Dynamite

Dynamite omelette!

Omelans walk away

Away, come away, human child

Children cross the border

The border is wide, we cannot cross 

Cross of Fire, Cross of Shame

Shaming, naming, gaming the same

The same rain that falls on the rich man…

The rich man eats pâté de foie gras

Gross old man eats Big Macs on silver platter

The platters spin, the planets spin, the Wheel spins, 

the whale of a ride

Riding Hood holds her basket dear

Dear Heart, keep your ducks in a row

Row, row, row your boat ashore 

Ashore, on the other side, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhisvaha

Buddha sits basket in lap

Lapping waves all atwitter

Atwittering sparrows and avenging hawks

Hawking their wares at the county fair

Fair weather friend, what will be your end?

The End Is Nigh, or Never!

Never mind that man behind the curtain

It’s curtains for you, Mr. Rooster

Rooster may broil or broast, but hen will sit

Sitting, sitting, sitting, what chicks may hatch?

 

 

Snug of a Pub

 

When you get locked out of Twitter

When Spoutible fails to load

When you can’t recall your Linkedin password

When Facebook gets too boring

 

Remember that snug in a Dublin pub

etched in your mind

always open

always serving

good conversation 

and non-refrigerated Guinness

with reels and jigs

slightly muffled

by the oak partition

 

On a particular night,

maybe Joyce himself in one chair, 

Flann O’Brien in another, 

and you doing your best

to keep up with the ricocheting words

 

 

 

I Saw That Movie

 

It came on at midnight

I was too tired to sleep

so I watched it

Tried changing the channel

but there was only Bowling for Dollars,

reruns of My Favorite Martian,

and some guy demonstrating how to use a potato peeler.

 

The movie started in some American small town

What we used to call The Heartland

Though I never knew why.

 

Then there were monsters.

 

 

Virtual Reality Check

 

Sorry, friends,

but even your best poem 

won’t get nearly as many “likes”

as two koala cubs grooming

a tabby on top of a roof

or a bobcat lounging

on somebody’s patio

Poems for Aug. 21

Many Winters, 1974  by Nancy Wood (1936 –2013)  https://nancywood.com a special poem Polly wanted to share;  poems by MJ Iuppa . Howden Pond, 2021; Fighting Death; Strandhill Beach in May (Sligo); 

  Poems from Sometimes Simply (small chapbook): Sometimes; Chrysalis; The Gift; Simply; You might want to explore http://mjiuppa.blogspot.com/

We didn't get to all the poems from As the Crow Flies: (Over)look; (Over)heard;  Triolet on the Adage 'As the Crow Flies'; “Things Are Not Always What They Seem”;  but did end on Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 17 (from One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII)

Paul started us off with a bit of witty humor from Yeats, teasing his friend wishing some praise: 

You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

Nutshell:

Nancy Wood:  Polly explained this poet had other poems that intrigued her, but the one selected was the one that showed up on line.  Richard was curious about how poems work with line breaks -- a quite valid question for "free verse" which generated a long discussion about the relation between visual impact, how to read a poem to deliver outloud.  Many people shared the intuitive process they follow by writing, vs. following any rules. Many related to Paul's mention that  he could feel so pleased with something he'd written, then two weeks later wonder that he could have found merit in it. 

There exist implied rules about a small (intuitive) pause after a line break vs. reading a poem without any pause to deliver an entire thought.  Judith called on the oral tradition of poetry, in days when it was not written down, but memorized and handed down by word of mouth.  She also mentioned a book by Dame Judy Dench, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent  where the actress explains English is such that serious messages are best delivered in iambic pentameter, and end stops are "theatrical instructions on delivery" as to how to recite them.  (The book is new and several copies are in the library system.) 

Some participants referred directly to the poem, the pleasure of the repetitions which are emphasized by the visual set up and the subtle change of the final "Hold on to" where "what" is replaced by "life" and followed on the same line by "even when" (instead of dropping to the next line to deliver 4 words, "even if it is") and the speaker of the poem enters.  For some, it felt like a conversation with a child, giving parting words of advice, for others, the voice of someone dying speaking to a loved one.  

It confirmed the fact that each individual will find rules and meanings that confirm individual likes and dislikes.  Poetry, Art, Music go beyond a "right" or "wrong" interpretation.  Examining the "how", noticing the "what" and how it leads to a greater sense of "wondering" often can change a dismissal of a poem to a glad acceptance. 

Howden Pond:  The discussion about line break continued with the unusual choices in this poem.  All agreed that the poem's visual set up allowed us the gift of slowing down, to enter a meditative space which was resilient in its sense of suspension.  The sound of the long O in alone, closely, close, over, opening, closing, the exquisite image created by "wings of/moths, opening & closing in emerald shadows" which continues only to "dissolve into darkness & sounds of even/breath..." added to the power of the unexpected line breaks.  The "three little dots" in French are called "points of suspension" very different from the em-dash that follows "I am left here—" which is followed by "wanting" and then the fall of a double space like a stanza break, allows the reader to feel the emphasis on the tenderness of "holding this moment".  People noticed the indentation pattern, also like breathing, and how the poem started with "looking closely" at visual details, but shifted to sounds.  How "even breath" allows because of the line break can be understood as "even"  meaning both  "regular" and "also".  

Had the line breaks been more "conventional" we might not have sensed the intense mindfulness paid to the penultimate word of the poem: this -- the italics holding the weight of everything in this one moment without spelling out a name for it.  It echoes the traditional trope of poetry's ability to create a sense of the ineffable which cannot be named, described.  

Fighting Death: This poem appeared in the review Amethyst and indeed, much as one person thought "stranglers" might be a misprint for "stragglers" a chorus of people disagreed!  The review also printed "stranglers" and those who are gardeners attested to those late-blooming vines and one person described the two small blooms above her ripe heirloom tomato.  Knowing that MJ was fighting cancer increases the power of this  poem about survival.  We wondered about the break in the second couplet of in-/fancy-- a play on infancy, and fanciful as if part of a magical tale?  Or simply, a mimicry of a cruel cut.   Unlike the peaceful, meditative calm of "Howden Pond" this poem ends on a very relatable will to live in spite of feeling "miserable".   She does not use the verb "fight", in the final couplet but rather the verb "settle".  The conversational tone of the poem, describing the speaker in the garden at the end of growing season,  ends with a tiny tuck in of her own "compulsion" to live, (like me)  "to the bitter end".   We remarked the clash in feeling of those final words.  Re-reading that final couplet,  I go back to the "wishing I were a witch" -- don't we all wish for the power to make things last, have time to do all we want to do?  I love how she confesses her desire to save the late bloomers, and deftly, without any sentimentality, involves the feel of the late-morning sun,  "creep over my shoulder/ and settle upon this garden's compulsion to live, like me, to the bitter end.  A beautiful marriage of concrete with abstraction to add heft to the title.   

Strandhill Beach: Paul, our resident Irishman described this beach for us, and how "if you turn 180 degrees from the cold blustery Atlantic, you'll face the 3,000 year old burial cairn of Queen Maeve.  Paul also brought up Ben Bulben, the backdrop for Yeats' tomb which has the inscription of his line about the Horsemen passing by. (This link will tell you more about it : https://www.freedomandflourishing.com/2013/10/do-i-understand-meaning-of-w-b-yeats.html

The poem's language reminded Bernie of the time he and he wife went up to Lake Ontario after a serious storm, where the waves were indeed "muscular and taut, rising like an infantry".  Everyone was swept away by the power of the description--and the depth of her experience:  black stones "God's tears", the stanza break after the mystery of losing them without know how they fell back, and the final metaphysical embrace of lack of  knowledge "of who God is and the impossibility of/keeping what no one else sees".  It felt to Jan like a powerful environmental poem as well.  

Sometimes:  This poem felt like it was meant to be set to music.  MJ's husband Peter Tonery said MJ wasn't a musician herself, but for sure, this poem conveys the important element of musicality in poetry.  The "duo" of two syllables soft, in lonesome, syllables, sinking, scattered, falling (falling, repeated) set in couplets paints a duet of lovers! 

Chrysalis: published in Poetry in 1993, is beautifully timeless.   At first, you might not think it is told from the perspective of a chrysalis, but rather a description of "a lie for beauty" -- with the double meaning of a place where beauty lies, as well as a clever "trick".   In this first stanza, the language is as "careful" as the intricate unfolding that is predicted.  "My secret" increases the mystery, prepares the reader for the Merwin-esque final stanza, "perhaps the world is empty/as I am brief", but with MJ's inimitable grasp of the spiritual we can only imagine.  You will want to read this poem at least 10 times, to feel the gravity.  

I told the group about MJ's final book The Weight of Air  https://www.amazon.com/Weight-Air-M-J-Iuppa/dp/1639801863  published the year before her death.   Highly recommend.

Maura offers these magical pictures of a chrysalis:  If they do not appear on the blog,

here is a description of the three: the making of it: the subtle presence where you might not guess a caterpillar is preparing a new stage; the wing-like residue left after the transformation complete.

The Gift:  We admired the liquid l's, the way "the words that took" (took root) with the comma after took, 

allowed pause before "took, forever" the same way in the previous poem one could read in the final stanza, "Perhaps the world is empty as I am" as well as "as I am brief".  Paul helped those who are not familiar with  Thursday and Bells of Ascension, Maundy Friday, this is an Easter poem.

Simply: the final poem in this small chapbook Sometimes Simply  which begins with the poem "Sometimes".  We loved the visual format which mimics the "rain rain go away, come again, another day".

This poem is on Poets Walk, with the poem tile, hiss of tires".  Again, MJ combines sound and sight! 

 As stated in the beginning, we ran out of time to discuss the selections from this 2008 chapbook, As the Crow Flies - but did read the first one, and the Neruda outloud, happily satiated by the  full hour and a half of discussion. 

I knew we wouldn't have time for two more by MJ  published in Wild Word, 2022: Waking, without knowing; Waiting for Nothing and paste them below: 

Waking, without knowing

 

where I am, I seek summer’s

open window to see what exists

in the dark that pools before me

 

I trace the outline of sumac, rising

up against the barn, gleaming

in moonlight

 

as if it were memory— this hour

seemingly divine in its solitude

becomes a gateway

 

I can slip through, without

notice, which makes me

nostalgic

 

for those humid nights

where I could come and go

as I pleased

 

Waiting for Nothing

 

In the stillness of summer heat, a bird’s

plaintive whistle sounds like a slow strand

of wind rustling beneath the garden’s ivy.

 

I glance, catching a glimpse of what is there—

a luminous carapace leaving its silver

signature, leaf to leaf, returning to its place

 

before it’s swept away by sudden rain . . .

Who am I to say that it’s over?

 

 

Poems for Aug. 21-- MJ Iuppa Poetry Prize

MJ Iuppa: for MJ Iuppa Poetry Prize

MJ's husband, Pete Tonery told me the MJ Iuppa Poetry Prize is very close to getting endowment stage at SUNY Brockport! This means that the fund will be invested with the returns being used to fund the award. That prize will now be self-sustaining and run in perpetu; ity!  That is an inspiring achievement.

There is one downside- they still need to fund the prize for the 2024-2025 school year. All the funds raised so far are being invested- so we need to have an initial $1000 for the coming year's award. The upside is that we have to raise another few hundred dollars.  If you feel moved to help, details are in this link.

https://fundraise.givesmart.com/form/WKr__g?vid=16xeod

What is the M.J. Iuppa Poetry Prize?

It is a $1000 cash prize awarded annually to a student that

wins the poetry competition.

To win the author must do several things:

Read the supplied biography of MJ

Read one of MJ’s full length poetry books or two chapbooks.

Comment of an aspect of MJ’s life, work or teaching.

Submit three poems for judging:

A free verse

A Cinquain*

A Haiku

This package of submissions will be reviewed and judged by

members of the SUNY Brockport College English Department and

a winner will be selected.

Shortly thereafter, an event will be held with the College, English

Department and a relative of MJ’s to present the check to the

winning author.

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poems for August 14

 Untitled  by James Baldwin; Siesta by Robin Robertson; At the Reception  by Bob Hicok; Here’s a Little Mouse  by E. E. Cummings; Next Time by Joyce Sutphen;   Refusing Rilke's “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher

belated happy birthday to James Baldwin who would have turned 100  this August 2. The New Yorker republished this from 1962: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/11/17/letter-from-a-region-in-my-mind  Baldwin died so young.  I always loved that he lived in France -- I relate to that a lot.

Nutshell:  I am reminded by this advice by Rumi: "Listen to the presences inside poems:  Let them take you where they will."  For sure, the first two poems provide good reason to do so!

 

Untitled:  I am not sure if Baldwin picked the title of this poem which reads like a prayer. It came up that the overtone of plea perhaps is due to his background as preacher for 3 years.  For sure, he knows how to craft a cadence in the cascading lines, the pause before the repeated

"falling water":"Do not get carried away/ by that sound of falling water,/ the marvelous light/ / on the falling water."  I underline "sound" and "marvelous" which are not repeated with the words that water; the light in the next stanza... and the final word, light.  Simple (which does not mean easy) as in pure, and clear, supported by the sound which contrasts between the round, deep O's and the long "I/light/Blinds/light" with implication to ignore the "phony concerns" (sound of water) and concentrate on the Light, not easy to see.

 

Many present were familiar with the 2 volume set The Fire Next  Time which title refers to the spiritual, "Mary Don't You Weep" and this couplet: God gave Noah the rainbow sign

No more water, the fire next time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fire_Next_Time.  This provides a deeper context for the mention of "falling water" and being "beneath that water".

Paul suggested that the words, "Lord", "Do", "I" could be read down "Lord Do I?" and back up as answer, "I do, Lord". Judith mentioned how James Baldwin is without exception one of the best prose stylists of the 20th century and added this consideration as well:  There is a Jungian belief that people who are "too balanced" live shorter lives as there is "no more work to be done".  Such is the case of Baldwin.  

 

Siesta: We all felt a "sensory wham" in the sound play and rich vocabulary which grounds the reader, connects us to a world filled with vibrant aliveness, in contrast to the title "Siesta".   We picked up on the sounds "churned" by the cicadas, described as "chiding" and "fricative", which by definition,  is a "consonant made by the friction of breath in a narrow opening, producing a turbulent air flow". ( f,v,z, th)  filled Who is resting?  What is his or her story to come up with choice of adjective "bitter" with "understanding" and the poignant but enigmatic "heart-sick wonder" coupled with "all this life"?  Some felt the poem might take place near the Mexican border.   Elaine O pointed out that in the SW most houses are enclosed by walls ridged with shards of broken glass.  

 

At the Reception:  I read the note first, which sounds humorous, cheerful.  The contrast of the title, and first dance, where you think you will witness and wedding reception shifts dramatically in the 4th line where it is clear, the main character is a holocaust survivor.  As readers, we too want to "listen to the locomotive of his heart" and understand the deep intimacy of getting close to him.  Hicok throws in some humor with the mention "or at least pulled a rose out of my ear to show him the magic///" only to quickly return to the horrors this man endured.  The question, "what is normal", is haunting, especially horrifying used in the context of a "factory of death?  

The deft use of "ashes", the simple closure of how "most people look in photos", leaves me thinking about what it is to be alive, how we come across "preserved" in a photograph, what it is we want to be preserved.

 

Hicok has created a different almost mystic atmosphere and you realize his note echoes Rumi's idea that a poet knows "we're in the middle of some enormous energy" and doesn't plan how it will be said but is open to the poem channeling through him.

 

Here's a Little Mouse:  Carolyn captured the spirit of this cat and mouse game on paper with her expressive dramatic reading.  Judith reminded us that Cummings is also a superb classical sonnet maker, and to be able to be so successfully playful takes the skill of an artist.  It is also delightfully visual with 3 suprises of capital letters (SED, Latin for "but"whether it is intended  as that or even as a homonym for what is not SAID).  The parenthetical double o's, like little eyes, "groove" the room and return in the unmodified spelling (look) which has nothing parenthetical about it.  The more you work with it, indeed, the more you'll see.  

                                                     

Next Time: Joyce Sutphen provides A delightful exploration of the very human characteristic of hindsight, but not layered with regret, or self-chiding.  Her honest authenticity is refreshing.  The offering of a quick kiss, or a poem matched exactly to a friend reinforces a sense of being connected to the world where indeed, there is no place to "waste the heart on anger".  In a way, the poem delivers a sermon, but without sermonizing.  I love the feeling of believing her last line, embracing the conviction of her imagination!

Refusing Rilke's "You must change your life".  It helps to know this is the last line of his famous sonnet https://poets.org/poem/archaic-torso-apollo. Kathy shared her delight in saying indeed, when it comes to "Swedish Death Cleaning" and hearing the next generation urge us to "toss out" something we still enjoy or cherish, she will not "change" to suit them.  We create a museum of ourselves -- and there is indeed a pleasure in visiting it!