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.)