Poems for July 31

  It takes a community of curious, thoughtful people to have the treasury of our discussions we experience each week.  I thank each and every one of you.

This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh. (BTW Bernie says his group usually refers to Thay - the affectionate Vietnamese for "teacher", as "Tick" Nhat Hanh rather than "Titch") seems to sum it up:

Interrelationship – 

You are me, and I am you.

Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

You cultivate the flower in yourself,

so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself,

so that you will not have to suffer.

 

I support you;

you support me.

I am in this world to offer you peace;

you are in this world to bring me joy.

Poems: The temple bell stops…”  Haiku by Matsuo Bashō (trans. Robert Bly); In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound;   Aubade with Calf BY MEGAN J. ARLETT; GHAZAL AT THE END by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor; Let the Last Thing Be Song by Hannah Fries; Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith by Mary Oliver;  Loom by Bradley Trumpfheller.

Nutshell: 

Haiku: Richard questioned the translation of the Bashō.  Haiku's spirit is to evoke a mood and certainly much can be read between the words... 

The temple bell stops—

but the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers.

Another translation that comes up is this:

temple bells die out.

the fragrant blossoms remain

a perfect evening

For either, the confusion of bell shapes, metal and flower, a sense of time resonating comes across.

Likewise in the case of Ezra Pound, the title gives the setting: not the romantic version of Paris, but the very busy metro, equating blank faces in a crowd to petals "on a wet, black bough".  

As Judith sums up the Zen story: Quingyuan Weixin had a saying...   The beginning monk enters the monastery and mountains are mountains; rivers are rivers;  As he continues to practice, he sees that mountains are not mountains, rivers not rivers.  At the third level, approaching Satori, he sees again,

mountains are mountains; rivers are rivers.

The more we examine, the more we see more than the thing in itself.

Poetry is a wonderful place to examine contradiction and paradox!

Aubade: We listened to the poet read the poem, and then Graeme also read it.

 So many cow memories!  Maura reminded us of Paul in 2020 who imitated a belllow and I did ask Paul if he would do a repeat! (see below) It  had us all laughing, and seemed to release a flood of "cow"-related  memories.  We agreed that the poem provided a meditative exercise, a bit like the haiku.  "I have found the one" could be the interrelationship-- where the essence of the cow and poet intermingle.  The sensory details are strong (shin-deep).  Some remarked there was no question mark after the two phrases in the penultimate stanza.  Listening to the audio, you hear it in the voice, however it is written as a statement.  Perhaps an observation that is curious, questioning in its nature of pondering.  The calf sees nothing of his future perhaps.  But what is purpose, and does it matter?  

After class, Mario shared a cow poem which totally has haunted him since 2009: 

She dreamed of cows.   https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009%2F10%2F30.html

Ghazal:  the form of couplets ending with the same repeated end word does not require related leaps to link meanings, which allows a multi-faceted examination of possible applications of a word.   How do you spend your day?  What conclusion do you draw at the end of it?  It all depends. Bedtime stories, lessons, history seized and written, seasons, day by day.  The rich rhyme at the end: decay, dismay, buffet, Bombay are not any more nonsensical together as trends as the other uses of "day".  The poet indeed uses the form to twist and turn the cliché "at the end of the day".  

Let the last thing:  Similar to the above ghazal, this 4-part poem examines memory and connection.  How do we "arrange" our piece of time in which we exist?  How does the universe, "with its loosening warp/and weft, still /unspool its symphony?  Musical language examines different metaphors for what it is to be alive, how it is we want to be remembered.  The cumulatives sounds of m's, alliterations creates tones reminiscent of music of the spheres.  Many remembered the power of music to bring back memories, and stories of alzheimers patients who "came to" on hearing a song.     about how to "harmonize with the black hole's fathomless b-flat.  A few people were intrigued by this concept and looked it up:  fathomless b-flat black hole

Little Summer Poem:  We discussed what Mary Oliver does so well: her careful crafting of observations of nature, and how perhaps the Biblical overtones in the 7th stanza could be interpreted as a crescendo of "Faith" as announced in the title.  Wonderful stories and memories about cornfields, about perfect rows of corn where you will never find an uneven number, mindfulness and religious retreats.  How does she mean "she fails as a witness", and yet seems to capture a sacredness in summer.   Is this "obligatory humility"?  The title excuses that as well.  Although I brought up the topic of pulpit thumping

with the repeated "let the... " there is a naive reassurance that there is nothing to fear in the final stanza.

Loom:  Seen both as noun and verb, the title announces how the weave of 3 generations and overtones of edges overlapping, seamed looms over this moment between a mother and adult child and a photograph of her mothers, a Lesbian couple. Beautiful use of the old fashioned noun "a verge", used without "being on the verge of + something", but on the edge... like the trees who "started themselves" against the yard.  The imminence of death that palpable ending of feeling the "edge of her thumb", running her index finger over it, is amplified with a sense of touching an entire lifetime.