I highly recommend the Fall/Winter issue of the Journal of American Poets. It is chock-full of inspiring messages such as this: "With poetry, you're never alone. You're never starting from scratch and you're always mingling with a lineage you've yet to comprehend fully. With poetry our time becomes mutual and bearable. We hold each other up in times of grief, and times of joy." The Bruschac poem below appears in it. We may have discussed the Al Poulin poem before which is on Poets Walk -- to see links to all the poems and stories on this Rochester treasure conceived by the late Joe Flaherty, founder of Writers and Books: https://mag.rochester.edu/walk/
Poems: October Nor'easter by Marge Piercy; Refugia by Traci Brimhall; Taking Stock by Elaine Equi; The Cane by Joseph Bruschac; The Angels of Radiators by Al Poulin (founder of BOA Editions, another Rochester treasure in the publishing world.)
American Academy Reading 11/7: You can replay the reading on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4G3LW4vDzo.
To revisit the poems shared this evening, visit our digital program book here: https://poets.org/gather-poems-2024.
Line-up of poets reading poets:
Ricardo Maldonado (current Pres. and Ex. Dir. of the Academy) reads “Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye (one of our favorites!)
**Carolyn Forché reads “On Living” by Nâzim Hikmet
Joseph Rios reads “They Won’t Find Us in Books” by Willie Perdomo (his friend and mentor)
Diane Seuss reads “The Miracle of Giving” by D. A. Powell
**Andrea Gibson reads “The Church of Michael Jordan” by Jeffrey McDaniel
**Robin Walter reads “Wait” by Galway Kinnell and “I Belong There” by Mahmoud Darwish
Tracy K. Smith reads “Carrowmore” by Lucie Brock-Broido
Tree Swenson reads “Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon (Tree designed the cover of the book. Also President & Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets for 10 yrs before
Jen Benka who recently retired after 10 yrs in this position. Jen reads “From **‘Elegy in Joy’” by Muriel Rukeyser and “job prescription” by Evie Shockley
Patricia Smith reads “Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege” by Joseph Fasano
avery r. young reads “VOODOO V: ENEMY BE GONE” by Patricia Smith (another Chicago native). Avery is Inaugural poet laureate of Chicago. He sings.
Robert Hass reads “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman
one comment in chat: Uncle Walt bring us home…remind us of who are still at our core
Ricardo Maldonado: This poem is a vision -- a prophecy, an aspiration
see line 83 Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
age of photography. You are the film;
great or small you furnish your parts towards the soul. (final line)
**
Comment from Tree Swenson: The academy feels like home... Reading a poem, feels like coming home.
**
Blog Notes about poems discussed Nov. 6
I didn't particularly PLAN a program poems which offer hope, however, given the nature of human beings, their politics, I was grateful to be reminded how hope is essential for survival.
I started by reading aloud a quote from MLK : “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"
I also referred to Alison Luterman's Poem, Holding Vigil: https://www.rattle.com/holding-vigil-by-alison-luterman/. We are living in a time some might call one of vigil :
October: If you are from New England, you know what kind of storm a Nor'easter is.
Neal noted that Marge Piercy describes the weather the way a sailor would, fully understanding the violence. Elaine picked up as well on how it "ripped" in the vocabulary, the rain turning to scimitar, how stripped and bare to the bone we feel. From storm, to self observation one senses an older person looking back, with the added touch of the enjambment between the 3rd and 4th stanzas, grabbed// at what chance offered. The end offers a surprising new association of "hard", unlike the hard as granite (rain) in the first stanza, or using days hard in the third. Now hard is juxtaposed with "where love rubbed sweetly".
Elmer brought up another poem by the poet, A Work of Artifice where the "could have beens" of a bonsai, crippled by the art also provide a surprising twist at the end. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/marge_piercy/poems/19228
Refugia: The title demands your attention, and indeed, you will be rewarded by this definition: an area of relatively unaltered climate that is inhabited by plants and animals during a period of continental climatic change (such as a glaciation) and remains as a center of relict forms from which a new dispersion and speciation may take place after climatic readjustment.
Brimball shares what she loves, but in the context of "discovery". What things did you not notice/know you love? Not only does she love unusual words like skirling which refers to the shrill wailing sound of bagpipes and gravid which from Latin gravis, means "heavy" but also has the figurative meanings of pregnant: "full or teeming" and "meaningful", but she also "verbs" nouns, and gives us instructions on naming groups of animals. Elmer informed us that normally a group of buzzards is called a wake, but it is indeed one of the three names for vultures[1]. I noted in the poems the comment from Major Jackson in the Slowdown: "Today’s poem knows some environments awaken us daily to the wonders. Maybe that is paradise — a place of first permission to go on loving the world."
We appreciated the sense of stillness, sense of sanctuary, and the delightful, unusual, but apt oxymoron of "the hopeful ugliness" of cygnets. 3rd stanza: I'm not sure the legs of insects only tested n's and o's (in her book), but again, an unusual way of noting two letters usually indicating negativity. How refreshing her use of color in the 4th stanza, the bold, bare blue of an afternoon, the white of ecstasy at its edges -- followed by the enjambment of lyric// bending me
over its knees which enacts the gesture! Her skill continues, wrapping us up to notice with her, and reconsider how we really feel about living things like wasps. What in the natural world allows you to know you love life... watching survival at work? It is easy to write how we love the moon, but to love tomorrow's moon, not just visually, but connecting it to scent it coats raises the level of affection and reinforces hope. Driptorch in the penultimate stanza brought up commentary of positive effects of what looks negative.
Elaine R. brought up as compliment to Brimball, the fabulous poem by Nazim Hikmet, born 1902 and recognized as first "modern Turkish poet", Things I Didn't Know I Loved : https://poets.org/poem/things-i-didnt-know-i-loved
Taking Stock: This poem exercises a skillful cleverness that seems comfortable with contradiction and allowed the discussion to entertain thoughts on what is involved with thinking,
whether rational "brainwork" or introspection and how it relates to understanding intuitively through our other senses. Curious how English has two words for sight, (see vs. look); touch, (physically tactile and emotionally moving); hearing (auditory perception vs. listening).
What is the role of a label? How does it help or hinder living? Eddie brought up the sense of primitive rhythms of the 4th stanza, the iambic heartbeat and placement of the repeated Hearing
as "bread" holding the repeated feeling and solo thinking. Neil brought up the first sound a baby is aware of: the mother's heartbeat in utero!
How much is choice involved with selection of labels? How else do we identify? The poem shares an intimate insight of how the poet is Taking Stock.
The Cane: Kathleen brought up her connection to the poet, Joseph Brushac, Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs. His website will provide more information on the way he gives voice to "marginalized people, amplifying their wisdom and stories" https://joebruchac.com/.
We definitely felt the strength of Native American tradition where the word condoled is used, selecting the next chief during the time of condolences for the one who has passed. The cane,
symbol of wisdom, tool to guide us, help us balance —something to lean on passing on words
to young teens who lean on them as they shape their own journeys and memories. Beautiful poem where one does not need capitals, punctuation, stanzas as you feel your way, voicing each word just like the cane of the elder, speaking to all of us. We all walk our paths, and profit from the support and guidance.
Angels of Radiators: Old fashioned radiators still exist, and many shared memories of how it used to be to keep a house warm in cold weather. The juxtaposition of a personalized furnace with celestial references is humorous: it fails like heaven, its water turning to steam as grace runs out, the angles of rooms unlit, cold, waiting for the cold, white, silent, dead angels to activate. Mary who read the poem added her touch of humor, saying, sitting in a cold draft of the room, the poem "warmed her up" ! Indeed. All of us could feel the pure spirit of those radiators singing -- and dancing wild allelujahs warm as spring.
It reminded us of Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays which I read aloud. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46461/those-winter-sundays
[1] Kettle: A group of vultures in flight; Committee: A group of vultures resting in a tree or on a fence post
Wake: A group of vultures feeding on a carcass
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