Neil shared this comment: “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you? ... We keep expressing our anger and our love, and we hope..." He shared "Heading Out",(4th poem slated for discussion) and photo by Peter Ralston, a photographer from Maine, entitled "Still There".
Poems: excerpt from Passwords, a program of poems by William Stafford (1991)
Table by Edip Cansever, Translated from the Turkish by Richard Tillinghast https://stratfordcrier.com/the-poetry-corner-table-by-edip-cansever/; Airborne Hope by Vivian Huang; Heading Out by Philip Booth; On Being by Ruben Quesada; Condottiero (The Warlord) by Mary Hood (Ekphrastic response to Leonardo da Vinci, Antique Warrior in Profile, c. 1472); Hummingbirds by Campbell McGrath; Mockingbird by Louis Jenkins
Nutshell:
Passwords: In this day and age, it isn't always easy to connect in a "safe way". Stafford suggests that poetry offers us a guideline for communication.
Table: Just the title can flip from noun to verb, from concrete physical structure to an abstract place for mathematical concepts. The opening line sets the scene and as one person says, "tells you all you need to know" about how to fill up with "gladness of living". It starts with giving up keys... opening up to receiving and sharing all that abounds. Although the poem is in translation, it would be hard not to imagine that the words in Turkish sound as theatrical as they call on all the senses starting with "light",
then sounds, then textures like the softness of bread, and weather. Life is not totally good things -- and this man understands not to be exclusive, adding what hasn't happened yet, and desires, quickly followed by those he loved and didn't. He anthropomorphizes this table, a sort of implied companion, and projects his approval that it can hold so much, stay so firm in spite of the unending arrival of more things piling up on it. We appreciated the humor, the tone. Depending on your mood, you might sense a still life created by someone in old age, where all the objects congregate --a record of life before the end, which indeed will happen. A funny association: the "horizontal surface syndrome" -- how some "spread out", but one senses, this table knows no limits for "holding" whatever comes. There is no mention of teetering vertical piles, or objects being pushed aside to make room for new arrivals. Endlessness is on the table, arriving after the mention of the window next to the sky. But the ending offers a reassuring metaphor underlying the eternal strength of the table, able to bear whatever life offers.
Airborn Hope: A "contrapuntal" poem, not just to read in three parts (horizontally, in 2 separate columns) but one person pointed out the fun of "crossing" the ocean of the white space, and going from line 1 in
column one, to the last line of the 2nd column.... followed by line 1 in column 2, going to the last line of the first column. Why not?
Eddie offered insights into the implied crossings an immigrant faces -- the China left behind, the China remembered and painted for a generation who will not know it; the idea of America some who do not leave have, contrasting with those actually living in America. A beautifully rendered crossing of physical, emotional and psychological oceans. As this young 15 year old poet confirms, "I have the freedom to push beyond what is conventionally perceived which challenges me to add a new perspective to recurring themes in modern society."
Heading out: An end of life meditation, beautifully crafted and supported by line breaks, enjambments, alliterative effects, metaphors which carry both physical and internal meanings. Judith was reminded of G.B. Shaw by the metaphysical overtones. https://literariness.org/2019/05/07/analysis-of-george-bernard-shaws-plays/ The more we give away, the more we have... It is not whether we resist, but the how of our resistance. Like "Table" which can handle everything, the question is no longer needing to "give in" or "give out."
On Being: as if a continuation of Heading Out, but more ambiguous and difficult. Who is the I ? Is the speaker of the poem driving? a passenger? a pedestrian? We felt the sounds, especially the sibilance which mirrors California smog was quite effective. Who indeed has turned/this image around?
And who is looking into the mirror? We didn't feel the comment about the poem on the Slowdown was terribly helpful or provided insight.
Condottiero: the literal Italian is "Antique warrior". The Ken Burns special on Leonardo da Vinci came up. If this portrait were not called "Warlord" might we feel different about it? Who is he -- as a man?
Some felt he is stupid, others, handsome, others, grumpy, others still again, a rival for Apollo. What a great assuredness of tone. She starts with hammering in the physical description, then levels him off, belittling his pouting lips, his soul-less eyes: attributes of a mercenary life, as the poet coldly puts it... " based on contract killing for money."
Hummingbirds: Much silence after reading this and a crack at a joke about New Yorker poems, which seem to be related to the issue, but on their own, difficult to understand. The irony that indeed, everything changes, the difficulty of how we perceive things like the moon, with its stages of waxing and waning, and yet it is still the same moon might not have much to do with a hummingbird. As Elmer pointed out, Hummingbirds do not share. Ever. Are light and night interchangeable? And what does the ocean have to do with this?
Mockingbird: In contrast, those especially from large families could relate to how differently family members remember a common experience!
No comments:
Post a Comment