May 14-5

  

The Globe by Michael Collier;  Opposing Easels  by Thomas Mixon; a dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem by Rachel Dillon; Oxymorons by William Matthews; Without  by Joy Harjo; ARCHIVE AND EXODUS by Jimmy Neenan

"For any poem to render meaning, it must first coax its reader into becoming an accomplice" -- from  Confessional Poetry by BY NASRULLAH MAMBROL on APRIL 26, 2025 https://literariness.org/2025/04/26/confessional-poetry/#google_vignette

Nutshell:

The Globe: The first 4 couplets describe a globe, inviting the reader to think of how we "represent the world", how a planet is divided into arbitrary color-coded portions of nations.  The alliterative description, "cradled in its caliper", emphasizes the stamp of our human representation/organization of this planet. In the 5th couplet, "obvious and obscure" as adjectives about a globe leap into the inner light that it holds. Two more couplets paint an intimately tender memory of the speaker's children.  We admired the rhythm, the clever metaphors and parallels.  

Born in 1953, Collier perhaps remembers when  times seemed "round" and solid.  Graeme remembered "when the world was red", meaning, territories in red belonged to the English Empire and many remarked  how names of countries have changed, and many had such a globe although not all had the feature of night light,  controlled with a flick of a switch.  

The narrative's poignancy of packing it away, signifying the inevitable passing of time, becomes the vehicle for recalling the intimacy the poet feels for his sons, intensified by  comparing the light to the size of a child's thumb, the continents the size of their hands, translucent as they "palmed the planet" to make it spin—perhaps an echo of the song "He's got the whole world in his hands".   Hands down an excellent poem with everyone a willing accomplice! 

Oppposing Easels:    Delightful villanelle written in response to Rattle's ekphrastic challenge of the painting, Siblings under the Skin, where the living  people (and even some of skeletons) in the image are  "holding death at arm's length", with many variations of skeletons in various  active poses.  Given the form, the repeat of the striking first line (Our hearts were formed before our bones)  is not only emotionally  but also biologically correct with the 3rd line repeat  (I listen to the metronome), marking the passage of time like a heart beating.  Judith brought up a personal anecdote of being in a drawing class where the teacher, like a demanding metronome demanding exactitude, forced her to re-do a drawing 4 times.  (The drawing did win a prize however!)  One does hope practice with a metronome will enable mastery.  It doesn't skip beats, but it also puts creativity at risk,  which is a second theme in the poem. The short 4-syllable sentences at the end ( I try to paint. The palette's dry.  It's getting late.) add an element of urgency.

Creative process, self-judgement (the question, "what else do I really know about myself" ) go hand in hand facing an "empty canvass", with the "groan" of long O's and A's so unlike the relentless sound of the tick-tick of a metronome.  Perhaps the "Opposing" in the title refers to the inner heart as metronome, as Richard punned, the inward thinking vs. thinking "outloud".  Another poem that engaged us all.

A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem-- but in this poem nothing dies. 

In the spirit of a villanelle, the idea is repeated with a dolphin, trapped in a river who swam a great distance to die only to have the poet refute it by confessing, "I lied".  In both cases, the first word in the stanza break after "die" is "alone.

Echoing the opening quote, ("For any poem to render meaning, it must first coax its reader into becoming an accomplice"),  the poet in this poem uses the word coax -- as a desperate plea followed by a line and stanza break, for  poetry to change things starting with the rescue of whales, dolphins, trapped cats, sea birds from the damage humans have created on this planet.  The poet emphasizes the need for bravery, uses her "brave voice" no matter what  hurricane, rip current, toxic algal bloom, or other disaster looms ahead.  But the bravery comes knowing we can't control what lives or dies.  Perhaps the plea, tell me, that appeal to the reader, is to join in, take her hand.  Axel pointed out sea creatures don't have hands, and perhaps ours can be put to use to help them.

Oxymorons:  Marna pointed out the etymology:  oxy: sharp; moron: fool. For a further history of the word see: https://wordhistories.net/2017/09/12/origin-of-oxymoron/

 Normally opposing terms,  Paul pointed out the poet is not truly using "oxymorons", rather words put together which if separated seem odd bedfellows indeed.  We chuckled that "famous" is indeed a rare companion for "poet".  But some did not care for this slant attack on firearms, divorce, monetary and political coinages .  The poem's apex come in the last line of the 4th stanza:  "these phrases want to have it both ways" -- line and stanza break -- "sag at the middle like decrepit beds." 

For more of his work,  and bio of this poet, born in 1942, sadly deceased after a short 55 years in 1997: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-matthews

Without:   An enigmatic poem, both elegy and love poem, as if imagining the end of the world. This site, gives a detailed analysis: https://poemanalysis.com/joy-harjo/without/   Axel shared the term "optimistic nihilist"... and another term, "paleo-anarchist" came up.  Will the world keep on trudging through time without us?  Some saw a literal attendance at a story contest, ruminating on the power of stories, others a more metaphorical implication of a story contest.   One person saw a parallel with the Whale poem, pointing out how we rationalize, but that doesn't let us off the hook for being responsible for our actions.  Although there is no punctuation, the poem has clear enjambments which reinforce emotion --  whether or not those  looking at the world are seeing real or metaphorical  story tellers, they watch from  "the edge/of grief and heartbreak".  I was intrigued by the interruptive "and... and"  

seeing the "design of the two-minded creature/

[and know why half the world... and the other half...]

//through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers' trysts, and endless//

human industry.

[the "interruptive and /and :those who fight righteously, and those who nail it all back together -- both share the cooking fires, trysts and enjambed "endless/human industry". 

One feels the words breathing as if in a song circle, "timeless weave of breathing".  In the final line, are the hyenas laughing, or the people?  Being in the desert, difficult to imagine hyenas have much opportunity to drink rain water.  Is this yet another metaphor?  

I highly recommend the analysis link.

Archive and Exodus: From Sunlight Press.  After contacting Sunlight Press, I received the email of the poet and Kathy was reassured that the procedure of this fine review is first to select a poem, then match it with a visual image.  It was sheer coincidence that the photograph of the Konark Sun Temple by Navneet Shanu   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple) matched the poem so perfectly!  

In my letter to the poet I mentioned our discussion : how we were reminded a bit of  Oxymandias (Shelley) perhaps with a twist of Keats' Ode on Melancholy.  Another participant was reminded of American Ramble by Neil King which explores memory and renewal.

How to "purge" what we don't want to be reminded of? How to keep what we want for ever?  We enjoyed comparing Mnemosyne (archive) and Lethe -- and you will see, to keep the poems to 4 pages, I broke the poem into two parts.  I am curious why you chose to use only  one stanza.    We enjoyed your treatment of such polarity but were a little stuck on this powerful line :  "I'll keep it as a letter/holds a sound"-- imagining an association with the Sun Temple* which the editors chose to accompany your poem as "wheel" and "circle".

His answer:  The inspiration for the poem (like much of my current work) is the raising of my daughters in troubling times and how so much of what we experience on an average day must be held in as close to a state of permanence as possible (the archive). I like playing with digital allusions and mentions alongside more classical references (which is where my literary heart lies), but the exodus segment felt fitting to smash into the same stanza only because so much of what we encounter must be held on to as we often strive to push out that which we long to forget. 

At the time of writing, I was reading Megan Wilson's stunning new translation of The Iliad and was caught by the breathtaking violence paired together with moments of true grandeur and heroism--how so much of what can be memorialized also stands amidst terror. I wrote the poem about six months ago.

He didn't elaborate on my mention of his credentials:  in "Crack the Spine" (2012): Jimmy Neenan educates the masses of irate seventeen year olds with the likes of comic books, video clips, and a short story here and there.  He holds a bachelor’s in English Literature from University of Colorado at Boulder and a secondary language arts teaching license in Colorado. His work has appeared recently in the Piker Press, Pig in a Poke Magazine, The Tomfoolery Review, and the Dog Oil Press, to name a few.

**

full correspondance below 

Hello!

I am a fan of Sunlight Press and was so intrigued by your poem "Archive and Exodus",  I selected it for discussion in my weekly gathering of poems here in Pittsford and Rochester, New York.   [ I started this 18 years ago, and each week select poems to fill 4 pages which we read aloud and then discuss.  

So you can see the other poems with yours, this was the line-up:]

Congratulations on your poem!  We were reminded a bit of  Oxymandias (Shelley) perhaps with a twist of Keats' Ode on Melancholy.  Another participant was reminded of American Ramble by Neil King which explores memory and renewal.

How to "purge" what we don't want to be reminded of? How to keep what we want for ever?  We enjoyed comparing Mnemosyne (archive) and Lethe -- and you will see, to keep the poems to 4 pages, I broke the poem into two parts.  I am curious why you chose to use only  one stanza.    We enjoyed your treatment of such polarity but were a little stuck on this powerful line :  "I'll keep it as a letter/holds a sound"--

imagining an association with the Sun Temple* which the editors chose to accompany your poem as "wheel" and "circle".  In fact, one person was convinced that you had proposed the photograph, so we contacted the editor to find out.  They kindly provided us with your email.

* Konark Sun Temple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple)  by  Navneet Shanu

We would be most pleased if you wanted to share more about the inspiration behind this poem.

When was it written?  I did find this 2012 mention of you in "Crack the Spine": Jimmy Neenan educates the masses of irate seventeen year olds with the likes of comic books, video clips, and a short story here and there.  He holds a bachelor’s in English Literature from University of Colorado at Boulder and a secondary language arts teaching license in Colorado. His work has appeared recently in the Piker Press, Pig in a Poke Magazine, The Tomfoolery Review, and the Dog Oil Press, to name a few.

The inspiration for the poem (like much of my current work) is the raising of my daughters in troubling times and how so much of what we experience on an average day must be held in as close to a state of permanence as possible (the archive). I like playing with digital allusions and mentions alongside more classical references (which is where my literary heart lies), but the exodus segment felt fitting to smash into the same stanza only because so much of what we encounter must be held on to as we often strive to push out that which we long to forget. 

At the time of writing, I was reading Megan Wilson's stunning new translation of The Iliad and was caught by the breathtaking violence paired together with moments of true grandeur and heroism--how so much of what can be memorialized also stands amidst terror. I wrote the poem about six months ago.

Correspondence: 

Hi Kitty, 

Thank you so much for letting us know how much your group appreciated the poem and the image. I thought this poem was particularly difficult to illustrate. I never know how an image will land with a reader. It was a nice surprise to hear your poetry group appreciated this particular image and the fact that it generated so much discussion. So lovely that you reached out to us! 

With our gratitude, 

Rudri 

Rudri Patel & Beth Burrell

Editors

The Sunlight Press

On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 1:38 PM Sunlight Press <thesunlightpress@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Kitty,

Thanks so much! I don't see why permission is needed to discuss a poem from our site. I love that the group delved into both the poem and image, and glad you have liked some of our poem/art pairings. Some poems are pretty tricky to illustrate as I'm sure you can imagine! I also am glad for you to spread the word about Sunlight within your group. As I'd shared with Kathy, Jimmy would likely appreciate your choosing his poem for discussion. (I'm not sure we heard from him after publishing now that you mention it. Hope he liked the accompanying art!).

My query

You will see, one of the participants of my weekly group contacted you!  We so enjoyed the pairing of the poem and photo.  I am amazed at how beautifully you do this poem after poem!  I am glad you enjoy it so much-- and hope that hearing how gratifying it is to the readership makes the "time-consuming" part feel worthwhile.

You mentioned the Poet Jimmy Neenan might enjoy hearing our comments -- could you send me his email?

I want to be sure also, is it enough to have the link to Sunlight Press with the poem/photo to credit you-- or should I have asked permission first?  I am very naive about how this works, and confess, for 18 years now, have blithely have been choosing good poems without paying attention to this.  

Poems for May 7-8

 If Librarians Were Honest  by Joe Mills; American Abyss by Cynthia Dewi Oka; The Sonnet-Ballad  by Gwendolyn Brooks; Le Temps Mort  by Jenny Xie;  For My Unwritten Poems Itshe Slutsky; Loom Poem Jake Skeets;

 The first poem, Jonathan offered as a segue from last week, and the Gwendolyn Brooks offered by Bart.  Although all the poems feel like contemporary "pulse-takers, it is only the others which were posted recently in Poem-a-day and  Rattle Magazine.

Nutshell of discussion:

If Librarians were honest... The title invites us to think about honesty, as well as libraries and their provisions of books, reviews, etc which give us commentary on history,  human endeavor and the nature of man.  The epigram by Benjamin Franklin emphasizes debauched as verb  which seems to mean the adjectival "distracted me from my work".  The syntax is off if you apply a synonym as verb:  "a book destroys me from my work".  Perhaps Franklin was implying a book could be an agent that  debases moral purity of; corrupts." Perhaps some contemporary far-right fanatics might take this poem seriously and continue to ban "dangerous" books.   However, for most readers, the clever use of enjambments hooks the reader in, only to surprise us with unexpected turns, and often augmenting the humor with double meanings.  Alliterations pepper the color.  Although there could be three distinct stanzas, all starting with "If librarians were honest",  the lack of separation between the two ironic commentaries  and the truth of the third, is part of the fun.  It is augmented by the alphabetized order of the Ms, with the first two ending in X, leading up to the repeat of the verb "debauched", (as if the stacks were filled with dangerous people ready to rape unsuspecting readers).  The final 4 lines are delightfully subversive.  The "while you still can" a contemporary reference to the  banning of books, threats to libraries, Education, the Arts. 

American Abyss:  Perhaps the title allows a sense that the poem's mixed metaphors are intended to fall between cracks?  Many found the poem a struggle, to the point of feeling "battered by it".  The metaphors are perhaps fresh, but seem not to mesh with each other. Who is the "you"?   Mother nature? What is the "ideal" and "idea" of an America built in the speaker's head?  As for the note, interesting as it was, how did it help us understand the poem?  It is quite sincere, but it is hard to see the evidence of US Supported Genocide in Indonesia in the poem, aside from "belligerent" to describe grasses.   As Graeme pointed out, a poem should be able to work without a note explaining it.  For many, it remained obscure with or without the note. 

Sonnet-Ballad:  Many had associations with  ballads about the cruelty of war, including this one by Peter Paul and Mary: https://genius.com/Peter-paul-and-mary-cruel-war-lyrics.  The opening and closing line, sandwich two fears:  a loved one may not come back, or worse, he will return changed if he does, because of  the seduction of war, that "coquettish" flirt with death, heroic grandeur.  The rhyme scheme, abab / bcbc/ dfdf/ aa is subtle, unlike the fragment "would have to be untrue" repeating as echo of the 8th line on the 9th.   The rhyme with happiness, at first "guess", ends with his stammered "yes".  The lament that opens the poem, seems to  swell to a high pitch in its repeat, confirming the fear.

Le Temps Mort:  Without the note, one is left with the French words for "dead time".  In a way, as Judith pointed out, it is an ekphrastic poem about the idea of film as a way of perceiving/seeing, using film vocabulary.  She shared as well her experience living in New York City, where Sixth Avenue is "Avenue of the Americas", indeed a sound of vowels, and described the slow matinal "mucus" as the city fills with people going to work, and subways vibrate underneath.  Some found this poem a struggle to read.  Eddy wondered if the poet, who left China at age 4, was not thinking of the Chinese Cultural revolution.  Be that as it may, one has the sense of an observer offering words with no discernible plot, only an "immeasurable substratum of the unperceived" as she puts it in the note.  We don't take time to notice what is around us.  In a way, the poem seems voyeuristic, and points to a vast potential of possibilities. 

For My Unwritten Poems: Why are they not written?  Or are these poems that have not yet found a way, and are waiting to be born?  The title may sound even more luscious in the rich mouthiness of the Yiddish.  The poem celebrates waiting, mirrors midpoint: and the seed/and the word, 

The first stanza:   for those, could mean,  the unwritten poem, but perhaps also refers to people, and the "rigid rest of nothingness" as the dead.  Double meanings continue with  "rest of reason" as in the relaxation of eternal sleep or rest of, meaning the remains of reason... unemerged ideas, to help us return to the idea of unwritten poems.  Poems... with hints of ghosts,  arrive at the  second stanza:  "How good the word is that has not yet been pronounced. "

As concept, unwritten is all that is understood, but not stated.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to have less constant talk in our interconnected internet-ed, siri-convenienced world that leaves us feeling disconnected? Unwritten rules of common sense, common courtesy, unwritten givens of hibernations, rebirths."Beds of silence" is a surprising expression linked to the image of kernel in the field, whether old fashioned wheat once known as "corn" or American maize.  Tomorrow perhaps...  repeated twice...  Perhaps is definitely key underlining unpredictable possibility.

We arrive at the final stanza: How good the kernel (the similar syntax equates kernel with word).  We enjoyed the sense of potential, the sense of pacing, timing, patience.

Loom poem:  it looks to be woven and indeed, is a mirror poem arriving midpoint on bone.  The form instructs us on how to read it.  One can hear the sound of looms.. imagine the damp seeping... although "seep whisper" has no definition.  The noun snakeweed turns to verb and the line breaks help us see name/collapse could be a double noun, double verb, or perhaps names collapse;    memories against/ pink;  light against/bone.  Pink perhaps is dawn, or a pink bird alighting.

It could be a love poem, where nouns are aroused as verbs, verbs become whispers of presence.  Worn tongue perhaps old or extinct language.  T perhaps could be the lover's initial.  

One way to read the opening/closing lines:  I, window words, name a light kiss.... //a light kiss I window: words into a name.

Intriguing, without a sense of  a struggle perhaps because of the design/pattern of the poem. 

April 30 - May 1

 

The Old Poets of China by Mary Oliver (1935-2019); All by Bei Dao; The Answer; Never Alone by Francisco X. Alarcón (favorite by Ada Limon~); Incantation by Czesław Miłosz; from Mythologizing Always : Seven Sonnets by Patricia Spears Jones. (I and IV); The Library's Roof Is a Meadow  by Pamela Lucinda Moss

We  had the honor of hearing Eddy read the two poems in the set by Bei Dao in Chinese.   Thank you Eddy for offering this special opportunity to hear the original and  point out particularities of the translation.

NUTSHELL: 

The Old Poets of China:  The title sets us up to want to know more... Much is happening with Oliver's management of these five lines. The first line delivers a double-meaning, where the world "comes after me" could imply the speaker comes first, then the world; or literally, the world seems to chase us with its offers of busyness. Then two short sentences, one of which broken by an enjambment.  Then a long two and half lines of the next sentence that completes the poem, shooting us back in time, and high in the misty mountains.  She needn't  tell us how she understands these old poets, it is enough that she does, and we are invited to join in a metaphorical meditation of an old Chinese brush painting of tall mountains where a tiny figure can barely be distinguished.

We can all relate to a desire to escape busyness... and The World is too much with us (Wordsworth) comes to mind. How does she mean "it does not believe that I do not want it."  ?  By personifying "the world" this is not an easy statement to ignore. What is our place in the world, whether it be natural or the one of human affairs?  The more you stay with this short poem, the more satisfying it seems to be,  straddling whatever occidental present in our case, with an ancient oriental art and wisdom.

Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai) born in 1949 is an important poet both for both China and the World.  Eddy gave us a brief history of modern China, after the rise of Mao, the cultural revolution  in 1966-76, Tianamen Square  Massacre in 1989.  Bei Dao was exiled in 1989 but allowed back in the country in 2006.  He belonged at one point to the Misty Poets, and he is known for subtlety, eloquence, and innovation.  All:  In English, the "l" curls off the tongue and the anaphor allows a sense of a flowing river.  Note, the translator emphasizes "All" with a capital A, but there is no punctuation, only a double space between each line, as if the words "creep into the pale mist" in the high mountains.   Each line invites long reflection. The first four lines treat "All" as an entity, with an opening that implies birth, awareness of being in immense and eternal beginnings without end, and yet "All is a search that dies at birth".   What comes before?  Is there need to know what comes after?  All does not need to search.  The final line echoes the echoes -- "All deaths have a lingering echo".

 The rest of the phrases couple "All" to mostly abstract nouns : joy, sorrow, love, hope, faith.  Even language reflects the anaphoric All, as it repeats.  One thought about "All joy lacks smiles/all sorrow lacks tears": these two lines see the inward nature that does not need outward expression.  Likewise with the "groans" carried with faith; abstract love encased in the heart; abstract hope as a metaphorical vehicle carrying annotations.  To arrive at a true sense of joy, sorrow, love, the "all" cannot be pinned down, put into words.  We try to make meaning, to understand the complexity of faith, hope, but it is almost reassuring to hear the chiming of "All".

The footnote gives a site and further reference of one blogger -- to add to our discussion and address the penultimate line.  We discussed the line, "All contact a first encounter" -- which affirms the constant shifting nature of reality.  Each time we perceive something, meet someone, it will be different.  

Carolyn had the idea of a choral incantation where the group would join in saying "all", and then different individual voices would complete the line.  Indeed, this poem is one you can imagine sung.  

The Answer: It is helpful to know that this poem was written in response to the 1976 uprising 4 months after Chou En-Lai's death.  Indeed, with a title "The Answer", a first response would be "what is the question"?  It seems to be a call for truth, calling into question givens like "the sky is blue"which modern science will confirm is a matter of our perception, not fact.  Coupled with the protest is a belief in dreams.  

We remarked the irony of the opening two stanzas.  What makes good or bad poetry?  How  does writing poetry make a difference?  (Perhaps "All" has the answer!)  Eddy was helpful explaining that "brackish water" in the penultimate stanza is a phrase in Chinese for grievances.  "Let all the brackish water pour into my heart", would imply absorbing grievances to create harmony, encourage "Humanity to choose a peak for existence again" (back to the philosopher-poet-scholar's mountains!).  

Never Alone:  This was a choice of a poem by current National Poet Laureate, Ada Limon and one she used in "Poetry in the Parks. To hear her read it: https://www.nps.gov/places/poetryinparks3.htm The softness of the sibilance is reassuringly convincing.  The final word, corazón, heart echoes Bei Dao, "All love is in the heart".

Incantation:  Like "All", this poem offers us lines deserving careful attention, meditation, however, they do contain punctuation which accentuates an "end-stopped" gravity.  The first 14 lines of this 20 line poem concern Human Reason.  The second character is a coupling of love + wisdom, "beautiful and young Philo-Sophia" and then Poetry who brings the news as mythic unicorn, magical but offering us ways to imagine the possible.  Again, eternal, renewed, and the echoes confirm old/young go hand in hand, renaissance after renaissance.  The background of the poem:  written in Berkley, CA in 1968 shortly after Prague Spring, Milosz wrote it in Polish and translated it with his good friend Robert Pinsky, who later became a two-term National Poet Laureate.  Pinsky would read this poem at public events, such as the memorial after 9/11.

As Seamus Heaney remarks, "it is thrilling to hear ideal possibilities of human life stated so unrepentantly and unambiguously." Vive the spirit of optimistic enlightenment, more powerful (we hope) than post-structuralists preaching indeterminism!

two stanzas of Mythologizing Always:  As a series of seven sonnets, the title uses "mythologizing" as adjective to the abstract noun of "always".  I am reminded of the saying that "poetry tells us what we think we need to hear, that we would not get from honest, responsible prose."  The first sonnet deserves a dramatic reading, bringing alive "heart part" hand in hand with "intense improvisation" turning mythologizing (in parentheses) into a verb, where always becomes its adverb.  Sonnet IV goes to town with the sounds and rhythms supporting lively images of a poem miming itself, working itself up to the fabulous last four lines where the reader is shown the choreography of "the anxiety dance".  Yet another way to address the Tao theme of this week's selection of poems.  

The Library's Roof: Delightful set of couplets drawing on "library" vocabulary -- from bibliographic record, sanctuary (especially in the psychology section of 158.9's), catalogues, Libby -- all the way to the roof, as a place of renewal-- imagine that final line as everyone's birthright: astonishingly undocumented, circulating love!

The poem brought up mutliple shares of memories wandering the stacks, the joy of serendipitous stumblings .  Apparently the Frederick Douglass library had a garden on its roof! 

April 23-4

 Chickadee by Stanley Plumly; Small Fragments by Nasser Rabah; Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise by Jay Hopler;  Political Plaintive  by April Hoffman; The Fear of God  by Robert Frost; You know what, about this little match? by June Gervais

Nutshell:  April 23-4:

The array of poems allowed us to delve into our expectations of all we want a poem to do.

Perhaps the poem and poet have other ideas about what they think we need to hear, but one

thing is clear, a poem is a playground for content, form and feeling, with an eye out for

the visual set up, an ear out for the rhythms and sounds, and a sixth sense about establishing

tone.

 

 Chickadee: 

On the surface, there are lovely sounds, and one senses the cold, the chickadees, but as one person put it, the poem is lacking in artifice, and another described it as  "a lump of dull in need of kneading". Another wondered if it might come across any better as a prose paragraph, as there didn't seem to be any particular reason for the line breaks.

Aside from alliteration, slant rhyme, a repetition of "glass", a sweeping statement about wearying of the sublime, the poem hops along with details, but to what end?  The ending doesn't bind us with a sense of mattering, and we are given little clue as to who Margaret is, aside from being the opening word, remembering in summer, outside, in contrast with his winter memory. She is mentioned a second time sitting still inside in winter in an unsettling brokenness of sunshine "falling in shadows all about her", now contrasted to the "bright" chickadees.   If this is supposed to be a poem about relationship, for most of us, guesswork is necessary.

 

Small Fragments:  These 10 "fragments" in translation give a very real and convincing portrayal of the devastation of Palestine and what it is like to live in Gaza.  Touches of poetic imagination give hope, as in verse 6, (cypress dream... cloud as stream's lover, soil's fate) and 8 (The reason for the glass of water by your bedside: so the guardian angel can drink.)    

 

Personification is all throughout:  shadows, night, homes, laundry, even a wound . Because it is in  fragments, perhaps it is up to the reader to sort out confusion and feel the importance of the writing the poem : #5 (balcony, newspaper, laundry -- will it break down quickly, or resist... until the poem bleeds out) and #9 even nighttime, come to shut the window/had its spirit broken, content with the poem.) . As the translators say, these words are important in ways we have yet to comprehend.  

 

Out of these wounds:  The words of Maya Angelou, Still I Rise come to mind from the title.  Without knowing anything about Jay Hopler, (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/158256/what-do-i-want-with-eternity) perhaps you might not understand the poem, but capture a meditative mood.

The visual set up, with Capital letters at the beginning of each line, stanza space augmented by the space mid-line,  accentuates a sense of fragmentation.  Reinforcing the "disconnect, enjambments, juxtapositions like "Wet/scorch" give a sense of unpredictable.  One senses urgency, and obstacles in the way to overcome.  He moves from porch light, sunset, to celestial transcendence.  The penultimate line could be read independently Make a wish, not that we would  and also connect to the next line:  not that we would /wish for anything but the impossible.  

Knowing that Jay Hopler was fighting cancer and determined to finish his last book, puts a different context on wishes and brings the poem to life.  It changes the "impossible dreams" such as world peace, to the very specific wish of wanting more time alive. 

 

Political Plaintive: Plaintive is an adjective, not a noun like Lament (or Plaintiff) but the double p's and underpinning of sarcasm override any such technicalities perhaps. 

One person was reminded of the feeling tone of  American Ramble  

We all recognize the songs, the myths, what we would like to think America was, used to be, could be.  Especially now, the last two stanzas echo with yearning for a return of decency.  Judith reminded us of the excesses of hypocrisy in America's "Golden Age", Salmon Chase and the changing of the motto E Pluribus Unum to "In God We Trust". Marna brought up "The New Rasputins" (Atlantic)   If anything, we all would profit from our subconscious collections of beliefs, myths, news sources, judgements.  The final "Don't I?" is both a looking at oneself in the mirror as well as implying perhaps we think we remember something one way... which maybe never was.

 

The Fear of God:  A very different tone from what we think of with Robert Frost .

A bit of wry humor, but no embellishment, just keen-sighted clarity, economy of language.

Lovely metaphor of "uniform" (society's rules to conform), using "apparel" as the "curtain" of the inmost soul -- protection perhaps.  Unlike the usual nature poem, here, he is addressing the ego in the cosmos... using the adjective "arbitrary" next to "god" which could mirror the God in the title.  We didn't discuss the "fear" mentioned in the title.  Nor does the poem for that matter.

 

 You know what... Fun poem-- which brings an ordinary match to life as something quite different!  Reading the prompt and her response helps the poem along.  It might be easy to read the opening line as "popular" but hard to fathom what glue (from hooves whether horse or cow) has to do with it.  Eugene Levy.  The onomatopoeic "nick, tick, wick, stick, flickers" threads sparks throughout.  I'd love to see a sequel of an interview with the little match, how it's faring in retirement, having served its purpose.  Perhaps it has a secret about breathing and reaching forever?!  

poems for April 16-7

 "So few grains of happiness / measured against all the dark / and still the scales balance,”-- from The Weighing  by Jane Hirshfield  

Blessing of Boats by Lucille Clifton;  The Trouble with Poetry,  by Billy Collins; Spring by Marjory Wentworth; The People of Tao-chu by Po Chu; Walking an Old Dog by Lisa Chavez; How My Father Learned English by Juan J. Morales; Rules for flying by Allyson Whipple

For Wednesday:  Paul re- read his response on Feb. 24 to John Donne's Canonization.   Maura brought in "We are Not Alone" by Israel Emiot;   https://mag.rochester.edu/walk/poets-walk/a-stone-also-hears

Marna brought in "My First Typewriter" by Billy Collins. in new book by Billy Collins: Water, Water

I shared this version: 

  Nutshell: April 16-7A good poem is not about meaning, but what it does -- how it makes us feel.  The last three poems selected this in the selection were centos. All the poems but the last one  made quite an emotional impact.   Forgive me if I go on longer than usual to try to "unwrap" the how. 

 

Blessing of Boats:  It is comforting to read these gentle, encouraging words.  Indeed, the metaphor of understanding like the "lip" of the tide  captures the nature of life, where the best we can do is stand on the edges, trusting indeed, the coming and goings like the tide be balanced.

She repeats May four times:  first, referring to the tide, and then  "May you" extends beyond the boats to each of us, with the 3rd time written after a space on the 9th line,  cushioned with a line break.  The 4th time, in perhaps the longest line propelling to innocence like a baby boat on a maiden journey, which after the line break lands on the final line.

Associations: Biloxi, and the blessing of shrimp boats; Bob Dylan, Forever Young;

 

Her images of tide, wind, water, waving are filled with motion, coming/going.  I connect  the tide/entering even now/ the lip of our understanding, the yin/yang of possibility of "this to that"

which she applied to the wind, now facing it, now turning from it.   A lip does not guarantee one opens the mouth to swallow something,  or keep it shut, but rather, that edge is an awareness of something that will carry us.  The prayer emphasizes that it carry you beyond the face of fear.

Then, the action is transferred to a kiss... to the wind, confident it will "love your back".  Only then, the third verb, to open your eyes,  the 4th action to water.  The beautiful ambiguity of  "open your eyes to water/water waving forever" gives a sense of tearful goodbyes, never losing connection as if the waving continues to maintain it. Water as verb/noun suggests "wave" in the same way.  A perfect blessing to help us face danger, things we cannot control.

 

The Trouble with Poetry:  The opening stanza could be the start of a serious poem, and invites the non-poet-less-than-intrigued-by poetry, to join in a critique of why it is not necessarily a good thing.  The quick turn in the second stanza is followed with two outlandish and hilarious images,

which seem indeed to make fun of poets and their output.  The third stanza confirms the impossibility of ever putting a stop to such production, and finally in the 4th stanza, we have a hint that the "we" in question just might be students in high school.

Again, another twist, we are introduced to the speaker of the poem, who, contrary to thinking there is a trouble of too much poetry, comes up with a summary of poetry's ability to fill us with joy, sorrow.  Another twist, next stanza, and we're back to that urge of writing more poetry and then an unusual and ingenious description of waiting for inspiration.  

Oh, but this is Billy Collins at his best... who next tosses in a fragment of an elaboration on the arising desire (while waiting) to steal.  Now the door is open for 8 lines using a stolen image (which indeed, comes from The Oracle at Delphiby Lawrence Ferlinghetti) and a confession that now, the speaker is finally honest...  The final quatrain refers to Ferlinghetti's iconic poem, Coney Island of the Mind , and you would never guess that the student ever thought poetry could even be in the same room as trouble.  

 

I loved that several people shared memories of a favorite small volume of poetry.  Why "unmerry" to describe the thieving band?  Perhaps to mask insecurity? be different? critique those unlike the speaker who don't get the fun of poetry.

About plagiarism: 

 I forgot to include Neil's reference:  https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-lobachevsky-lyrics

 

Spring: The poet although born in Lynn, MA and attended Mt. Holyoke, has quite a biography as 6th Poet Laureate of South Carolina. (click hyperlink). Her opening stanza is skillfully delightful.  The second stanza provides an unexpected associative turn comparing the birds to Chinese peasants released from "the quilted clothes they were sewn into for the long winter".

Judith was reminded of a passage from The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.

Shifting to a different culture and time amplifies the surprise.  The idea of ducking and laughing while flicking picked fleas from the lining of those winter jackets, the communal equality of children being naked, the total cast off of winter as they plunge into icy water adds a surreal sense of joy.

 

The People of Tao-chu: Although the reference is from a pocket book published in 1919, it refers to a poet in the Tang dynasty (7-10th century) considered the golden age of cosmopolitan culture.  Translated by the brilliant translator, Arthur Waley, Judith who selected the poem, pointed out the ground-breaking of his translations, which reflect his poetic heart as well as his breadth and depth of knowledge of the culture.  What a wonderful moral lesson this tale reveals,

and quite timely for today.  We still have those in power who refuse to see others unlike themselves as human.  "One must offer what is there, and not what isn't there", goes beyond the question of slavery and anti-anything-ism regarding people outside of one's own tribe.  

 

Comments included how fortunate it was that the Emperor had a heart; the problem of capriciousness of rulers; the moral lesson is for both common people as well as administrators. 

 

Walking an Old Dog:  the first of three centos (Latin, for "patchwork") or patchwork poems quilted from other poets' lines.  (The thievery of it mentioned in Billy's poem!)  I do not know what poems, or lines Lisa Chavez was reading when she wrote this poem. It would seem she understands and loves an old dog.  Perhaps she is referring to her own older age, although, with a cento, it is easy to write in the persona of someone else.  We enjoyed the vocabulary... whiffles, the implications of letting go with the piñon cones/ opening like fists/ dropping their treasure the perspectives/comparisons caterpillar's//circuitous journeys the almost paradoxical ending of shadows, thinning to fade, //(double stanza break)// lengthening (as if strengthening)

The short lines unroll slowly.  The final three lines cannot be said quickly.  The end is not yet, but one feels a lump in the throat knowing it will come.  

lengthening

toward the end

of the day

 

A lovely adaptation of a human being to a dog.  There is not demand for pity for the dog or the master.  There is no mention of "love of our time together".  It shows the powerful yet  simple presence of shared, mindful moments. 

 

How my Father... There is a lot of ambiguity in this poem, perhaps because it is a cento.  The poet has a Hispanic name, the title speaks of his father learning English, and the poem is set in a hospital in Japan in 1952.  Is Manuel Spanish-American, or is it the father translating the English into Spanish.  We could feel the pain, as if the pain of a phantom limb, could feel the fear of a soldier wounded, wondering if his legs would walk again.  The line that struck my heart was the final one. He didn't have words in English yet.  Indeed, even if he had the English, how does one express the horror of war, the pain of being wounded, the difficulty of being in a foreign land, 

the fear in the dream of losing your native tongue as well as your legs?  The description of English stuck in his mouth, stumbling past his teeth is a poignant and powerful way of describing learning a language.

 

Rules for Flying:  There are some lines that relate to the title as in, flying on an airplane. 

For those from the South, Bless your Heart is a polite way to disdainfully brush someone off.

We thought the first mention of it to the flight attendant a northern version, meant in all sincerity. 

Then again, maybe not, if you only think what it really means when facing TSA and customs agents.   Quite a different poem addressing loss of control than the first one!

For sure, it invited quite a few stories about flying. 

 

 

 

Chavez has written a cento (from the Latin, "patchwork") provided as example by the review, Zingara for their prompt for writing a poem each day in the month of April. This collage poem poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets. The collage poem may use full or partial lines, but should include more than just a couple of words from each line.  It allows for look for unexpected connections, interesting contrasts, associative leaps, and surprising juxtapositions.

other example Zingara provided: https://zingarapoet.net/2018/01/24/the-mystery-house-by-jim-eilers/ 

another example of a Cento: https://zingarapoet.net/2011/04/13/lisas-poetry-picks-how-my-father-learned-english-by-juan-j-morales/  and the poem after: https://zingarapoet.net/2016/03/16/rules-for-flying-by-allyson-whipple/

Poems for April 9-10

On the poster for Poetry Month 2025 is a quotation from Naomi Shihab Nye, from her poem Gate-4:   This is the world I want to live in.  The shared world.  This was a theme of last week's poems.  When we share, we feel interconnection. 

Poems April 9-10: We had a special guest of David Michael Nixon who  read his poem, "My Fears" aloud.  I included two poems that came up from last week: the Clifton  came up in the James Dickey poem, The Strength of Fields with the line about "The dead lie under/ the pastures."  which imparts a sense of ancestors... The two parts of a longer poem by Langston Hughes came up when discussing his early work curated by Danez Smith in Stereo in Blues  If there had been  more time, I' would have included this one: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43386/the-god-who-loves-you ;  

Line-up of Poems

The Landscape of My Fears by David Michael Nixon; Postscript by Anna N. Jennings; mulberry fields  by Lucille Clifton 1936 –2010; [poets in their bassinets] by Lucille Clifton; How Do I Know When a Poem Is Finished? by Naomi Shihab Nye;  A Seat at the Table  by James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901– May 22, 1967) (just two sections); The Things I Love by Scottie McKenzie Frasier; More Music  by Carl Dennis; My Ordinary Love Paula Bonnell

I shared lines from poems in David Michael's book  Stephen Forgives the Stones.https://www.foothillspublishing.com/2019/nixon.htmlGretchen Schultz, another Just Poet member provided the cover in her shot of Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina in 2018 : The  poem" I thought I heard you callin' My name" gives us a hint of  biography:  "editors who did not choose the poems that chose me as their champion; captains who left me shooting set shots in my head, until I formed my own team... In the poem p. 35 Tomorrow Morning with Tennessee Williams, he notes: "will -- used to express simple futurity -- tomorrow morning I will wake up in this first-class hotel suite. -- It is the opening line and concludes-- only he and I...will wake up in this first-class hotel...  On p. 31 he mentions  where the future will be shining in his first class eyes for years to come. p. 66+ 67 One of my favorites:  Friends meeting wherever we are - p. 71 Let the River rise p. 77; p. 83 "Despite the fear that everything is decaying; with no way out but death, there seem to be new poems, ghostly as the future,, calling to me from some clear day.

I read his poem from the 2024  Le Mot Juste, (anthology of members of Just Poets, a local poetry group in Rochester.)  Leaning Toward the Inner Life (p. 45)

Why open my eyes

when I can see white tigers

in rhapsodic dark?

Sunlight only shows me pain:

lovely women I can't touch. 

Nutshell:

Landscape of my Fears: David Michael read aloud his poem, Landscape of My Fears to our appreciative audience who saw a metaphorical parallel of imaginary/real with the above poem.  The "indoor woods" (perhaps an echo to Dante's dark woods?) are self created, as anxieties are not necessarily real. The regular rhythm gives a sense of classic iambic pentameter in a rhymed poem, yet there is no rhyme.  Looking for alliterations one can see  d's in indoor, dangers, and the double d in hidden-- indeed, the "inner d's" imitate the meaning of "indoor/hidden".  The group enjoyed the surprise of the last line where humble describes the path illuminated by implied inner light cast by a concrete lamp.   The second stanza seems to take emotional charge.  

Postscript:  This poem allows us to imagine all that went before in this poet's life, whether 16 years ago, or just the past 16 years of going it alone as a widow with two children.   The poem is set up with 3 lines offset between stanzas that could be read together as an offset inner dialogue:  They're doing all right. / But sometimes I do wonder./ They're doing all right. The second time "They doing all right" is said, it is after mentioning how the children laugh the deceased father's laugh.  This poignant poem imparts to the reader the weight of the poet's  grief.  The dialogue with the dead shows how alive the presence of the person who has passed. This is a perfect example of the truth in the saying that "a person who lives on in our hearts will never be dead". 

 

mulberry fields: Clifton uses no capital letters, no punctuation, only a few extra spaces and judicious use of line breaks, to set up the "they" of the privileged white, and the "i" spoken by the black poet.  Eddy commented it was a "star" poem, one to be given several stars, as it makes you think a lot.  One senses in the rocks, multiple stories, perhaps of Indians, as well as white settlers removing them to create fields for a plantation, and again using them to set up walls to keep out those they enslaved.  There are overtones of an ancient perhaps biblical curse.   Clifton gives crops and pillows the ability to act for themselves to drive home a metaphor for resistance: the one refusing to grow anything,  the other refusing any dream.  The same stones for the black slave  "marked an old tongue", a slant reference perhaps to markers for safe passage north; the slant rhyme echoed of mulberry in the title and moulders  makes a strong contrast of the resistant strength of the living (nature with the alliterative "berries" and "bloom" ) and the bones of the buried mistress whose great grandson [now old] refuses to speak of slavery.  The final "i say" underlines the power of the speaker to have the last word. 

We admired the plain speech and how powerfully Clifton worked it.

 

Poets in their bassinets:  delightful title, which in reminded Judith of Robert Graves. ( "The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse.") The muse uses you...  Here, Clifton's  muse is more accessible, a "splendid woman" dreamed, a "globe shining with//possibility" (note the very effective break).   One person elaborated on the image of a baby in a bassinet, batting shiny objects strung up for instructive amusement.  We batted about meanings of terrifying one of those words with "God voltage" --  terrifying and wonderful all at once with the weight of unpredictability.  At Rundel, Bart felt compelled to read her poem Blessing of  Boats as echo.  Marna thought of Billy Collins, The Trouble with Poetry.   (We'll discuss these next week.) 

 How Do I know When a Poem is Finished:  Naomi Shihab Nye wears a Billy Collins hat with this poem. A stanza in Italian means a room, and takes on its own personality, at first light-heartedly described as happy to have some space from the poet.  What a character "this room" who rises from gathering dust balls unruffled and proud! The wry humor continues with a fabulous twist, which doesn't quite answer the title's question, but clearly insinuates that overworking revisions is not worth the effort.  That first draft was enough.  Paul provided more humor about "over and done with".  1) when you hear the snoring; 2) When the congregation says amen.  

A Seat at the Table:    This long poem written  by "The Bard of Harlem" reflects  a time when African Americans were struggling for civil rights, and the poem speaks to their plight. A Seat at the Table has come to be seen as a major milestone in the history of American literature, as it addresses African American identity and their unique experience. The poem is divided into seven sections – “The Question,” “The Table,” “The Chair,” “The Voice,” “The Proposal,” “The Decision,” and “The Seat.”  I could not find all 7 parts.  My guess is that there are different titles.  I offer two here. 

  Most know his poem I, Too. (echoes of Whitman, "I hear America Singing). Hughes wrote "I too" in 1924, trying to board ship in Italy to return home, only to have his place by-passed, replaced by white sailors. 

The metaphor of table, both as noun, implying one's shared place, and as verb, implying to be tabled, or set aside for a future date is quite poem.  One person brought up Poems of America where the Hughes and Whitman poems are set side by side... celebratory and challenging.    

For a sampling of short poems about America:https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/poems-about-america/#america-whitman

The movie about a talented Black piano player and the necessity of protection from a white bouncer came up:  The Green Book.https://www.biography.com/musicians/don-shirley-tony-lip-friendship

The Things I love:  This kind of list poem could be dismissed as sentimental, and the few rhymes towards the end "tacky attempts"and yet, the clichés are touching in their sincerity and make the reader want to make up his/her/their own list.  If you are so lucky as to have a home "where love, kindness, peace, rest" abide, indeed, how could one not celebrate this as being "the best."  

More Music : We teased about Uncle Victor, as being symbolic of RCA, but for sure, everyone agrees, "Poetry is a first cousin to song.".  There was a stanza missing at the end which Eddy provided from the book The Poem is You by Stephen Burt.  (in our library system! I just reserved it and will be happy to pass on after I read it.)  Some figured out the the poem tells the whole story of Victor... the "one" in the first  stanza is Uncle Victor en route to a concert, perhaps "she" is the nephew's wife.  The missing part and last line I gave you, which on internet ends with "list..."

Should we try to deny it? Why make a list ...

Of all we think he's deserved and missed

As if we knew someone to present it to

Or what to say when told we're dreaming

Of an end unpromised and impossible,

Unmindful of the middle, where we live now?

Dennis emphasizes the ambiguities of life we tend to shirk by passing judgement about what is good, bad, lucky or not,  pronouncing who deserves what as if we have any control about it.  The middle is the now of our story,  wherever we are "now".   

Ordinary Love:  Everyone seemed to note the comment by the poet: “Poetry and I met when I was fifteen and Poetry a couple of thousand or so. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I still hanker for Poetry, and new poems arrive when they feel like it. I try to help them land where other people can hear them too.”

What is the "it", this simple thing, this grey, golden, solid, red, quiet, dense  thing?  The title tells us, but the poem elaborates the accidental possibilities of "ordinary": humdrum, gritty, numb, loud steady, ruddy

The 8th line a loud (as if trumpeting the news aloud), ordinary love is "a fabulous flower—

This simple poem delights by its refusal to "spell things out" and yet, breathes and weaves with adjectives what the poet "wants us to know" (said in the opening line,  and repeated in the  4th.

We discussed at length the adjective "ruddy", often used in British slang as substitute for "bloody" as in "bloody good".  The common association is with  red cheeks or a healthy complexion.  Oh yes, a great rudder of a word on which to end the poem followed by a period, but which doesn't feel it will ever end.

As Naomi Shihab Nye says, "you might as well/leave it that way"! 

---

[1] https://www.poetrypoets.com/a-seat-at-the-table-langston-hughes/This long poem was written during a time when African Americans were struggling for civil rights, and the poem speaks to their plight. A Seat at the Table has come to be seen as a major milestone in the history of American literature, as it addresses African American identity and their unique experience. The poem is divided into seven sections – “The Question,” “The Table,” “The Chair,” “The Voice,” “The Proposal,” “The Decision,” and “The Seat.”  I could not find all 7 parts.  My guess is that there are different titles.  I offer two here.