July 9-10

Almost by Bob Hicok; Straight Talk from Fox by Mary Oliver; (sequel to Astonishment by Szymborska); Desire for Melody by Larry Colker; Heavenly Length by Bill Holm; I'm here for a short visit only by Noel Coward; Untitled by James Baldwin; The Skylight by Seamus Heaney; The Socks by Jane Kenyon Morning by Yannos Ritsos; In the Corners of Fields by Ted Kooser; The Freedom of the Moon by Robert Frost 

see article by Sean O'Hare in City Magazine: "Beauty in the Ordinary": Marie Howe, who is from Rochester, has just recently won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her New and Selected Poems... Marie pinpoints exactly what I do each week.... getting people to look closely at poet choices -- and that magic of discovery when words line up to express feelings that line your life-- and the life of others! 

"You have this wood that's your life, and you burn it in order to transform it into a poem.  And so it's your life, your imagination, your memory; it's made up , it's real— language, silence, music, all of it combines."

A  poem invites you to be open to the magic of working with words, just the right one, in the right place is the aim, but there's nothing about certitude involved.  How to hold a feeling, hold something that is essentially unsayable.

It felt so good to be back, sharing poems with people curious about what makes a poem work. 

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Nutshell of discussion for Poems July 11-12, 2025.

Almost:  Almost what?  What words might follow "almost"?  Almost perfect?  Almost "there", finished;  almost as being on the brink or lip of understanding, so kissing somewhat related, although, how kissing for a year to prove nothing is permanent seems an unlikely way of proving it so.  We admired the  succinct crystalline shortness, the slowing down of the last line with its two adverbs that give the feel of something lingering  on and on.  What is it about "almost" the poet wants us to understand?  What do we expect and want?   A young college student at Rundel was reminded of the song "Dance all night" (pre-chorus: and we talked for a while, sat for a while and one of them asked if there's anything I would change and I didn't know what to say. But I?  I'd dance all night...  https://genius.com/Rose-dance-all-night-lyrics

Straight Talk: Perhaps the first adjective associated with a fox is sly, or cunning and the last thing one would expect, would be "straight talk".  It's thus surprising to find the fox finds music everywhere,  and  even "death itself is a music... Mercy is a child beside such an invention"...  It perhaps makes us wonder how animals think... and feel it might be a welcome change to live the life of a fox.  Comments included appreciation of the sounds of nature, the critique of humans, and the message of Oliver's Wild Geese asking us what it is we are doing with our one wild life.  

Desire for Melody:  The title could be for the piano, for the young girl, or for us all.  What is melody, but harmonious arrangement, and when it is "endangered", no longer, whether  visibly "ditched", or absent,  how do we respond?  In this spare poem, the poet gives us descriptive details: the bench is black, the piano in a different state, by a rural highway, and even its position specified as "tilting slightly", and yet the whole situation is odd, with a sense of nothing being quite right.  For what is the girl waiting...? is it more than what is fitting to complete the picture?  Is it hope that a piano appear, or that music be created without it? How do we, as readers complete the picture, fill in the story of how this situation happened, imagine what happens next?  

Heavenly Length:  The title is the only part of the poem aside from the last two lines that is not part of a question.  There is no length or measurement in heaven.  What is too much?  What is it we want yet blather along, covering it with small talk?  What questions matter?  Is the poet being sarcastic, ladling on absurd questions?  What is it that we want to "get inside"?  One thought from the group:  Nothing is ever too much... We can't control how many breaths we take... so, whatever the subject, (religion, ecology, meanings, desires, all of which are suggested) are questions necessary?  

I'm here... It could be a delightful show-tune, nicely rhymed with captivating rhythms.  Are we only replays and reruns, imitating others, who in turn may be rewound as re-runs?  Where does anything unique about a soul come in?  It's good to be reminded with a jesting tongue in cheek, indeed, our life is just a short visit in a much grander scheme of things. 

Untitled:  A common formulation states that prayer is a way of speaking to the divine and meditation is a way of listening for it. Poetry synthesizes these.  How to understand Lord / Do / I , offset from the lines indented underneath.  Perhaps an unfinished question.  Many picked up on the message, "Lord, please don't add on to my pain..."  We sensed reference to  such Biblical passages as  "once I was blind but now I see" and sensitive to the importance of light repeated 3 times, first as marvelous, on the falling water, and how the reflection blinds.  The word Blinds  outside of the offset first, capitalized words, doesn't fit with them.  One person saw baptism, the water allowing the initiation to light of faith; others saw a skillful poem which invites  the reader empathize with the speaker of the poem.

The Skylight:  Rhyme, rhythm especially the first part of the sonnet reinforce the description of  a cozy cottage.  The turn, with the line-break on extravagant, with the surprise landing on sky with reference to the parable of the miraculous healing is like opening the coffin of the first stanza to the resurrection of the second one.

The socks:  Sock of course, can be a verb, the action delivered by the fists.  This poem was written before Jane Kenyon would have contracted leukemia.  I sense rage, not so much jealousy, although perhaps there was some, married to her teacher, poet Donald Hall.  What I love about this short poem, is the emotion, the ordering action of pairing and rolling socks, fitting them in the drawers.   What is going on in that final line?  One person joked, "do I want this lady in my drawers".  Perhaps a Buddhist parable as many of her other poems, once she was battling her cancer.  Note, the title is THE socks.  Second line:  YOUR socks.  YOUR drawers.  Whose fists?  She doesn't end the poem inviting the socks to be socks.

Morning :  how to understand this? Rather like Alice in Wonderland falling into the looking glass, the surface words paint the day, but who is this lone woman?  Is she suicidal?  Is "jumping from the mirror" a way to return to herself?

In the Corners of Fields:  Everyone enjoyed this poem filled with a sense of place.  It is refreshing to read a poem whose images do not require extra work.  From describing a field with broad strokes, the poem narrows to a detail of a moth, traditional symbol of a soul.  

The Freedom of the Moon:  two stanzas.  One the new moon, thus dark;  the other later, the moon has gone on to travel through its phases.   The rhyme is discreet.  One person had the sense of "taking the moon for a walk".  After discussion most concurred Frost was implying the variations of the moon-- but also our part in observing it.

haiku: back to morning, and a passionate kiss of sun.  

Poems for June 25 + discussion of July 2-3

 June 25: 

Alive Together by Lisel Mueller; IN A TIME OF DROUGHT, LONGING FOR RAIN by Patrica Roth Schwartz ; THE ORCHARD by Francesc Parceriissas translated by Cyrus Cassells; THIRTY by Margaret Atwood;  THERE IS ONLY ONE OF EVERYTHING, Margaret Atwood; DON’T DESTORY THE WORLD by Ellen Bass; THE SWING by Robert Louis Stevenson

  July 2-3

Line up: The Last Things I'll Remember by Joyce Sutphen; Ode to the Whitman Line “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d” by Kimiko Hahn; The Heart of the Matter by Dana Gioia; Astonishment   by Wisława Szymborska; So much depends upon by Tom Chandler; Rain  by Tove Ditlevsen;

Two of the poems chosen were inspired by this talk,  Poetry and Spirituality :  Kaveh Akbar:  Blaney Lecture  https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/what-can-ancient-spiritual-poetry-teach-us-about-living/

Wisława Szymborska, Astonishment  and the Haiku by Issa. 

Akbar's advice:  Ask a poem: to what do I owe my being.  This triggers other questions:  how am I related to this poem... how are my values reflected in this poem... How do they shift when I find out more about a poet...   When I disagree or don't like a poem how does this reflect my expectations about art.  

What makes a poem timely? Writing is to address humanity, in its endless mysterious baffle.

A common formulation states that prayer is a way of speaking to the divine and meditation is a way of listening for it. Poetry synthesizes these.

Nutshell of discussion:

The Last Things: This poem reads as an embellished list of images replete with sound, smell, and sense of touch.   It unfolds, starting in the dark,  (an empty barn) and ends with the active sounds of milking machines at dawn.  We are pulled into memories, but this is not merely nostalgia:  the title evokes a sense of someone cognizant of death.   It was amazing that for each person, no matter where "home" was located, it evoked a memory of farmland, working farms.  Whether Hannibal, MO, Indiana, North Carolina, a dairy farm in Auburn, NY, each image was like a familiar touchstone.  Elaine, from SW desert, could feel each image as much as those from more verdant regions.  Many chuckled at the line breaks in the third stanza, the peonies heavy/  their deep heads/ leading to that dog house roof.  Elmer noted how the lilacs were not planned, planted, but naturally present "between lawn and woods".  Just like the opening stanza, the partly open hay barn door, the broken board small enough for a child/to slip through, we as readers also slip though, see the white frame around the darkness... hear the slap of flat leaves,  an intimacy one feels,  that is silent/and invisible from any road.  The last two tercets are separated  by a comma, the rhythms of the tractor shifting gears, carry us to that final image of the sounds at dawn.  We liked the irony that "the last things" was a poem from a volume called "First Words".  

Ode to the Whitman Line: To better appreciate Kimiko Hahn's poem, it is useful to review the 15 part Whitman poem  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloom'd.  Who is the "you" for Hahn?  Who was the "you" for Whitman?  One thinks of his self-description, "I contain multitudes", and indeed this applies to whoever/whatever "you" in the reader's mind:  a civil war soldier, a lover, Hahn's Japanese-American mother, etc.  Why flawed as a Lincoln?  I could only guess that even a historical person of mythic proportions, Lincoln is still subject to the innate imperfections of being human.  The w's whisper like the push of When towards the alliterative l's in the inverted syntax of lilacs last which prompts the poem's question of the meaning of last: does it mean final, or something which continues?  I suggested the  idea of the poem being a reliquary, like a cathedral holding bones of saints.  One person suggested the poem was a peaen to a poem, a tribute, perhaps like Poe's https://www.online-literature.com/poe/2169/#google_vignette.

The Heart of the Matter:  The opening line, where the title is followed by "the ghost of a chance", sets up the conceit, followed by a series of well-known clichés about a lover which Judith beautifully  dubbed "the battle of bummer and banal".  Is it tongue in cheek?  We actually laughed at the "scent of shame a heavy cologne..."  The delightful rhythms and alliterations of the last stanza's second line lead to an abrupt end of poem, and story. No sense in belaboring a well-known story. I asked Judith to share what she recited:  It is part of a poem by James Stephens.  The first stanza:   

For if thou truly lovest her, from thee away she would not stir,

But ever at thy side would be thyself, and thy felicity.

Go, clad thee in the greeny hue, thou dost not love,

She is not true, and no more need be said, adieu! 

Astonishment:  The overall feel was the fun Szymborska has pointing to the fact we are not in control of ourselves or our fate.   As Akbar puts it so well.. The notion of "astonishment" or wonderment at the complexity of the universe is seen in much of her poetry as the poet looks with curiosity, awe, sadness, and even joy at the contingency of human existence and the place humans occupy in the universe. In her 1996 Nobel lecture, Szymborska talks about inspiration, which she says is "born from a continuous 'I don't know."  Nine questions pepper the sixteen lines.  We all enjoyed learning the word "coelenterates" (jelly fish family) which swimmingly floats in to rhyme with "dates and fates".  It is good to have a good laugh at oneself, and I wonder how much the line "What made me fill myself with me so squarely" is from the original Polish, or the art of the translator.  Grappling with one's own flaws, reminds one of Hamlet:  

• "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe O God, Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me!".
• I was reminded of the two teens in the movie, The Fault in our Stars, and their opposite responses to cancer... the one with the attitude, why me and why bother, the other why not and in spite of it all, let's make the most of it. 

So much depends on: Most can recite the short poem by William Carlos Williams that starts this way, who champions the new modernism with his fragmented line breaks: 

So much depends

upon                            glazed with rain            beside the white

a red wheel                   water                            chickens.  

barrow 

That Williams adds space between lines and stanzas proves the strange connectedness

in the details... how wheel, rain, white, lead to and are completed by an image of a wheelbarrow, wet with rain beset in a barnyard with white chickens-- but then again, so much depends... 

upon the how of it all, no matter what the "it".

Polly emphasized the importance of reading Chandlers train of thought quickly, which highlights the chain of one thing leading to another.  By the time you get to the 11th line when the driver, (unbeknownst to the blond woman dropping a potato) shifts into reverse, the playful irony accelerates and the poet drops in a poetic simile so unexpected, yet so rife with implication — imagine -- a squished potato akin to a dream's last breath! — which in turns carries forth the narrative.  We enjoyed the linebreak on "now he will have to settle for someday", which in turn takes another spin to the plot of what might or might not happen in the synchronicity of things, as Jung might label it, or accidental connections, or the format of a Chinese folk tale threaded by "fortunately... unfortunately", the poem mirrors the way life happens swinging as it does from what could be to what peculiar landing spot it ends on.

Rain:  It is interesting to look at the time period of a poem, and always interesting to explore what goes into a translation, in this case, two translators of the original Danish.  Some found this poem "over the top" and excessively sentimental, others found it a pleasure.  Judith suggested it might work beautifully as a romantic art song, where "gooey lyrics" don't interfere with the delivery of sentimentality.  There is indeed a fine line between pathos and bathos... I appreciated the unusual touches to the images: the cliché of "words gentle as caresses" carried to the next line, "hung, covered in dust", followed by the suggestion of

the story behind the "aching wrecked promise".  I've never encountered "absentminded" with the noun of city.  I'm not sure when the poem was written.  It could be during world war II, it could very well describe many places where war wreaks havoc, where autocratic rule crushes the human spirit.  But the final line satisfies my thirst for hope, the importance of remembering goodness when it falls like gentle rain into our hearts. 

Spelling Bee: It is curious what strikes a chord in us when we read a poem.  This poem elicited a thought about whether the subject is for a limited audience of those with children.  Another who does not have children felt the poem was universal enough and countered that  even if one has no interest in  spelling bees, whether a memory of participating in one, or watching the action described in the poem where the emotions of the parent observing  are described,  much more than the actual competition unfolds.  The ending lines provide a satisfying and convincing metaphor.   

Haiku:  This small piece by Issa was yet another slant on how "so much depends on..." how we perceive things as they happen.  The radish in question is most probably a Japanese daikon, a long, white root. Whether this is good or bad fortune is perhaps immaterial. Haiku can leave a Western mind shrugging, possibly dismissing perhaps with an irritated sigh, or leading to further, deeper contemplation.  Judith cited this haiku as example:  Frog and I / staring at each other / neither moved.  

Kaveh Akbar's comment about any "point" was this:  To get to just where we already are. The man pulling radishes is strapped to his living like anyone else. What does a man pulling radishes have to point the way? Well, a radish of course.

The Sound of Trees:  This poem came from Mountain Interval, published in 1916.  Frost would have been possible in his early 40's, and back from his time in England and meeting such poets as his friend  Edward Thomas, and others such as T.E. Hulme and Ezra Pound.  His famous essay, "A figure a poem makes" came 23 years later.  I quote David Sanders from his book on Frost examining the drama of disappearance in Frost's collection North of Boston published in 1914:  His "lyric highly personal and emotional poems, were laced with wistful melancholy and archaisms" -- what he referred to as "the manner of the '90's".   I forget often that Frost was born in 1874 !  

As one person put it, "It's hard to get excited about the author's opinion of his point", and we noted the rather archaic language Frost is known for in his earlier work  "We suffer" has a biblic overtone, and the thrice-repeated "shall" adds to this.  Others thought the poem a dignified reflection contemplating the riddle of what a tree is.  What it is we wish to hear and bear, and a tree registers different sounds of wind and weather.  

 

  

Poems for June 11

 Barb will be hosting.  NO MEETING  June 18.

June 11: Ode to Teachers by Pat Mora; (from Dizzy in Your Eyes, 2010); The Leash  by Ada Limon (from The Carrying, 2018) ; Cuttings by Theodore Roethke (from The Lost Son & other poems, 1948); The Raspberry Room by Karin Gottshall (from Crocus, 2007); Soul Make a Path Through Shouting by Cyrus Cassells (title poem from book of same name, 1994, ); But We Had Music by Maria Poplova

Do listen to this reading of the final poem.  : https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/06/but-we-had-music/

Poems for June 4

  

The Maples by Marie Howe[1]Hymn by Marie Howe[1] The Story Wheel by Joy Harjo; Chinese Silence No. 22 by Timothy Yu (after Billy Collins, "Monday")  
The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry; How to Regain Your Soul by William Stafford

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[1] the hyperlink takes you to: https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/04/marie-howe-hymn/?mc_cid=b36e88d513&mc_eid=2e713bf367

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[1] The hyperlink takes you to: https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/05/16/marie-howe-the-maples/?mc_cid=b36e88d513&mc_eid=2e713bf367

Nutshell of discussion.

First of all, apologies for labeling the poems for June 3.  We did indeed meet Wednesday, June 4. 

Several people remarked that the theme threading this week, was to find solace in Nature, take a step back, refresh the  soul.

The Marginalian links are refreshing reminders to look within to find "what to do with our one wild life", a popular theme of poetry which knows so well how to embrace paradox, doubt and all the emotions associated.  

The Maples:  Here, using the poetic credo, "show, don't tell", the title launches us to the main character: a stand of maples.  The poet enters with her question, "How should I live my life?"  You cannot say their response "shhh   shhh   shhh  shhh ..." in a hurry.  Nor perhaps is that a response to the question but rather a way of being.  Try saying that back to them in the breeze as they "ripple and gleam" and you might adopt it as way to quiet your innermost worries.  

Elmer shared that now is the time to admire the Black Locusts in bloom.  You might enjoy this link to find out more about this amazing tree.  Jan brought up another book about plants:  The Light Eaters.

 

What does Marie do in this poem that engages us?  Clearly, she is not offering a sermon, but rather a personal meditation that touches the universal challenge of answering within oneself the question, "How shall I live".

First, she shares her thought of useful advice to herself:  "stand still... see how long you can bear that. " the next couplet picks up, as if to confirm in the stanza break that perhaps standing still was not so easy. Repeating  "try to stand still" --with  the added encouragement,  "if only for a few moments,"  line break,

to the final line.  Have you ever tried to drink light?  Can you do it while breathing?  Note the space between drinking light             breathing.  It makes me glad to have read the poem and eager to try it myself.  

Hymn:  Here, Marie Howe chooses tercets, with the third line indented, and connects the enjambed stanza breaks with third line  propelling to the next thought.  The sounds are rich, indeed, like a congregation gathering voices, as if a 5 stanza hymn to being human, in a world that contains galaxies, our immediate moon and sun.  She continues  her "song without words" (and I think of Mendelssohn's music of that title) as "snow conceives snow/// conceiving rain, the rivers rushing without shame  -- / the hum turning again higher-- into a riff of ridges/ "peaks hard as consonants//", a praise song filled with details of oceans, what lies above, below, on to the final 4 stanzas  our earth "turning to dawn"... as we humans mirror rising/lying downand then note the break to the last stanza :  the human hymn of praise for every"/  (I pointed out the importance of pausing on the "every" which lands on 

"something else there is and ever was and will be.".  Something else, perhaps implies art, and what humans create, say, enact to praise the "else" which is not us.

Does the final parenthesis work?  Perhaps some of us feel skeptical at such a description of harmony, such bigness we can barely conceive making such music?  The  verb "Listen"  can be understood both as command -- (Listen to this), and a confessional aside, as if having an intimate conversation, and connecting the poet, as human, to the reader.  Indeed, reading a is a conversation between poet and reader.  The idea of a dream, speaks to transcendence.  Another fine poem which asks us to engage with it, leaving us energized by the interaction. 

The Story Wheel: Perhaps you are familiar with the "medicine wheels" of the Lakota, the importance of the story teller in Pueblo culture.  The opening stanza addresses this "story of forever" where all is connected and everyone finds their way back together.  The final line with the double meaning "no one really lost at all"  both in the sense of the story wheel as map, and in the sense of a battle where it is not a question of winning or losing, but a cycle of ceremonies for celebrating and grieving.  Some felt the poem was disjointed, the parts not quite fitting, and yet, reading aloud, the words weave a whole civilization, and its enduring story.

Chinese Silence No. 22:  If you go to this site https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/timothy-yu, you will find out more about this most interesting poet, his reasoning behind his poems.  If you go to this site you will find out more about this most interesting poet, and his thinking behind his poems.  In this interview he cites a reference to John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs, and recites #14 which he uses in his Chinese Dream #14. He exchanges the word "Life" with "Race" to examine more deeply the clichés and traps that encourage people to consider a topic "boring", as if there is no sense in discussing it.

Poems like to "illuminate" the human condition, find the "universal" but Timothy is curious about how we are different and feels this is important to explore.  

He plays with other poems as well as Billy Collins poem "Monday"

Chinese Silence No. 30 after Eleanor Goodman, "Boston's Chinatown"

Chinese Silence No. 14 after Billy Collins, "Silence"

Chinese Silence  No. 92: After “Exile’s Letter” by Ezra Pound

Chinese Silence  No. 36 -- the epigraph:

To make a Chinese poem in English we must allow the silence to creep in around the edges, to define the words the way the sky’s negative space in a painting defines the mountains.

—Tony Barnstone, “The Poem Behind the Poem”

 Elaine also wondered if there was a connection with Maxine Hong Kingston, and her 1976 memoir (The Woman Warrior) 

and also brought up this powerful  poem (Immigrant Blues) by Li Young Lee one of the many that are referenced here

I love how poems interrelate with other poems/writing/history, providing the rich potentiality of different directions.

The general feeling of reading this long poem was one of "mixed results" : some good imitations of the Billy Collins poem, which in turn is a bit uneven, albeit laced with his usual wit, and a sense of a compilation of compressed stereotypes, a hint of history.  

Silence, the word,  is in each stanza but the last two... It is cultivated, swept, or simply there; 3 flavors of 100 kinds, a lame comparison of the film Crocodile Dundee to the Australian and Mel G. to the Scot.  Without reading the interview, it might be hard to see he is working to undermine "silence", see some of the noisy bricks in the "wall of language", we might not be aware of.

The Want of Peace:  Want, as in lack of, and want as in need or desire for.  Most people are aware of Berry's poem, Peace of Wild Things, where there is no need to "tax himself with forethought of grief".  We admired the sound of the word, "wholly" how like "want" a "hole" is round, as is a "whole", a Holy connection.  We wondered if the mention of buying fire was specific to weapons, given his anti-war stand, to the "burning man" festival or perhaps an more antique notion of Prometheus stealing fire.  Dumb, as in mute, seems filled with the Timothy Yu idea of "silence" which is much more than the word, or the idea of an "underground" life.  

How to Regain Your Soul:  The title offers an explicit diving board into the first stanza which tells you where to go.

The second stanza reminds you of the complexity history, but starts with Above, air sighs the pines.  

This prompted Judith to site the opening lines of Evangeline

"This is the forest primeval....

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest...

The on-going, eternal aliveness of air.  Butterflies, as soul, rebirth, are mentioned three times.  Outside of you, white ones.  Finally, no mention of the butterfly, only the soul, pulling... shining back through white wings -- and that unexpected  finish -- to be you / line break/ again. 

for while I'm gone.

 

For while I'm gone:

 

Aug. 20: Elaine Richane

August - Mary Oliver; United  by Naomi Shihab Nye; 

Ghazal: America the Beautiful  by Alicia Ostriker  (maybe not?)

Day of the Refugios  by Alberto Ríos

I Hear America Singing  by Walt Whitman

 

Aug. 27:  Bernie Shore

In Our Blindness, Chalked Up To Just Be Fate  by Robert Lindley (11- 21-2019

Heavenly Length  by Bill Holm (1943-2009)[1]

Carrying Paul  by Ted Kooser

Opening by Tess Gallaher (from Poems from Is, Is Not)

Two poems by U Tak[2] 1263 - 1343

At the Fair  by Edith Sitwell

 

September 3 :  Elaine with Graeme

 

Sept. 10

September 17

 

September 24 -- Bernie

Poems from Is, Is Not  by Tess Gallager: 

Recognition; Hummingbird-Mind;  Blue Eyelid Lifting; Cloud Path

My Species, by Jane Hirshfield

 

 

Oct. 1

Oct. 8

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[1] A popular contributor to Writers Almanac: 

BILL HOLM was born to Icelandic immigrants on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota in 1943. A long-time resident of Minneota, Holm lived with his wife Marcie and taught at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall from 1980 until he retired in 2007. He traveled widely, to Iceland on a Fulbright in 1979, and more recently to his summer home in Hofsos; and to China, where he taught on an academic exchange program in 1986 and again in 1992. The recipient of the 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, Holm is the author of several books of essays and poetry including, most recently, The Windows of Brimnes. Known both regionally and nationally as a humorist, writer, and prairie radical, Bill Holm passed away on February 26, 2009. -- Marianne CombsMarch 21, 2011 6:00 AM

[2] U Tak, born in 1263, was a Korean philosopher of neo-Confucianism and poet. He died in 1343.

Joy Harjo:  Eddy's share:  her book “An American Sunrise” and there have been poems that also mention “story” in a kind of metaphorical sense.  One poem is “The Story Wheel” (photo below), and another is “Washing My Mother’s Body”, in which she says “The story is all there, in her body, as I wash her to prepare her / to be let down into earth, and return all stories to the earth.” And later, “I emerged from the story, dripping with the waters of memory.” Lastly, I interpret “Without” as Harjo expressing a desire to meet her “beloved rascal” again, maybe after death. The poem was written too early to be about this, but I believe her daughter Rainy Dawn Ortiz passed away in 2023. (A poem she wrote: 

https://poets.org/poem/more-something-else). So I don’t know who the “beloved rascal” is…

 

great poem selection:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/?f=flair_name%3A"Poem"

More Than Something Else

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• 
• 
• 

Rainy Dawn Ortiz

1973 – 

2023

Something Else.

Some one else

Some where else

That place is here,

In my home,

We are here.

I am brown,

Brown hair,

Brown eyes,

Like cookies Feather tells me, and I like to think it’s perfectly

cooked Pueblo cookies.

My kids are something else,

9 different shades of brown,

All beautiful.

My grandkids are something else,

4 brown eyes, 2 blue eyes,

All Native,

Definitely something else, as I watch them be rowdy, be loving,

be here in this world.

We are here

On this earth

In this time and place

In our homes,

On our lands,

In the cities,

With our families, laughing loudly, cooking together, protecting

each other.

We are something else

With our songs

Our dances.

We pray with corn meal,

Eagle feathers,

Medicine bundles,

Burn some sage, make sure to acknowledge the four directions,

as the sun comes up.

We are the something else,

Who were here,

To greet Christopher Columbus

We were born from

This earth,

Crawled out of the center,

Of our mother’s womb, we are important, we are strong.

We are something else,

We are Pueblo people, Plains people, Forest People, Desert

people, Nomadic people, Cliff dwellers, Ocean fishers, Lake and

river fishers, hunters, medicine collectors, horse riders, artists,

speakers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we are human beings.

We are something else,

We are Native People,

Indigenous to this land.

We are a proud,

Something else.

May 28, 2025

 Note: For Rundel:  Sessions will recommence July 3 and run through Aug. 14. NO MEETINGS in June or next week.For Pittsford:  There is NO SESSION June 18.

Poems: In a Village in the West Bank by Naomi Shihab Nye; Saying Grace by Abby E. Murray; There Is a Fire  by Michael Lavers; What Does It Say  by Tess Gallagher; In a Country None of Us Called Home by Peg Bresnahan; Hedge, that divides the lovely Garden by Torquato Tasso 

Nutshell:

In a Village... :  This first poem triggered a discussion on the nature of poetry.  What makes this anecdotal scene a poem?  If it had been in a block as an essay, would the lines have unfolded as they did, contrasting the words of the boy in quotations?   It starts in media res -- in the middle of things -- a boy writing a book and speaking about his work in class conducted by  zoom.  We imagined reading the poem with two voices, one  of the boy saying, "It's about a  problem" the other the poet/teacher providing information -- first about soldiers sneaking around in the occupied land breaking into houses, chopping olive trees, smashing lamps.  The boy's voice reiterates: A problem between spiders and ants.  Now, we hear a commentary, how refreshing, to look at a problem not made by humans.  Were the details about spiders and ants accurate?  Does that matter? 

Now, the boy's voice disappears and we hear the interpretation of the teacher.  The trigger of imagining his parents speaking Arabic, and her homesickness for all that represents for her.  The reader is given three different "spaces",  what a world looks like, long ago before the war, for spiders and ants, for warring soldiers.  

I don't mean to re-tell the poem, but show the layers livened  into the bread of the poem kneaded with air.

Parallels, images, anthropomorphizing, an example of imagination at work, the beauty of an idea this boy believes in and will illustrate.  And the final three lines that give a clue of what the ants can do so they don't all get killed, ending with:   "It's not that hard."

We agreed, the poem gave us hope.  Perhaps it is a two-state solution for Palestine/Israel, but regardless,    

we engaged with the boy, his world, replete with hints of smells, tastes.  We are reminded about who we are, who we pretend to look like, and how this links with what we do to survive, in turn connected to   how species take up space.  Does that matter when addressing a larger issue about re

I doubt a block of prose could provide such an ample and rich understanding. 

Saying Grace:  If you don't pause before eating, perhaps not even sitting down with others, I'll be glad to share the roomful of shares of things to say before a meal from "rub-a-dub dub, thanks for the grub.  Yay God", to more formal blessings and the Quaker respectful silence before eating.   Tucked into the poem are lines like following holiness where it goes and we give thanks/and feel certain that somewhere beyond us/our gratitude matters: Breaking habits... miracle of rest... small things we take for granted as gifts "we only seem to give away." As Graeme remarked, the title is a perfect high-dive platform and  we join the poet  plunging in, glad for each drop of detail.   Well... the bottom line is everyone LOVED this poem.  Every line and line break so perfect, effortless and delightful.

There is a fire:  We agreed, powerful imagery but quite an uneven poem.  Art, nature, children and this idea of trying... watching "God bloom".   Perhaps the purple comb comes from Gorky's painting or a poem about a Chinese wife who died leaving it behind.  Objects are meaningful in different ways to different people and many shared associations the poem brought up.  

Reality filtered through memory animated with feeling... ?

The quote chosen by the poet sums it up:  "In art there is only one thing that matters:  that which cannot be explained."  

What Does it Say:  the title feels incomplete.  What is "it"?  Or is it a general, "what does that say about us... about a person, about things...).  The line breaks are fabulous-- and  enjambed stanza breaks an extra dollop of pleasure.  What needs repair, restoration in this "falling-apart era" ?  Why in a world that "walks around/only in new shoes" do we not ask for that shoe repairman, alive to our "need to be treated mercifully..." ?  We enjoyed sharing comments about "the patina of use" and how things are more interesting when they have "wear" in them... , memories of the shoe repair shop, and more.  The final three lines are a beautifully phrased commentary of such a repairman as we walk through life.  It's not the shoes... but the journey... 

someone to companion our fragile hopes

in the form of these emptied out,

unsalvageable steps.  

In a Country... The final poem starts with unpinnable circumstances, and then, a serendipitous cab ride replete with multiple details that left us all wanting to revive whistle power!  As one person put, "I don't envy the cab driver".  Delightful and of course, allowing us to think about what makes us "feel at home" in general as well as when traveling.

Hedge that divides: Lovely poem in courtly love tradition where hedge/lover can be interchanged... the sense of touch especially makes the poem feel alive.   

In closing, Neil shared this poem from Pat Janus, in her book, Synchronicity

Opening 

To sit with tea

and contemplate the blessings of

the morning

the possibility 

of magic,

the potential

for adventure,

the depth

of mystery,

before I am 

swallowed up

by the need

for doing/