July 30

Possibilities by Linda Pastan; 4 versions about a by-gone picture of Nanjing -- Painting of Jinling by Wei Zhuang (c. 836-910) translated by Zewen Senpai1 Rajat Jayanti by Kirun Kapur; Love leaves Leftovers: Marie Giesbrecht;  Love Letter from the Afterlife:  Andrea Gibson Nature Aria  by Yi Lei  

Although rife with references, PLEASE do not feel you have to read each one.  The idea is to look at the words of the poems... how they work, or don't for you.Afterwards, the notes may be helpful to further think about what you have read.  THERE IS NO NEED TO READ IN ADVANCE OR PREPARE ANYTHING!!!!!!!!   

For the versions responding to the Painting of Jinling , Eddy recommended this "explainer" video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZNYYe8H0lw. and also a link with some paintings of the Tang dynasty provided by Eddy to give an idea of that time period. https://baike.baidu.com/item/金陵图/55021942. 

Andrea Gibson:  https://www.today.com/popculture/andrea-gibson-poetry-death-letter-wife-rcna218974  Her poems are emotionally intense, and her positivity in the face of death provokes triggers many find helpful.  As spoken word artist, she activates the reader with a success I've never seen with the usual "confessional" poet. I put together this document, if this intrigues you. OPTIONAL! 

Tribute to Andrea Gibson : 8/13/1975-7/14/ 2025  This young poet was able to write poems which truly touch the heart and has been a champion of finding beauty in unlikely places and gratitude in the hardest hours.   Poet Laureate of Colorado, world-touring spoken word artist, author of seven books, Calais Maine High School State Basketball Champion, and subject of the award-winning documentary, “Come See Me in the Good Light”, and so much more.  At the end of this memorial article by her wife  are lines from her poems.  You may wish to note any that seem as if they were meant just for you at this moment in time.  Andrea's wife refers to her with the plural pronoun, which may take some time to get used to.  

As a spoken word artist, Andrea has a direct delivery that matches the words on the page as her own truly authentic and courageous self, unafraid to spell out what it is to be human.  

 

The words penned by Andrea Gibson,  8/13/1975- 7/14/2025  have invited listeners to have an experience with (her)*  (she uses the plural pronoun *them).

to read about her .  https://www.yahoo.com/news/andrea-gibson-understood-very-simple-170000712.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

NUTSHELL: My nutshells:  truly, only a few kernels relating to the poems, but as ever, the comraderie as we work our way through the poems, remains precious.  Should you wish to add/amend, kindly let me know.  

Briefest of Nutshells:

The poems this week brought sharings about music, art, how to "talk to a squirrel" by imitating its tail, and even a film recommendation (The Penguin Lesson). 

Marna shared this link about the Willow's symbolic meanings: https://japonicaplants.co.uk/2020/06/18/willows-in-the-chinese-garden/ 

 

Andrea Gibson:  As a spoken word artist, Andrea has a direct delivery that matches the words on the page as her own truly authentic and courageous self, unafraid to spell out what it is to be human.  

 

The words penned by Andrea Gibson,  8/13/1975- 7/14/2025  have invited listeners to have an experience with (her)*  (she uses the plural pronoun *them).

to read about her .  https://www.yahoo.com/news/andrea-gibson-understood-very-simple-170000712.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

 

Judith recalled a beautiful painting, Grapevine in Wind and Moonlight after reading the Nature Aria    https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1916.240/

We agreed the final poem with two translators perhaps did not reflect what the original chinese intended.  Bio of Yi Lei, 1951-2018 -- 

More:

Possibilities:  This delicate series of tercets cascading with enjambments seemed to be breathing.  The idea of "almost buying" a house, hearing music of a different family who did, with hints of biographical material about the poets family ( births, deaths, how children move away).   More importantly, Pastan presents possibilities with choices such as how we define ourselves by the music we choose to listen to.  Marna brought up the sound of winnowing, that purposeful separating of grain from chaff, juxtaposed with the more accidental openings and closings of a screendoor in the wind.  Several memories were shared -- the unexpected sound of Opera when passing a run-down home; Vivak Mercy, and more.

Jingling : 4 versions of by-gone era.  Thank you to Eddy for this link with some paintings of the Tang dynasty to give an idea of that time period. https://baike.baidu.com/item/金陵图/55021942.The first two contrasted Two Tang poets, the first by Wei Zuang responding to one by Gao Chan.  The final two were two different translations of yet another landscape which does not speak of the city or the court of Jingling, but  avoids specifics by speaking of nature.   Elmer contributed a note about mizzling, as brief spot of rain... we discussed the "unfeeling" willow, which only looks as if it is weeping.  

Marna shared this link about the Willow's symbolic meanings: https://japonicaplants.co.uk/2020/06/18/willows-in-the-chinese-garden/  (associated with spring and rebirth. Its pliability suggests meekness and humility. It is associated with friendship, because of its intertwining branches, and also with parting from friends. Traditionally a willow branch was given as a parting gift, because its name in Chinese – 柳 liǔ – sounds like a word for ‘stay’. )  

Nature Aria:

Judith recalled a beautiful painting, Grapevine in Wind and Moonlight which captures the feel https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1916.240/

We agreed this final poem with two translators perhaps did not reflect what the original chinese intended.  Bio of Yi Lei, 1951-2018 -- as Judith put it, a gallimaufry -- a hodgepodge of elements stuck together. 

We did love the image "laughing like a cloud in trousers" which perhaps has a reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "the curious case of Benjamin Button".

Poems for July 23

 Evening Walk  by Charles Simic; Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver; The Space Between by Jill Jupen;  After Hayden Carruth  by Jacqueline Winter Thomas; After Television  by Hayden Carruth;  Time of Tyranny, 49 by  Lyn Hejinian; See You Tomorrow  by Hayden Carruth; Places With Terrible Wi-Fi by J. Estanislao Lopez

 It just is luck, and 6th sense as I stumble into poems and poets who seem to treasure the power of words that restore our sense that this life is an invitation to notice, wonder and share textures and feelings of our connections.

Often the poems in O Pen express feelings that line our lives, or elaborate feelings of others so we can better understand them.  They guide us, give us faith that indeed, we can hold on for a moment to something "unsayable".   The sharings and responses of those present enrich all this. 

 The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.—James A. Baldwin (from Conversations with James Baldwin, Univ. Press of Mississippi 

Jerry's "words"; a participant's sister writes a book: https://bainbridgeisland.press/products/a-woman-in-pieces; Marna's transportation.  Hard to remind people... The focus of O pen... looking at the human condition through the lenses of poems.  However, I find myself citing people's names. Should I refrain from that? 

Nutshell: -- this is more personal than what I sent out to the O Pen group.  

Evening Walk: We enjoyed the sense of  mystery  beautifully accentuated by enjambments of the first lines of the first 3 stanzas.  Elaine coined a term of the "internal poem" for such a meditative piece that brings us "inside" ourselves, and prompts us to remember perhaps a place we have put aside.  Elmer noted the juxtaposition of nature and reality... on one hand, the poet walking, on the other, a personification of trees.  What an unusual image of a tree as staircase, rising to heaven, as the night slowly descending. Jan noted the short i sounds (listening/lips/bit/wind/fit/unpinned/ dinner) which contrast with the long I (night/high/decide/quiet/light/sky).   That helped people hear the O's at work . Lines that stood out:  3rd stanza, next to last line: happy heart, what heavy steps you take...  

Climbing China's Great Wall: We agreed the title brings us to the experience of climbing the wall, so one feels a live interaction with it, as opposed to a description of this amazing feat of engineering, replete with gatehouses and keepers, a signal system   for danger lighting fires.  (Judith suggested the movie Mulan which shows this.) You might enjoy reading some of the "truth and fiction" about it here: https://www.chinahighlights.com/greatwall/fact/  Friends of ours who live in Beijing confirmed the opening line.  In the Mutianyu area, the stairs were built before there was architectural code, which made them steeper with inconsistent rises and runs... They mentioned, since the descent is harder on the knees than the ascent, for a few RMB you can bobsled all the way down the mountain! 

Now for the poem:  I didn't notice the rhyme scheme  until the next to last tercet -- a sign of an excellent craftsman in my book.  Afaa M. Weaver weaves in history, but also human elements of soldiers, "wishing for the lovers they left behind" and the mothers, "weaving braids of grief/in their hair".  The surprise of an actual "little old woman" -- perhaps invented to bring all together in the final stanza: the stairs, the legend, skeleton of the wall, "where white cranes dance in pairs" -- the crane, symbol of purity, grace, and longevity, 

and in pairs, perhaps a symbol of faithful union.  Judith corrects herself: the bird symbol for wedded bliss in China is the (or properly are) mandarin ducks.  It is in Japan that the cranes are considered symbols of marriage.  But the crane is a Chinese symbol for long life and prosperity.

The Space Between:  the poet mentioned how Hayden Carruth supported her and I gave this link about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Carruth  and https://www.npr.org/2008/10/02/95310480/hayden-carruth-a-poet-with-a-jazzmans-touch

  We definitely felt the poet as being "beside herself" or "outside of herself".  We enjoyed the sense of mystery, especially 2nd and 4th stanzas, trying to imagine the situation.  The space between what you thought was felt, and physical distance between two people, and the ambiguity of being separated from herself, thus from another-- as one person put it, the "missingness" of love.   

Judith quoted from  Richard III, Scene 3, Sir Richard's Soliloquy:  Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.

After Hayden Carruth:  the title could be a "nod to" the poet, or perhaps a Eulogy -- and recognition of his influence.  I read the poem backwards, to play with the idea that the poem seems to be Carruth speaking back.  It is not snow...nor sleeping silence  vs.  An old man sleeps like/snow on hills.  

We remarked how when you lay your ear against your hand or someone else's skin, you hear your own heartbeat.   

After Television:  this is Carruth playing perhaps with irony.  The poem was published in 1994, so a year after the World Wide Web was made available to the public.  Stephen Jay Gould refers to Homo Sapiens as "a tiny and accidental evolutionary twig"...  -- but what are we doing to ourselves?  I didn't know about the ironic nickname    The discussion included fond reminiscences of childhood before TV.  Carruth provides delightful adjectives: squirmy trees; mumbling days, but also inexhaustible sadness. 

Judith brought up:   Homo Sap.  She also mentioned Ogden Nash about TV and being the village idiot... so for video, one is the village vidiot.

Time of Tyranny: Hejinian's work often demonstrates how poetry is a way of thinking, " a way of encountering and constructing the world, one endless utopian moment even as it is full of failures."(https://poets.org/poet/lyn-hejinian).  The 14 lines peppered with alliterations do not avoid words like ambiguate, obviate.  The poem borders a sense of science fiction, perhaps a slant reference to artificial creation of life.  We agreed... a lot of emotion. 

 Neil taught us the term, -30- used in journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-30- 

See you tomorrow:  Humorous, perhaps describing the apocalypse or his own aging.  We enjoyed the honesty.  Judith sang for us, "Beautiful Geezers"... to the tune of Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamers https://genius.com/Stephen-foster-beautiful-dreamer-lyrics

Places with terrible Wi-Fi:  A list poem which ponders what it would be like without the internet.

What is sacred?  The reference of Megiddo: an important town in the Old Testament where battles took place,  Armaggedon  so the "Tell of M" is a pun on Tel Meggido   an archeological site and a national park…

 

Poems for July 16-17

 

Margo by Fanny Howe;  Irish Weather by Tess Gallagher; White Towels by Richard Jones; The Pear by Jane Kenyon; Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon; Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye; Ode to the Grimy Breeze of an Underground Subway Platform by Abby Murray; The Music before the Music by Jeanne Murray Walker; 

In Memoriam: Fanny Howe 1940-2025

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Writes [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, “The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.” Fanny Howe,  the luminous and incontrovertible proof. Bio and more poems- tap the hyperlink!

NUTSHELL: 

Poems about dichotomy, how the contradictions seems to kill us, keep us alive.   To quote Khadijah Queen, poem -a-day Guest Editor for July "as a reader, I enjoy a poem that respects my capacity to receive and process contradiction and to deepen my empathy for the full range of human experience." 

 

Margo:  In this poem, one feels the pain of losing a friend.  Each details shows it.  Paul informed us that in Ireland, to be "planted" means to be buried.  He also said there is more sunshine in Ireland than myth would have us know.  There's a thrumming of "r" throughout the poem, whether as initial sound of rock, redden, rain or inside a word, like garden, heart, brief, Irish, perfume, tree, green, turf, burning.  Image, scent, and whispers of alliterative "p", leading after 3 lines, to this musical rhythm:  Diamonds on the stamens when the sun goes blind. As the poet says, "the poem touches on the pieces of the natural world, its colors, perfumes, sounds and finally its burning when all is said and done.  It's a poem of hope for what is not seen."

 

Irish Weather:   Paul approved of the "Irish" in the title, as accurate and that the  poem seemed "meant to be spoken".  Wonderful sounds of strong verbs like squalls, gust, plunder. And the response? short and compressed:  it's raining; sun's out.  Judith shared the saying, "when the sun is shining, the devil is beating his wife" as a way to describe a sunshower.      One  can imagine the speaker gesturing with arms the sideways rain, the spray of wheat grains.  Axel commented on the  elasticity of language and structure of two extremes,  similar to the Frost poem about the "Freedom of the Moon".  

 

White Towels:  To start a poem out mentioning solitude and loneliness could elicit endless comments  about how they are different, how they are felt and experienced.    One might choose solitude, enjoy it; loneliness often is felt with loss.  Judith shared  the first lines of Elinor Wiley: Poor Loneliness and lovely solitude.   https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/little-eclogue#google_vignette   Neil offered the idea of looking at solitude and loneliness as a Venn diagram, two circles able to intersect/overlap.   Another thought was of a sine curve, of highs and lows.  

Other comments... the poem is all "mished up"; enjoyable personification of those towels which brought up very practical advice about the comfort of warmed towels for those who are ill.  How the poem came from a collection called The Blessing, which in a way, resembles solitude which can work silently.  

 

You can tell this is a poem that invites many doors to be opened, so many possible stories of this life a man is telling to those warm towels. So much to know about his children he carries in his arms as though asleep.  Loneliness invites us to learn how to live with one another perhaps.  How to understand each other humanely.   This article about AI and Loneliness goes into it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/21/ai-is-about-to-solve-loneliness-thats-a-problem

 

The Pear:   The poem comes from her "Best Poems" and it may be an early poem, before her illness.  Marge commented it feels like a  "healing poem" for herself.   It speaks to her way of being, a quiet thoughtfulness where each line break, careful use of sounds invites the reader in.  Not too lyrical, nor too dramatic in the build up of the sun, burns hot and bright/making you more desolate.  It feels paradoxical, and prepares for the shift to the pear.  In her later work she will explore this sense of desolation in her poem, "Having it out with Melancholy".  Eddy mentioned how, like Ada Limon, she skillfully uses nature like a mirror.  53 words.  Two stanzas.  A quatrain with diminishing lengths of line even as middle repeats with middling mind, only to land on one final word: afraid.  In the next stanza, the first three lines swell to desolate. Like a turn in a sonnet, without a stanza break, the shift to the pear and the foreboding of the final two lines.  

 

Hunger:  The opening line is one of those universal truths about being human and our need for love, twisted as Bernie put it as a "sympathetic fallacy", inviting negativity but calling it good.  To get into explanation of the irrational, as in  Pathetic Fallacy: see  https://www.victorianweb.org/technique/pathfall.html

I was glad as we read it, that there was some laughter.  The contradictions, the non-sequiturs, the fact that the poem is titled "Hunger" brought up many responses.  Physical eating of the coyote, but the poet's eating of hen and duck is side by side with  what it is that we want to believe, want to be true, or want to have happen with mother goose and nonsense about three blind mice tossed in.   Indeed "We are all trying to change/what we fear into something beautiful".  As Major Jackson asks:  "what blinds us to red flags, to what we hope our instincts should catch?  We become wild in our desperation to present ourselves as worthy of love."

 

Separation Wall:  A strong title, for what seems to be unpredictable, disjointed couplets.  The opening couplet triggers introduces the idea of something becoming sour, (curdling, separate);  the next couplet:  the problem of silence, of giving up.  Indeed, why were you born then?  Reactionary treatment is no good, but not speaking, not trying to communicate, is to stop being human.  Where do we stand with "willful ignorance"?  It would be hard to read this poem and not to think about the conflict between Palestine and Israel since 1947 as well as the heartless war since Oct. 7, 2023 in Gaza.  

In the 3rd couplet, Naomi brings in fear.  How "they" as  nuclear bomb (modern powers)  are scared of a cucumber, (traditional food for the original inhabitants. The soothing tone of the mother, the grandmother, questions of how to slice cucumbers support the almost innocent depiction of the poet feeling "like a normal person with fantastic dilemmas".  The confirmation of normal takes the space of almost three couplets, for the Grandmother,  after a time, as long as "it takes a sun to set" to say "yes".  "They" vs. me.  In the discussion we did not address who is involved in the "we".  Onlookers from the rest of the world?  Israelis? Palestinians?  Zionists?  Hamas?  

No one should want babies to find out about// : the line and stanza break allows us to pause, think  about what we want and don't want the next generation to know.  We would like the babies not to find out about // the failures waiting for them.  She separates from "we" and counters.  I would like/them to believe on the other side of the wall// line and stanza break.  The hope represented by a circus, the artificial theatre that represents the world.

Our friends.  Naomi gives us the hope of that 1st person plural -- hope in the learning of juggling, of using tall poles.

 

Ode to the Grimy Breeze: The poem speaks for itself.  I love Abby's originality, starting with  things you'd rather NOT be thankful for.  How beautifully she places that almost perfect lotus, that Buddhist symbol in the grime, the heat, the smoke, the modern version of hell imposed by a dictator... how she transforms a cigarette of an armed guard into a source of choreography, how that means the dark cannot be stagnant, and light, the way light is, will explode, sparkle, disappear, in its cycles, now inviting amazement, then, goes offstage for a rest before returning.

 

The Music before the Music:  a perfect sonnet...  captures the synergy  of orchestra ... not a celebration of chaos.  Playful.  How enjoyable to think of scales as  horses on nickering runs, the plow and plant in one of Beethoven's "fields".

 https://dailypoempod.substack.com/p/jeanne-murray-walkers-the-music-before?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1603480&post_id=165041437&r=3b45d3&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=listen_now_button&triedRedirect=true

 

 

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. 

**

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.