Poems for Jan. 15-6

 First Snow by Arthur Sze; Injustice by Jared Campbell; Silence and American Sonnet  by Billy Collins; American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin  by Terrance Hayes; 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

First Snow.  Eddie had proposed the Arthur Sze poem as an interesting technique using nature.  First Snow as title is delightfully ambiguous  and allows an embrace of several aspects of "hidden" things.  Yes, there is a rabbit, and yes, a gravel driveway and a comparison of "the world of being" akin to the gravel.  For many it seemed bafflingly multi-faceted.  For others, an interesting narrative where "you" could be the rabbit, as well as the poet.  The punctuation is careful:  Three lines end with a colon.  The first is followed by stanza break, to indented couplets and a staggered tercet.  The elaborations after the colons are given breaths of semi-colons.  The second  and third time a line ends with a colon, it hangs in space.  

There appears to be a juxtaposition between an urban environment, a human, and a rabbit.  

Known as a poet of clarity and compassion, detailed imagery such fastidious punctuation however, does not help elucidate any point he is making. There is an embrace akin to a Buddhist silence. We cannot know "the whole, only small parts offered... markings of a buck on an aspen, but no buck; work of a carpenter, but no craftsman; mention of a blue-zizagged shirt,  car, house, which you do not own, but rather borrow; snow that melts and is no longer.  The mention of dreams, and starlight behind the daylight in the haunting last line gives a sense of timelessness.

Injustice:  The triolet is known as a form for making fun of something, and is fun to write.  We had a lovely discussion about pigeons, their iridescence, and the word "beautifullest" which carries an innocence of a child combining "full and fullest of beauty."  Of course, "dove" rhymes with "love", but no need to mention that bird.  A critique of religion, or empty praise of love ignore the pigeon, the one carrying messages, providing filling for a pie, both quite useful attributes.  But aside from being ignored, what is involved with injustice?

Silence: Billy Collins often has a flippant tone, but in his repeated use of the word Silence, he amply observes the many angles of silence.  We examined the contrast of words that seemed to fit in each tercet and those that didn't.  One person saw a narrative connecting the second stanza, mentioning the belt striking a child, to the penultimate one of the broken silence.  There is a Buddhist feel of "one hand clapping" where one imagines the other hand that is not present, perhaps a memory.  There is also tension between several of the elements, such as "the quiet of the day" and the roar of the sun.  

We made conjectures about the last line.  Is he just being self-effacing?  Perhaps referring to the difficulty of writing, and not being able to express the greater aspect of something, or merely, the preference of the process to the silent end.  Someone brought up Kipling and the "wind between the words", and another the palpable "roar" of heat and light from the sun in hot countries.  

13 ways: We did not discuss this complicated poem, however in the Wednesday group there were countless associations with crows! Bernie: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/851/try-a-little-tenderness ( ACT 2 of the This American Life episode "Try a Little Tenderness" from 1/10/25, which starts at about 29:15

 13 as bad luck number; black bird as symbol of death; or merely a convenient image to chose for  a collection of disconnected images presented in a haiku-like  kaleidoscopic manner that ultimately emphasizes the plural nature of perception. There isn’t just one way to look at a blackbird! In the century since its publication, the poem has inspired numerous musical compositions, pieces of fiction, essays, and other poems.

My favorite it verse 5:  which to prefer:  beauty of inflections, or innuendoes. Connected to time, which also flavors our sense of something,  perhaps it is easier to quibble about the difference than to keep seeking "indecipherable causes traced in the shadow" in the next stanza!  

Inflection involves volume and pitch of the voice;  innuendo:  an allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one.  What remains is the constant of the bird.  Perhaps like the first poem,  the "evening all afternoon,  points to a larger cosmic connection.  

American Sonnet:  Terrance Hayes is a powerful voice and creative force in the poetry world.  He wrote 70 sonnets for "My Past and Future Assassin" after Trump was elected;  published in 2018.     See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sonnets_for_My_Past_and_Future_Assassin 

Wanda Coleman  (1946—2013) also worked with this form, a looser, more inventive group of 14 lines with no requirement about meter, rhyme or volta.

 American Sonnet: Billy Collins:  He doesn't bother with confining a fake posturing of a sonnet to 14 lines, but goes for 7 tercets -- perhaps an expanded half sonnet?  Clearly a parody.  The idea of a sonnet as travel postcard is wonderfully funny and many a chuckle was provoked by "the Wish you were here //  line and stanza break,  and hide the wish that we were where you are.

It prompted Judith to recite by heart a Gwendolyn Brooks Sonnet.  If you do not know these, they are well worth looking up.  article   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/141972/velvety-velour-and-other-sonnet-textures

Poems for Jan. 8-9, 2025

January, by William Carlos Williams; Making Luxury out of Flat Soda by Frederick Joseph; Sign by Sahar Romani; Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop; After Rain by Michael Pfeifer (Ekphrastic response to Paradigm Shift” by Morgan Reed.  Image: https://www.rattle.com/after-rain-by-michael-pfeifer/ ) Claim by Kasey Jueds; To the New Year by W.S. Merwin

Poetry echoes loudly and unapologetically the transformative power that language has to connect, challenge, and inspire....

We started with mention of the Public Defendant Heather Shaner and her key for 2025:  humanity.  In this video,  

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+New+Yorker+Documentary+A+Public+Defender%E2%80%99s+Radical+Approach+to+Representing+the+January+6th+Riotersyou can see her at work with those involved in the Jan 6, 2021  insurrection.  Each of us have a story, and it behooves us to try to understand each one.

So it is with poetry.  The selection started with  the poem January and ended with To the New Year.  I can't think of more unlikely pieces of bread to make a sandwich of poems!

What we all appreciate in these sessions is the wealth of angles shared in trying to understand the words some other human being has penned to share something of importance to him or her.

 

William Carlos Williams:  What was going in 1921 when he published Sour Grapes, a volume of poetry in which you will find this poem January?  It is not an especially accessible poem, even if you are a musician and know about chromatic  or perfect fifths[1], or perhaps find an association with John Donne's Holy Sonnet, Batter My Heart Three-Person'd God  (see below) which has a more convincing form replete with tripled adjectives and triplet of verbs  [2]

 

Again: first word, and one thinks of how January rolls around each year, announcing a "new year", but what are the triple winds?  Winds of fortune? time? the physical winter wind?  And how are they filled with derision for the poet who twice attributes derisive to the wind and its music?  We were not insensitive to the double meaning of "sentences" .  Donne also develops this idea of  being "imprisoned" as well.  How to understand "You will not succeed". The wind, perhaps unlike Donne's 3-personed God, cannot enthrall.

On surface, given the set-up of the poem, it implies the wind and poet seem to be in a fierce contest.  As one person said, "Williams seems to be saying,  Bring it on.   Perhaps this is a poem where an inner struggle is reflected in the outside weather.

 

I saw an explanation  of Williams' poem The Red Wheelbarrow, as a series of implied chromatic intersections. If one makes 3 circles out of details, such Red (wheelbarrow) overlapping with Blue (glazed with rain water) (with a small slice of purple); Blue overlapping with yellow (beside the white chickens) (with a resulting slice of green) and the yellow overlapping with the red with a slice of orange, one can see a small triangle of the interconnected overlappings of all six colors as visible light.  This was labeled with the opening line, So Much Depends On...

 

Perhaps January is a similar arrangement where the first 3 lines and final 4 lines as outside wind overlap with the inner sanctum of the poet's world.

Donn';s Sonnet:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

 

Making Luxury out of Flat Soda:  A different sort of metamorphosis happens here.

This poem was an immediate favorite and for good reason: story with universal appeal well-crafted sound, delightful alliterations, imagery.  

We could feel the particulars of Grandmommy's kitchen and had no doubt about its authenticity.  One person remarked on the detail of "gossiping over cognac" which is usually something reserved for the well-to do.  One possible explanation is to elevate the "metaphorical  status" and importance of the family gatherings.  One senses a feel of an idealized "Aunt Jemima in the South", and yet it is not contrived but a real Grandmother delivered importance life lessons.  The opening and closing lines both contain the verb "breathe" -- which sets up the central line of "learning to fill my lungs with survival".  Joseph skillfully shows us how the Grandmother leads the way--

"how deserted became a diamond for joy's crown".  A meaningful, heartwarming poem of reminiscence, filled with all the senses.  Perfect material for a sermon called, "How to make positive choices". 

Judith brought up Frances Hodgson Burnett's story T. Tembaron.  You can read it free of charge here : https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2514

 

Sign: This poem about coincidences, starts with a  statement: What aren't you willing to believe. Not a question.  You can hear her read it here: https://poets.org/poem/sign and one doesn't sense a challenging tone, but rather an exploratory meditation about "sightings and significance".  She mentions the poems leads her towards an answer.  I'm not sure what that is.  

I love that she embraces the multiplicity of a yin/yang approach to life, indeed, quoting the line from Bishop's poem, Sandpiper where the world is mist, and then all clear.  For sure, the final line could be a statement about reality and what we think we believe is real.  Does it take whimsy and ego to believe the universe will tape your shoulder?  If so, she doesn't show how.  She only says she believes this to be true, and is convinced there is such a thing as truth, contradictory as it might seem.  

 

We felt we were witnessing a mini scene in a play or film.  What aisle though?  in a store? a church? a tram?  We all picked up on the poem's yearning for a hint of meaning in life.

I brought up Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.  A rich inner life can help us through horrific circumstances, provide alternatives to protective apathy, or a sense of despairing helplessness. 

 

Sahar is an Arabic name for girls meaning "dawn, morning, awakening".  https://poets.org/poet/sahar-romani  I am not sure where she is from, but the nod to Rumi, the detail of her mother's bracelets places us somewhere in a timeless sense of Persia, and yet, the mention of the Indian actor, producer and television personality Shah Rukh Khan places us in contemporary times.  The poem is an example of the rich conversations we can carry on, whether from the 13th century with Sufi mystic Rumi,  translated by Halah Liza Gafori in 2022, or 20th century Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) and contemporary (and fabulously innovative poet) Terrance Hayes (b. 1971)[3]

 

Sandpiper:  wonderful poem where one could easily transpose "he" for human, not bird. 

One observation was, if human, he was self-absorbed and prisoner of his own self-imposed panic.  If a student of Blake, the quote, "to see the world in a grain of sand" runs through the poem, like a reassuring anchor.  Rather like Romani's statement, "Truth is not going anywhere.  It's your eyes passing by".  No need to be obsessed looking for something, repeated 3 times.

 

After Rain: In viewing the image, the co:mmentary by the series editor doesn't jive that the women have their backs turned to us-- we see many faces... The subject of the poem, "she"  is intriguingly described as shadow, fog and rememberance -- and that haunting image of being

a "collapsing umbrella after rain".  Other "resurrection sisters "hold a ticket/for a train of sand and fear", another unsettling image.  That the rattle of goods confident they willbe sold, is akin to a mystery confident it will be told, creates a sense of urgency, perhaps like the obsessive sandpiper searching for food, and for us, trying to cajole  meaning out of chance moments. 

 

Claim:  Many stories about animals, the comfort they bring us came up after the reading of this poignant poem.  The opening sentence set the scene of someone out of touch with the world, insecure and wanting a sense of connection and belonging.  We agreed this was a "feel good" poem which is successful in providing a deeper meaning. with the reversal that the dog would be the one to say to the human, stay.

 

To the New Year: from Merwin's book Present Company.  The soft sounds provide a magical antidote to the opening poem.  Perhaps if you live in Hawaii, one is exempt from the cold with little light we experience in the Northeast. However this may be, "we have ccome with our age" -- meaning, our years, this point in our human history in the time period in which we live,

.  

 

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fifth : perfect fifths are more consonant than other intervals; Chromatic is the straight path through all 12 notes in an octave.  It is often jarring to listen to applied to atonal music.

[2] line 2: knock, breathe, shine; line 4: break, blow, burn;  verbs 11th line: Divorce, untie, break

[3] Since the publication of his first book, Muscular Music, in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America's most exciting and innovative poets, winning acclaim for his sly, twisting, jazzy poems, and his mastery of emotive, restless wordplay.  Hayes structures his poem using the poignancy formula, which is a variant on the Greater Romantic Lyric form. He invented the "Golden Shovel" and "The poignancy formula" which simply presents the present, then the past, then the present with the past, normally using imagery.

Preparing for the New Year

 December 27, 2024.

Words...  Judith on "dumbing down prose" -- my poem follows.

 A writer friend asked me to edit a few chapters of something she is writing, and I had quite a discussion with her about the slovenly trend in the last twenty years or so—it appeared suddenly and spread like poison ivy—of having people “exit” a room.  By me (New York Yiddish derived dialect) exit is written over doors and otherwise appears in play scripts.  And it is a dead word.  It took a while for Melody to get it  (well she is considerably younger than I am..NOT me, by the way, which is worse than poison ivy and is EVERYWHERE.)  I insisted it is dead.  You can amble, flounce, stomp, slither, stalk—all sorts of nice juicy active verbs to convey situation or character, so why exit?  She finally got it.  Exhausting.

see my poem: Exit with a nod to Sartre and TS Eliot and dedicated to the inimitable Judith Judson (filed in December 2024)

Exit

            with a nod to Sartre and TS Eliot 

 

It's clearly marked: over the doorway, to show

the way out.  But please, says my friend, would you 

have it be a verb?  Exit a room?  What does that tell?

Amble, flounce, stomp, slither, or even stalk will add 

a bit of juice to convey the character, the how of it all.

Rather like hushing the CH in touch so plutoc(h)ratic 

crisps its freshly minted bills, pressing

them into the CHIC gloves of oligarchical.

The infamous "they" say, all cyclical.

How easy to switch off the howl of ouch with the paint 

of T, squeezing the uh, uh, of touch.

 

Let's review Huis Clos performed three months before 

the "end" of world war II 80 years ago. Let us 

re-examine decisions behind closed doors— 

stop the play.   No matter how you stage 

and re-stage,  translate it as No Way Out, 

Vicious Circle or Dead End, it doesn't help 

the smell of the rat. 

 

The hush returns.  Shantih. 

Shantih.  Shantih.

 

commentary on Bishop's Sandpiper: (tbd on Jan. 8-9)

Wallace Stevens ended one of his poems hilariously:  “Happens to like is one /of the ways things happen to fall.” I love how irreverentially he notes that our emotional lives and our desires are often governed by accident

 ...  Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Tomatoes” likewise  celebrates the objects which surround us, amidst which we live our lives, and insists that the small things we take for granted are important, even if we too often we ignore them.  For more commentary read: https://www.huckgutman.com/sandpiper

**

Two Poems not chosen for the start of the year 2025...  The first somewhat discussed in O Pen.

"A wonderful poem to read when "ever negotiating the psychic demands of being present in a world where kindness feels in short supply." posted on the Slowdown, 12/2/2024    

On Living  by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

Living is no laughing matter:

      you must live with great seriousness

             like a squirrel, for example—

   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, 

             I mean living must be your whole occupation. 

to continue reading: https://poetrysociety.org/poems/on-living

 

Christmas on the Border, 1929 by Alberto Ríos

       Based on local newspaper reports

       and recollections from the time.

 

1929, the early days of the Great Depression.

The desert air was biting, but the spirit of the season was alive.

 

Despite hard times, the town of Nogales, Arizona, determined

They would host a grand Christmas party

 

For the children in the area—a celebration that would defy

The gloom of the year, the headlines in the paper, and winter itself.

 

In the heart of town, a towering Christmas tree stood,

A pine in the desert.

 

Its branches, they promised, would be adorned

With over 3,000 gifts. 3,000.

 

The thought at first was to illuminate the tree like at home,

With candles, but it was already a little dry.

 

Needles were beginning to contemplate jumping.

A finger along a branch made them all fall off.

 

People brought candles anyway. The church sent over

Some used ones, too. The grocery store sent

 

Some paper bags, which settled things.

Everyone knew what to do.

 

They filled the bags with sand from the fire station,

Put the candles in them, making a big pool of lighted luminarias.

 

From a distance the tree was floating in a lake of light—

Fire so normally a terror in the desert, but here so close to miracle.

 

For the tree itself, people brought garlands from home, garlands

Made of everything, walnuts and small gourds and flowers,

 

Chilies, too—the chilies themselves looking

A little like flames.

 

The townspeople strung them all over the beast—

It kept getting bigger, after all, with each new addition,

 

This curious donkey whose burden was joy.

At the end, the final touch was tinsel, tinsel everywhere, more tinsel.

 

Children from nearby communities were invited, and so were those

From across the border, in Nogales, Sonora, a stone’s throw away.

 

But there was a problem. The border.

As the festive day approached, it became painfully clear—

 

The children in Nogales, Sonora, would not be able to cross over.

They were, quite literally, on the wrong side of Christmas.

 

Determined to find a solution, the people of Nogales, Arizona,

Collaborated with Mexican authorities on the other side.

 

In a gesture as generous as it was bold, as happy as it was cold:

On Christmas Eve, 1929,

 

For a few transcendent hours,

The border moved.

 

Officials shifted it north, past city hall, in this way bringing

The Christmas tree within reach of children from both towns.

 

On Christmas Day, thousands of children—

American and Mexican, Indigenous and orphaned—

 

Gathered around the tree, hands outstretched,

Eyes wide, with shouting and singing both.

 

Gifts were passed out, candy canes were licked,

And for one day, there was no border.

 

When the last present had been handed out,

When the last child returned home,

 

The border resumed its usual place,

Separating the two towns once again.

 

For those few hours, however, the line in the sand disappeared.

The only thing that mattered was Christmas.

 

Newspapers reported no incidents that day, nothing beyond

The running of children, their pockets stuffed with candy and toys,

 

Milling people on both sides,

The music of so many peppermint candies being unwrapped.

 

On that chilly December day, the people of Nogales

Gathered and did what seemed impossible:

 

However quietly regarding the outside world,

They simply redrew the border.

 

In doing so, they brought a little more warmth to the desert winter.

On the border, on this day, they had a problem and they solved it.

 

-- posted on Poem-a-day 12/22/2024

AND  a little commentary from Paul on the session he missed (see Dec. 18)

On Friday, January 10, 2025 at 02:04:04 PM EST, K Jospe <kjospe@gmail.com> wrote:

I thank you for this!!  Not that we need end of the world messages ... but well-crafted ones with that extra ribbon, "Humanity dies gently with a sigh of relief" -- invites a poem in itself.  Most days I don't see humanity dying gently at all... but I have great compassion for whoever will sigh that sigh of relief when the play is over.

 I added it to my blog post of Dec. 18 !

By the way... I WISH I had taken a portrait photo of you -- what a wonderful New Year attire you wore with the red suspenders, the reds in the plaids... 

you are quite the dapper Dan... and you know I am always grateful for your insights shared!

Hope all is well.

xoxoxo

Kitty

His reply:     My father used to quote a fellow lawyer who was famous for an overabundance of malarkey and after attaining a favorable decision, said to the Judge,

" Your honor is too kind."   I admit to a certain amount of malarkey and apply those very same words to your kind e mail remarks.

                                                                      Daniel Dapper,III,

                                                                     Late of Saville Row