March 12-13

 email note w/ send out of poems:

In my blog https://kdjospe.blogspot.com/ I apologize for leaving off the crucial last 2 words of the second Merwin Poem along with a short summary of our fabulous discussions.    I include many links but  cannot figure out how to share one from Bernie  of  a letter written by one of his friends who is a dharma teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh tradition.   I agree  that a letter is a small step in activating ourselves.  This particular letter is a reminder of the need for an antidote to our tendency to "tribalize others", accusing them as being wholly immoral and evil.  I am reminded that stooping  to anger interferes with understanding and invites further harm.   Should you wish a copy of this letter or the blog,  let me know.  I am sensitive to the overuse of internet sharing.

Back to the poems!  Oh the words!  Understanding our love of them, our need, our sharing of them.  I cannot tell you how much I treasure our time together.  Share: not as a portion, a divide, a cut, percentage, but a gesture of generosity towards each other.   

For next week:   The 3rd poem was recited by Judith in response to the Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet last week.  I apologize to scrollers for my attempt of side-by-side 

of the Robert Frost and Shakespeare .  You will see a large space after the last line of the Shakespeare Youth's a stuff will not endure. Frost's Flower Gathering starts with I left you in the morning. (reference is in the footnotes).

Poems: When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (excerpts-- first and last stanzas) full poem here

by Galway Kinnell;

Love Poem With Toast by Miller Williams; Not in a silver casket cool with pearls by Edna St. Vincent Millay; The Bracelet: To Julia  by Robert Herrick (from Robert Frost Book review ); “The World After Rain”  by Canisia Lubrin; POEM BY WENDELL BERRY:   VII; Carpe Diem (from 12th Night  Shakespeare    side by side w/ Flower-Gathering  by Robert Frost

Book review  How Robert Frost "invested in the literary tradition": note: In Maggie Doherty's review of Love and Need  by Adam Plunkett, "My appreciation of the exquisite late sonnet "The Silken Tent" did not increase upon learning that it borrows an image from this 17th century poem. In the same article,   Emerson's poem,  about Montaigne's relationship with a close friend, mentioned as an inspiration for The Road not Taken, written for the English poet Edward Thomas.

In a nutshell...  poems about aging, and love... poems which draw on "ulteriority" -- how you can love a poem without explaining the sense... Each poem offers a different spin, and we wondered,  what motivated Miller Williams to come up with "toast" in his upbeat poem?

Kinnell:  Good prompt.  Start a poem where each stanza repeats the same opening and closing line.  Try 11 of them.  Not "When one has lived a long time".  Or "when one has lived alone"... what is a long time and what is alone in the context of saving small creatures one used to thoughtlessly swat... but now offer "a life line flung at reality".  The repeat of "one", not a person, but a general reference to being human perhaps gave some the idea of a sermon, and many said, "for such a fine poet, not his best work". Others did not feel a tone of sadness, regret, but rather a meditative contemplation reflecting on the complexity of life.  The sense of life, birth to death, the gaze of the new baby looks past the gaze/of the great granny... and the unusual way of describing love with "lips blowsy from kissing, that language/the same in each mouth."  But he goes on... with a comparison of long-winded blethering of the birds.  It's not the words that are of consequence, it might seem, but the singing of daybreak, both earth's and heaven's.

Williams:  plenty of disparity in how to understand this poem which starts out logically enough about what it is we do, whether to make things happen, or trying to keep something from doing something.  He expands this idea with 6 repeats of wanting as anaphor, alternating between wanting to... and wanting not. Yes/no.  Some felt it was a poem about wanting what is beyond our understanding or control.  There's enough ambiguity to suit any reader's take.  Is it a tender love poem about two older people?  Or, two people caught in the complexity of life, pretending it makes any sense?  Lots of fun to read and re-read.

This is the same poet who was selected for Bill Clinton's second Inauguration. Of History and Hope https://poemanalysis.com/miller-williams/of-history-and-hope/ -- full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47107/of-history-and-hop

Millay: Not in a silver casket... as in a jewelry case, not about death at all, only a beautiful rejection of artificiality.  The last lines say it all -- Look at me... at what I have... with all the veracity of a child.  Millay's mastery (and love) of language is clearly evident.  Judith gave a summary of a poetry session on her at Maine Media.  Growing up on farm, very poor, many of her poems are filled with vegetation.  

Herrick:  Back to 17th century... this poem apparently inspired Robert Frost in his love poem, The Silken Tent :  https://poemanalysis.com/robert-frost/the-silken-tent/  But is he sincere? His love of conceit evident... but Julia? 

Lubrin:  her book, The World After Rain will come out in October... so we have no idea if this is a complete poem or an excerpt from the book, or how it fits in.  And yet.. we thought it magnificent!  References to Santa Lucia, the strange disconnect between mother and daughter -- where the mother's reality and astonishment feels so negative, but the daughter, as the voice of the poet, lifts up with imagination, connection with a sense of a former world... 

Judith provided us the story of a mother explaining the word slippery to her son who couldn't understand it, by dumping a bucket of water filled with fish over his head.  Yes. This is that sort of poem, where we can't  quite put the feel of it into words. 

Berry:  beautiful love poem... and kindness towards one's aging self... "young, with unforeseen debilities" is so much more gracious than decrepit.  And to feel the love still of how one used to love... that is a "beautiful bomb" at the end!

We loved the idea of age being a "progression" with new stages and the optimistic tone.  Judith brought up "No one loses all the time" by E.E. Cummings : https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1628/nobody-loses-all-the-time/

Frost:   So, poets steal from poems, and roaming from the snippet of Shakespeare appears in Frost. Seize the day.  

Judith shared at the end the grace and beauty of dancers, who off-stage might have looked ready for burial, but as soon as they approached the stage, returned to their former state of supreme mastery and race. Duende... what comes up inside of you, fills you with a love of life, some might say.