Poems for April 2-3- prelude

 The Strength of Fields by James L. Dickey[1]  Not Even by Michelle Visser*** see footnote; Osprey by Billy Collins; Banana Bread  by Abby Murray; The Invisible Stenographer Listens to the Dead  by Kathleen A. Wakefield; Formula by Langston Hughes

A lovely thought from Kahil Gilbran (thank you Carolyn):  "All things shall melt

and turn into songs

when spring comes. 

Spring is full of tricksy weather, and the history of April Fools a perfect foil.  To follow up on last week, another poem for an "inaugural occasion", another response to the photo of an abandoned library...

for humor, a Blly Collins... a different take on cake, an invisible stenographer, and Langston Hughe's mockery of what the old privileged guard in the 19th century might call Poetry.  

The nutshell  for last week: has links to the 3.5%; to This American Life; to Verdi -- kindly understand, this is trying to collate a wealth of treasures offered in discussion, not a scholarly report!

I am posting several "nutshells" for this week.  Sent out with "Nutshell #1" these words:

 

This morning I googled the antonyms of subtle thinking about how  tyranny starts in subtle ways. One of these is abusing language. (beware of dangerous words with fatal notions like "emergency" and "exception".)  I was taken to a list of 1,146 words : https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-opposite-of/subtle.html

What is frightening to me, is that some of the antonyms reflect the slippery nature of understanding what subtlety is-- on the surface, many of the words look like positive attributes.  I skimmed through 12 of the categories and stopped after antonyms of beautiful, elegant, astute, wise.

 

Subtle has the reputation for being difficult, ambiguous, unclear-- and the opposite thus gains power by promising to be moral, conscionable, trustworthy, sincere -- 

in the same group of words for "understated" (the "bad" connotation of subtle as delicately complex) immoderate, shocking, misguided, ill-advised  hold hands with  explicit, apparent, 

the opposite of "capable of making fine distinctions" is a best buddy of "innocent, naive, trustful, honest, genuine" !

 

Tyranny is not afraid to be unsubtle, as it puts on its sheep's clothing.

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**Footnote for Not Even: Last week we enjoyed the poem by Dick Westheimer responding to the photo "Abandoned Library" by Walter Arnold[1], part of Rattle Review's ekphrastic challenge.   Michelle Visser[1]

 Formula:  from the book Blues in Stereo: the early works of Langston Hughes, curated by Danez Smith. It is the final poem of the book, and Smith calls it "ant-Hughes" in the poetics of its claims.  He's poking fun in the voice of the "Muse of Poetry" which Smith thinks is the kind of poet Hughes would least like to see in the world.  Who will be the poets that speak -- who will provide the poems that help us change the world, invite us to have an active hand?  Poetry should treat/of lofty things  in the opening line, moves from statement to command in the final stanza:  Poetry!/Treat of lofty things...Can the shift be believable -- that this include the manure-rich dirt, pain -- lofty things spring from such things , and the call is for all of us to speak to the pain, conjure up compassion for the entire realm of living. 

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[1] Abandoned stacks of books at the historic Cossitt Library in downtown Memphis, TN 

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[1] Megan O’Reilly: “The first line of ‘Not Even’ intrigued me with its unexpected phrase, ‘the hard number of sheep it took to copy a bible.’ I was drawn to the contrast between nature and the metaphysical, which continues in the juxtaposition between the physicality of the monks (the stones making their ‘bones ache with cold,’ their ‘thin gruel and thin cloth’) and their belief in the spiritual. This contrast is also a connection: It’s the harshness of physical reality that seems to push the monks toward something beyond the material realm. I love the way this is reflected in Walter Arnold’s image of the bookshelves, a visual which is so tactile and textured, and yet we know that each book we see represents a transcendent experience. The metaphor that runs throughout the poem–books wrapped in animal skins, the cerebral anchored by the physical–reaches its peak at the end with a flawlessly-crafted insight into how our faith in the divine can never fully overcome our human nature.”

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[1] Poem shared in the week-long ceremonies preparing President Carter's inauguration in  1977.  Article about it contains reference to Robert Hayden and many others: https://blogs.loc.gov/bookmarked/2025/01/02/jimmy-carters-lifelong-love-of-poetry/

Footnotes for Langston Hughes -- from Blues in Stereo: early poems of Langston Hughes curated by Danez Smith. the famous question Hughes is known for is "what happens to a dream deferred."  As a young black poet, Smith and his friends learned that a dream could dry, fester, run, stink, crust and sugar over and even explode.  They stretched their minds to meet Hughe's imagination. This collection contains the early poems of Hughes.  It is hard not to be moved by Hughes, age 18, writing a poem where his "I" is big enough to hold all of us, and "the Negro" is both individual and all Black folks.  

The Negro Speaks of Rivers [1]became his first published poem in June 1921, in The Crisis,  the NAACP's monthly magazine edited at the time by W.E.B. DuBois. Danez Smith claims this poem changed the canon of poetry, the history and sound of American poetics.

Hughes wants us to take his poem Formula with irony.

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[1] In Hughes autobiography he recounts about looking out at the Mississippi through a train window, near St. Louis

and started thinking about what this river meant to Negroes in the past.  "...then I began to think about other rivers in our past— the Congo, the Niger and the Nile in Africa —and the thought came, "I've known rivers" and I put it down on the back of an envelope I had in my pocket.  Within the space of 10 or 15 minutes, as the train gathered speed in the dusk, I had written this poem.