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