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.
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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.
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