March 18 + 20

 Origami  by Meg Yardley; For Air by Ed Robeson; Butchering by Rhina p. Espaillat; No Swan so Fine by Marianne Moore;  American History by Michael S. Harper; Night Bird  by Danusha Laméris; Lessons at the Legendary Institute for Yarn Spinning by Rigoberto González; The Lanyard  by Billy Collins

I fully subscribe to Ross Gay's statement about "Joy, as practice of survival."  I  

Nutshell of discussion of poems for March 18 + 20

 

I opened with this quote from Isabel Allende: We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that sudden strength forward.  In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity people do amazing things.  The human capacity for renewal is awesome.

 

Because the subject of War and Peace is on everyone's mind I shared few quotes from the Peace Postcard initiative[1].  Interesting that the first poem brought up the Japanese legend of thousand cranes and the story of the Japanese girl, Sadoku, one of the many who suffered from the effects of the Atom Bomb

 

  

Origami:  brought up many associations which included the Japanese legend of folding paper into origami cranes. The hyperlink will give you the story of the Japanese girl, Sadoku, one of the many who suffered from the effects of the Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. She folds 1,000 cranes knowing the Japanese legend, that whoever does this will be granted a wish. Lest we forget about the bombing of two cities... 

 

How do we make sense of our world?  How can we repair the damage we see, unfolding a paper,

the creases of failures?  The uses of the word folding take us  from origami to the idea of wrinkles you wish you could smooth away, folds of empty spaces, cities, language, wind, valley, bill folds. The act of creating an origami bird is a meditative calming and methodical practice  that offsets the unpredictable.  I like that kami refers to origami paper but also to Japanese deities.  

 

The poem itself uses many enjambments as if each stanza is folding through space.  Indeed, the word "fold" is key, used in all but three stanzas (5th, 8th and final)   What is the bird base referred to in them?  This many-layered poem has the reader imitating folds of possibilities in the mind. 

 

Night Bird:    Who is saying the opening "Hear me"?  Is it the night bird, the poet? Should we believe or mock the prophetic tone?  The jump to the odd detail about the nephew and the therapist who dismisses that "he" (perhaps the therapist, perhaps the nephew) at play "sank a toy ship and tried to save the captain) is yet one more instance of not knowing more than the surface of the words. 

 

14 lines calls us to examine the poem as a modern sonnet.  Note the repetition in the six lines after the volta "Not, he said"echoes in the final line "Not, I'm sure".  The commas accentuate the contradictory hesitation.  What is what?  and how can we be sure?  The title is repeated at the end as a night bird, just one instance of something communicated. We noted the rhythm of one-beat words on the final line as if drumming echo that we do want to read meaning into what we hear.  

For Air : After a first read of this poem filled with gaps, unexpected spaces, as well as enjambments I re-read the first line:  There is a place in me for air.  I re-read it again and think of the breathing of rhythms and music but just like the scrambled syntax of "making sense like a cart/we are each other's horse before", I am also prompted to wonder if Robeson is implying  something comes before "____ for air" ?  Maybe a verb, like  gasping for air... or maybe an adjective like, "desperate", or a noun, "a craving for air".

Our minds play with empty spaces, try to fill in what's not said, or possibly erased.

This interview gives helpful insights into Roberson's experimental methods which refuse parsing.  He uses  "double-jointed syntax"  (Mackey) to explore and bend themes of race, history and culture.  "I'm not creating a new language.  I'm just trying to un-White-Out the one we've got" (2006 interview with Chicago Postmodern Poetry)

We discussed the last word in the first stanza, taking note there were other instances of ignoring rules of capitalization and punctuation.  What is given?  How it is to be understood?  It is the beginning of a math proof (corroborating the later mention in the 5th stanza, "geometries of air".  The repeat of "shod with a vibration of the unsaid"  feels fresh as the words line up  on the last line of the 4th stanza, and return at the end of the first line of the 5th stanza-- a new bounce of meaning preceded by "geometries of air".  

Many saw ressemblance to Jazz, which uses a different part of the brain than classical music.  The poem is visual in its choreography and all the senses are employed --with synaesthesia  (fragrance if sound wave and beat),  music, poetic beat, heart beat,  balletic leap.  However the possibilities of meaning, there is something delightfully refreshing confirmed with celebratory champagne.

It is fun to see how many different ways Robeson plays with "air": in stanza three, "the surface the air impresses upon..." the way things do that they be.  Other prepositions

No Swan so Fine:  Another sonnet where the oppressive opulence of Louis XV is compressed brilliantly with sound and image of a small detail of  a swan "lodged in a candelabrum..." which may indeed ressemble this: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsNxyBEoUU8/

The final sentence brings relief!  Apparently Marianne Moore would find inspiration from lines in magazines or elsewhere, hence the opening sentence in quotation marks.  It doesn't matter if she actually went to Versailles... 

Lessons at the Legendary Institute:  The word play in the title, teases us about what the double meaning of yarn as part of embroidery and as story. We loved the note about the Indigenous grandmother whispering, "If you're going to make things up, do it well."  Gonzáles does exactly that -- we don't have to know the tale, but we get the point-- and loved the idea of anger / demoted to delight...  The visual disposition of the poem resembles a weaving pattern, spinning out stanza by stanza.  

The Lanyard: The perfect blend of humor and compassion, where indeed, one could say "tears demoted to laughter" as we read the double viewpoint.  So many know about the "camp project" or the school project, but as one person commented, not all of us had mothers who made us feel our efforts were deserving of recognition.  

** A small aside:  Paul had brought in 4 years ago

a cudgel made from the limbs of blackthorn trees, common around the Wexford town of Shillelagh.  So called the same.   A hole was drilled near the end of the shaft to accommodate a lanyard to wrap around the wrist so as not to lose hold during the fray. These 

"Faction Fights" were no little gang dust-ups at the street corners. There might have been a 

thousand or more men involved to spit in the eyes of opponents while fracturing skulls. It 

was not uncommon to have four hundred killed over two or three days of fighting.

[1] This year, 5 Countries, 3 Canada Provinces, 35 States and 168 poets participates which adds up to about 4733 postcards circulating peace during February.  (World Peace Poets).  It's wonderful to receive a piece of mail with the Metta prayer on it,  or a recipe card for making Peace:  

Frost with/ample presence/active listening/building layers of trust.

March 11+13

 Dear March—Come In, Emily Dickinson;  Four Years Later  by Julia Kolchinsky; Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen; She says, being forbidden: -- by Leonora Speyer;  The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye; Coffee in the Afternoon  by Alberto Rios; Birdbath by Henri Cole; 

A final Poem to enjoy as a PS by Seamus Heaney: https://poems.com/poem/postscript/ (Thank you Bart)

Preamble to  Nutshell for March 11-13, 2026

I believe Poetry is the handmaiden of serendipity because every week, a certain magic happens when a group of people come together and read aloud a bunch of poems.  Who would think that a breathless em-dashed  Dickinson poem about March written in 1874, 

a 2026 villanelle about the on-going war 4 years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,  

a 1917 sonnet by Wilfred Owens, written in an Edinburgh hospital, where he was treated for shell shock, 

a 1926 sonnet referencing Canut the Great, 

a contemporary parable about an onion, a narrative about a visit over coffee, and a poem of 14 unrhymed lines filled with the emotional force referencing what is delivered by song, 

not only  could provide a memorable hour of animated discussion, but seemed to be matched as if to celebrate the way poetry can catch the heart off guard and blow it open (last line of the dividend poem, Postscript, by Seamus Heaney.You can see already from the hyperlinks, each piece is loaded with a treasury of references and contexts.  

Add to this, countless stories, associations, in the discussions, such as the wit of Ogden Nash, coffee with the meal  or the delight of the tongue twister lyrics from  Trout Fishing in America's  "All I want is a Proper Cup of Coffee"  and the opening quote by Ross Gay, " The heart's perhaps the most reliable clock we have.  This link will bring you to the October 2022 issue where you can read his words about Auden's poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" It's not that "Poetry makes nothing happen."  but rather, as Ross points out, what happens is that poetry spreads seeds which lie dormant, and then bloom out of control like wildflowers  in a summer meadow when given the fire of a common hearth around which we gather,  feasting on the act of communal sharing. 

 Nutshell of discussion of the poems: 

Dear March:  At first read, it would seem an enchanting celebration of this month known for its gusty nature and what some call "March Madness", with a little tongue-in-cheek humor as if the month were a special lover.  Who is speaking?  When the breathless litany of welcome, of questions, of accusation calms down in the last four lines, Emily provides us with an insight into our human paradox of love-hate relationships with seasons and weather.  Perhaps there is a bit of dismissal-- and she doesn't really allow March to answer her question 7th line, how are you, and the Rest.  Instead, she teases us with a play on double meaning of "rest" when things hibernate in Winter, and implies the larger "rest of nature" with which March is spending its time outside its designated season.

The trilling of t's -- triffles look for trivial turns the opening "Dear March" from a private letter, to what is dear, as in precious, or perhaps what comes at a price,  as we blame what we praise and vice-versa.  She capitalizes many of the nouns, but blame, mentioned twice,  only receives a capital letter when it concludes the poem, side by side with Praise, (twice-capitalized). The deft touch of the rhyming of dear/mere as interchangeable descriptions emphasizes the contradictory and inconstant attitudes we adopt with blame and praise.  Will you greet March differently now each year? Or even each time you read this poem!   There is no one analysis, no singular certainty here, but rather an echo to the many flavors and personalities of March with a small underlining of what it is the heart desires. 

 

Four Years Later:  The hyperlinks will lead you to Kolchinsky's bio and her other poems about the Russian invasion and on-going war.  The power of the villanelle lies in the repeating of the two lines: It's difficult to remember the war.//Everything returns as it was before. What do we choose to remember about the past?  Fail to recognize or even mention?

 

Anthem:  Wilfred Owens was friend with Siegfried Sassoon fellow anti-war poet, who suggested Anthem for the title,  and that the adjective doomed replace dead.  Written in October 1917 while recuperating from shell-shock in an Edinburgh hospital, this sonnet has a visceral effect with the rapid rattle of repeated consonants and grim images. As one participant whose husband is a war veteran commented,  one senses the anger of a soldier caught in the brutal absurdity of the first world war. The villanelle before, is from the viewpoint more of distant observer.  Both use poetry to make sense of being caught in the violence of wars which should never have been.

 

She says, being forbidden: Published in 1926, the title of this sonnet sounds like it could be a woman's lib poem.  As I quoted from Harriet Monroe in the footnote ," her prevailing mood is that of a conqueror; she hits back against whatever blows of fate, and faces even death unbowed.”  Be that as it may, the poem becomes even more powerful when you realize it is referencing  Canut the Great and lesson of waves.

 

The Traveling Onion:  The epigraph explains the history of the onion, however, the adjective, traveling gives a folk or fairytale flavor to the title.   It is soon clear this is more than an ode  extoling the onion for its physical qualities, honoring its commendable humility in its career!  Oh the stories, the recipes even a reference to Shrek and how Ogres are like onions (starts at minute  .47 on the hyperlink. Back to the poem, lesson, delivered like a moral in a fable,  points to  translucence, not needing to stay around to be given credit or recognition.  Here is another example an "onion" poem.   

 

Coffee in the Afternoon: Who is he?  Who is she?  We had as many conjectures as participants. Did they know each other? Did the poet just make the whole scene up?  I was delighted with the variety of responses.  Many anecdotes of unusual encounters over coffee were shared but also some were sensitive to the  possibility of a "grief visit", or an "end-of-life visit".  Whatever scenario, the poem by the lack of specificity about who, when, where, allows the reader to pick up on clues and expand on them.  For example, how do you make a pot of coffee from memory?  How the 5th stanza sounds like a repeated visit, not just a repeated gesture of helping oneself to "tea food".  Most everyone agreed the key was that the visit was liniment-- and after, tea or coffee, confusion plain and nice and a balm for the nerves of two people in the world.  

The last couplet packs an emotional punch to the simplicity of the power of such a simple moment.  Most agreed the final line no matter how enigmatic, confirms the importance of the visit, no matter the missing details about the people involved.

Joyce shared this story of visiting a coffee farm on top of a mountain in Nicaragua on a Pack, Paddle, Ski Adventure with Rick French.  First they bounced in the back of a truck and finished the journey on horseback!  At the farm they were treated to a small ritual that spelled  "welcome" in Costa Rica with coffee offered by natives to American tourists.  Knowing they like milk in coffee, they squeezed some fresh from a cow.  They all shared the richness of the flavor, sipping from paper cups with everyone in a circle, and then the natives all disappeared.  A memorable experience filled with the goodness of coffee and sharing.  

 

Birdbath. If you didn't look him up already, Henri Cole comes from an unusual background. 

We laughed heartily at line 4, and relished the anthropomorphism of birds and italicized words of what men say, which imitates sounds of a robin.  How is it when an Opera sings the story it is so different from silently reading the words?  Cole tosses us the challenge to live and sing the things we cannot say.  

 

A hearty thank you to everyone who attended.

 

  

 

 

PS to myself.  

Postscript -- I originally had all 4 lines.

You are neither here nor there,/ A hurry through which known and strange things pass/As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. 
from Rattle:  This link will take you to her other poems about the invasion. This poem written in 2022 gives some of her biography and an example of erasure technique -- in this case Putin's February 21, 2022 speech that rewrites history as justification for war. 
I had cited these three lines: The heart's perhaps the most reliable clock we have -- Ross Gayhttps://www.bookey.app/book/inciting-joy/quote

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/158591/out-of-time-time-the-fourth-incitement

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ross-gay

All those hours spent trying to outstare the distance of what the days must come to.  Carl Philips

The poem as the champagne of what the body has bottled in its strain -- Ed Roberson  

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Poems for March 4 + 6

 [collage]by J.I. Kleinberg; The Peninsula by Seamus Heaney; The Red Wing Church by Ted Kooser; At the BBQ Spot by Tara Betts; Shelf Life  by Hemat Malak; When I do count the clock that tells the time[1] by William Shakespeare; Alive by Naomi Shihab Nye 

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[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/92652/the-music-of-poetry - music of the line of this sonnet discussed.

Nutshell: 3/4+6

 

The first "poem" was a collage of what looked to be as torn piece of paper.  There is no title. Click here For a good article about the history of concrete or visual poetry.  We didn't really get into a discussion of any "meaning", as one could chase one's tail at length to imagine the possibilities of what was on the paper and why we only see a few staggered lines.

For those who feel like taking time to decipher implications here are some questions.

1.  What is the emotional effect of what you see, without reading the words?

2.  How many different ways can you "piece" the actual words together so they make some sort of meaning?  Do you add punctuation?

3.  Does the amount of time spent trying to decode this piece feel worth your while?

 

The Peninsula: For some, this poem which at the end mentions "uncoding all landscapes", followed by the last two lines, also seemed somewhat baffling.  Even if a reader not felt to be in the shoes of the speaker,  Heaney offers good counsel.   Looking at the form where each stanza uses enjambment to spill down to the next stanza, you might sense a feel of traveling through space, which mimics the speaker's drive around the peninsula which may well be The Ards Peninsula in NE Ireland. (This site gives you a map and satellite view ).

 

The sound and rhythm carry us throughout the poem:

 -- lines filled with l's and r's such as

That rock where breakers shredded into rags,

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,

 

--the pile-up of l's  in the end-words of the second stanza;

--  the rhyming patterning of AbcA, BddB, CefC (with a pile-up of g's in the endwords).

 

He breaks pattern in the final quatrain, but repeats much of the opening,

When you have nothing more to say, where the vowel rhyme of say[1] has been echoing all along--

And drive back home, still with nothing to say

 

I bolded still as many remarked how although indicating prolongation, Heaney takes a sharp turn, Except...  dropping end rhyme pattern.  However, he repeats the ex in the final word extremity  It is dark, and the poem ends but the work of the reader lies ahead.  You will uncode.  ponder "things founded clean on their own shapes. "  

 

What a wonderful discussion, where so many offered different angles of understanding of interior/exterior tension,  man-made/abstract,  man/nature, what is grounded/ungrounded -- and the unique boundaries of sky and sea "in their extremity" as if melting into a bigness.  It was helpful to be reminded of the definition of foreshore (3rd stanza): the part of a shore between high- and low-water marks, or between the water and cultivated or developed land. On the peninsula, one is aware of the rise and fall of tides, and the personification of "islands riding themselves out into the fog" giving a sense of shifting movement, like the rock shredding the breakers into rags. 

I added a link to another Heaney poem in the selection for 3/11+13.https://poems.com/poem/postscript/

The Red Wing Church:  One finds out soon enough that Red Wing refers to a town in Nebraska.

Everyone enjoyed the sense of community, and gentle humor.   Although at first glance, it might seem the poem points to a breakdown of "organized religion", there is something uplifting to see "religion" being recycled.  The pews are not destroyed and indeed, the church is not a place, but a gathering of people.  Interesting that the Quakers called traditional churches, "steeple houses"... The rebuilding of a church came up as well, as in Notre Dame in Paris, or the Frauenkirchein Dresden.

 

 At the BBQ Spot: Delightful description using sparkling language[2] one normally would not think of applying to flies.  We enjoyed the wonderful sounds and word play such as plastic bags as "ornaments or omens"; unexpected reversals Christened from maggots and scat... clustered like gathered stems of bouquets... and the hilarious twist of an ending -- where a trash heap, dead or alive, is indeed heaven for a fly.  It's always a joy to see something beautiful made of something ordinary, and in this case, irritating.  Adding to the pleasure is to learn something new in the process, as many had never seen or heard of such a fly-catching system. 

 

Shelf Life:  People were curious about the name of the poet, Hemat.  Apparently as Himmat in Urdu and  Hindi it means "courage, determination" and in Ancient Egypt Hemat translates to "woman" or "female servant".  One person looked her up and saw this line on her website: "I lie in a field; a poet drops a pebble; I ripple."

 

The note about the poem explains the prompt of "referencing small talk in a big way".  There were a few "small talk" instances, such as "nice dress" or

"everything will be OK honey" but from title to final line, the poem seemed more inspired by the poem by Bruce Weigl  the Tale of the Tortoise.  

 

Each scenario elicits sympathy, and then, suddenly is erased as if it never happened.

We wondered about what reality lies behind the couplet: Something happens when tomorrow rips/to its last few threads.  This is the only short stanza that is a couplet and seems to set up the idea of "take-backs".  

 

The title, Shelf Life, implies a potential "expiration date", but the poem leads us to a very different sense of "metaphoric" shelves, at present empty.  Or maybe it is life stored on a shelf that no one is aware of?

 

Some imagined a lonely person escaping loneliness through imagination; others imagined that everything did indeed happen, and this is a way to try to mend and heal.  We all felt the acute emptiness, the sense of being stripped naked emotionally.  I know I was totally engaged in the poem, and wanted to know more about the speaker.  

 

Sonnet 12: Is it fatherly advice to a younger man? I did give a reference to the sound lines 5-8 where the abundance of b's, echoes of repeated vowels, could arguably turn any sense into nonsense.  It is thought this is part of a series of "Fair Youth" poems, in particular, a "procreation" section, as remedy for inevitable aging.  I love the first line... and see it an invitation for us all to write as did Bruce Weigle, who inspired the last poem -- to tell a story "to fill a hole in your mind, or to try and mend something that's been torn by a violent wave that washed through you once." 

As an aside, Judith brought up this hilarious, but scientifically accurate book by her niece.

Alive: How do you explain the title?  What does it mean to be "alive" and who is to judge how to be?  We all enjoyed the leaps from mundane to significant, perhaps an implied proverb such as "don't cry over spilt milk".  Starting with "Dear Abby", one immediately is prepared for an answer of sound, compassionate advice, delivered with the straightforward style of a good friend.

The fun of the poem, is that the questions are not answered.  The reader can consider what is reasonable, when a joke goes to far, and whether telling a dog to stop barking is worth the effort. And what do you do about flat statements about what is remembered from school?  

 

Now that you are equipped knowing that "stories, poems, project, experiments and mischief" are how we learn about life... how do you answer the question about the man or the dog?

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[1] day, runway, gable, glazed, (perhaps legs, if you pronounce it laygs) landscapes, shapes

[2] Although it is not up to us to workshop a poem, I like the sound of the adjective myriad someone proposed to replace multiple on the first line of the second stanza.