[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
[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?
