Poems for Aug. 25

 Inside by Dan Albergotti; For the Anniversary of my Death  by W.S. Merwin; From the Sky by Sara Abou Rashed; Around Us by Marvin Bell; Any Common Desolation  by Ellen Bass; How to Take a Life  by Janel Pineda; Frederick Douglass  by Robert Hayden;  Back Yard by Carl Sandburg; Driving West  by Linda Pastan; My Daughter Describes the Tarantula  by Faith Shearin

For last week's poem, Elegy by Merwin, I provided a link  to a post by Devin Kelly,  poet/professor who said:"A poem doesn’t save us from this world, and it doesn’t save the world from whatever the world might need saving from. But a poem is, in and of itself, a kind of value that someone cultivated within this world from those very needs and desires and questions."

I agree... and further agree that the kind of attention we pay to a poem  awakens our hearts and minds to appreciate what sustains us. 

Inside by Dan Albergotti is such a poem.  In an interview with Ploughshares, about it,   the poet explained   the rhythm of a 3 beat anapest (short-short-long) followed by an iamb (short long) drove the poem.  The pattern captures what lies inside a lake, a sea, soil, but also abstractions: the dark, light, and metaphors:  steel, dust, air, vessel. With the hole in the earth,  one senses burial,  and grief inside one's own living blood where the image of the one gone becomes a vessel, leaving in the trace of these four couplets, a wake.  We noted the interweaving and repetition of internal rhyme: the rhyming of the final words of a couplet carrying on to the 3rd syllable of the next first line-- I type up  the sequence of rhymes below.

shark/lark: dark  

trust/rust: dust  (memory in the dust)

soul/coal: hole   (the coal in the diamond)

quake/wake

The richness of internal rhyme such as seed, tree, steel;  head-unsaid provides further associations and interconnections of a complex tapestry of life.

 

We puzzled about how to understand In the child, the weight of years.  Perhaps the beginning of a life story and what a child will bear growing up.  We also made conjectures about how to understand In my blood, your vessel ran, which seems less awkward if you do not connect "blood vessel" although one can see the connection.  

 

We agreed it was a hauntingly beautiful poem with multiple threads to admire, hold up in multiple lights and weavings.

For the Anniversary of my Death:  Bernie provided  Dan Chiasson's short article about this in the New Yorker entitled, "The Final Prophecy of W.S. Merwin".  Chiasson summaries that the anniversary, perhaps a small Zen joke, contrasts being outlived with last week's "Elegy" -- which addresses "outliving".  For both poems, I feel a little background on the poet will help the rather enigmatic choices of Caps on first words and lack of  punctuation.

 

Theorists propose that unusual punctuation of  Merwin, like e.e. cummings, or William Carlos Williams, allows an unfettering effect.  Dan Chiasson compares Merwin's lack of punctuation to how "a jet stream must speak, or "how a crack in bedrock might introduce itself" -- but for sure, to avoid "stapling the poem to the page".   As for a theory of capitalizing, it is curious to guard that traditional practice but forego rules of punctuation.  One thought is that it  places an accent on the first words.  If you read first word each in a row, "Every When— Tireless Like Then" is an intriguing combination.  The four "And" stand out, as does the rhyme between "When" and "Then" and wren in the penultimate line.  Our brains are sensitive to such innuendoes, which also occurs with  eye-rhyme of "bowing" and "not knowing".

 

Regardless, the fact that Merwin wrote this poem when he was 33, published it seven years later in his book Lice in 1967, and again in his book The Second of Four Books of Poems in 1993, and since 2019, we can read it on the actual March 15 anniversary, perhaps provides several different angles with which to read it.  

 

I highly recommend that you spend a few minutes with these two links found on the Merwin Conservancy web page.  The first is commentary of the man who made a film about him.  The second will show you the scope of work that Merwin undertook and his Buddhist practice -- poetry, translation, essays on words  and ecology. 

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/merwinfilm/129836313

https://merwinconservancy.org/w-s-merwin/

 

Discussion of the poem:  Each of the 13 lines can be savored independently, or read as two sentences in two stanzas.  Polly brought up that this is the first summer she has not heard a wren at her cottage.  Elmer reassured us that he is hearing plenty of wrens.  Merwin captures a sense that the world is indeed a magical place.  Indeed, sensitive as he was to the man-provoked disasters and destruction of nature, writing poems such as "Even though the world is burning", or "For a coming extinction", he is able to go beyond this.  His work on Maui, creating a palm forest creates such magic.  

 

To find ourselves, "in life as in a strange garment" resonated with many of us -- embodied, not quite as ourselves, and yet, we are that self.  The humble side of Merwin is revealed in the final line.

 

From the Sky:  The poet is Palestinian-American.  Judith reminded us of the murder of Lorca and the Spanish Revolution.  Although the poem could be solely political, the opening stanza is clearly not speaking of the reality of the sky, filled with planes, space stations, warring parties and drones.  We discussed the link between the metaphorical sky burial, a heaven unsullied by war, a place of peace after life.  Using all the senses, and the perspective of looking down, the poet provides a sampling of life, rife with death.

 

Around Us:  This poem evoked many memories of camping and our need for connection to nature. 

Although "zipper" and "snap" are good onomatopoeia, many felt coupling that "a little sound of thanks" took away from any otherwise expression of gratitude, and trust in the possibility of good.

 

Any Common Desolation:  Threading the title to the first line "unstitches" the negativity of "desolation" until the wordsshot, rip, break, echo a certain violence in describing what should be beautiful.  Add the ruby neon of the liquor store, and the discombobulating effect of "all you dread, can't bear, dissolves/like a needle slipped into your vein..."  We loved the description of the socks-- that was the heat of the poem, and most of us wanted it to stop on "dissolves".    Judith brought up the parallel with the ballet Swan Lake-- where the lyric grace of dancers suddenly changes gear.  For a visual taste of this, compare the first two minutes, with the following minute in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btiBzU9mCgY

 

How to Take a Life : real life told -- and how we ached, feeling this story in these 13 lines.

 

Frederick Douglass: a perfect sonnet... this dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Hold fast to dreams, says Langston Hughes. This poem reminds us to continue to make the vision of a just world, where "man, superb in love and logic" will be remembered, "fleshing his dream of the beautiful needful thing."  

 

Back Yard:  And back to nature.  I felt I was eavesdropping on Sandburg's private song sung to the moon. Hold on to such moments... 

 

Driving West: Although Linda was born in the Bronx, was Maryland Poet Laureate from 1991-5, one feels she has experienced this travel first hand.   These words would have been enough perhaps:  "We are pioneers ///  of our own histories, drawn/to the horizon as if it waited just for us" -- but she goes on with one more couplet :  the way the young are drawn/to the future, the old to the past. It's no longer about driving West, but the larger sense of life's journey. 

So many in the room who have traveled West could relate to this... but even better are the universal lines about what it is about traveling -- drawn to the horizon.

 

My Daughter Describes the Tarantula : We did discuss real tarantula -- and yes, they are quite soft will not bite unless you threaten them.  This is a wonderful snapshot of a small thing most people would shy away from knowing connected to the complexity of mother-daughter relationship.  Don't we all want to be appreciated properly, feel we have a place where we belong?

August 19+ 21

 Food by Brenda Hillman;  Elegy  by W.S. Merwin; One stanza ghazal  (untitled) by Agha Shahid Ali; Poem by Langston Hughes; A Bowl of Fruit by Stephen Dunn; The Traveling Onion  by Naomi Shihab Nye

Nutshell:  What feeds us?  These poems consider the commonality of food and how we deal with life, knowing there will be an end.  What I love about putting them together, is the variety that is served: 

One long collage of a poem which could be a short story focussing on mothers, on where and how daughters and mothers are eating, painted like a Breughel scene with multiple personalities at play; 3 short poems: a one liner called Elegy; a one stanza ghazal and a short two stanza poem; a poem like a still-life composing a bowl of fruit with concealed messages; a multi-layered poem triggered by an onion. 

The discussion was rich and lively, and I wish the poets could have heard the interactions with their words!

As for the short poems, I am reminded of June Jordan, "These poems" (1977) - things she does in the dark/reaching for you/whoever you are/and/are you ready?  where words are stones in the water/ running away.  where skeletal lines/ are desperate arms for my longing and love. As poet, she is a stranger/learning to worship/the strangers around her--  whoever you are/whoever you become. 

How is it that desire or concern for connection can be expressed in so many ways?  I like that some of the group reading, are inspired to transform what is read to their own idea in the spirit of respectful conversation.  For instance, why not write a haiku for Merwin's one-line "Elegy"?  He provides the 7 syllable line.  What 5 syllable line might you put before and/or after?

Or, for the Stephen Dunn poem, to switch the final sentence to read: But surely by now you've come to realize/there is no word, only this bowl of fruit/made out of worms...

I was glad some looked up the background of the poets.  Brenda Hillman is highly experimental. Praising Hillman’s deft handling of form and subject, poet, and critic  Marjorie Welish wrote, “Each poem … creates its own experimental configuration, within which the phrase swerves and discombobulates sense, as several registers of subject complicate the sampling of experiences and also as the experimental format throws the lyric into symbolic disarray one moment and naturalist scrutiny the next. And even more: she writes as if the lyric poem had a political calling.”

Now to examine each poem:

Food:  We all eat -- and the poem paints a Breugel-esque portrait you might forget is in the setting, (given in the first line) of a fast food place because of the variety of mommies, children, with a sprinkling of Russians, a nostalgic leap into what seems to be a different kind of restaurant.  It ends with the daughter eating a fast food burger, and a mother's recall of her eating at home over "the mantra of the refrigerator" (which says to feed her) and what her daughter sees in a parallel mother and son.  Even if you don't know Oakland or Marin County, MacDonalds is ubiquitous, established in 1940 in San Bernadino, and almost 90 years later, is a worldwide experience in which to watch people.

There are many lovely poetic gestures which layer multiple meanings-- like the bands of black seared onto meat "like the memory of a cage"; or the CCCC slices in "an oil of forceful herbs".  Observations, labeling someone "Mr. Egotistical Sublime" or noting a girl's face "stood for something/and from it, a little mindless daylight was reflected."  We wondered about  the tall boy and mother-- which one of them was "repressed rage/in espadrilles, if he is carrying a tray for her, and she is saying "Oh this is fun" ?

595 words in 88 lines, as if playing possibilities on a piano.  We agreed, that although it reads like a short story, it is a poem with delightfully weird structure.

Elegy: Positioned as a one-liner next to the first two pages, this zen-like Elegy, was like a brush of "negative capability", Keats' term for accepting  uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without impatiently searching for absolute facts or logical reasons.  

If it had not been written by Merwin, would we have paid attention to it?   We spoke at length about loss, how the one line brings losses home.   Changing on emphasis on the words, e.g. WHO would I show it to (everyone's dead, so what's the point) or Who would I SHOW it to (the choice of showing, vs. keeping it quietly silent to oneself)  increases the multiple layers and emotional impact.  Why the need to write an elegy?  For whom?  Oneself, the person gone, for all those who you wished had known this person the way you did?  There is perhaps a larger sense of loneliness, and grief.   

See: Every waking minute of each day is its own elegy: https://ordinaryplots.substack.com/p/ws-merwins-elegy I gave the link in the footnote on p. 3 of the poems.  Perhaps Merwin is questioning the purpose of poetry.  How can I return the love that a loss has left me thinking of?  What good is a poem if I can't.  Kelly quotes Merwin: "Poetry conveys both the great possibility and the thing we can't do."

Next week we will read Merwin's “For the Anniversary of My Death”.  To summarize Dan Chiasson's article about it:  The poem addresses the problem of being outlived. “Elegy,” Merwin’s great single-line poem—not the greatest short poem, but perhaps the shortest great poem, ever written—is about the converse problem, that of outliving.

One stanza Ghazal:  I'm not sure what the title is.  Again, the problem of connection... who are we? what matters in living?  What is it that explains our existence? 

Poem:  Langston Hughes opens and closes the poem with the same words, which skillfully embue the power of the context and placement of words.  As Mary put it, "this poem rejuvenates my heart".  We searched to find out who "F.S." was -- apparently a political activist Langston met in Harlem. 

 A Bowl of Fruit: The poem by Stephen Dunn is the first in his book Local Visitations and well-described in this delightful article about his poetry: https://blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v2n2/features/smith_r_111403/dunn_s.htm

Billy Collins says this about his cleverness and craft: "The art lies in hiding the art, Horace tells us, and Stephen Dunn has proven himself a master of concealment. His honesty would not be so forceful were it not for his discrete formality; his poems would not be so strikingly naked were they not so carefully dressed."

Jeanne Andree was a colleague of Dunn at Stockton University.  This playful extended metaphor employs word play using still-life vocabulary and noun/verb stacking.  As one person put it, Jeanne is interested in the specifics of trees, whereas Stephen shows how to see the bigger picture of the forest.  

The Traveling Onion: We enjoyed sharing onion stories... but also noted the repeat of "small and forgotten" in line 3 and 12".  If you ask Aristotle, Nietszche or AI, "What difference does an onion, or a person, or any living thing make?" you can explore the idea of living things giving purpose and order to chaos.  See below what AI provides.  Poets don't need AI, but do draw on thinkers, and myths, and even "The Better Living Cookbook", which may even have been an invented detail.  The part about the onion being a solemn item of worship, apparently can be corroborated by the custom of laying a hand on an onion when taking an oath.

We enjoyed the detailed description from crackly paper peeling, to the post-simmered translucence, rather like rings of a tree, revealing history.  Yes, tears fall/for something small and forgotten... especially when sacrificed for the sake of others.   

The addition of "traveling" in the title adds the sense of metamorphosis, exchange, and perhaps also, survival.  

AI Summary of why something living matters. 

The Science of Life

Fighting chaos: The universe wants things to mix and spread out. Life pulls energy in to stay whole.
A rare spark: Matter usually forms rocks and dust. Life is rare matter that wakes up and notices itself.

The Value of an Onion

Simple survival: An onion does not think or weep from sadness. It just grows, feeds itself, and protects its core.
Part of a web: It takes food from the soil. It feeds other animals or humans. It matters because it is one link in a large chain.

The Value of a Person

Self-awareness: A person knows they are alive. They feel pain, joy, and love.
Creating meaning: People ask big questions. They build art, write rules, and care for others. We give the universe a voice and a heart.

Why It All Matters

No grand boss: No one wrote a rulebook saying life must exist.
Self-made value: Because life is rare and fragile, it holds its own value. When you care for an onion or a person, you push back against the dark and create a reason to care.