Exercise: translating Robert Bly's Slim Fir Seed.

THE SLIM FIR-SEEDS [Ramage #23]
The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
BABELFISH:
Le FIR-SEEDS MINCE [Ramage #23] L'oiseau agile de four, la dignité des poires, la simplicité des avirons, l'impérissable/ Moteurs à l'intérieur des sapin-graines minces, toute la ces derniers conseil combien nous longtemps pour que l'impermanent soit permanent. Nous voulons le roitelet d'hermite Pour conserver ses oeufs même pendant l'orage ; Nous voulons les océans éternels. Mais nous sommes périssables ; Des amis, nous sommes des royaumes salés et impermanents.

YIKES! a nimble oven! graines de sapin sounding like sapeurs-pompiers, some incomprehensible interior syntax before the wish that impermanent be made permanent No sense of hint. I lik the choice of "roitelet" , but I'm not sure "little king" gives the same sense as "hermit thrush" nor the subjunctive relationship where we wish that the mother thrust keep her eggs,
Mes amis... not just some friends.

** Getting Started.
Listen to the three “s” in the title. How slim slides the short /i/ to the lips;
how seeds starts with a the soft sibilance of /s/ and ends with the buzzing/z/ of the plural.

The whir (of engine) of the R in fir connects by a hyphen to the broad double e which rhymes with heed, deed, reed – all of which pertain to living – take heed, the end is death; be flexible as the reed as you do your work.

call and response : /i/ to ir
from the “ih” of nimble and dignity, simplicity, slim, hint, hermit, perishable
pinned under the “er” of bird, fir, impermanent (twice) , permanent (once) (hermit) eternal

ee: eternal; seeds,
or: oars, storm


If you don’t know oven birds or hermit wrens, you will need to look them up, admire their olive and brown colors which camouflage them, and listen to their songs.
How “nimble” can jump in a lively way, whereas the hermit wren is tied in its sound, perhaps like the egg-like /o/ tied inside the word storm.

You will come to appreciate how in English, the verb “hint” holds the preposition “in”
like a secret, how “hermit” seems to make allusion to hermeunetics as if to make interpretations of the hermit wren protecting her eggs.

Working Title:
Les graines fluettes de pins
I chose “fluettes” although slim is both “pauvre” as in slim pickings, “peu probable” as in slim chance as well as physically “mince” svelte and slender. Fluette accents the shape and grace, with a breath of transitory youth.
Fir, in my mind is a general, green-boughed evergreen, whereas “pin” is a general pine, and I think of “pommes de pin” or pine cones. Seed, in general is “graines”

How cumbersome to say:
les graines de pommes de pins fluettes et transitoires

First line:

Nimble, one can call agile – but we have “associations with Jack and a candlestick, a lightness, a playfulness – not so much deft or that leger-de-main but something about jumping, not grace. what associations would a French person have with “agile”? How would a French person feel about the “m”, the rolling of the lips to make a “b”?

an ovenbird: well… thanks to google, you can hear the call, which doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher, teacher attributed to it, but rather whistles and chirrups like many of the 70 varieties of warblers in the Eastern United States. A canary is also a warbler,
but translating nimble oven-bird into a canari agile really misses the beauty of the bird, whose olive and brown feathers camouflage it – something seen, but not heard.

Now for the dignity of pears. Since Louis Philippe was often caricatured as a pear (see the 1831 lithograph by Daumier : http://www.sociocritique.com/fr/image/image_0804.htm ) a French person might be hard-pressed to consider a pear digne although one could be deserving if in a dignified state…

Perhaps Bly was referring to prickly pears, studded with seed, short-lived and quite tricky to eat. It is not a common image.. but does force you to think of what makes a fruit “dignified” – and call attention to the pull of both sound and sense: nimble/dignity; what moves: bird with what doesn’t: pear,
“ir” and “air” sounds, one taking off and landing (bird) and one pushed into form, only to drop, ending with a /z/ sound.

So : le canari agile, la reverence des poires
comes to mind. flighty bird, with bright voweled “ee” and the more dignified ponderance of pears. Reverence is also a bow, a sign of obeissance before a King, potentate, or the Lord.

Line 2
Now we have the image of oars, without mention of a boat –
but the homonym is “or” which could mean the plurality of choices, coupled with a paradoxical “simplicity”, and an enjambment, where the adjective “imperishable” is suspended from the noun it qualifies,
“engines” which we find out are the seeds referred to in the title.

La simplicité des rames will puzzle the best of anyone either French, or possessing a French dictionary! Since long adjectives follow nouns, it will be confusing (but certainly suspenseful) to put "les impérissables" first, waiting for moteurs – which doesn’t have the driving force of the sound of "engine". I suppose there is something imperious about “Motors that will never die”, like a kingdom handed down from King to Prince.

Oars also will be what propels the boat from the shore of the living to the shore of the dead across the river Styx. Perhaps the double sibilance of simplicité moving to the single "impérissable" works in this case.
Third Line
Ah. We see the title! But, in the case of the French, do we want to repeat the awkward pommes de pin fluettes. The sense of “all of these” picks up on the wide “e” of seeds, referring to bird, pears, oars, and fir seeds all of which contain an “r” in final position, unlike the “r” inside imperishable.

One can argue that canari, poire, rames, graines also contain “r”
two in final position, two in initial position .

A French ear will also note that the first two lines in English are beautifully symmetric Alexandrins where the hémistiche falls neatly on the 6th syllable of bird and oars.
Not so with this French.
Le canari agile / la révérence des poires (don’t pronounce poir- uh)
la simplicité des rames (7 syllables) les impérissables (6 syllables)
moteurs dans les graines de pins fluettes, tout cela
(this clunky and inept attempt at literalism needs major work)



Fourth Line
another enjambment to “Hint” which rhymes more or less with “impermanent”

Hint, is NOT an easy idea to translate into French.
fait allusion / insinue/ imprègne d’une impression subtile, suggère

There is no one syllable equivalent with the word “in” (dans) inside of
two very whispering, light and suggestive consonants (“h” and “t”).

There is also a problem with translating “long” in the sense of yearning.
Note, long not only has an enduring sound, but means something that lasts, at least for a while.
aspirer ? desirer vivement soupirer auprès de..
as in Combien de fois, en l'entendant soupirer auprès de moi,
suggère combien nous désirons l’impermanent
de devenir permanent.

Fifth Line

Now we need a hermit wren. Maybe Bly meant a hermit thrush.
Another small, inconspicuous bird with a pretty song that chuffs softly.
They get their scientific name from the tendency of some species to forage in dark crevices.
I suppose you could use the scientific name.
Its call is a beautiful fluted whistle.
It can flick its tail.
Why might a hermit wren not keep her eggs in a storm? They often build nests on the ground and lay well-camouflaged eggs, of a soft moss-green color.

Maybe it is this idea of “hermit” or the duty of a bird or mother to protect the young.

But not knowing these things in English, how in heavens’ name can we approximate them in French?

Last line:
Friends: This changes the tone – he is using an envoi:
(address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.)He blends the ocean in the salt, playing on “salt of the earth” perhaps.

Mes Amis… les amis… nous sommes des royaumes salés, impermanent.


**
Now enjoy repeating the poem in English! If you do not speak English, hopefully you have asked some English-speaker to tell you the jist of this post. Ask them to read the poem. Taste a few sounds of it in the mouth. Chacun a son gout. I hope this speaks to yours.

september 2 at Highlands: What Lies in the Envelope of a Poem: considerations of sound in translation of poetry

selections:
Bly's ramage, "The Slim Fir Seed" (from "Turkish Pears in August)
Wilbur's translation of Eliante (Misanthrope Acte II sc. 4)
Moore's translation of La Fontaine, La Cigale et la Fourmi, The Grasshopper and the Ant
Robert Lowell's translation of Baudelaire, Recueillement, "Meditation"
a composite translation of Rilke's " Archaischer Torso Apollos, (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
and reference to Caldwell's blog entry on Robot Rilke. http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/03/advance-praise-for-robot-rilke.html


This talk keeps evolving. Maybe it will turn into a course called, "Under the skin of a poem" -- but however you look at it, poetry is both written, eye-guided word and performed with theatrical skills to render the music.
Poem as 2-D blue-print -- how to interpret white space, pauses, punctuation, speed of words, breath... like a recitative on one note.

But that's like reading the address label.
To: Reader
Where you're at now
in your head or space,
located loosely in some state, recognizable by some universal thread
pinned by the boundaries of experience, language, culture

and the reader sees:

From: Poet (with a name one can link to a nationality and research time period, biography)
Title (of poem)
Form (arrangement)
blueprint for reading (line breaks, stanza breaks, calligrammed message)
United assemblage of image, sound, word

OK. So the text just comes in Russian. Say, Eugene Onegin, and you can't decipher the letters and sounds, let alone explain any of the crafting, meaning. So, you turn to Nabokov and ask for help.
And you only know about this because an old friend says this is worth doing.
You already know a poem does constant trade-offs in translation, and the only saving grace is to see how a fellow-wordsmith can bring it to some enjoyable level.
**
Today, I presented a hefty dose of examples, concentrating on English/French, as those are my languages. The translators are respectable. But it was fun to point out where connotation lies beyond the mere word choice.

Background of Robert Bly's Ramage, "The Slim Fir Tree" --
Ramage, being flute-like bird song, (and I think of the fox flattering the crow -- "si votre ramage se rapporte a votre plumage, vous etes le phenix des hotes de ces bois!)

how in 8 lines, he is responding to energy of tiny forceful sounds.
"im": slim, nimble, simplicity, imperishable,impermanent (twice)

"in": reversed in dig ni ty. (dig in!) engine, inside, hint, even, during, kingdoms. (last word of the poem)

"er" is a "sort of being that cries out" : the pleasure of "pears" pushes into "imperishable" and perishable; bird, fir, impermanent,(twice) permanent, hermit, her, eternal,

ee: seeds; these, keep, even, eternal,

how "oven" oars to "storm" through long for.

How all is in salty --

the sibilance of plural: seeds, pears, oars, engines, eggs, oceans

shhh of "ocean"; vast desire in "perishable".

paradox
bird/pear (nimble, still)
oars (engines)/seed

**
See note #2 about putting the poem into French.

Summer O Pen... 8/23 and 8/30: WCW, CK Williams, XJ Kennedy, Robert Hass

Working backwards...
August 30 : The Long and Short of it
August 23 : Parody and Irony
I usually don't like poems over a page and was pleasantly surprised to discover "A Swimmer in the Air" by Howard Moss -- having only known his tongue-in-cheek, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". (O pen -- 8/23). These two poems illustrate the difference between a short, witty poem which gives rise to a chuckle, and a longer poem which probes into mystery, wrapped in melopoeia, phanopoeia, logopoeia. The former falls in the category of "delightful conversation" equivalent to so many scarlet maple leaves, pressed between wax paper for a time, hung in windows, until the next season... The latter delights the ear, the eye, (each stanza can be seen with a left margin, fish-like mouth, and trailing right margin fins. The latter evoked the following:
Gould's "lung fish" and a story of evolution
the creation story with God's Hand, a snake, choices
ancient pre-civilization juxtaposed with the vernacular of modern times;
medieval mystery play and the beginning of the Word

Moss challenges us to see the undersides of being, whether metaphysical ("Man is an animal that needs a warden/to frighten off the Master's face") psychological, ("the idiot... "as spit and image of our wish"...). In the voice of collective humanity, six of the 12 stanzas involve the sea in some way: mirror, burial and breeding ground, site of the beginning Word, home of articulation's fishnet.
He links our "dry translations tidied from the deep," to the closing line, "part man, dry fish, and wingless bird": "abnormal dryness" in stanza 10, drying memorials, What is shed, "fingernails of scale" shed in spring, coil after coil... facsimiles, though not quite dead -- and the salt shed from our tears and blood.

The layers are exquisitely crafted with a b cc b a rhyme and echos of internal rhyme.

A poem to read for the beauty of its magic. A poem which stretches far beyond popular contemporary poetry, content to stack together some thoughts with linebreaks.

**
Length can be considered also as a horizontal stretch -- as in "Greeny Asphodel" where words defy a justified margin. In Robert Creeley's "The Language" he breaks line across expected grammatical pauses. Perhaps we do need Moss' last "condensed reader" who can figure out not only the abridged alphabet, but syntax axed by space.
Locate "I"
(wouldn't that be great -- locate the ego, the "I" that is you)

love you some
(as in somewhat, not somewhere)

eyes, bite
(OUCH! OUCH! with a comma yet -- as if eyes are taking their time to open their jaws)

I
love you
again,
(AH, it's starting to come together!)

Without the line breaks, this poem couldn't work so well.

then what/
is emptiness
(especially if the next line is two prepositions!, followed by a dive into space between a repeated "fill, fill.")

He then takes us through the vowels:
fill, full, holes, aching, speech, mouth

I added CK Williams "Roe vs. Wade" which appeared in Poetry Northwest Fall/Winter 2010.
It gives you chills to read. Miserable mysteries.
His poem "Wait" deals with time -- the chop, hack, slash of it -- how perfect a title, "wait"
how we can't wait, plead the other to wait, or can't wait to forget how we tried to run away from the inevitable last breath where we hope our anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

**
XJ Kennedy's Death of a Window Washer appeared on writer's almanac.
What a metaphor -- what do we wash, when we wash windows. What is suspended, no longer suspended when someone plunges down to his or her death? Kennedy gives food for thought.
How do we regard the man who has no relationship to us? What shakes us to look, think, even if fleetingly, it could have been me.
3 syllable words: obstinate, forgotten, copying, barricards.
they lead up to a 4 syllable word: coincidence
then the 3 syllables again: uttering, tedious, legacy.
The one which has an accept in second place is "forgotten"... associations with Christ and sacrifice.

Donald Hall says that analysis of poetry is only a chance for us to catch our breath, to be able to absorb the intensity of it. Experience the wild sounds.

Finding a corresponding work of art, gives yet more time for breathing. Look at Giacometti, "Figure" -- we would not pay attention to him unless by accident -- in this case, framed and hung in a museum. He is a ghosted outline on a suggestion of boards and there is a scribbled, smudged sense of uselessness in his hands -- perhaps they would have wanted to stop the "mindless copying machine" that "kept making scores of memos no one wanted."

**
Another two great sessions of reading great poems...

Parody... O pen 8/23, XJ Kennedy

Why does Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII last, and what prediction do you have of Howard Moss' poem?

We all chuckled at the "compressed reader" -- how all the fragments of various readers could be "condensed", just like the poem's. What makes for good poetry? What drives it? What wonders come out of the tyranny of form? Are poets working hard enough these days? Does clever vernacular compare to the musicality of well-turned verse?

These are fair questions in an age of mushrooming ezines, and young editors hard-pressed to rival the reading background and experience of the still active octogenarians.

Rachel Kadish, in the Sept/Oct. issue of Poets and Writers, mentions in her rallying cry for writers, (p. 32) the example of the man in Warsaw who told her, "Don't you know parents in this country hope their children will grow up to be poets?"
What does "poet" mean in America, , that our culture seems to consider a poet/artist irrelevant, morally dangerous, or crazy? Does this mean, witty conversational pieces are all that are required? Something that makes language feel less soul-deadened in a politically correct, newspeaking society?

As readers, we do want to experience what John Gardner calls "the vivid and continuous dream" created by good writing.

Given Howard Moss' biography as New Yorker editor, patron launcher of such poets as James Dickey, Galway Kinnell, James Scully, Theodore Roethke, L. E. Sissman, Anne Sexton, Richard Wilbur, Sylvia Plath, and Mark Strand, one can argue, that his summer's day is a piece perfectly aware of Shakespeare's conceit. "Partly as a consequence of [his role at the New Yorker] his own talent has been underrated," observed David Ray in Contemporary Poets. "Yet he has with consistent productivity ... turned out volume after volume and has dutifully and with impressive scholarship written criticism. He is, in short, an American man-of-letters in a sense largely missing from our literary culture."

Let us read on!

**
XJ Kennedy is a favorite of mine -- particularly his fun volume, "Nude Descending a Staircase" and his children's books.

The poem selected by Garrison Keilor last week, "Death of a Window Washer" struck me as one worth not just reading a few times, but reading outloud, and analyzing.

the 3 syllable words (obstinate, forgotten, copying, barricades) lead up to the 4 syllable "coincidence" and then the 3 syllabled (Uttering, Tedious, Legacy) -- The end rhymes made me look for an equivalent for "sash". Perhaps it is an "H" that has been passed over -- in shhhhh
where "His legacy is mute". By "coincidence" I stumbled on a Giacometti painting, Figure, 1951, who just like the window washer, would be a nameless man, unless some accident framed him... (Uncanny how these things happen...)

You can check out the figure at this site: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/documents/18_Giacometti_Figure.pdf

postcard festival -- August 2010

http://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2010/08/sending-postcards-to-strangers.html
Posted by David Sherwin on August 19, 201

Forwarded by Paul Nelson, one of the organizers.
My thoughts this morning : 8/24.

I love the question: What is a satisfactory work of art -- along with considerations on the definition of "satisfactory" and "work of art". The constraint of finding something authentic (hence, worthwhile to ones deepest layer) on the back of a postcard and sending it to a stranger is akin to taking words that have been written in free-style, and trying on different types of jackets of form. How would this idea look in a sonnet? a pantoum?

Indeed, many of the images, words received, prodded my thinking to levels I would not have known existed in the big tent of my mind.

I shared with a friend some of the process -- and how the postcard nutshell often kept my writing honest -- how often that "first fresh" was a lifeline to hold while navigating the "big dig" of the well of the subconscious.

I am grateful for the thoughts and images received, for the connection.

Here are some:
To Jaala: An alabaster perfume vase representing two kingdoms (Cairo Museum, Egypt)
Alabaster Perfume vessel : 18th dynasty: Tutankhamun 1347-1337 BC
(Alabaster – a labaste for Bast, the lioness)
To see through the Smoke : per-fumare
**
One vase, two lines
one balm, two wings
and a small spider climbing up
wheeling out the story of papyrus,
sliding down the story of lotus
living heat in the offering
still life spinning.

To Deborah Theresa: Postcard of the Erie Canal

“An unimaginative person can be neither reverent nor kind.” – John Ruskin

This is why my ears insist on hearing the mule’s footsteps, the creak of the rope, the idea of goods feeding something instinctively good.

**
To Andy King: George Eastman House :

Full Capacity Living
as if catastrophe caps a city so filled with people,
that art has fled from smart. Snap!
Wake up! Each of us a finger shaking
in a hand.

**
To Carol:
On postcard of The Ross Fountains at the Butchart Gardens.
The water jets reach to a height of 80 feet.

Serenity

The fountain knows
wind sweep, season,
surprise of new direction,
change as cause to be different,
to transform "wanes" to a swan’s gain
fountain to rain, magic rein.

**

To Yvonne : Postcard of Butchart Gardens
(Retentia “Pray to Retentia”, John Barrett
for each muse aids
in their measure
and the task is to know
the mix of the muses gifts
in their lines…
**
“Retentia” and he plays his talking tie
scissor, scepter, cutting, prow” – Ed Sanders

**
Who would have believed a quarry
could turn into a flourishing garden?
Inception, a calm sea,
collage of Matisse dancers,
scissored, sceptered, cutting, prow.


**
Marty Williams : Brantwood, John Ruskin’s residence from 1872-1900.

“All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.”

New cloaks and swords shield our eyes from the steady,
intent, attentive, look –
we are busy spokes of a creaking cart
pretending our words are new.

Let u s low
down and find amazement.

**
Nancy Wakeman. (I wrote a letter to her after the postcard...)

The Begonia Bower

“It could be illusion but we might as well try.”

 Scarlet Begonias

A lifetime burning in each begonia
each beckoned moment suspected.

Note: Michel Bégon, (1667-1747)
French Governor of Haiti for whom this flower named.
Can he see what has happened?
Can we try differently?

**
Lacey N. Duham: Postcard of NY Farm in Autumn

World as color
pressed into frame,
hills as line
curved into space,
clouds wind-buffed
like bell-wethered sheep
echoes of a whinny,
the horse’s mouth
motoring delight of an apple!
**
TO: YVONNE: (response to her card and image on my card to her.)

Inside the Church the Old

Breath as need to breathe
curls inside, dies
cleft desiring cleave
light shadows, spies

What curls inside, dies
weft and woof in tight weave
tight shadows, spies
darting, unable to grieve.

(They need white lipstick? something foxy?)


**
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; Hans Holbein

Perhaps today,
sounds light in towards each other
the way an apostrophe shifts
summer corn’s talking
to cornstalking sky,
storm knocking but it is winter
scorn, and she is warm in her velvet wrap
Her shadow slights the wall,
as she wrings something lifeless in her hands.
**
To Brett: Picture of Vermont covered Bridge.

Inside the covered bridge
what’s socked in darkness
what gapes
waits for someone
squeezes like the iris

focus on what lies on the other-
wised side. Where are the pupils?
Do they spread
between the boards?

**

To Tanya: postcard by Bellini : Doge Leonardo Lordano
Outside RSS

Real
Sentences from
Several millions of sources

Real sentences avoid I’m
(wondering)
Simple ideas eschew X
(without)
Syndicates.

Really
Should be
Simple.

But there’s too much
and not enough space.

re: so much
said
space for so ...

**
Postcard to Deborah: She sent me: Dangling Metaphor on a bunch of white words scripted on green background. 3 muses ? graces;
I sent her the family mansion of Dunsmuir Family : Craigdarroch Castle

The word “one” is bound in the middle of lonely. In “all one” alone finds its companion.
3 graces each contemplating an apple have leaped out of a painting to rescue their sisters in marble. Look in the turret on the other side. Can you imagine?
**
Postcard to Jaala in response to hers.
(Sherman Alexie: “The Elders knew the spiders/carried stories in their stomachs” – from “The Summer of Black Widows”)
MY CARD: sent National Gallery : a woman; Robert Campin 1378

Story for/from the 14th c. woman
Her story is pinned under the folds of her headdress
hides in the cuff of her sleeve
aches in each shy finger
Will she allow a tear to slide a story
out from her glistened eye?
Purse a story in her prayers?
Does she say
a story
the story
my story
our story
history
Which story does she tell?

**
To Jody:
Sent Motif #1 : Rockport, MA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_Number_1
stubborn isn’t it, an idea that won’t go away, whatever it is about a red (wheelbarrow) fish shack that pains to preserve, reconstruct, keep alive. So much depends on it.

**
To Kimberley: Postcard of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; by Holbein
In fall, the maple turns red,
the last slight bee’s thrumbing
no longer lighting,
to find wing-strummed work:
echo
of the bell’s wing
swung.
Do you see it there, that shadow
behind her right shoulder?

**
Postcard of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
and St. John the Baptist: Leonardo da Vinci

Zingiber, zingiber!
A mosaic of jotted Italian, Dutch sea,
sails racing like a pair of angel wings
made of invisible garden gloves finge-
ring feathers to dig
deeper.

Poems shared at Highlands -- July 20

The simple act of asking another human being, "What are you going through" is also a perfect starting point for appreciating poetry as a great conversation. I love listened to different responses to a poem, whether they concern analysis of pattern, admiring universal themes, or capture the magic of sound playing sense.

Thank you Claire, Anne, Gloria, Martha, David, Gerry, Pat, Evelyn, Ann D., Betty, Aline for sharing your insights and voices.

Euclid Alone: Edna St. Vincent Millay (poem from The Harp Weaver, 1923)
Note how many times she uses the word "Beauty"; the embraced rhyme; The long second sentence ending on the 8th line. The embraced rhyme in the Octave; eff; eef; in the last six lines; the enjambments cease/to ponder on themselves
they stare/at nothing
nowhere/in shapes of shifting lineage;
let geese/gabble
seek release/from dusty bondage
how those who prate are not the Fortunate...

**

Can you imagine: Mary Oliver

Have you ever asked what trees do, when we're not looking?
In seventeen lines, Oliver dares us to imagine... and provides a compelling sketch of what it is to embrace acceptance.

"Surely you can't imagine/
they don't dance, from the root up wishing/
to travel a little"

What perfect balance of a double negative and line break -- a real kick to wake up our imagination, re-examine wishes, wants, (more sun, or just as avidly/more shade) and then

"surely you can't imagine they just /
stand there loving every/
minute of it"

"Just" is repeated -- with the clout of its double function -- an implied justice (trees are JUST, (adj.) and are not complicated: they just stand, want just as avidly -- with adverbial emphasis -- the paradoxical desire for shade and sun.

Used colloquially, "just" is either unnecessarily redundant, or adds a flavor. Here, Oliver
establishes a spotlight on desire, and the motionless "being" -- a zen-like acceptance which allows love of everything (and nothing different) the birds, the emptiness, the soundless years thickening into dark rings. The patience and happiness to deal with the capricious wind.

And the reader has a chance to re-imagine himself as tree in storm, in seasons,
a Pascalian spirit of "roseau pensant" bending with the wind.

**

Other poems discussed:

Her Kind by Anne Sexton (self-portrait with fairy tale quality)
How it is: Maxine Kumin (elegy for Sexton)
Parents' Pantoum: Carolyn Kizer (poem for Kumin)

The inter-relatedness of poems and poets carrying the conversation.

The last poem was Dorianne Laux's "Timing", which appeared in APR, Vol. 39, No. 4

Helene Cixous provided the epigraph for a book called "Cries of the Spirit" ed. by Marilyn Sewell, 1991 which collects poems by women and organizes them into themes.

"When I write, it's everything we don't know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one nother we will never be lacking."

I think of Wilbur, "Love calls us to the things of this world".

summer poem

Summer Playing Peace Pipes

Pairs of new green horse chestnuts
hang high

peer down
as they ripen before fall
spiny as urchins
(street urchins, sea urchins)

Inside, their invisible silk
pockets a red-brown core
swelling
(chested blood)

Lime-spined in the breeze,
smell of pine dyes, phlox,
supine, verbed to mean amatum
(to be about to be loved).

Everything waits for your gaze to face up.