D. H. Lawrence : In a Boat
The Book of How -- Merrill Moore (experimental sonnets)
Carol Muske: To a Soldier
—Lt. Col. Edward Ledford (Verse Daily in July)
Invention of Cuisine( from her 1981 book, Skylight.)
Maxine Kumin: The Immutable Laws
Michel Meyerhofer : New Babel (Michael will be coming to ROCHESTER on October 13th to give a reading at St. John Fisher! His chapbook, Pure Elysium was the winner of the 2010 Palettes and Quills competition judged by Dorianne Laux.
Emily Dickinson – The Sun – just touched the Morning
I was so taken with the sounds and tensions of Michael Chitwood's poetry --"The Docks and Dusk" I wanted another "boat" song and was enchanted by the repetitions, the inner end-rhymes of the Lawrence poem. Although the repetition of "love" can be overwhelmingly insistent, the way the first 3 stanzas use "love" as the end word, first line, then close the 3rd stanza with it, after a perfectly matched "tossed/lost" inner rhyme invites the reader to watch it change place in the next three stanzas. It is in keeping with the instability of watching the stars in the water, and the sudden spark, where even in heaven, stars are not safe. A fringe of shadow limns the poem, so one wonders -- is the speaker talking to a daughter? a lover? And we are wrapped in the question of our own death.
**
I had made a comment about the delight of poetry and life, when we feel surprised --
and so, the Merrill Moore, the Muske and Meyerhofer poems, whose names might not stir up a reaction or be attached to prior knowledge allowed us to respond to the poem just as they are. How does it change anything to examine a poem "as a sonnet"
or to know who the person is in the title and know the background? What allows a poem to be universal?
Would Moore's poem work, even if you didn't know that Mars was god of war? Would you have paid attention to it differently to check to see if there is a volta at or around the 8th lines? The rhythms one remarked, were regular, like Edna St. Vincent Millay, to create tension with rather irregular questions. How DID God do it?
Is it irreverent to think of him on a ladder hanging the stars as if decorating a Christmas tree? The Book of How -- and its omissions, is a marvellous vehicle for discussing faith and doubt. And then, look him up -- if you are lucky, you will find a copy of his book "Experimental Sonnets", from 1956 and enjoy the wit of this physician from New Zealand!
It gave rise to a few marvellous stories: the nun who said, "The problem with the Bible is that they put a cover on it." and the story of the monk transcribing who raised the question that possibly someone had made a mistake in a previous copying and the head abbott went down to the storage to check who copied who and what. He did not return and so after many hours, the young monk sought him out, and found him with a look of devastation on his face. "The word was celebrate."
The Carol Muske poem, sketches in twelve lines, familiar details with the shadows of war. The enjambments work to draw out the tension and we discussed the em-dash which acts like a diving board to accentuate and dramatize the leap into the next line -- how gold & blood are given time to be autumnal, and military, metaphoric, and colors as first word is followed by a period, cut short. How "armaments" hangs without really being finished echoed by "turning" -- where leaves could be from trees, or the men and women who are given leave, or not, "without color, they die."
A longer, protracted syntax before the word, "die".
If you look up her interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-muskedukes/soldier-to-a-poet-part-ii_b_452156.html you will see she had quite an exchange with the specific Lieutenant.
Some reactions to the poem:
soldiers die without growing up/ old enough.
Don’t be taken in -- What price is war? Hand, finger…
Don’t get caught up in syntax/diction… before looking at how the poem was crafted, it was better than after -- the dashes spoiled it.
Even the word "Redemptive" seems odd for Autumn -- until you go back to "not enough Fall to/Make a cliche, the one we love about/ the season's redemptive powers.
A jewel of a poem to be read slowly and many times to see how each word calls another and calls to the reader to meditate -- what would you write to a soldier?
We looked at Wilfred Owens "Dulce et Decorum" -- a very different and powerful poem about war.
Michael Meyerhofer's poem used a different sort of cleverness -- blending in a sense of the modern day life-- gas b/c lazy to walk; the easy clauses of politicians "keep civilian casualties at a minimum" -- and ominous by the fact it's only a goal...
There is a dark underpinning to each flip of line. And you re-read and ask,
what has my conscience asked me to do? what am I too lazy to do with my own feet, but pay lip service to (make sure to give the lecture of civil responsibility); and what should I have written, but haven't... and make a list of what you have allowed,
even said "made sense" ?
We ended with a silly performance of Emily Dickinson :
I'm not sure if this was the poem I saw at a rest stop on the NY Thruway--
but it was a good antidote for feeling the weight of war, the sense of inevitability... mention of the Koran: if attacked, it is your duty to fight;
Krishna saying, go ahead and fight -- it is all this world of illusion...
and a mention of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem which is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. http://warprayer.org/
The morning – Happy Thing—
If you aren't sure of how to understand a poem, try understanding it as a sex poem.
Sun (he) – Morning (she) – her crown of dew gone… feebly exiting…
(John provided this one by her.)
Sleep
Nature at 5
Custom at 7
Laziness at 9
Wickedness at 11
Monday, August 1, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
open discussion July 25: Mary Jo Salter, Ashbery
O Pen – July 25
Au Pair – Mary Jo Salter
My Philosophy of Life -- John Ashbery
Spacing in Concentration – a response to John Ashbery (yours truly)
2 poems from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror – John Ashbery
I started with a quote from an article by Lisa Russ Spaar, and join her in feeling grateful for the ways in which reading allows what Sven Birkerts calls "the delicious excavation of the self through another's sentences."
The poems this week take different points of view – a French au pair, a philosopher, a noun-laden, myth-referenced “hop ‘o my thumb” where we join we’re not sure who, doing what , and a Rimbaldien “jeu of je” in a drunken boat. "Ashbery involves us in sentences whose machinery makes us feel how, not what, they mean. . . ." Note the paradox of "ecstatic stillness" in the extract of his title poem "Self-Portraitin a convex mirror" below:
Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"
By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission
That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.
**
So.. a sharing of AA ADD : age-activated attention deficit disorder—
And how an Ashbery poem allows us to Frank-O’Hara our way through a day, and yet delve into just what living a day, as a philosopher is all about. What affect inflects, injects… not in an Dantesque journey through various circles, but rather more like “a stranger who accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below” – but that’s not enough – Ashbery adds a friendly, tongue-in-cheek tone with an edge of humane “as the bookcase slides shut”. It is not scary, because you can trust him to handle the scenario (he does say "it is customary for such things to happen on such occasions” and further, introduces
a pleasant fragrance at this point. What coaxes us (rhymes with hoaxes Gus) to join in leaps with a sense of “anything goes” is a delightful blend of recognizing ourselves in surprising ways – understanding that whatever point one thinks one has, is usually not the point – but rather, living the “gaps” fully.
Words… how we use them, understand them – how a poem allows us to teeter on the edge of lines, as in Mary Jo Salter’s poem, surprises ways of thinking – new layers of “self” to discover. We share our stories -- for instance how one person couldn’t get past the first stanza of Mary Jo Salter’s poem, which mentions flags in a flippant, dancing, derogatory way, as she had just returned from her uncle’s funeral and an elaborate flag folding ceremony and what a flag meant to him as marine. And yet, as we read each stanza, other questions appeared – what we worship, value, how we cope with life, what we hope for, as we wore the lens of a speaker describing what the au pair saw.
Ashbery ‘s Hop o’ my Thumb, is a complex story combining myth (Undine and Ariadne) and the fairy tale much like Hansel and Gretl (http://www.rickwalton.com/folktale/junior85.htm).
Undine, or Ondine is the water nymph and title of the Giraudoux play written in 1938 that tells the story of Hans, a knight-errant who has been sent off on a quest by his betrothed. In the forest he meets and falls in love with Ondine, who is attracted to the world of mortal man. The subsequent marriage of people from different worlds is of course folly. Ariane is the French version of Ariadne, the one who helped Theseus out of the minotaur’s labyrinth in Crete. Massenet’s opera, written in 1937 tells the story of Ariane and her sister Phèdre. The two sisters are both in love with Theseus, yet he chooses Phèdre over Ariane. When Phèdre is killed by the toppled statue of Adonis, Ariane travels to the underworld to beg Perséphone for her sister's resurrection. Softened by Ariane's offering of roses, Perséphone complies and Phèdre returns to earth. Theseus is then made to choose among the sisters again and once more chooses Phèdre, abandoning Ariane on the banks of Naxos. Distraught, she is lured into the sea by the voices of the beckoning sirens.
And as for the drunken boat—whether or not you subscribe to 19th century lit and Rimbaud – or fairy tales.. to thread wishes and desires , a gentle human element pulls you in. The self-portrait, is not obsessed with self in lines like this: “Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again? ” but rather ends on a larger universal truth. The last stanza is worthy of memorizing!
The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.
And a sigh heaves from ah the small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.
The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.
Below is a “clin d’oeil” to Ashbery’s manner of soaking up details from art, literature, history, philosophy, living in the 20th century.
KNOW THE SYMPTOMS .....
Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder.
Somehow I feel better,even though I have it!!
Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A..A.D.D. -
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my garden.
As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.
As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.
I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.
I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.
I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left.
My extra checks are in my desk in the study,
so I go inside the house to my desk where
I find the can of Pepsi I'd been drinking.
I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Pepsi aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over..
The Pepsi is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need water.
I put the Pepsi on the counter and
discover my reading glasses that
I've been searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my desk,
but first I'm going to water the flowers.
I set the glasses back down on the counter,
fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.
Someone left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,
I'll be looking for the remote,
but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,
so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on to the floor..
So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.
Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do..
At the end of the day:
the car isn't washed
the bills aren't paid
there is a warm can of Pepsi sitting on the counter
the flowers don't have enough water,
there is still only 1 check in my check book,
I can't find the remote,
I can't find my glasses,
and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I'm really tired.
I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail....
Do me a favor
Forward this message to everyone you know,
because I don't remember who the hell I've sent it to.
Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!!
Au Pair – Mary Jo Salter
My Philosophy of Life -- John Ashbery
Spacing in Concentration – a response to John Ashbery (yours truly)
2 poems from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror – John Ashbery
I started with a quote from an article by Lisa Russ Spaar, and join her in feeling grateful for the ways in which reading allows what Sven Birkerts calls "the delicious excavation of the self through another's sentences."
The poems this week take different points of view – a French au pair, a philosopher, a noun-laden, myth-referenced “hop ‘o my thumb” where we join we’re not sure who, doing what , and a Rimbaldien “jeu of je” in a drunken boat. "Ashbery involves us in sentences whose machinery makes us feel how, not what, they mean. . . ." Note the paradox of "ecstatic stillness" in the extract of his title poem "Self-Portraitin a convex mirror" below:
Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"
By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission
That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.
**
So.. a sharing of AA ADD : age-activated attention deficit disorder—
And how an Ashbery poem allows us to Frank-O’Hara our way through a day, and yet delve into just what living a day, as a philosopher is all about. What affect inflects, injects… not in an Dantesque journey through various circles, but rather more like “a stranger who accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below” – but that’s not enough – Ashbery adds a friendly, tongue-in-cheek tone with an edge of humane “as the bookcase slides shut”. It is not scary, because you can trust him to handle the scenario (he does say "it is customary for such things to happen on such occasions” and further, introduces
a pleasant fragrance at this point. What coaxes us (rhymes with hoaxes Gus) to join in leaps with a sense of “anything goes” is a delightful blend of recognizing ourselves in surprising ways – understanding that whatever point one thinks one has, is usually not the point – but rather, living the “gaps” fully.
Words… how we use them, understand them – how a poem allows us to teeter on the edge of lines, as in Mary Jo Salter’s poem, surprises ways of thinking – new layers of “self” to discover. We share our stories -- for instance how one person couldn’t get past the first stanza of Mary Jo Salter’s poem, which mentions flags in a flippant, dancing, derogatory way, as she had just returned from her uncle’s funeral and an elaborate flag folding ceremony and what a flag meant to him as marine. And yet, as we read each stanza, other questions appeared – what we worship, value, how we cope with life, what we hope for, as we wore the lens of a speaker describing what the au pair saw.
Ashbery ‘s Hop o’ my Thumb, is a complex story combining myth (Undine and Ariadne) and the fairy tale much like Hansel and Gretl (http://www.rickwalton.com/folktale/junior85.htm).
Undine, or Ondine is the water nymph and title of the Giraudoux play written in 1938 that tells the story of Hans, a knight-errant who has been sent off on a quest by his betrothed. In the forest he meets and falls in love with Ondine, who is attracted to the world of mortal man. The subsequent marriage of people from different worlds is of course folly. Ariane is the French version of Ariadne, the one who helped Theseus out of the minotaur’s labyrinth in Crete. Massenet’s opera, written in 1937 tells the story of Ariane and her sister Phèdre. The two sisters are both in love with Theseus, yet he chooses Phèdre over Ariane. When Phèdre is killed by the toppled statue of Adonis, Ariane travels to the underworld to beg Perséphone for her sister's resurrection. Softened by Ariane's offering of roses, Perséphone complies and Phèdre returns to earth. Theseus is then made to choose among the sisters again and once more chooses Phèdre, abandoning Ariane on the banks of Naxos. Distraught, she is lured into the sea by the voices of the beckoning sirens.
And as for the drunken boat—whether or not you subscribe to 19th century lit and Rimbaud – or fairy tales.. to thread wishes and desires , a gentle human element pulls you in. The self-portrait, is not obsessed with self in lines like this: “Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again? ” but rather ends on a larger universal truth. The last stanza is worthy of memorizing!
The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.
And a sigh heaves from ah the small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.
The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.
Below is a “clin d’oeil” to Ashbery’s manner of soaking up details from art, literature, history, philosophy, living in the 20th century.
KNOW THE SYMPTOMS .....
Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder.
Somehow I feel better,even though I have it!!
Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A..A.D.D. -
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my garden.
As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.
As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.
I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.
I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.
I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left.
My extra checks are in my desk in the study,
so I go inside the house to my desk where
I find the can of Pepsi I'd been drinking.
I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Pepsi aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over..
The Pepsi is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need water.
I put the Pepsi on the counter and
discover my reading glasses that
I've been searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my desk,
but first I'm going to water the flowers.
I set the glasses back down on the counter,
fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.
Someone left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,
I'll be looking for the remote,
but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,
so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on to the floor..
So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.
Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do..
At the end of the day:
the car isn't washed
the bills aren't paid
there is a warm can of Pepsi sitting on the counter
the flowers don't have enough water,
there is still only 1 check in my check book,
I can't find the remote,
I can't find my glasses,
and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I'm really tired.
I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail....
Do me a favor
Forward this message to everyone you know,
because I don't remember who the hell I've sent it to.
Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Open discussion July 11: Poetry mag: David Ferry,
Two poems by Michael Chitwood (from Verse Daily)
(At the Dock at Dusk; Going)
The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley
Picks from Poetry July/August: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/toc/2358
Two poems by David Ferry:Little Vietnam Futurist Poem
The Crippled Girl, The Rose
Spencer Reece: The Manhattan Project
I love this paragraph from poetry magazine (see above) announcing David Ferry as recipient of the Ruth Lily Prize.
"One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall, much less be, that person inside of us who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be."
Michael Chitwood probably has an enormous capacity for surprise and ability to blend paradox: in the first poem of anthropomorphized boats, filled with the sounds of tethered boats at a dock, "drawing an inch and a half of water in a prolonged kiss"
the reader is tucked and tied in the same way, invited as well to "test out what we know" -- how much space we too take in our tippy, tricky walkings, and pausing to reflect on the safety of being tied. The wide mouth of them and the slender Lord,
Buoyancy. Without once using the word "float."
His second poem, also plays with perspective as it lopes down in the page in short-lined couplets -- ending with the word "glint". He allows you to think about the properties of a river -- where the small creek or brook can run a "trickly, cunning"
and you feel the flow imagining both butterflies siphoning out water, and the water rising by itself into reeds like music. Delicate, sensitive, delightful. No preaching. Allows the Ohio to be broad-shouldered rather like La Fontaine's Oak,
while the small river is "un roseau pensant" -- the thinking reed.
Although I enjoy Grace Paley, lack of punctuation is a distraction for me in this poem. I do enjoy the idea of feedback from a pie… and a feeding of one's self.
One senses a wise grandmother... one with a toddler to watch, friends, people who appreciate her cooking -- whereas a poem has a less certain reception.
We wondered if she was related to the CBS Paley and Paley park… and looked it up -- tables, chairs and a lovely waterfall...
For the first David Ferry Poem, Maura remembered the picture of the naked Vietnamese girl (Kim Phuc)
http://famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Vietnam_Napalm_Girl
and we admired the skill with which Ferry prepared the scene, which, without the title, could have been so many other things. The pejorative "pajamas" followed by "hideyholes" the unspoken napalm, and the odd syntax of the end lines of the penultimate and final couplets leave you wondering what kind of "future" could be played... what way will we see as we live our stories?
"Into the way that that was how I saw them.
The trees of the kind that grew there establish the place.
We know that way the story of what it was."
The Crippled Girl -- The rose
and of course, the girl arose -- arises in our minds as Ferry conjures up her face.
"It was as if a flower bloomed as if
Its muttering root and stem had suddenly spoken,
Uttering on the air a poem of summer,
The rose the utterance of its root and stem."
How simply a small change of language:
"In what it keeps, giving in its having." turns into
"That what it is is kept as it is given." -- a private and quiet poem.
Finally, the "short story" or prose poem, which sketches briefly the story of the Atom Bomb -- a crazy quilt of details. Just like the silence of the rose,
"The quietness inside my father was building and would come to define him."
Imagine being the designer of such a bomb, knowing what it did to human beings in two cities.
(At the Dock at Dusk; Going)
The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley
Picks from Poetry July/August: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/toc/2358
Two poems by David Ferry:Little Vietnam Futurist Poem
The Crippled Girl, The Rose
Spencer Reece: The Manhattan Project
I love this paragraph from poetry magazine (see above) announcing David Ferry as recipient of the Ruth Lily Prize.
"One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall, much less be, that person inside of us who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be."
Michael Chitwood probably has an enormous capacity for surprise and ability to blend paradox: in the first poem of anthropomorphized boats, filled with the sounds of tethered boats at a dock, "drawing an inch and a half of water in a prolonged kiss"
the reader is tucked and tied in the same way, invited as well to "test out what we know" -- how much space we too take in our tippy, tricky walkings, and pausing to reflect on the safety of being tied. The wide mouth of them and the slender Lord,
Buoyancy. Without once using the word "float."
His second poem, also plays with perspective as it lopes down in the page in short-lined couplets -- ending with the word "glint". He allows you to think about the properties of a river -- where the small creek or brook can run a "trickly, cunning"
and you feel the flow imagining both butterflies siphoning out water, and the water rising by itself into reeds like music. Delicate, sensitive, delightful. No preaching. Allows the Ohio to be broad-shouldered rather like La Fontaine's Oak,
while the small river is "un roseau pensant" -- the thinking reed.
Although I enjoy Grace Paley, lack of punctuation is a distraction for me in this poem. I do enjoy the idea of feedback from a pie… and a feeding of one's self.
One senses a wise grandmother... one with a toddler to watch, friends, people who appreciate her cooking -- whereas a poem has a less certain reception.
We wondered if she was related to the CBS Paley and Paley park… and looked it up -- tables, chairs and a lovely waterfall...
For the first David Ferry Poem, Maura remembered the picture of the naked Vietnamese girl (Kim Phuc)
http://famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Vietnam_Napalm_Girl
and we admired the skill with which Ferry prepared the scene, which, without the title, could have been so many other things. The pejorative "pajamas" followed by "hideyholes" the unspoken napalm, and the odd syntax of the end lines of the penultimate and final couplets leave you wondering what kind of "future" could be played... what way will we see as we live our stories?
"Into the way that that was how I saw them.
The trees of the kind that grew there establish the place.
We know that way the story of what it was."
The Crippled Girl -- The rose
and of course, the girl arose -- arises in our minds as Ferry conjures up her face.
"It was as if a flower bloomed as if
Its muttering root and stem had suddenly spoken,
Uttering on the air a poem of summer,
The rose the utterance of its root and stem."
How simply a small change of language:
"In what it keeps, giving in its having." turns into
"That what it is is kept as it is given." -- a private and quiet poem.
Finally, the "short story" or prose poem, which sketches briefly the story of the Atom Bomb -- a crazy quilt of details. Just like the silence of the rose,
"The quietness inside my father was building and would come to define him."
Imagine being the designer of such a bomb, knowing what it did to human beings in two cities.
Monday, June 27, 2011
June 13 O pen - Dean Young; Kenyon; Love Song;
Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young (the other one on poetry foundation, not poets.org) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241444
Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer by Jane Kenyon
Love Song – a study in contradictions by Joseph Brodsky
Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare
When you chose me by Pedro Salinas
translated from the Spanish by Willis Barnstone
**
Although I didn't lead this discussion, the poems gather around "love" and loss.
I would love to hear the original Spanish for Salinas' lines -- the importance of feeling CHOSEN by another, and how skilfully the poet uses the "duende" so gladness is not one-sided joy -- but comes from a deeper place that knows shadows and dark.
"And my gladness was
sad, as small watches are
without a wrist to fasten to,
without a winding crown, stopped.
But when you said: you,
to me, yes, to me singled out,
I was higher than stars,
deeper than coral.
And my joy
began to spin, caught
in your being, in your pulse."
(Kim's notes: Generation of 27: wide variety of genres and styles; cubism, futurism, surrealism. Included Federico Garcia Lorca)
**
Dean Young -- version of Scarecrow on Fire -- in reprint section of American Poetry Spring 2011 issue, p. 55
In this one-block poem, Young leaps from statement (assumptions of "we" -- "we all think about suddenly disappearing" -- do we? What does that mean...) to question. "What counts as a proper/ goodbye." followed immediately by a last winter in Iowa and ladybugs which are now also included in the "we".
"We all feel
suspended over a drop into nothingness.
Once you get close enough, you see what
one is stitching is a human heart. Another
is vomiting wings.
Humans, ladybugs... life. Another question. Where did we get/the idea to rub dirt into the wound (when we were kids, and was that just in PA?)
and a comment on poetry. Poems ARE made of breath, the way water,/cajoled to boil says, "This is my soul, freed."
I prefer the other poem of the same title which starts this way:
Everything is brushed away, off the sleeve, Off the overcoat huge ensembles of assertions
** in it, there are no assertions of "we" and the poem leaps with lively sounds and images.
"just jars of buttons spilled, recurring nightmare of straw on fire, you the scarecrow, the scare, the crow, totems gone, rubies flawed, flamingo in hyena’s jaws, noble and lascivious mouth of the gods hovering then gone, gone the glances, gone moths, cities of crystal become cities of mud, centurion and emperor dust, the flower girl, some of it rises, proof? some of it explodes, vein in the brain, seed pod poof, maybe something will grow, another predicament
of bittersweet, dreamfluff milkweed, declarations of aerosols, vows just sprays of spit fast evaporate, all of it pulverized as it hits the seawall, all of it falling snow on water, flash of flying fish, breach and blow and sinking, far below creatures of luminous jelly constellated and darting and baiting each other like last thoughts before sleep, last neural sparks coalescing as a face in the dark, who was she? never enough time to know."
A good poem should leave you with more questions than answers! (Art of Recklessness)
Kim's notes on Jane Kenyon:
Bill Moyer's film: "A Life Together" ends, hauntingly, but lovingly, with Kenyon’s poem, "It Might Have Been Otherwise" which includes the lines:
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
-1st published in Poetry journal, then published in The Boat of Quiet Hours 1986.
-Translated Anna Akhmatova poems; married to Donald Hall.
**Akhmatova connection with Brodsky:
Kim's notes: He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for alleged "social parasitism" (living off unearned income) and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at universities including those at Yale, Cambridge and Michigan.
Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
He was appointed American Poet Laureate in 1991
**
His "Love Song -- study of contradictions opposes two lines in each quatrain --
a rescue with arrest; a free bird with a drills; play with the complexity of mirrors and roles we play -- and the great surge of lava -- and the realization that we can love, but divorce, come together, separate...
If... is only followed by because at the last line.
**
Sonnet 29
to carry on "contradiction: Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at haven’s gate; I quote my MFA guru, Robert who says "Literally, it means something like, “When the lark wakes up at dawn it sings to heaven from the earth, and this is just like what happens when I am feeling very bad about myself and then I think of you.”
How, exactly, does the poet turn from the previous lines of crying, cursing, and discontent into a lark.
Apparently a prison program uses
beginning of this poem as a spring board for the inmates to write their own version of the poem, tell their own story through their own words. Very cool idea.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer by Jane Kenyon
Love Song – a study in contradictions by Joseph Brodsky
Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare
When you chose me by Pedro Salinas
translated from the Spanish by Willis Barnstone
**
Although I didn't lead this discussion, the poems gather around "love" and loss.
I would love to hear the original Spanish for Salinas' lines -- the importance of feeling CHOSEN by another, and how skilfully the poet uses the "duende" so gladness is not one-sided joy -- but comes from a deeper place that knows shadows and dark.
"And my gladness was
sad, as small watches are
without a wrist to fasten to,
without a winding crown, stopped.
But when you said: you,
to me, yes, to me singled out,
I was higher than stars,
deeper than coral.
And my joy
began to spin, caught
in your being, in your pulse."
(Kim's notes: Generation of 27: wide variety of genres and styles; cubism, futurism, surrealism. Included Federico Garcia Lorca)
**
Dean Young -- version of Scarecrow on Fire -- in reprint section of American Poetry Spring 2011 issue, p. 55
In this one-block poem, Young leaps from statement (assumptions of "we" -- "we all think about suddenly disappearing" -- do we? What does that mean...) to question. "What counts as a proper/ goodbye." followed immediately by a last winter in Iowa and ladybugs which are now also included in the "we".
"We all feel
suspended over a drop into nothingness.
Once you get close enough, you see what
one is stitching is a human heart. Another
is vomiting wings.
Humans, ladybugs... life. Another question. Where did we get/the idea to rub dirt into the wound (when we were kids, and was that just in PA?)
and a comment on poetry. Poems ARE made of breath, the way water,/cajoled to boil says, "This is my soul, freed."
I prefer the other poem of the same title which starts this way:
Everything is brushed away, off the sleeve, Off the overcoat huge ensembles of assertions
** in it, there are no assertions of "we" and the poem leaps with lively sounds and images.
"just jars of buttons spilled, recurring nightmare of straw on fire, you the scarecrow, the scare, the crow, totems gone, rubies flawed, flamingo in hyena’s jaws, noble and lascivious mouth of the gods hovering then gone, gone the glances, gone moths, cities of crystal become cities of mud, centurion and emperor dust, the flower girl, some of it rises, proof? some of it explodes, vein in the brain, seed pod poof, maybe something will grow, another predicament
of bittersweet, dreamfluff milkweed, declarations of aerosols, vows just sprays of spit fast evaporate, all of it pulverized as it hits the seawall, all of it falling snow on water, flash of flying fish, breach and blow and sinking, far below creatures of luminous jelly constellated and darting and baiting each other like last thoughts before sleep, last neural sparks coalescing as a face in the dark, who was she? never enough time to know."
A good poem should leave you with more questions than answers! (Art of Recklessness)
Kim's notes on Jane Kenyon:
Bill Moyer's film: "A Life Together" ends, hauntingly, but lovingly, with Kenyon’s poem, "It Might Have Been Otherwise" which includes the lines:
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
-1st published in Poetry journal, then published in The Boat of Quiet Hours 1986.
-Translated Anna Akhmatova poems; married to Donald Hall.
**Akhmatova connection with Brodsky:
Kim's notes: He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for alleged "social parasitism" (living off unearned income) and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at universities including those at Yale, Cambridge and Michigan.
Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
He was appointed American Poet Laureate in 1991
**
His "Love Song -- study of contradictions opposes two lines in each quatrain --
a rescue with arrest; a free bird with a drills; play with the complexity of mirrors and roles we play -- and the great surge of lava -- and the realization that we can love, but divorce, come together, separate...
If... is only followed by because at the last line.
**
Sonnet 29
to carry on "contradiction: Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at haven’s gate; I quote my MFA guru, Robert who says "Literally, it means something like, “When the lark wakes up at dawn it sings to heaven from the earth, and this is just like what happens when I am feeling very bad about myself and then I think of you.”
How, exactly, does the poet turn from the previous lines of crying, cursing, and discontent into a lark.
Apparently a prison program uses
beginning of this poem as a spring board for the inmates to write their own version of the poem, tell their own story through their own words. Very cool idea.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
June 27: Merwin, Wright, Herbert, Jonson, Stroud, cummings, Young
Identity – W.S. Merwin (from 6/20 line up)
Bedtime Story – Charles Wright
Love (III) -- George Herbert
Hymn to the Belly – Ben Jonson
Night in Day -- Joseph Stroud
may my heart always be open to little – ee cummings
Is This Why Love Almost Rhymes with Dumb? -- by Dean Young
What a cast of characters! What wonderful poems... Time's hunger in a scary story turned into a "sometime dance"; Hymns to the Belly, love turning up in Conversation with God, and contemplating the other...
The Merwin is left over from last week -- IDENTITY:
You are what you draw, what you study, what... surrounds you, enters you, what you imagine...
http://store.metmuseum.org/met-studio-prints/hans-hoffman-a-hedgehog/invt/99080830/
or is it that what you think you draw, is drawing you --
A hedgehog becomes a means for feeling the dark undersides of stones --
but whether one becomes a hedgehog, Hans, the attention spent observing, until one becomes so keenly aware, edges disappear.
**
In the next two poems:Beispiel compares Wright to Herbert: I love the way all those somethings in the middle of the poem act on and against the natural world: wringing, making, licking, stringing, inching and scratching. In the poem, the bedtime story of existence is simply time itself. Poets are concerned with the subject of time -- I guess the concern is mortality generally -- because not a minute goes by when time does not influence our daily, imaginative and spiritual lives. So, for Wright, time is what he calls the "Something Dance."
Beispiel speaks about Wright's switchback on George Herbert, "who in his masterpiece "Love (III)" lets God into his soul. It's a poem that begins, "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back" and ends, "'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.' / So I did sit and eat." Here, Wright offers the "meat" to time. Then, like Herbert, letting time in, Wright allows the imagination to consider time more closely, well, another time." http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/06/bedtime_story_poem_on_time_can.html
How to take a scary story -- and then have it dance! Time is ravenous -- but Wright treats it a whole new way -- Marcie mentioned "atavistic" as flavor -- this is more than just spooky campfire story.
We questioned: The "generator" in the first line -- yet it has both the idea of "genesis" of something... as well as a machine. cicadas would be too confining.
Also, the "cleft feet" -- come far after the subject they are attached to. Imagine Time’s cloven feet and it seems the devil is walking.
A string of something -- imagining... followed by a string of questions of what we ought to do... How powerful to go from : "Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there." (the nails being fingernails, not spelled out as "evening's dusky blue nails" nor a handful of nails waiting to be hammered in...) should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
A great poem to memorize and tell again and again!
Along with the next ones!
The Joseph Stroud poem weaves a first line of "night not wanting to end" to leaps to different blacks, to all the glisten of light captured in obsidian, crow, watermelon seed... not scary, b/c of the guzzling sunflowers...
ee cummings beautiful love poem... and what "usefully" has to do with selves with perhaps an agenda not confined to TRULY loving...
We all chuckled and roared at both the Ben Jonson and the Dean Young.
Uplifting discussion!
Bedtime Story – Charles Wright
Love (III) -- George Herbert
Hymn to the Belly – Ben Jonson
Night in Day -- Joseph Stroud
may my heart always be open to little – ee cummings
Is This Why Love Almost Rhymes with Dumb? -- by Dean Young
What a cast of characters! What wonderful poems... Time's hunger in a scary story turned into a "sometime dance"; Hymns to the Belly, love turning up in Conversation with God, and contemplating the other...
The Merwin is left over from last week -- IDENTITY:
You are what you draw, what you study, what... surrounds you, enters you, what you imagine...
http://store.metmuseum.org/met-studio-prints/hans-hoffman-a-hedgehog/invt/99080830/
or is it that what you think you draw, is drawing you --
A hedgehog becomes a means for feeling the dark undersides of stones --
but whether one becomes a hedgehog, Hans, the attention spent observing, until one becomes so keenly aware, edges disappear.
**
In the next two poems:Beispiel compares Wright to Herbert: I love the way all those somethings in the middle of the poem act on and against the natural world: wringing, making, licking, stringing, inching and scratching. In the poem, the bedtime story of existence is simply time itself. Poets are concerned with the subject of time -- I guess the concern is mortality generally -- because not a minute goes by when time does not influence our daily, imaginative and spiritual lives. So, for Wright, time is what he calls the "Something Dance."
Beispiel speaks about Wright's switchback on George Herbert, "who in his masterpiece "Love (III)" lets God into his soul. It's a poem that begins, "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back" and ends, "'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.' / So I did sit and eat." Here, Wright offers the "meat" to time. Then, like Herbert, letting time in, Wright allows the imagination to consider time more closely, well, another time." http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/06/bedtime_story_poem_on_time_can.html
How to take a scary story -- and then have it dance! Time is ravenous -- but Wright treats it a whole new way -- Marcie mentioned "atavistic" as flavor -- this is more than just spooky campfire story.
We questioned: The "generator" in the first line -- yet it has both the idea of "genesis" of something... as well as a machine. cicadas would be too confining.
Also, the "cleft feet" -- come far after the subject they are attached to. Imagine Time’s cloven feet and it seems the devil is walking.
A string of something -- imagining... followed by a string of questions of what we ought to do... How powerful to go from : "Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there." (the nails being fingernails, not spelled out as "evening's dusky blue nails" nor a handful of nails waiting to be hammered in...) should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
A great poem to memorize and tell again and again!
Along with the next ones!
The Joseph Stroud poem weaves a first line of "night not wanting to end" to leaps to different blacks, to all the glisten of light captured in obsidian, crow, watermelon seed... not scary, b/c of the guzzling sunflowers...
ee cummings beautiful love poem... and what "usefully" has to do with selves with perhaps an agenda not confined to TRULY loving...
We all chuckled and roared at both the Ben Jonson and the Dean Young.
Uplifting discussion!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
O Pen June 20 -- Black Guitar, Jack, Mall, Nancy Jane
Black Guitar by Michelle Bitting
Jack by Maxine Kumin
At the Galleria Shopping Mall -- Tony Hoagland
Nancy Jane by CHARLES SIMIC
Although I wasn't there to lead the discussion, two of the poems have names of people.
What happens with a title? If a poem is called "Jack" or "Nancy Jane" what sort of conjectures do we already make as readers?
Would you have guessed that Black Guitar would evoke an odalisque, replete with neck, hips, lungs, pores, or glint-edged glamour, to offset interior syrup running through the O of sound like a locomotive?
What setting and characters do you imagine in the Galleria Shopping Mall?
Much of craft in a poem hangs on the title. That the poem about a guitar is about BLACK guitar, literally colors our expectations. Having a poem with only a first name whets our appetite to want to find out more. It's only in the middle of the 5th stanza that we realize "Jack" is a horse. His name is not pronounced after the title until the penultimate stanza. It stabs us that the "wise old campaigner", the occupant of the "motel lobby", the "he" who prawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters, has been let out to the world at age 22-- and he has a name. It reminds me of Kipling's poem about his son -- "Has anyone seen my son, Jack?" -- how it rhymes with "he won't be coming back". Turning one's back on an old animal -- no jacking up, only the chewing J and the dry sack-sound which accentuate
grief and regret?
Likewise, with a double first name, Nancy Jane, which sounds more like a little girl, a Mary Jane, a commonplace of a name, Simic disguises a grandmother for only the brief jump from title to first word. But this Grandma is laughing -- on her deathbed, each stanza adding a new paradox or ironic twist to the scene. Ultimately, the loneliness of each one of us, at the end is not still -- but "like a wheel breaking off of a car" -- yet moving entirely on our own.
Jack by Maxine Kumin
At the Galleria Shopping Mall -- Tony Hoagland
Nancy Jane by CHARLES SIMIC
Although I wasn't there to lead the discussion, two of the poems have names of people.
What happens with a title? If a poem is called "Jack" or "Nancy Jane" what sort of conjectures do we already make as readers?
Would you have guessed that Black Guitar would evoke an odalisque, replete with neck, hips, lungs, pores, or glint-edged glamour, to offset interior syrup running through the O of sound like a locomotive?
What setting and characters do you imagine in the Galleria Shopping Mall?
Much of craft in a poem hangs on the title. That the poem about a guitar is about BLACK guitar, literally colors our expectations. Having a poem with only a first name whets our appetite to want to find out more. It's only in the middle of the 5th stanza that we realize "Jack" is a horse. His name is not pronounced after the title until the penultimate stanza. It stabs us that the "wise old campaigner", the occupant of the "motel lobby", the "he" who prawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters, has been let out to the world at age 22-- and he has a name. It reminds me of Kipling's poem about his son -- "Has anyone seen my son, Jack?" -- how it rhymes with "he won't be coming back". Turning one's back on an old animal -- no jacking up, only the chewing J and the dry sack-sound which accentuate
grief and regret?
Likewise, with a double first name, Nancy Jane, which sounds more like a little girl, a Mary Jane, a commonplace of a name, Simic disguises a grandmother for only the brief jump from title to first word. But this Grandma is laughing -- on her deathbed, each stanza adding a new paradox or ironic twist to the scene. Ultimately, the loneliness of each one of us, at the end is not still -- but "like a wheel breaking off of a car" -- yet moving entirely on our own.
Monday, June 6, 2011
O pen 6/6/2011 : more Poet Laureates, Szymborska, Dean Young
O pen discussion – 6/6/2011
Daystar – Rita Dove
Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri -- Mona Van Duyn
Vermeer – Wislawa Szymborska
Ash Ode -- by Dean Young For more Dean Young : see interview: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/dean-young Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young From Dean Young’s new book: Fall Higher https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/util/email_poem_to_friend.asp?bid=1454&pid=1726
Patriotic Tour and Postulate of Joy –Robert Penn Warren
3 poems by women; 3 poems by men, but all with the human concern --
what is this all about? I quoted from the introduction of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" -- for what IS the point of so many words... whether poetry of witness, sharing a moment...or puzzling over the complexities of suffering and paradoxes of human motivation.
Rita Dove's title Daystar might leave you thinking about stardom, and the way we cannot see stars in the daytime, and "pure nothing" in the middle of the day -- in what seems to be a woman's effaced existence. The idea of starting a poem with "she wanted" immediately sets up a sense of lack, and the adjective police will attest to the power of verbed negatives: slumped, the pinched armor of a vanished cricket.
I love the power of "why" which makes a comment before jumping after a stanza break to answer a question.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace.
Mona Van Duyn's poem allows a reading of "you" to be a lover, the earth,
and calls on all the senses with great intimacy. A great poem to read if you feel tempted to be a pebble hoping someone will mistake you for a planet!
Szymborska -- translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak p. 55 of American Poet Spring 2011 issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)
Vermeer:
The power of paint to capture an simple act that is never finished
And the power of this small, one sentence poem which references
Not a portrait of a milkmaid, but the way she is painted,
“in quiet and concentration” and the way art can allow us to survive,
believe, hope that the world too, will go on. The unstated questions,
what will determine the world’s end – and what was the original Polish for the verb “earned” and what is “end”.
Kathy brought up the article by Mark Doty : how poetry consoles us with the thought as we witness – As long as there is beautiful art – the world won’t end…
Dean Young : Reading his poems gives image to thoughts about what we DO, what happens to us, and the slippery nature of language.
Scarecrow on Fire – in his book Fall Higher and on p. 55 is different from “Scarecrow on Fire” which poets.org has in a “flow” version where words come into a box S L O W L Y
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22196
You might enjoy listening to this poem: (I put a few lines down)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2444
Selected Recent and New Errors
My books are full of mistakes…
Conveyor belt caught the arm
New kid on the job
Worm/tequila
Do you think the dictionary says to itself…
I’ve got these words that means completely different things
And it’s tearing me apart.
Twisted silver wire of stealth and deception…
We have absolutely no proof God is not an insect rubbing our hind legs together to sing.
How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.
**
The Dean Young poems are chock full of images... first a sonnet, also an Ode...
Where the volta "flies off" (along with a woman...) to turn to the sieve of self and idea that one cannot catch another, fix another, keep another reinforced with the metaphor of the sea written in the desert.
The Scarecrow poem creates a collage of images which cinder down into further ashes.
Do we really ever KNOW anyone? What burns when we are cremated? What remains in the ashes?
Robert Penn Warren's poem with his clever repeating form provided a good example of irony.
Daystar – Rita Dove
Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri -- Mona Van Duyn
Vermeer – Wislawa Szymborska
Ash Ode -- by Dean Young For more Dean Young : see interview: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/dean-young Scarecrow on Fire – Dean Young From Dean Young’s new book: Fall Higher https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/util/email_poem_to_friend.asp?bid=1454&pid=1726
Patriotic Tour and Postulate of Joy –Robert Penn Warren
3 poems by women; 3 poems by men, but all with the human concern --
what is this all about? I quoted from the introduction of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" -- for what IS the point of so many words... whether poetry of witness, sharing a moment...or puzzling over the complexities of suffering and paradoxes of human motivation.
Rita Dove's title Daystar might leave you thinking about stardom, and the way we cannot see stars in the daytime, and "pure nothing" in the middle of the day -- in what seems to be a woman's effaced existence. The idea of starting a poem with "she wanted" immediately sets up a sense of lack, and the adjective police will attest to the power of verbed negatives: slumped, the pinched armor of a vanished cricket.
I love the power of "why" which makes a comment before jumping after a stanza break to answer a question.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace.
Mona Van Duyn's poem allows a reading of "you" to be a lover, the earth,
and calls on all the senses with great intimacy. A great poem to read if you feel tempted to be a pebble hoping someone will mistake you for a planet!
Szymborska -- translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak p. 55 of American Poet Spring 2011 issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)
Vermeer:
The power of paint to capture an simple act that is never finished
And the power of this small, one sentence poem which references
Not a portrait of a milkmaid, but the way she is painted,
“in quiet and concentration” and the way art can allow us to survive,
believe, hope that the world too, will go on. The unstated questions,
what will determine the world’s end – and what was the original Polish for the verb “earned” and what is “end”.
Kathy brought up the article by Mark Doty : how poetry consoles us with the thought as we witness – As long as there is beautiful art – the world won’t end…
Dean Young : Reading his poems gives image to thoughts about what we DO, what happens to us, and the slippery nature of language.
Scarecrow on Fire – in his book Fall Higher and on p. 55 is different from “Scarecrow on Fire” which poets.org has in a “flow” version where words come into a box S L O W L Y
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22196
You might enjoy listening to this poem: (I put a few lines down)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2444
Selected Recent and New Errors
My books are full of mistakes…
Conveyor belt caught the arm
New kid on the job
Worm/tequila
Do you think the dictionary says to itself…
I’ve got these words that means completely different things
And it’s tearing me apart.
Twisted silver wire of stealth and deception…
We have absolutely no proof God is not an insect rubbing our hind legs together to sing.
How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.
**
The Dean Young poems are chock full of images... first a sonnet, also an Ode...
Where the volta "flies off" (along with a woman...) to turn to the sieve of self and idea that one cannot catch another, fix another, keep another reinforced with the metaphor of the sea written in the desert.
The Scarecrow poem creates a collage of images which cinder down into further ashes.
Do we really ever KNOW anyone? What burns when we are cremated? What remains in the ashes?
Robert Penn Warren's poem with his clever repeating form provided a good example of irony.
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