Levine:
Salt and Oil: Kathy Commentary: vs. Salts and Oils;
The Valley
Salt and Oil as two characters... and as preservatives... how Levine draws us in --
"we", "you", "I"... repetition. How to use memory and writing to preserve... which is what the poem does.
vs. Pluralizing... a scandal of particularity that reveal a God in the shabbiest of places...
Louis MacNiece: Snow. vase of roses on one side... The world is suddener -- he sees reflection... the world is always more than one flat picture.
incorrigeably plural...
anomalous specificity
The words have come the whole way... time out of time... vs. 1948...
the real salty and oily food...
**
Two Henry Taylor poems:
Elevator
Riding One-Eyed Horse
Perspective... like Odin...
undismissable dignity...
9/11... and lots of poetry ten years later.
Last night heard a poem about 9/11/11... and the day after 9/11/11...
Wage Peace -- attributed to Mary Oliver
It was refreshing to read a Richard Wilbur article from 1969, reprinted in the electronic Shenandoah... Richard Wilbur: from 1969:
http://shenandoahliterary.org/blog/2010/12/poetry-and-happiness/
There are two main ways of understanding the word “poetry.” We may think of poetry as a self-shaping activity of the whole society, a collective activity by means of which a society creates a vision of itself, arranges its values, or adopts or adapts a culture. It is this sense of “poetry” which we have in Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Men Made Out of Words,” where he says
The whole race is a poet that writes down
The eccentric propositions of its fate.
But “poetry” may also mean what we more usually mean by it; it may mean verses written by poets, imaginative compositions which employ a condensed, rhythmic, resonant, and persuasive language. This second kind of poetry is not unconnected with the first; a poem written by a poet is a specific, expert, and tributary form of the general imaginative activity.
***
the desire to lay claim to as much of the world as possible through uttering the names of things.
**
I am struck by the poetry of poets who have this sense of "a whole race" -- not just an original voice... or a voice that could just as well be droning on a phone as opposed to line-breaking and calling it a poem.
**
Philip Levine is NOT a droner surfing through linebreaks. We enjoyed
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Phillip Levine: August 23 + 29
Discussion: Philip Levine:
Review discussion:
What work is
Fear and Fame
Belle Isle
They Feed They Lion
Yeats: Our quarrel with the world we express in the rhetoric of prose;
For our quarrel with our selves, we use poetry.
Levine’s poems call on personal experience, but sweep us into universals
Of the who we are . What is work? What is fame? Recognition? What is love?
Levine’s poems seem simple – but in a poem such as What Work Is you can see he knows how to thread his repetitions, twist in new details that change meaning and keep us on the edge of our seat. Not only does he mention the word “brother” 4 times, but the word “waiting” — how work in and of itself, does not shift — but rather our relationship to it and others does. That he uses gerunds contrasts a sense of “work” as being a solution as we prolong uncertainty. What can we see? Understand? It is not just the rain in the glasses that is blurring the eyesight — but the vision of who we are to each other as brothers... How easily we dismiss the "other part" of a person when they are not at work. What is so difficult about telling your brother, who is learning to sing opera you hate, that you love him? Without banging on the truth that maintaining family relationships is hard, we relate to that truth.
The first time we read Fear and Fame we were left with a new appreciation of what goes into the making of things we use. After Jim’s columns, we were able to more fully appreciate the driven sense of getting a job done, which overshadows any fear. To know in oneself that fear, and that heroic response to danger is only half of what is necessary to be distinguished among women and men. Levine doesn’t spell out the other half. Survival tactics: heat to quell the heat, the third cigarette (held in a shaking hand) to wipe out the taste of the others. Half an hour to dress to do this job; 15 minutes to eat a salami sandwich before returning. One understands why O’Mera drank himself to death. This hero won’t. He straps on his other self, the one that will distinguish him, not because of the black shoes and white socks and Bulova watch... but what this self outside of work is. This is a hymn to people who work in underground, hidden ways, but also a hymn to the part of a man who can inspire us as he keeps on in spite of fear...
After discussing the descent into the pickling tank, our group appreciated the honest appraisal of our fortune of living in a different social situation – and how, these poems about work open our eyes to what it is like to do a job no one would choose to do. To work with acids that fog up glasses, stick in the throat, and which could dissolve your wedding ring, is indeed to descend into hell. The return to sharing food, “normal” activity before donning the gauntlets and playing knight, contrasts the edge of fear on which a hero treads with the every day.
In Belle Isle, a descent into the dirty Detroit river could be seen almost as redemptive – where “baptized” becomes a holy place for an initiation rite. I love the idea that finding joy ensures a pathway for dignity. On the first reading, the group had a sense of “we’ll never think of a blind date in the same way” – but after the second discussion, thanks to your opening, we had a deeper sense of life-force in the young people, a deeper understanding of what it is one needs to allow us to survive. May God protect the joyful!
They Feed They Lion, with its liturgical force, the "lionization" of verbs, the 3rd person objective "they" gives a tone of sacred, mysterious. Lion as God, as Aslan, but we become lion taking ordinary work; earthy to industrial. Mary mentioned the expression of "coming with their 5 arms and 2 legs" -- i.e. fairly heavily burdened.
Metaphors bridge the familiar to the un-nameable...
Review discussion:
What work is
Fear and Fame
Belle Isle
They Feed They Lion
Yeats: Our quarrel with the world we express in the rhetoric of prose;
For our quarrel with our selves, we use poetry.
Levine’s poems call on personal experience, but sweep us into universals
Of the who we are . What is work? What is fame? Recognition? What is love?
Levine’s poems seem simple – but in a poem such as What Work Is you can see he knows how to thread his repetitions, twist in new details that change meaning and keep us on the edge of our seat. Not only does he mention the word “brother” 4 times, but the word “waiting” — how work in and of itself, does not shift — but rather our relationship to it and others does. That he uses gerunds contrasts a sense of “work” as being a solution as we prolong uncertainty. What can we see? Understand? It is not just the rain in the glasses that is blurring the eyesight — but the vision of who we are to each other as brothers... How easily we dismiss the "other part" of a person when they are not at work. What is so difficult about telling your brother, who is learning to sing opera you hate, that you love him? Without banging on the truth that maintaining family relationships is hard, we relate to that truth.
The first time we read Fear and Fame we were left with a new appreciation of what goes into the making of things we use. After Jim’s columns, we were able to more fully appreciate the driven sense of getting a job done, which overshadows any fear. To know in oneself that fear, and that heroic response to danger is only half of what is necessary to be distinguished among women and men. Levine doesn’t spell out the other half. Survival tactics: heat to quell the heat, the third cigarette (held in a shaking hand) to wipe out the taste of the others. Half an hour to dress to do this job; 15 minutes to eat a salami sandwich before returning. One understands why O’Mera drank himself to death. This hero won’t. He straps on his other self, the one that will distinguish him, not because of the black shoes and white socks and Bulova watch... but what this self outside of work is. This is a hymn to people who work in underground, hidden ways, but also a hymn to the part of a man who can inspire us as he keeps on in spite of fear...
After discussing the descent into the pickling tank, our group appreciated the honest appraisal of our fortune of living in a different social situation – and how, these poems about work open our eyes to what it is like to do a job no one would choose to do. To work with acids that fog up glasses, stick in the throat, and which could dissolve your wedding ring, is indeed to descend into hell. The return to sharing food, “normal” activity before donning the gauntlets and playing knight, contrasts the edge of fear on which a hero treads with the every day.
In Belle Isle, a descent into the dirty Detroit river could be seen almost as redemptive – where “baptized” becomes a holy place for an initiation rite. I love the idea that finding joy ensures a pathway for dignity. On the first reading, the group had a sense of “we’ll never think of a blind date in the same way” – but after the second discussion, thanks to your opening, we had a deeper sense of life-force in the young people, a deeper understanding of what it is one needs to allow us to survive. May God protect the joyful!
They Feed They Lion, with its liturgical force, the "lionization" of verbs, the 3rd person objective "they" gives a tone of sacred, mysterious. Lion as God, as Aslan, but we become lion taking ordinary work; earthy to industrial. Mary mentioned the expression of "coming with their 5 arms and 2 legs" -- i.e. fairly heavily burdened.
Metaphors bridge the familiar to the un-nameable...
Sunday, August 14, 2011
O Pen -- August 8 - Poems from Mark Doty's Art of Description, 2 New Yorker poems and a hop into Keats
Two poems From the New Yorker
Dothead by Amit Majmudar p. 66 of August 1st issue
Reconstruction by Stephen Dunn, p. 90 of July 11 & 18 issue
Prayer by George Herbert
Little Lion Face by May Swenson
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r -- by ee cummings
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
TS Eliot
Many of the poems read today, were "picks" of Mark Doty in his book, The Art of Description. I hope you are happy that we arrived at a perfectly wonderful understanding of the poems, inferring what he said, but not needing his words!
The two "New Yorker poems" gave us a fresh understanding of tone -- Dothead could be an adolescent speaking, with insulting implications, handled with aplomb, but delving deeper into the significance of a red dot on the forehead, which pushes beyond the boundary of India to universals. Stephen Dunn's clever turns, twisting dino behavior to recognizable contemporary human behavior gives "Reconstruction" multiple meanings as well. Who would guess the poem would arrive at "forgiveness" which has a dubitable existance regarding a "certain slithering and the likes of us."
Delight continues with George Herbert who strings apositives in a way that reads like sentences -- and the eye can ply diagonal sentences as well as it scans a stanza.
For instance, Prayer in breath (in man) heart in heaven and earth.
Words gain value by their placement, even subconsciously beyond the usual sounding out line by line. (think vertical anagrams, accrostics) and certainly a line like
"Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear" will review the fears of the beginning of the poem, and prepare the softer possibilities of joy, love, bliss which end it.
**
Books mentioned:
Dean Young: The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010)
Mark Doty: The Art of Description (Graywolf, 2010)
Quotations: epigraph of Doty’s book.
“We delight in our sensuous involvement with the materials of language, we long to join words to the world— to close the gap between ourselves and things—and we suffer from doubt and anxiety because of our inability to do so.” - Lyn Hejinian
What Doty had to say about May Swenson’s poem:
Chpt. 7: Speaking in Figures
The way language connects like and disparate things to the richest possible effects.
Figurative speech is one of the poet’s primary tools for conveying the texture of experience, and for inquiring into experience in search of meaning.
May Swenson: Little Lion Face 77-79
1. use metaphor and simile to describe what something’s like
2. figures work together to form networks of sense – how the act of picking a flower is standing in for something else.
3. Figuration is a form of self-portraiture
4. Metaphor introduces tension and polarity to language.
5. Metaphor’s distancing aspect may allow us to speak more freely.
6. Metaphor is an act of inquiry (not an expression of what we already know.”
As for cummings’ grasshopper Doty makes this remark:
“You can track and unscramble Cummings’ words, but it is clear that he wants them in a stubborn suspension, not quite parsable , till we get to that marvellous interleaving of rearrangingly and become. That’s what the elements do: rearrange and become so that the event that can be seen takes place. (embodying worldview of 20th century physics with its emphasis not on solidity but on motion, the patterning of life of energy, waving its way into the world of forms. It’s just the right gesture for this poem to end on a semicolon; even though we’ve finally arrived at a recognizable, solid word, that mark of punctuation tells us the sentence is not complete, the grasshopper is soon to leap again.
You will find a small discussion of the Herbert poem, “Prayer” on pp. 35-7. “plummet”: I was wrong to think of “plume” – it comes the French for lead, “plomb” like a plumb bob. Doty says this :“Prayer is a swift mode of traversing heaven and earth, and its plummet (plunge) leads to the depths of the stanza to follow. (Which Kathy pointed out is all positives.) “It’s extraordinary to think of railing at God – using words as engines of war , building a tower in order to thunder back at the old thunderer.”
If you re-read it, look for how Herbert values the active role of intuitive grace he calls “understanding”.
My book review of Doty’s book:
Description is one of those words that is worth holding up, like an ode, especially if one is a poet. How we describe an object, person, scene, experience is to imbue it
with a life beyond what our eyes see. Doty takes us through the layers of perception and discussion of image with words that are not lost in some academic subtext. He provides the reader not only with examples of poems, quotations and ideas ranging from George Herbert to contemporary American poets, but also with a set of keys to engage new understanding.
We know the rule, “show don’t tell” – which caters to the definition of description as the act, or technique of describing, not simply listing facts of what we see. He reminds the reader of Proust’s descriptions, resembling those Japanese flowers gathered tightly into a small sea-shell of a capsule which when dropped into water, slowly and yet surprisingly, expands and blooms. So it is to braid layers of perceptions, including all the senses, and reflect both on what we notice and what is invoked from the past, and if we’re lucky, to find a metaphor, stumble on a point of view, so as to create a totally unique flower. Doty has one chapter devoted to different Sunflower poems, where he analyzes the tone, message; an entire chapter on Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, The Fish and references a dozen complete poems.
“Every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul.” (Emerson)
This book will provide you with a “workshop in your pocket” to help you see and unlock. This book is well worth the romp through the territory called by Coleridge “Best Word, Best Order”.
Dothead by Amit Majmudar p. 66 of August 1st issue
Reconstruction by Stephen Dunn, p. 90 of July 11 & 18 issue
Prayer by George Herbert
Little Lion Face by May Swenson
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r -- by ee cummings
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
TS Eliot
Many of the poems read today, were "picks" of Mark Doty in his book, The Art of Description. I hope you are happy that we arrived at a perfectly wonderful understanding of the poems, inferring what he said, but not needing his words!
The two "New Yorker poems" gave us a fresh understanding of tone -- Dothead could be an adolescent speaking, with insulting implications, handled with aplomb, but delving deeper into the significance of a red dot on the forehead, which pushes beyond the boundary of India to universals. Stephen Dunn's clever turns, twisting dino behavior to recognizable contemporary human behavior gives "Reconstruction" multiple meanings as well. Who would guess the poem would arrive at "forgiveness" which has a dubitable existance regarding a "certain slithering and the likes of us."
Delight continues with George Herbert who strings apositives in a way that reads like sentences -- and the eye can ply diagonal sentences as well as it scans a stanza.
For instance, Prayer in breath (in man) heart in heaven and earth.
Words gain value by their placement, even subconsciously beyond the usual sounding out line by line. (think vertical anagrams, accrostics) and certainly a line like
"Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear" will review the fears of the beginning of the poem, and prepare the softer possibilities of joy, love, bliss which end it.
**
Books mentioned:
Dean Young: The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010)
Mark Doty: The Art of Description (Graywolf, 2010)
Quotations: epigraph of Doty’s book.
“We delight in our sensuous involvement with the materials of language, we long to join words to the world— to close the gap between ourselves and things—and we suffer from doubt and anxiety because of our inability to do so.” - Lyn Hejinian
What Doty had to say about May Swenson’s poem:
Chpt. 7: Speaking in Figures
The way language connects like and disparate things to the richest possible effects.
Figurative speech is one of the poet’s primary tools for conveying the texture of experience, and for inquiring into experience in search of meaning.
May Swenson: Little Lion Face 77-79
1. use metaphor and simile to describe what something’s like
2. figures work together to form networks of sense – how the act of picking a flower is standing in for something else.
3. Figuration is a form of self-portraiture
4. Metaphor introduces tension and polarity to language.
5. Metaphor’s distancing aspect may allow us to speak more freely.
6. Metaphor is an act of inquiry (not an expression of what we already know.”
As for cummings’ grasshopper Doty makes this remark:
“You can track and unscramble Cummings’ words, but it is clear that he wants them in a stubborn suspension, not quite parsable , till we get to that marvellous interleaving of rearrangingly and become. That’s what the elements do: rearrange and become so that the event that can be seen takes place. (embodying worldview of 20th century physics with its emphasis not on solidity but on motion, the patterning of life of energy, waving its way into the world of forms. It’s just the right gesture for this poem to end on a semicolon; even though we’ve finally arrived at a recognizable, solid word, that mark of punctuation tells us the sentence is not complete, the grasshopper is soon to leap again.
You will find a small discussion of the Herbert poem, “Prayer” on pp. 35-7. “plummet”: I was wrong to think of “plume” – it comes the French for lead, “plomb” like a plumb bob. Doty says this :“Prayer is a swift mode of traversing heaven and earth, and its plummet (plunge) leads to the depths of the stanza to follow. (Which Kathy pointed out is all positives.) “It’s extraordinary to think of railing at God – using words as engines of war , building a tower in order to thunder back at the old thunderer.”
If you re-read it, look for how Herbert values the active role of intuitive grace he calls “understanding”.
My book review of Doty’s book:
Description is one of those words that is worth holding up, like an ode, especially if one is a poet. How we describe an object, person, scene, experience is to imbue it
with a life beyond what our eyes see. Doty takes us through the layers of perception and discussion of image with words that are not lost in some academic subtext. He provides the reader not only with examples of poems, quotations and ideas ranging from George Herbert to contemporary American poets, but also with a set of keys to engage new understanding.
We know the rule, “show don’t tell” – which caters to the definition of description as the act, or technique of describing, not simply listing facts of what we see. He reminds the reader of Proust’s descriptions, resembling those Japanese flowers gathered tightly into a small sea-shell of a capsule which when dropped into water, slowly and yet surprisingly, expands and blooms. So it is to braid layers of perceptions, including all the senses, and reflect both on what we notice and what is invoked from the past, and if we’re lucky, to find a metaphor, stumble on a point of view, so as to create a totally unique flower. Doty has one chapter devoted to different Sunflower poems, where he analyzes the tone, message; an entire chapter on Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, The Fish and references a dozen complete poems.
“Every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul.” (Emerson)
This book will provide you with a “workshop in your pocket” to help you see and unlock. This book is well worth the romp through the territory called by Coleridge “Best Word, Best Order”.
O Pen -- new poet laureate, "left over" poems August 15
Poems for August 15:
Levine: Our Valley
Susan Stewart: A Language; The Forest
A History of the Night (Alistair Reid transl.) of Borges: Historia de la Noche
The theme of "make it new" is part of a talk I'm working on for October. Perforce, my brain is honing in to any article that smacks of a honey called "new" -- which is no surprise, as that's how brains work. If we always do the same old thing, we zone out, and lose that edge of excitement which comes from paying careful attention.
Levine, known as the "working man's poet" is an attentive writer, working connections which keep our brains going, and "peopling" his poems, so that they are not vague abstractions, but grounded and real. The "You" in "Our Valley" works this way, and the entire poem works in subtle layers where, yes, literally, you could be part of the folk in the valley who don't know what an ocean is, and figuratively, yes, one can beg the question "what is ocean" -- whether it's what a mountain says it is... or our preconceptions and experience.
I gauge the worth of a poem by the number of times I go to drink from it, and again, and again, I find refreshment. This is such a poem.
The Susan Stewart poems, found in Poetry Magazine (also this summer) also work layers, in a narrative pinned with a conceit I'll call "what we know, is perhaps not what we know when we think we know about others". In the first, she challenges us to think about how we use language and what intimacy or necessity drives us to create a different language? "In the forest" also addresses this "singularity" and how even when we think, "oh, but that isn't ME", it is a challenge to find, recall, and accept that we are more alike than we'd like to think.
In the discussion of "A Language" the following ideas were sparked: she uses preconceived ideas we express in cliche, or thoughts we accept as given, such as
"If you find a good job, you’ll keep it"
"If you work hard, you’ll succeed"
but life and language rarely work the way we intent.
Others think the conceit was "Stolen futures".
A discussion about making up languages, forcing people to learn a language (such as Afrikaans, a made-up language only good for South Africa, but the Africans want to learn English, for a better chance of connection with the world).
There was variation in the understanding of the details of the couple,
and many felt the poem confusing. Others felt it made perfect sense.
The Borges poem, in both English and Spanish, puts into mind the question of "sight", insight... how we seek to explain dark, the mysteries – the dizzying inexhaustibility of “in between two lights” we can only guess at through myths and dreams. What do we learn from translation?
Our eyes will see patterns, such as white spaces, eye rhyme, discrepancies of line and length; Using two translations and a dictionary will highlight different ways of understanding the content. What is "Historia" in Spanish? Story, History, in Romance languages has the same word. What are our connotations of "history". And what associations do we have with Night?
Levine: Our Valley
Susan Stewart: A Language; The Forest
A History of the Night (Alistair Reid transl.) of Borges: Historia de la Noche
The theme of "make it new" is part of a talk I'm working on for October. Perforce, my brain is honing in to any article that smacks of a honey called "new" -- which is no surprise, as that's how brains work. If we always do the same old thing, we zone out, and lose that edge of excitement which comes from paying careful attention.
Levine, known as the "working man's poet" is an attentive writer, working connections which keep our brains going, and "peopling" his poems, so that they are not vague abstractions, but grounded and real. The "You" in "Our Valley" works this way, and the entire poem works in subtle layers where, yes, literally, you could be part of the folk in the valley who don't know what an ocean is, and figuratively, yes, one can beg the question "what is ocean" -- whether it's what a mountain says it is... or our preconceptions and experience.
I gauge the worth of a poem by the number of times I go to drink from it, and again, and again, I find refreshment. This is such a poem.
The Susan Stewart poems, found in Poetry Magazine (also this summer) also work layers, in a narrative pinned with a conceit I'll call "what we know, is perhaps not what we know when we think we know about others". In the first, she challenges us to think about how we use language and what intimacy or necessity drives us to create a different language? "In the forest" also addresses this "singularity" and how even when we think, "oh, but that isn't ME", it is a challenge to find, recall, and accept that we are more alike than we'd like to think.
In the discussion of "A Language" the following ideas were sparked: she uses preconceived ideas we express in cliche, or thoughts we accept as given, such as
"If you find a good job, you’ll keep it"
"If you work hard, you’ll succeed"
but life and language rarely work the way we intent.
Others think the conceit was "Stolen futures".
A discussion about making up languages, forcing people to learn a language (such as Afrikaans, a made-up language only good for South Africa, but the Africans want to learn English, for a better chance of connection with the world).
There was variation in the understanding of the details of the couple,
and many felt the poem confusing. Others felt it made perfect sense.
The Borges poem, in both English and Spanish, puts into mind the question of "sight", insight... how we seek to explain dark, the mysteries – the dizzying inexhaustibility of “in between two lights” we can only guess at through myths and dreams. What do we learn from translation?
Our eyes will see patterns, such as white spaces, eye rhyme, discrepancies of line and length; Using two translations and a dictionary will highlight different ways of understanding the content. What is "Historia" in Spanish? Story, History, in Romance languages has the same word. What are our connotations of "history". And what associations do we have with Night?
Monday, August 1, 2011
O Pen 7/18 tabled for 8/1: DH Lawrence, Carol Muske, Maxine Kumin, Mike Meyerhofer, Dickinson
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
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
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.
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