February 11

Martin Espada : Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass
http://martinespada.net/Litany_at_the_Tomb_of_FD.html
Mary Oliver: The Poet with his Face in His Hands (The New Yorker, 4/4/2005)
: Spring Azures
We Wear the Mask -- Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872–1906
There Is No Word by Tony Hoagland
Where by Taha Muhamad Ali

Imagination threads all the poems discussed today. To see, envision, understand with insight...
paradox, the obscure, becomes possible.

I didn't plan the Espada poem, written on the occasion of visiting Rochester, Frederick Douglass' tomb, interview with Bill Moyers on Obama's 2nd inauguration, to prepare us for Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday 2/12, Lincoln's Birthday.
The world is as we see it, and always will be. (from interview w/ Martin Espada w/ Bill Moyers on Obama’s 2nd inauguration. http://billmoyers.com/wp-content/themes/billmoyers/transcript-print.php?post=22548

But there is something about the foresight of strong leaders, courageous men that allow us to enter the language of "the impossible".
In our discussion, Martin reminded us to pay attention to the difference between "illusion" and "hope".
Hope is OK. Susan B. Anthony saying, "Failure is impossible" had the grit of hard work in it.

That Espada used the "omphalos" or epicenter, the O in Douglass' name, the shape of a button, in a litany -- not an elegy, gives a sacred feel to a prayer, filled with hope.
This is... repeated 8 times; semi-colons and colons marking relationships, clear images of past to present tense cuts out the social importance.



The two Oliver poems struck me as containing a new tone. More realistic. Worthy of the "stone-hard beauty" as well as the playful. By using the second person, she could be talking to herself, to the reader, or universal "us". Does she say to go it alone with complaint, or rather -- take some time with it until you do what you have to do to transform it?

The same with Spring Azures -- whatever the circumstance of Blake, butterfly, or reader, what turns the poem from tra-la-la lyric is the story of Blake, how his imagination freed him, just like the butterfly wings,
the spring return of azures, sharing that hope with us, the reader.

The Dunbar poem gives a clear portrait of the black man. David pointed out the break in the regular rhyme,
Rich pointed out specifically the hemiola (O Great Christ) in between the two iambs of the final stanza.
Subtle ties indeed.

Hoagland's layered sensibility from white milk in wrapped plastic to the stretching of language, relationship is a tour de force which resonates beyond the "how witty, I'm so glad I read that".

Taha Muhamad Ali brings our imagination home, to the reminder of looking for the pencil.

poems for February 4

Poems for February 4

Somewhere to Paris – by Richard Blanco
Dark Charms by Dorianne Laux
Live Light by James Grinwis
from Timbered Choir -- Wendell Berry
Letter to a Lost Friend by Barbara Hamby
quotes of poetry by an art exhibit, Williams Gallery, UU Church, S. Winton Rd.


The first three poems used a single block approach, the Berry gathered into five lines stanzas, and the Hamby had a long line, followed by an indented, shorter line.

How do we respond to form? to title? to "made-up" words as we respond to surface meaning?
I called attention to the multiple layers in the etymology of "Charms" , the ambiguous announcement of "Live Light" -- is it adjective, or verb? descriptor or command? As we read the poems, the repetitions, the play of dream to reality, use of common detail to something we can only hint out as we ponder how important anything is, what the "truth" of anything is.

We admired Richard Blanco's skill, both as inaugural poet, but also the way he "train stitched" the space between "there" and "here", the dreamed and dreaming, until the reader too is swept up in the scrolling wave, heartbeat, breath, and through enjambement, "nothing" defies touch, and can be read two ways
as "keeping nothing with nothing" /to deny the dark. How to you understand this accumulation? The epigram from Pascal -- where there is no misery if you keep in the quiet of your room... not defined by anything outside. The sole cause of a man's unhappiness
is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
--Pascal, Pensées

A beautiful meditation. What makes it convincing is the final sentence and, like the moon video Maura suggested we spend 4 minutes watching,we allow ourselves to BE the solitude
... never more beautiful, the arc of space
I travel through for a few hours, touching
nothing and keeping nothing, with nothing
to deny the night, the dark pines pointing
to the stars, this life, always moving and still.

Somewhere to... could be Paris, or dreamland, or wherever you have been, but are no longer. Which threaded nicely to Dorianne Laux's poem, embracing the "dark", like an incantation, a magic spell. I would say by consensus the favorite line was "bag like a lung filled with shadow and song." which describes "it" -- what is dragged in the past, something in us that longs to be named, something and the final line: "dreams of running, the keys to lost names." Again, the line breaks are such that "explaining this" cannot be done -- as the words don't spell anything out explicitly and the opening line "Eventually the future shows up everywhere" bears re-reading. What is true? What is important?

I loved the language play of the Grinwis, "a big question pops out of the frost cabbages" and his questioning starts to revolve (unlike the stonewheel, unable to rotate any direction) "Everyone is waiting/
for something. Why won’t it come?
Indeed "time strikes out at night like a loose bandoleer" --

Wendell Berry's soothing words take us to trees, tasks laid aside, to what is afraid of us, what we fear... finally the chance to listen to our own song.

The Hamby addresses aging, but also that yearning for a word that would help us pin down what can't be said... John brought up the story of Gertrude Stein chiding Picasso for his portrait of her: Stein – but I don’t look like this. Picasso: You will. Marcie brought in the quote:
People die. Life goes on. We are all people just walking each other home.

title – what it isn’t said. What friend? how lost? what is the relationship of the us. But poems aren't about facts pinned down -- but a a place we enter a deeper consciousness, recognize a feeling we might have been too busy to notice.

Poems for January 14

New Year Resolve by May Sarton,
Flowers by Linda Pastan,
Above the Lake -- Stephen O’Connor (Verse Daily 1/7/13)
How it is -- Maxine Kumin
Bagel Shop Jazz – Bob Kaufmann

New Year Resolve:
We spent quite a bit of time on the May Sarton poem, admiring how the rhyme did not make a clunky appearance, but rather the sounds and repetitions created a pleasing effect. Unfortunately, I had the poems open with my comments, and didn't save them,
and in an unexpected shutdown of the computer, they were not saved, so I can only go by memory.


This is the perfect situation to allow her message of allowing silence, like a cat, to enter. Clutter enters twice in the first stanza, with an overtone of the “Walrus and the Carpenter’s “the time has come, to speak of many things”. Clutter clutters as noun and verb whereas, by the last stanza, “clutter” is shoved aside. Thus, the “firming of resolve” comes after the speaker considers the inner peace found in silence that allows clarity. Inner and outer world combine ending with a slant reference to the 23rd psalm.
We discussed at length the line, “all I have ever been/false or true/ will live again in my head” – with multiple takes on how “being” could be as an inside interpretation, as opposed to being run by “monkeymind” and outside clutter we have allowed without mindful attention.

Flowers is a sensuous run of couplets filled with colors and luscious sounds, names of flowers like “clivia” and a perfect touch of unusual adjectives – the “odd magenta”, “secular lilies” (without any mention of sacred), "notched" tulips. "The odd strangeness of flowers" in the chill of winter does indeed make one ask, “Is it real” -- and think about how juxtaposition changes our view of everything.

Above the Lake is a fine puzzle poem, filled with imbedded meanings, to the point that Sandra had the idea of substituting all the "this means that" to reduce the poem to this idea:
In this season, the snow, (woods, sky, mute roar)
is composed of abstraction (brook as diagonal gash, trees as lines, )
which is meaning (longing, loneliness accreting as quiet on quiet, white on bluish white)

Even if you don't read the poem this way, the way it is constructed, allows snow, abstraction and meaning to "accrete" and end on "white" (which is the color of blank).

We had a romp with that one -- and only just enough time to read the Maxine Kumin whose elegy for Anne Sexton is one of the most brilliant poems I know.


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2013! Poems for Jan. 7

Ode to Repetition by Ellen Bass
The Conductor by Jacqueline Berger
Frankly by Naomi Shihab Nye
Happiness by Jane Kenyon
Push Back the Catastrophes – by Jayne Cortez


How to start the new year... examine what "new" and "same" mean, and read a bit of Ellen Bass. What an audacious title -- an ODE to repetition -- so the same walk,
looking at the sea which not only cycles through tides but reflects the weather; wash the same dishes, and in the same breath think of the rhodendron making not just blossoms but "pink ceremony". Water then, will be a gift, lampposts will wear halos in the fog, and the moon will rinse parked cars as we age, and we can find reassurance in stars, call them faultless as they disappear into day. Well, of course, you can't paraphrase a poem, but you will want to enjoy the colloquial tone that Ellen Bass sprinkles with such unusual images. Have you ever thought of waves as "surf's drunk crashing into the cliffs like a car wreck."

We discussed at length the nature of repetition -- how especially in music, even though the notes might be the same, they aren't played the same way when repeated. The variation hanging on the repeated hanging on we do to the familiar. How Bass challenges the metaphor of the "fixed town of your life" with line breaks that suspend the possibilities only to surprise you. I'm grateful, is followed by an observation
that the toilet is in it's usual place; back in bed she finds that the same woman in bed is not the same; The opening of curtains repeated the second time has no closing. A wonderful poem to read to be reminded not so much of what happens (repeats over and over) to each of us, but the possibility of how we face that fact.
We could despair, be afraid, or watch how same wears a different face, as we do.

The next poem allows us to think of who we are -- from the front, or the back, old, young, healthy or stricken with a disease like parkinsons; the role of music; the role of "composing" or "constructing" a face. The two "I" sentences could be the conductor speaking, but just as easily the speaker of the poem, who seems to be able to "wear his skin". Twice the use of innocence, but the repetition expands into trying to pinpoint the meaning of "the face/unconstructed". The ending question, stretched over seven lines implies for how close he is to not being
able to be a conductor, or alive, twice, repeating the word "edge".
the description of Parkinsons' effect, "fingers tap their useless code" and what else can he do, but show us who he is/ a man standing too close to the edge,/ edge no one can call him back from.

Martin called on the fact that the poem comes from a book entitled, "The Gift that Arrives Broken"-- all of us are born with something slightly "broken" -- sometimes not apparent, sometimes declaring itself much later in life. Perhaps there is a play on the word "construct" and "conduct", which would accentuate the unconstructed smile, is attached to the person whose gift broken, will prevent him from conducting both music and his life.

We did not discuss "Frankly" by Naomi Shihab Nye very long, but admired the wry tone, and how indeed we do not know how to be with the dying, let alone make time for them.
What is labor? What do we bare, bear, as in carry, and what bores us in all the senses of the word, what penetrates through us, or cannot engage us.

Kenyon's poem, Happiness develops a fine context to show happiness as something
that appears as unpredictably as a prodigal son, an uncle you never knew about.
And so you feast, "and weep... to know that you were not abandoned" in those "unmerciful hours of despair". Three times she repeats in the final stanza,
"it comes" with the fourth time repeating, it even comes... followed by a list of inanimate objects: boulder, pine barrens, rain and wineglass. Why is it weary of
holding wine -- the waiting for celebration and feast -- as if to underline that
unpredictability of happiness.

The final poem, I wonder, if it were performed like Jayne Cortez' "endangered species" which is spoken with music, might come across better. But the message is clear. Whether it is Gaia, mother earth, or an endangered animal or human,
catastrophe is pushed back to the root cause: the catastrophers.

poems for December 31

Hymnal by Hafizah Geter
Apples, peaches by Donald Hall
Winter Solstice by Janlori Goldman
Late December by Joe Millar
Winter Mantel by David Livewell

**
The question comes up in my mind often, about the arbitrary nature of selecting a poem for discussion. It might be because on a particular day, I happen to be thinking about something addressed in a poem, or perhaps I have just read something about the poet, recognize the name, or simply, something in the title looks appropriate for the season, as in three of the poems discussed on the last day of December, 2012, last Monday.

What is it that we seek from poems, and how do we "complete" them as readers are questions that provide a mirror for our own self-interrogations as we read.

In the case of Hymnal, the discussion among the 18 of us present, was filled with different angles about this "block of 17 lines" -- whose form was as tight and unrelentless (no stanza break, so "breathing space) as the hard smiles of the aunts.
Do we know exactly what abuse or reasons for it the speaker refers to? do we know the circumstances of the father who at age 9 held a shotgun and what exactly happened? As David pointed out, we could argue a long time about comparative evils, and pit faith against our hard core beliefs. It reminds me of "the incoherence of incoherences" -- or how faith and reason/philosophy in their very argumentation will not come to a dialogue that can make sense to either party. Some agreed that violence can only breed violence, some not, but the point of a poem is not to support a "right or wrong" way of thinking.
Why do we laugh at certain details, cringe at others, and which associations are
merely our experience pinned on to the poem as opposed to images proposed to us by the poem?

Hymnal, as title is an interesting point of departure. A collection of songs of Praise. Can it be applied to the rigid belief system confirmed each Sunday in the hard pews, the righteous beatings? The end lines, referring to the spirit,
point to some hope, and also the triumph of the writer, to go beyond such confines,
recognizing how difficult it is to break through the cover ups, self-deceptions, the pain of injustices, etc. The theme of covers: the couches in plastic, the potpourri, the smiles, the "dress like roses" -- what we do to look our best despite circumstances pulls at the details of shotgun, switches, moonshine, and the rot at the root of a family tree.

By relief, Apples, Peaches, which refers to a jump rope rhyme, is a clever imitation of pure rhyme, but substituting modern items and Twinkies and wonder bread, move on to Plague and pestilence, Unicorn sphinx, German women's name, news journals, and each mention of death, is counted in shortened space. How many seasons, months, hours, days, breaths -- until we're dead, cold, stiff, rigid, eaten by the worm.
Clever but sobering. The rhyme allows us breathing space, unlike "Hymnal" and yet, also is relentless, and we can feel the squeezing of the undeniable inevitability,
as marks of culture, history, tick us along to the ultimate end.

Janlori Goldman's "Winter Solstice is "for Jean Valentine, about whom we did not talk, except a slight reference to her as a language poet, which perhaps is reflected in the occasional wide spaces on the line. The 20 line poem has a melancholy feel from the sonics, (slow sheathing of moon in shadow; flow in ... filter out... ripped roots... a meditative flow with the repeated images of round moon, home, space of curling in and repetition of "before that" as if circling through a nostalgic recollection.

We ended with the long title of Plutzik's poem, 3 lines long, which "coupled" with the three couplets. The contrast between realistic title and elevated language of the couplets creates a space for the reader to think on omens and fact, the fragility of what could be depending on your circumstances.

And now, we speed on the first week of 2013.

poems for December 17

Poems for December 17 : NOTE: THERE IS NO MEETING DECEMBER 24
but we will meet on December 31.

Reindeer Moss on Granite by Margaret Atwood
Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo
By intuition, Mighty Things by Emily Dickinson
Baby Villon by Philip Levine
My Cathedral by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Prophecy by W.S. Merwin

Apparently, the world is pronounced as coming to an end, again -- and Jim brought in the spread from the NY Times Sunday paper of poems addressing this. Beginnings and endings are a great topic of conversation, and the poems read aloud and shared
above, all seemed to share in an understanding of cycles and connections.
We did not have time for Linda Pastan's "Mosaic", originally slated for discussion.

Starting with Atwood, whose conceit in "Reindeer Moss" works such a tiny living thing, stanza by stanza from the large, (language is gallic -- which as John pointed out penetrated most of Europe)to smaller units. Dialect, (David mentioned Yeats on Ezra Pound's translations, "clear as if said in dialect") then syllable, and the specificity of sound. And yet, like water wearing down boulders, cliffs, mountain tops, the moss, spores as rumours (both sound, and an invisible spread of what is understood) penetrates -- perhaps an indirect hint that language too can have such an effect. The tone and spirit of the poem has an ancient feel of reverence to it,
as do the Dickenson and Longfellow poems, "Intuition asserts itself" and tall trees contain the same awe of cathedrals.

In the Dickinson poem, the question of "who asks" and "who is you" takes a back seat, to the larger idea that "mighty things" don't need justification... It feels rather like we are eavesdropping on a delightful snippet of conversation where "omnipotence lisps" and in which we "overhear" sea in the see; eye in I.

The Longfellow sonnet has perfectly embraced rhyme until the final two lines...
"...listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship with out words.
Almost everyone had a favorite memory of a "sacred place", a childhood outdoor space where trees arch into an architecture of sacred proportions. Carmin referred to a relative who calls himself a "blue domer", worshipping the unhampered largeness of the sky. Kathy thought of Wendell Berry's Timbered Choir.

In Philip Levine's "Baby Villon", the details evoked everything from Kristellnacht to child soldiers in Africa, outcasts and boxers. Indeed, if you google, you'll find many boxers and the dates, 1924... But the last lines "knock us out". What humanity to imagine someone, who is everyone, as brother, cousin, as self, transformed
by the pain.

Joy Harjo: "Perhaps the World Ends Here":
I love the title, which mentions end, and the opening stanza which starts with "the world begins" and the metaphor of table: what do we bring to the table? set on the table? do at the table? from "a" table, to "the" table, to a specific series of "this" table, is repeated 4 times. (as house, as starting place for war; as where we birth, and lay out the dead; sing, pray, give thanks). The 3rd and 4th stanzas refer to table as "it", what we chase away from it; what happens under it; instructions and making men/women at it-- as if to carry a larger sense of "table" as life and life's instruction manual. The middle of the poem, not only made me chuckle, but provides a reassurance about our human imperfection :
"Our dreams drink coffee with us, as they put their arms/around our children. They laugh with us at our poor/falling down selves and as we put ourselves back/together once again at the table.

Ending with Merwin, his "prophecy" demonstrates what Dogen says, "One side of your hand is in the daylight./The other side is in the dark."


So... how will the world end this December? We take each word, to understand
the sound of world, as our "year" comes to an "end" -- only to begin something,
again.

Poems for December 10

Great Things Have Happened -- by Alden Nowland
Contrary Theses (II) -- Wallace Stevens
Butterfly -- Margaret Atwood
Crickets -- Margaret Atwood
Bear Lament -- Margaret Atwood

I was going to start with Rilke's sentence, “Human beings are put on Earth to experience the beauty of the Ordinary”. But opted instead, given the rather loud sounds of the set up of a Hannukkah party which surrounded 18 of us, focussed on the "how" of delivery of a poem. Would these poems be different if read silently in the total peace of your favorite place, sitting in your most favorite chair/sofa/spot on the floor/bed?
The "How" tells as much of a story as the "what". If you start a sentence with "Oh, I suppose..." this will be quite different from a declaration, well, my favorite moment in 1963 was... Just as "But of course we were lying", which drops out of the sky to make you wonder if you should try to believe the speaker, intrigued by such candid surprise, and wondering what "truth" will be told.
Alden Nowland hooks us in, and before you know it, the hinge of the present, remembering the past, folds in the middle on one sentence, ""Is that all?" I hear somebody ask." and the second part of the poem continues the 4 am-cinnamon-toast-eating-occasion, is transformed to a trip to a country never visited before, where "butter is a small adventure" -- and then comes the confirmation of the Great Thing: "except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love."
The exception, imbedded in the exception, of the unique possibility in relationships (with perhaps a raised eyebrow for the 3) and reminding us to look at what moments cry out, "this is really special, really precious."

Emily compared the advent of expecting a child to the country metaphor: You think you are going to "Italy"... but then the child is born, and it turns out it is not the sunny boot, kicking in the Mediterranean, but the North Sea and Dutch dykes...

Wonderful poem allowing reflection about expectation, context, the "how of a moment".
Stevens had a very different approach, setting up oppositions:
not only concrete and abstract, but "natural world/human", the adjective "bombastic" modifying "intimations" and a sense of humor with "martyrs a la mode; alexandrin verve, not verse; wide-moving swans. Although not an easy poem to grasp, the unexpected adjectives like "chemical" to describe the late-autumn afternoon (yellowish, like sulfur), the sonic effect of cutting "c" threads through the entire poem (chemical, mechanical, barked, park, walk, abstract, contours, cold, conclusion, chrysanthemus) with locust and bombastic containing but the cutting edge, and sibilant, the locust joining the other labials in "leaves" and "yellow".
A touch of synaesthesia, "leaves falling like notes from a piano" heightens the scene of a perfect almost winter day.

The three Atwood poems come from her book "The Door". Although you might suspect with a title like "Butterfly" there would be some sort of resurrection, here, it is a story of her 90 year father when he had the experience of seeing one as a boy, and how it transformed his life; how now, in vain, he tries to return to that time and place growing up. She matches a tercet filled with natural detail of the child's world with a tercet matching the abstract world of his work as an adult. The former is followed by the crux of the poem: It must have been an endless/
breathing in: between/
the wish to know and the need to praise/
there was no seam.

the spotting of the butterfly, such a small incident,(heard parenthetically) "shot him off on his tangent. Those who wouldn't know the logged-out bush lots might call them poverty. For him, the wanderings of his life, cannot allow him to get back to meanderings of the river that ran through his 10 mile square of home.

For Crickets, many memories came up: Pinnochio, who is reminded by Jiminy Cricket
comes in the "consciousness" of the chirpers, the idea of finding crickets on the hearth, perhaps a blessing for the heart of the home. Beautifully constructed poem with the sound of the crickets singing first, "here, here, here, here" contrasts with their being stepped on...and for those that survive, there is nothing to eat. "We have become too affluent./Inside, they’d die of hunger." Now they sing
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. But we're as cruel as the ant in Aesop's fable. We have no more hearth for them. The poem could end here:
Nevertheless, they wake us
at cold midnight,
small timid voices we can’t locate,
small watches ticking away,
cheap ones; small tin mementoes:
late, late, late, late,

but the last song carries to four more lines; bedsheets (like shrouds); bedsprings (one thinks of source; beginnings, return) and the ear now hears ghost-like heartbeats.

The final poem, "Bear Lament" sparked a lively discussion about protection of animals, poaching, Eric Good, the NY Restaurateur who gives tons of money to save tortoises (maiming the beauty of the shell to save the animal)
The poem, rife with enjambements cutting endlines as if to whip us awake, addresses
3 levels of survival: environmental, both Earth, and Species as well as our own old age. What will happen to us in all these instances?

Elaine referred to Annie Dillard: Holy the Firm.