Poems for Lunch: October 17

Living Room by Marie Ponsot
Persimmons by Li-Young Lee
A Fantasy – Louise Glück
The Sound Of Trees – by Robert Frost

How do form and meaning work? We'll start with a "tritina" and end with a version of Robert Frost who experiments with rhyme but understands the importance of the "meter-marking argument" and function of rhyme. (The text used for discussion is that of the original versions of this poem
is as it appeared in the August, 1915, issue of The Atlantic Monthly. There are some differences between this text and the text of the poem as it appeared in later editions of Frost's poetry.)


**
We read through the Marie Ponsot poem in several ways -- stanza by stanza, as well as line by line to slow down the way the words combined and recombined. Highlights noted: the sound -- of K's, P's, M's, D's...
one conditional "if" among 3 stanzas of things at risk of breaking, aching, buckling --balanced by a positive final line using the end words, and a repeated hypenated word in each stanza. (paint-stuck; house-warm; storm-hit; wind-break) The title,then is understood not as a room in a house, perhaps with a family picture, but a "living" room, where life-space is alive... which is to say, colliding, joining, separating..."if we force it open the glass may break." How do we frame what is special to us? That is what we must put up as wind-break. Truly, a must-read.

We discovered much about persimmons, and memory in Li-Young Lee's poem, and a sense of "ripeness" which comes at a time we may or may not notice. This much longer poem winds mother, father, persimmons, into a satisfying metaphor of a fruit confused with the word "precision" and other words now forgotten. We noted the precise instructions of how to sniff, eat, chew. What gets you into trouble? fight, fright? And what comforts? birds, yarn. And did you know every persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing? This is where the poem turns and loss includes blindness.
Louise said it reminded her of Wallace Stevens, "13 ways of looking at a blackbird".

Glück's "A Fantasy starts out with a vernacular "I'll tell you something:" Who would guess it would be followed by "every day/people are dying." And then, to add to the suspense: "And that's just the beginning". From there, the funeral home, the birth of widowhood, the sequence of how we cope with grief for which there really are no guidelines, only prescribed motions. The "suddenly" in the 3rd stanza underlines the arrival of people who will participate in mourning, in contrast to the sickroom, the months of isolation. The final stanza goes to the heart --
the desire to move backward -- not to perhaps the great intimacies of our back story -- but "just a little".
Powerful poem indeed.

We ended with Frost and the "sound of trees" -- what the wonder is.. the contrast of rooted trees and people who wish to "unroot"... what we say, but don't do, or what going is about... what is reckless, what needs saying, and how do the trees say it? There were as many responses to the poem as people in the room!

Another wonderful session!

Poems for October 14

Love Is More Thicker Than Forget by E.E. Cummings
opening poem: set to music: Uta Fricke Quartett - Love Is More Thicker Than Forget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mYEa_QMZ4c
The Hunchback in the Park by Dylan Thomas
And You, Andrew Marvell, Archibald MacLeish
Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/andrew-marvell
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell
May my heart always be open (on poets walk) by E.E. Cummings

I was reading James Dickey's notes on lectures and agree that the Thomas and MacLeish poems he mentioned are well worth the read…
I am curious to know if you think the music enhances the first e e cummings … and for those who have not yet discovered "Poets Walk" on University by the Memorial Art Gallery, the final Cummings poem is carved in granite on the corner of University and Prince.

Monday was the 14th and ee cummings birthday (b. 1894!) -- so of course there were several "poems of the day" as tribute -- one of which was "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) and on Writer's almanac "5" which is a visual delight.
The two Cummings poems for today's discussion look "traditional" in regular-looking stanzas and yet both play with syntax to tickle our imagination to think deeper. We know one doesn't say "more thicker" or more seldom,
and what could "less it shall unbe" be? Everyone's mind was set a-whirring, including an association with Corinthians (Cummings father was a minister, so a biblical reference is highly possible -- as in the prayer-like "may my heart always be open). The opposition between "mad and moonly" and "sane and sunly", the sea and the sky leaves a sense of love both as being sandwiched between, and yet, less always and less never, the least and littlest, thick and thin, where "unbeing" and forgiveness and eternal roll all about. One person quoted Sandburg: "I understood it until you explained it to me."
Indeed. For the second Cummings, "may my heart always be open" we have a return to "little" -- poised just like a bird to which the enjambment falls in the first line. The second stanza 3rd line "may i be wrong"
had varying responses: inverted syntax (parenthetical, I may be wrong) as well as a request not to be cast into
an old-man's inflexible thinking proclaiming "rightness". The final stanza has a feel of of "may" as a conditional "should" or "if" to join the "could fail" -- this impossible yet delightful metaphor of pulling "all the sky over him with one smile" with a sense of contradiction -- only a fool could do this, only a fool could fail to do this.
The playfulness invites us to stay with the poem, entertain possibilities -- encourages us to go beyond irritation or annoyance that meaning is not a straight forward shot.
The way in which he takes givens and plays with syntax, underlines the importance of "play", which has a simultaneous layer that is often quite serious.

We both read and listened to the Dylan Thomas and spoke of the problems both of how we "hear" and how a poem is read. A poem is meant to be "heard" -- but sometimes the poet is not able to read aloud to do service to the poem his imagination provided in his head. Sometimes also, as readers,we try to find signs in the poem to guide us, as we receive the words through our own filters. For me it was the "k" in the first stanza — it's a hard consonant— no tongue involved with forming it, and the air has to be forced out, not in the gluggy-"g" way but crackled and spat. The final stanza repeats the words: park, dark, but the bell is now a kennel, the lock perhaps now, a lake. The conversational "Mister, hey mister" the childhood ownership of "sailed my ship" runs parallel to this "old man sleeper". Why only two periods? Who is the woman
that might "stand in the night after the locks and chains // all night in the unmade park"? Whatever is happening, "the wild boys, innocent as strawberries" also do not know, wrapped as they are in their own imaginations, inviting us also to remember such times.


I love the idea of the "And" anaphor in MacLeish's poem as biblical and as the slant reference to Corinthians in Cummings "love is…" and "may…" As I noted, James Dickey called the MacLeish poem "one of the most beautiful poems that the English tongue has ever conceived of." Some felt the floating appreciation of the earth, even without the modern idea of being able to look down at it from an airplane. We did touch down on the 17th century's fascination with planispheres... and this idea of the shadow of the earth as it revolves, crossing all the various countries -- felt also like crossing over time. For some, the shadow of the night coming on was part of a song of joy... for some, a more sombre music. We all wondered what MacLeish was thinking of to title the poem as he did. Perhaps he was thinking of "To His Coy Mistress" -- but in Marvell's 8 stanza "Definition of Love", we have metaphysical "poles", ("though love's whole world on us doth wheel")-- cramp'd into a planisphere. It was helpful to discuss the times, the revolutionary times, uprisings, court intrigues, dictates of fate.
I'm reminded of the Mobile in front of the MAG -- where two arms sweep where the wind nudges them -- but never will meet.

How great to have a group discuss four poems, all embracing "love" in some way -- including quoting the lyrics,
"if loving you is wrong, then I don't want to be right."

Rundel: Poems for Lunch: October 10

POEMS DISCUSSED:
Words for Worry by Li-Young Lee
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
Angels of Radiators by A. Poulin, Jr. (professor, poet-translator, editor) (b. 1938-1996)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/a-poulin
Hurry by Marie Howe
Three Days of Forest, a River, Free by Rita Dove

Sunday, 9/30, Li-Young Lee was guest of BOA editions and read at the Memorial Art Gallery accompanied by sitar player, David Whetstone. The program included Words for Worry. Outside the MAG, you might have seen the tiles for “Poets Walk”: Li-Young Lee has one, as does BOA founder, A. Poulin, Marie Howe and Rita Dove. You might enjoy imagining what phrase or words you would use from the poems to put in a tile on a poets walk. For more information: (http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/poets-walk)

The first poem by Li-Young Lee is worth reading in different ways in order to appreciate the nuances of "Worry".
It starts "in media res" -- in the middle of things -- "Another word for father is worry" -- as if we have dropped in on a conversation. A single line. Stanza break. 3 couplets. A quatrain with hypenated words creating names and ending with five lines where the final 3-line sentence breathes. More than a catalogue, it reminds a reader of the experience as a child, providing a parent with worries... and if a parent, one thinks of one's children.
Lee shows the various facets -- the embodiment of "worry" as father, boiling water, taking care of a child --
which segues into the word "son" -- with a play on "delight" and "hidden". One person remarked on the use of indigenous people to hyphenate names, often with a verb -- so a son is also the action of leaving and returning.
The language in the quatrain adopts an elevated Biblical register, which makes me think of Father-Son as Christian relationship, although followed by a fragment which starts the final stanza: "But one word for father."
And after this exploration of words for "worry" -- the reassurance of the final sentence which flows easily,
unlike the previous choppy rhythms.


The second Li-Young Lee poem feels like a meditative breath which takes us "up" as James said, "like an out-of-body experience" -- a superior point of view... and yet freedom spirals to fasten onto each falling thing.
A good poem doesn't need to explain, postulate or pound sense into the reader. This is a perfect example
of suggestion, contradiction gathered into the unity of "love".

A. Poulin, founder of BOA and renowned teacher and figurehead in Rochester, provides a poem which creates
the sounds of old cars, regulators and the feel of angles of night, cold, and the "angels responding to blank space" which respond to "sing wild allelujahs warm as Spring". The metaphorical "furnace fails like heaven"
and work of the radiator where "The water that will turn/to steam and turn to heat/and rise as grace runs out."
requires the mortal action of going down to turn the valve to "filling up" for those angels to return...
As one person put it: here's a simple, mundane object like a radiator, given "high-flown" worth.


The poem by NY State Poet Laureate, Marie Howe, "Hurry up darling" brought a few of us to tears -- how what we do as parents, then is imitated by children, who take, tease and grow up, and hold the keys... It's so easy to recognize in the opening enumeration" We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store/
and the gas station and the green market and/ "
the pace with which we lead our lives. Howe cleverly stops this endless bustle by following "and" with
Hurry up honey, which spins the crux of the poem into orbit.


The poem by Rita Dove, US Poet Laureate, 1993–1995, recreates a gripping narrative of an escape to freedom,
which bears examination about the twisted logic of slavery. We started the discussion by examining what "duty's whistle" means, both in and out of the context of the poem. It follows the opening sentence: "The dogs have nothing better
/to do than bark;" But, isn't that what dogs do? And when do they bark -- to greet, to warn,
when they are in pain, i.e. to communicate." And dogs as a fill-in for "inferior to human", or perhaps at best,
faithful servant... and later, "Who can point out a smell/
but a dog? " -- both the dogs set to chase a fugitive -- but also the ability of a dog to point out things for what they are. The paradox in this stanza is worth noting as well: "The terror of waking is a trust/
drawn out unbearably/
until nothing, not even love,
/makes it easier, and yet
/I love this life:"
The title prepares us with the word "free" to understand more fully the final word of the poem "underground".
the river to cross, as the river Styx or the Ohio and boundary between life/death... the visible/invisible,
all these themes intricately bound up in a poem where each line bears the weight of saying one thing, but meaning yet another -- what Robert Frost calls "ulteriority". Case in point: the final sentence broken into 5 lines: Faint tongue, dry fear,

I think I lost you to the dogs,

so far off now they're no

more than a chain of bells

ringing darkly, underground.


Thank you all for coming and for the wonderful discussion and sharing!

poems for October 7

Green-Striped Melons by Jane Hirschfield
Make It New by Alice Fulton
from Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner
The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop

This week's poems are in response to a letter to the editor of Poetry Magazine, criticizing Michael Robbins' review of the Norton Anthology, Postmodern American Poetry.
You might enjoy this 2008 article about Ezra Pound who coined the term "Make it New" --
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_menand
What does "make it new" mean in 2013? Below some old, some new, some long, some short. The point is not to belabor an academic approach so much as to see how each poem is working.

**

For 10/7, I picked four poems, two of which are “old” to form a sandwich around two of which are “new”, using these terms loosely. Although the name Ezra Pound is often inseparable from his phrase, “Make it New” (the “it” meaning the culture of the past) perhaps the question is more to make artistic expression something which allows
a reader, viewer, witness to ponder on what brings vitality, meaning—and to walk away
feeling that the experience (poem, concert, art exhibit, performance, etc.) in some way underlines that life matters.

The first poet: Jane Hirschfield’s biography underlines her contributions as poet, essayist, teacher, translator, ambassador. To quote Rosanna Warren from the American Poet site,
“Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature...Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield's poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance.” - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563#sthash.cDE3eE7R.dpuf

The first poem, taken from her 2001 anthology, “Given Sugar, Given Salt”
demonstrates how she shares “riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature”.
One could read “Green-Striped Melons” as 3 stanzas (broken into two quatrains, one couplet) which have nothing to do with traditional meter. Or count syllables and admire her delicate weave of repetition:
“they lie” and a line break to “under stars” vs. “they lie under rain in a field”. vs.
the fragment. “Under sun.”
The Comparison of melons to “some” people continues the idea of something hidden, unexpected expressed by “under”. The group picked up on a play of implied homonym weight/wait for ripeness and ambiguity of “lie” as both position and how depth is deceptive, whether in melons, people or paintings. Judith recalled the concierge in “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”

Born a year before Hirschfield (1952), the second poet, Alice Fulton, is known for her innovative use of language and her explorations of “poetry as sensual math”, “fractal poetry”etc. The poem under discussion, “Make it New” which appeared in Poetry Magazine, this October (2013) demonstrates her facility to vivify both line and cliché, to make the reader think about perception, and what it is that we really “know”. One person offered the idea of the setting of a graveyard (inscriptions on implied tombs in a blizzard), corroborated by “what I do for a dying”. The “how” of the lines play in multiple ways.
There is an injunction to avoid collective thinking, a twist on the slang for “get out of here”, and an idea of a cathedral, although “stained” glass might mean also, hoist up what we have sullied, colored rose, or altered to suit our personal agendas:

"Avoid the hive mind. Go fly a kite,
raise a stained glass window in the sky.

It’s the opposite of making love to drudgery,
what I do for a dying."

We all laughed when reading the poem sentence by sentence and Larry read with full exclamation as the punctuation demands.
“... The curiosity rover

lands on Mars! “
Curiosity as adjective, also acts as name without a capital letter and rover, points at the space between the couplets as if roving to land... The next statement, uses the 1890 word “hooligan” (note, not new slang, although echoing the vowel sound “oo”.) Again, she breaks into a stanza break – and we discussed “rests” as “remains” or “lies” or even, unassembled. The idea of video games, or an abacus for “reckoning frame” comes to mind.

“New is a hooligan.
It breaks the reckoning frame and rests


in pieces."

At this point, I hope you will want to read the whole poem, to appreciate the format, the tone. (see: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246476 )
I often ask “which line hits you the most” – and for many of us, it was the final couplet which contains the personal expression of grief.

“Let me collect its dna
from the tears on your desk.”


We read through and admired the Ben Lerner, whose poem title,
"from Mean Free Path" evokes this bit of physics: the average distance a particle travels between collisions..., and Lucretius. Lerner, with a light dust of humor over something serious, threads musical references, repetitions, into a personal voice, caught in its sphere, desiring to connect, find a way to communicate.
What the “this” is that surrounds us on our journey? – How do we talk about it with others? He opens with:

“What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that.”

(source: Paris Review, 2013: http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5870/from-mean-free-path-ben-lerner

The final poem, The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop we have read before – but the pleasure does not diminish. Each time we visit, revisit a poem, we are making it new.
Comments included: “It’s like seeing a movie... you don’t have to figure anything... It’s a communion-- nature—with history. We too are on the bus moving into darkness... It’s a symbolic journey where people talk about tragedies and remember and tell... but something arrested for a moment... by moose in complete innocence... reminds of something else of life. new mood. moving into sleep. wakened..."
The moose reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ Aslan – the largeness of spirit some call God,
in a visible visitation. The question of why we all feel “this sweet/
sensation of joy?” does not ask for answer, so much as remind us to take note, remember,
as it comes in the midst of our living stories.

poems for lunch! Rundel October 3

Hurray for poetry as part of lunch! Yesterday was the first of 6 sessions offering "food for thought" in form of sharing the reading of poems.

Poems:
Some Like Poetry: Wislawa Szymborska
A Monday in May: Ted Kooser
A Grandfather: Marie Thurmer (selected by Ted Kooser)
Baby Listening: Billy Collins
Happiness: Jane Kenyon

The wit of arranging a poem by repeating the title, a word at a time, on the first line reminds me that form comes in many guises. Some / like / poetry -- can be said in many ways -- suspending and threading quite different meanings. Some... like poetry.
"Some-- /thus not all.
Like / (as a verb, with a list of likes.)
Poetry/ followed by a question about what it is.

It amazes me that 7 people can discuss 3 stanzas and pick up on so many dimensions that lie in wait for the reader.
Whether it is the vernacular response to the fact of many "shaky answers" about what poetry is... the small proportion of people who like it; the other things one likes (which includes the sense of control, of having an upper hand, as well as the tenderness of stroking a dog) the "it" onto which we hold, even if we don't know...
"like to a sustaining railing."

Part of the fun is to read a short poem in many different ways. Reading the Kooser poem as three sentences,
feels differently in the mouth and mind than read line by line. Two parts, like a contrasting weather report...
the breakdown of houses, and what lies under "leaf, cobweb, feather"... the note of nostalgia with the sentimental maple... the threading of bright and somber sounds (peak/leaf/each/weep)and (our/shower/hours).

We all enjoyed the poem selected by Kooser, but noted that the "we" might be an archetype for human beings , not just one caregiver. O like "om" universal ocean, consciousness, or dying breath. the plural meaning of "response we wanted" the almost mistake of understanding the O, where both the one slipping away and the one remaining might remember each other, both say goodbye.

We chuckled at the wit of Collins -- the surreal ideas -- although Mike mentioned British vernacular -- which adds to the humor. If we called the service "baby monitor" it would lose out on some of the absurd. We all agreed that the ending had an unexpected darkness -- bathed in ambiguity.

We ended on Kenyon's poem, where the first 3 stanzas describe the haphazard nature of happiness. The final stanza feels like anything but circumstances that would allow happiness-- the indent moving from humans to inanimate infused with a sense of death, as if to echo the "unmerciful/hours of your despaire.".

What a joy to spend an hour with delightful people and give poems a chance to do their work as both prompts for the shapes of the sounds and sense.

10/4/2013
the boulder, shade of pine barrens, sea, wineglass -- what we might associate

Poems for September 30

Wedding Cake by Naomi Shihab Nye
Sea Surface Full Of Clouds by Wallace Stevens
2 stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" -- Wallace Stevens
In Love with You by Kenneth Koch

“Almost anything great that has survived the test of time has a riddle in it, a long arc between comprehension and understanding.” from interview with Ange Mlinko http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/06/17/poetry-must-still-dance-an-interview-with-ange-mlinko/

The first poem has plenty to puzzle about -- from the surprise of a mother giving a stranger her baby so she can spend an hour washing her hair and changing her clothes, to the question of whose "mother" is claimed by "my" and onward to the end line knowledge a baby knows: a small finger, funnier than the whole arm. What is layered in poem and metaphor of dress, ritual, etc. brings the reader back to a universal recognition of an alphabet coiled in baby curls, the cooing, mewling of "new, new, new" and so much to "chew", an ache associated with a nub of a dream, the proprietorship to protect innocence, the power of detail. Delightful, and yet, not transparent -- meanings layered in title, dress, dreams, not yet lived experiences to come.

By contrast, the 1923 poem by Wallace Stevens creates a symphonic painting, like a theme and variation.
John pointed out the 6/8 time of a barcarolle; we had fun with textures of umbrellas, chocolate, patterns, colors, sounds until Martin pointed out the disquieting feel of juxtapositions and negative vocabulary. Judith thought more of Raoul Dufy and his spring-like colors, as opposed to the hectic and confusing chaos of Art responding the World War I. Is it just an experiment? Is the music like the Elizabethan court musicians, who were in fact spying on the nobles for whom they performed.. Why the interpretation of the sea in French? If it is a virtuoso exercise,
it is more imaginative than contemporary ballet demonstrating correct movement. The sea IS imagination...
Judith pointed out "pistache" -- French, which could easily be mistaken for "pastiche"...
Richard explained from his sailing experience about jelly fish on the deck ("breakfast jelly yellow streaked the deck") and other images... and my guess is that we could have puzzled for quite some time about the nature of change, clouds, sea, surface and what muddles what.

The two stanzas of "Man with the Blue Guitar" allowed us to continue a discussion of the imagination.
John mentioned Baudelaire and "le Mauvais Vitrier" -- persecuted by a malevolent man for not having rose-colored glass... things seen are as seen -- but the function of seeing is an act by each individual... how do our attitudes affect our vision?
Judith mentioned a purple trombone in the store next to the Little Theatre... which seemed a suitable seque for the final poem by Kenneth Koch. Part insouciant O'Hara, part "stop the world I want to get off"... part love poem to the world and wonderful images that make a reader feel alive:
O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance!

It's the kind of poem one wants to read over -- in different ways, allowing each line, linebreak to sink in:

It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), "Let's go five or six blocks."

The questions are more like prompts to participate than phrases requiring answer:
Isn't the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren't my eyes bigger than love?
Isn't this history, and aren't we a couple of ruins?

and on it goes -- as if on skates sweeping us along -- to the end which is the opposite of pinned-down, predictable, explainable -- and the exclamation point allows room for mutated, sad... breezed, revivified
"unabdicated" -- which somehow implies a choice to abdicate which falls in our own court.
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

poems for September 23

To Earthward -- Robert Frost
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes by X J Kennedy
The World Is in Pencil by Todd Boss
The Pattern by Robert Creeley
My Personal Tornado by Jeffrey Harrison

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/poetry-isnt-as-useless-as-a-lot-of-poets-say-it-is/279539/?utm_source=Poetry+Sept+18%2C+2013

I'm not sure the above article does justice to poetry in the closing line -- the question really is not what is the "use" of an individual poem, which borders on the aesthetics and emotional needs that direct our choices.

I will miss the discussion of poems for September 23.
The first one by Robert Frost, was a favorite of Seamus Heaney -- and I think one of mine, which got me thinking about other favorites like Roethke's villanelle. I needed a bit of humor for balance and stumbled on X.J. Kennedy in a book of "old men poems". A bit of linguistic wit, is always welcome in my book, hence, Todd Boss and Robert Creeley's poems -- and back to emotion -- what other's go through, felt with empathy, to reduce a sense that things out of control, tragedy, etc. Jeffrey Harrison reminds us, this is part of the human condition, and our own experience of it is merely a minor reflection.