April is the Cruelest month? (see TS Eliot: The Wasteland)http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
Ted Kooser says no! His pick shows what April can be like with the Eliot swept aside.
This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things by Robert Hedin
Flirtation by Rita Dove
Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova by Yusef Komunyakaa
Losing It by Margaret Gibson (with reference to Bishop, "One Art"
Until 1751 in England and Wales (and all British dominions) the new year started on 25 March – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days (the change to 1 January took place in 1600 in Scotland) and see news clippings about celebrations of New Years in April in SE Asia. This weeks poems have to do with Beginnings, endings and possibilities in between.
I love this group -- how a retired professor will give a new take on TS Eliot, how a former dancer who carries an encyclopedia of quotes around in her head will come up with a quote from A.A. Milne's "Now We Are Six" such as :
And so in the end he did nothing at all
just basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl,
I think it's disgraceful the way he behaved
He did nothing but basking until he was saved.
as we discussed "This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things" by Robert Hedin, indeed a delightful poem which made some of us think of EE Cummings. A little everyday 2014 but each detail made extraordinary, such as mention of a shopping mall where you can walk by "bright stables/Of mowers, juxtaposed with the choice "just lie/Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,/And wait for the day lilies/To open. (which in April won't be soon.)
The positive attitude takes a turn at the end: The sun is barely/
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate _
Bands of light over the lawns.
"immaculate" rather disrupts the meter -- but miracles are never an orderly thing.
The poem by Rita Dove (from Poetry,1982) certainly elicited a lot of discussion, summed up this way: "flirtation is a good title for a poem where specific things are alluded to... shakes us, then puts us into larger experience-- and yet we are parsing this poem like a bunch of lawyers... "
What would Rita have to say!
What a contrast with the recent poem by Komunaayaka. Knowing a bit of his background might influence his attraction to the time period of Ahkmatova and what she had to go through. However, what interests me is to look for universals that lie in a poem like this inspired by "a line" from a different time period, by a woman in a quite different place, do that makes us glad to have read it. The crux lies in the juxtaposition of wealth on "Millionaire street" where people wait in bread lines. Here Komunyaaka asks: Did the two poets learn it took more
to sing & reflect the burning icy stars
of poetry where privilege & squalor
lived beneath the same ornate ceiling?
He answers the question... saying how their tears bring them to laughter over pages of snow-blindness, anger "almost keeping them warm" as if to remind us of the possible flowers that come through the cracks in our own contemporary, American version of privilege & squalor.
Since we found two versions of the Margaret Gibson poem, we decided to view the second version next week.
It is shorter, more direct, does not contain as many references for instance to Elizabeth Bishop's famous
One Art. It reminded us of Freligh's "Wondrous" where loss makes artists of us as we weave new patterns into life. The recognition of "losing it" as caregiver, allows us all a level of vulnerability that we ttoo, are losing it, will lose life as we think we know it, which makes room for compassion for both Elizabeth, the speaker of the poem, and her alzheimer-striken husband.
** by contrast, a few weeks later, the Rundel group discussed the Komunyakaa, the Hedin and Gibson. It is a privilege to discuss the same poem with different groups.
For the Komunyakaa, we spoke of Akhamatova's modernist lens, and why we are drawn to struggle. The discussion veered somewhat into politics, idealism, corruption.
New thoughts: The Line, could refer to one of her poems -- or perhaps reference to the bread line, experienced by Anna. Field of Mars (war) after mention of a palace built for a lover, echoes in the "two minds" where snow falls. At the end, snow-blindness could be the tears blinding the eyes in the dual reaction to absurdity.
The dualities abound -- hot/cold images as well as privilege and squalor, tear/laughter; burning icy stars.
For the Hedin: We focussed on the tone, and the ambiguous way to understand "1,000 things. The onomatopoeia of "rocking like a lazy metronome" allows us to slow down and observe -- meditate on all the coulds of obligation and desire to admire, transforming something quite ordinary into something extraordinary.
The Gibson poem was received just as Martin had understood it-- a poem about one person, who is losing it, talking to herself. Of course the "you" could be someone else too, but it is even more frightening to think of a "we" which is a disassociated single person, holding onto herself for dear life. What is OK (is a giraffe OK -- a good luck charm, a memory of childhood that keeps you feeling real?)
I shared the link to the elegiac issue to Kurt Brown that appeared in the Boston Review and this beautiful poem his wife, Laure-Anne Bosselaer found in his "unfinished" poems.
That kiss I failed to give you.
How can you forgive me?
The kiss I would have spent on you is still
There, within me. It will probably die there.
But it will be the last of me to die.
for Laure-Anne
http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/14/spring/bosselaar.php
Friday, May 2, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
O Pen April 14
Poems for April 14
I'll be back for this one-- but sending in March, so people have the poems...
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby (suggestion from Judith)
Introduction to the March issue of Poetry: (see notes below) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/247300
from Tablets by Dunya Mikhail -- the entire set here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
14, 15, 16, 21
Tim Seibles in the same issue has 12 pages in a poem called “Mosaic”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
A few poems.
11 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Starting a discussion session with Naomi Shihab Nye is always a pleasure. In this pick, she announces the subject in the title, "change". What doesn't change? What changes around what you think doesn't change? I love the progression of the poem: One person picks train tracks, another notes with a tinge of sadness how even they lose shininess, the ties split, and if there's no train, that changes the track. Even the "every Tuesday" routine with the strong verbs of cracking chicken necks, is juxtaposed with the widow in the tilted house who spices her soup with cinnamon. The reader travels through details so real, so effortlessly recorded, at this point, why not ask the widow what doesn't change? The shortest line in the poem "Stars explode" introduces these images:
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.
The final stanza takes us to the train whistle, without mention of doppler effect but staged in this haunting way:
The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
You can guess that I want you to read the poem in the original.
The ending poem captures a moment of being 11 years old in a trademark Ferlinghetti easy-going style l creating with beautifully orchestrated flowing lines.
Judith's contribution of City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby gave a ashcan portrait of Manhattan. We learned from her that he was considered greatest critic of jazz. (Where were you when the page was blank?) Although the alliteration seems a bit pedestrian as well as the rhyme (John), David commented on how the syntax moves through the lines...
In general, how hard do we have to work to get to an enjoyment level? This poem required more work for not as much pleasure.
GENERAL
How is Poetry of witness is better than the news? And what news stays news? Jeffrey Brown's article in this issue gives a wide range of examples. How can we allow war after reading such as lines as these: "Now the earth/grew stained with bright blood as men fell in death... so all fought on, a line of living flame" (Iliad, transl. by Robert Fitzgerald and Alice Oswald, "The first to die was Protesilaus/a focused man who hurried to darkness." p. 569 of the March issue of Poetry)
The penultimate essay by Slavoj Zizek calls on the idea of poetry as language in a torture house (citing Lacan) as he looks at Yugoslavia. He first mentions
Plato and the danger of poets as manipulators leading people away from the rational angles of truth... Next, Hegel's mention of the silent, ceaseless "weaving of the spirit": "the underground work of changing the ideological coordinates, mostly invisible to the public eye, which then suddenly explodes, taking everyone by surprise.
How do the "Dichter und Denker" (poets and thinkers) become "Richter und Henker" (judges and executioners?
I only chose a few stanzas from Mikhail and Seibles -- both long poems, presenting as fragments, the first as "Tablets", the second as "Mosaic". How do the titles prepare the mind? Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing... Mosaic -- again, pieces, but do we have all of them, and what part of what story is told? I particularly like the moment when Seibles enters the fragment "Insert your story here".
My hope is that people will read both poems in their entirety... and discuss the "parts" stand out? What are the commonalities, what lessons move us to remember?
**
I was so moved by the Mikhail and Seibles' poems, I penned this for the May issue of Poet Talk:
Tablets by Dunya Mikhail http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
and Mosaic by Tim Seibles http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
Published in Poetry, March 2014 pp. 525-531 and . 546-559
Usually, I shy away from long poems, not just because of the rush-rush-instant-response-mode fostered in our society, or feeling pressed for time, but because in general, I prefer navigating through poetry plump with pith, sassy with surprise and compressing multiple delights to discover. I picked a few excerpts of two long poems, Tablets and Mosaic to discuss in my weekly group, to see how people would respond. It was marvelous to see how in 30 minutes, we not only enjoyed the fragments picked, but were eager to spend time reading both works in their entirety.
The question arises, what makes a long poem enjoyable? What balance of meaning and poetic pleasure derived (sound, image, spacing, line, etc.) convinces the reader that the effort of staying with a poem over 5-12 pages or more is worth the effort?
I think of epic poetry performed aloud, and contemporary poetic experiments which span many pages which I usually avoid and wonder what was it about these two poems which
was so engaging in spite of pages of length.
Sometimes, knowing the background of the poet helps, or the background of the poem,
but even without this, even without more than a passing glance at the title, I first noted these two stanzas from Mikhail, an Iraqi now living in the US.
14
The shadows
the prisoners left
on the wall
surrounded the jailer
and cast light
on his loneliness.
15
Homeland, I am not your mother,
so why do you weep in my lap like this
every time
something hurts you?
This use of inverting the usual powerlessness of the captive and ignored emotional condition of the jailor adds a dagger to a universal feeling. The poem is in translation, so it is hard to know how it “sings”, but the translator has done a good job in line breaks which create hesitancy even with the longer lines. Some stanzas are more gripping than others, but at the end, I had the sense of having read something important worth reading again.
To quote Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader
“When will there be another society that produces poets in Mikhail’s tradition? If you want to understand how disastrously an ancient culture has been affected by its recent history, this poem will tell you more than any film clips, news stories or books about Middle Eastern battles. Sometimes verse becomes the only language adequate to express the struggles of evolution or the depredations of human conflict.”
for more praises of Mikhail’s work: http://www.dunyamikhail.com
Linking a long poem to a title and holding the title in mind, also is an effective tool for reading. Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing...
In Seibles’ poem Mosaic, the title harkens to tiles or pieces. Do we have all of them, and what part of what story do they tell? How is the reader included?
If you think of the sections of the poem as tiles in a large mosaic, this “tile” in the Seibles poem is the one line stanza which invites the reader to participate:
-- / --
Insert your life here.
-- / --
The stanza before speaks of seeing The Game in pieces— /the rules inside me/ like bad wiring… The stanza after asks, Did you mean to be this way?/Did you mean to become/something you didn’t mean?
What would the poem be like if the reader shifted the pieces of the mosaic? In what part of the poem would you “Insert your life ”? Would it change the message, the impact? How does the “who we are in the times we live in” constantly shift?
The curious epigraph is attributed to “Florence Church”, about whom google won’t tell anything but information about the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Thus,
Mosaic sets a tone of entrapment:
I’m a ‘kickin’ but not high
I’m a’flapping’ but I can’t fly
The stanzas are ordered periodically by a straight line or -- / -- . The eye follows how the words/meanings seek space, for instance :
Myself runs
into my other self: Over here!
My self whispers — Freedom
over here!
He uses punction “< and >” but the interpretation is difficult to know. For instance:
... a house of hunger, personal
but not personal: the way moonlight calls
for you and not for you. What
I want> I guess < I want. ... Suppose nobody knows what’s inside you. But you, yourself, find it pretty clear: anxiety adding up, leveling off, doubling > some comfort in people
you think you
understand/frustration,
fatigue, a secret.
(the slash works to bar understanding, or put up a fence against which three things lean: (frustration, fatigue, a secret.)
Seibles evaluates our culture, but indirectly, using biography, reflection (metaphors for eyes, sight, what is seen, visible) and existential questions. He includes details that concern the environment, race, religion, money, power and the culture which binds us, yet cuts as lives are “turned on the spit”. Yet, even with such a mammoth undertaking, the more you read, re-read this long poem, piece by piece, the better the larger whole.
We ended up discussing both poems, eager to read them in their entirety. Rather like the psychology of sharing a good book with a friend, who otherwise might not pay attention to it, having 16 people respond to what parts stand out, what ideas are triggered, what phrasing becomes a springboard for emotion, made us all eager to re-read them both in their entirety.
I'll be back for this one-- but sending in March, so people have the poems...
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby (suggestion from Judith)
Introduction to the March issue of Poetry: (see notes below) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/247300
from Tablets by Dunya Mikhail -- the entire set here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
14, 15, 16, 21
Tim Seibles in the same issue has 12 pages in a poem called “Mosaic”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
A few poems.
11 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Starting a discussion session with Naomi Shihab Nye is always a pleasure. In this pick, she announces the subject in the title, "change". What doesn't change? What changes around what you think doesn't change? I love the progression of the poem: One person picks train tracks, another notes with a tinge of sadness how even they lose shininess, the ties split, and if there's no train, that changes the track. Even the "every Tuesday" routine with the strong verbs of cracking chicken necks, is juxtaposed with the widow in the tilted house who spices her soup with cinnamon. The reader travels through details so real, so effortlessly recorded, at this point, why not ask the widow what doesn't change? The shortest line in the poem "Stars explode" introduces these images:
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.
The final stanza takes us to the train whistle, without mention of doppler effect but staged in this haunting way:
The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
You can guess that I want you to read the poem in the original.
The ending poem captures a moment of being 11 years old in a trademark Ferlinghetti easy-going style l creating with beautifully orchestrated flowing lines.
Judith's contribution of City Without Smoke by Edwin Denby gave a ashcan portrait of Manhattan. We learned from her that he was considered greatest critic of jazz. (Where were you when the page was blank?) Although the alliteration seems a bit pedestrian as well as the rhyme (John), David commented on how the syntax moves through the lines...
In general, how hard do we have to work to get to an enjoyment level? This poem required more work for not as much pleasure.
GENERAL
How is Poetry of witness is better than the news? And what news stays news? Jeffrey Brown's article in this issue gives a wide range of examples. How can we allow war after reading such as lines as these: "Now the earth/grew stained with bright blood as men fell in death... so all fought on, a line of living flame" (Iliad, transl. by Robert Fitzgerald and Alice Oswald, "The first to die was Protesilaus/a focused man who hurried to darkness." p. 569 of the March issue of Poetry)
The penultimate essay by Slavoj Zizek calls on the idea of poetry as language in a torture house (citing Lacan) as he looks at Yugoslavia. He first mentions
Plato and the danger of poets as manipulators leading people away from the rational angles of truth... Next, Hegel's mention of the silent, ceaseless "weaving of the spirit": "the underground work of changing the ideological coordinates, mostly invisible to the public eye, which then suddenly explodes, taking everyone by surprise.
How do the "Dichter und Denker" (poets and thinkers) become "Richter und Henker" (judges and executioners?
I only chose a few stanzas from Mikhail and Seibles -- both long poems, presenting as fragments, the first as "Tablets", the second as "Mosaic". How do the titles prepare the mind? Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing... Mosaic -- again, pieces, but do we have all of them, and what part of what story is told? I particularly like the moment when Seibles enters the fragment "Insert your story here".
My hope is that people will read both poems in their entirety... and discuss the "parts" stand out? What are the commonalities, what lessons move us to remember?
**
I was so moved by the Mikhail and Seibles' poems, I penned this for the May issue of Poet Talk:
Tablets by Dunya Mikhail http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247324
and Mosaic by Tim Seibles http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247346
Published in Poetry, March 2014 pp. 525-531 and . 546-559
Usually, I shy away from long poems, not just because of the rush-rush-instant-response-mode fostered in our society, or feeling pressed for time, but because in general, I prefer navigating through poetry plump with pith, sassy with surprise and compressing multiple delights to discover. I picked a few excerpts of two long poems, Tablets and Mosaic to discuss in my weekly group, to see how people would respond. It was marvelous to see how in 30 minutes, we not only enjoyed the fragments picked, but were eager to spend time reading both works in their entirety.
The question arises, what makes a long poem enjoyable? What balance of meaning and poetic pleasure derived (sound, image, spacing, line, etc.) convinces the reader that the effort of staying with a poem over 5-12 pages or more is worth the effort?
I think of epic poetry performed aloud, and contemporary poetic experiments which span many pages which I usually avoid and wonder what was it about these two poems which
was so engaging in spite of pages of length.
Sometimes, knowing the background of the poet helps, or the background of the poem,
but even without this, even without more than a passing glance at the title, I first noted these two stanzas from Mikhail, an Iraqi now living in the US.
14
The shadows
the prisoners left
on the wall
surrounded the jailer
and cast light
on his loneliness.
15
Homeland, I am not your mother,
so why do you weep in my lap like this
every time
something hurts you?
This use of inverting the usual powerlessness of the captive and ignored emotional condition of the jailor adds a dagger to a universal feeling. The poem is in translation, so it is hard to know how it “sings”, but the translator has done a good job in line breaks which create hesitancy even with the longer lines. Some stanzas are more gripping than others, but at the end, I had the sense of having read something important worth reading again.
To quote Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader
“When will there be another society that produces poets in Mikhail’s tradition? If you want to understand how disastrously an ancient culture has been affected by its recent history, this poem will tell you more than any film clips, news stories or books about Middle Eastern battles. Sometimes verse becomes the only language adequate to express the struggles of evolution or the depredations of human conflict.”
for more praises of Mikhail’s work: http://www.dunyamikhail.com
Linking a long poem to a title and holding the title in mind, also is an effective tool for reading. Tablet and I think of Commandments-- but also ancient laws, and possible destruction of the tablets, so man might need to construe what is missing...
In Seibles’ poem Mosaic, the title harkens to tiles or pieces. Do we have all of them, and what part of what story do they tell? How is the reader included?
If you think of the sections of the poem as tiles in a large mosaic, this “tile” in the Seibles poem is the one line stanza which invites the reader to participate:
-- / --
Insert your life here.
-- / --
The stanza before speaks of seeing The Game in pieces— /the rules inside me/ like bad wiring… The stanza after asks, Did you mean to be this way?/Did you mean to become/something you didn’t mean?
What would the poem be like if the reader shifted the pieces of the mosaic? In what part of the poem would you “Insert your life ”? Would it change the message, the impact? How does the “who we are in the times we live in” constantly shift?
The curious epigraph is attributed to “Florence Church”, about whom google won’t tell anything but information about the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Thus,
Mosaic sets a tone of entrapment:
I’m a ‘kickin’ but not high
I’m a’flapping’ but I can’t fly
The stanzas are ordered periodically by a straight line or -- / -- . The eye follows how the words/meanings seek space, for instance :
Myself runs
into my other self: Over here!
My self whispers — Freedom
over here!
He uses punction “< and >” but the interpretation is difficult to know. For instance:
... a house of hunger, personal
but not personal: the way moonlight calls
for you and not for you. What
I want> I guess < I want. ... Suppose nobody knows what’s inside you. But you, yourself, find it pretty clear: anxiety adding up, leveling off, doubling > some comfort in people
you think you
understand/frustration,
fatigue, a secret.
(the slash works to bar understanding, or put up a fence against which three things lean: (frustration, fatigue, a secret.)
Seibles evaluates our culture, but indirectly, using biography, reflection (metaphors for eyes, sight, what is seen, visible) and existential questions. He includes details that concern the environment, race, religion, money, power and the culture which binds us, yet cuts as lives are “turned on the spit”. Yet, even with such a mammoth undertaking, the more you read, re-read this long poem, piece by piece, the better the larger whole.
We ended up discussing both poems, eager to read them in their entirety. Rather like the psychology of sharing a good book with a friend, who otherwise might not pay attention to it, having 16 people respond to what parts stand out, what ideas are triggered, what phrasing becomes a springboard for emotion, made us all eager to re-read them both in their entirety.
poems for April 7
Poems for April 7
I'll be away for moderating this one too...
Favorites posted by Poetry +
Spellbound by Emily Bronte
Love is Enough by William Morris (Elaine's pick)
The Gift by Li-Young Lee (an old favorite)
Mother Goose Self-Help by K. A. Hays
Sky Burial by Ron Koertge (suggestion from Don to discuss prose vs. poetry)
III from Tristan by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYORkpArYxc
Enjoy all the links to the poets on the sidebars as well!
From the clip "First poem/poet you fell in love with": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJgiW_JmeU
Spellbound by Emily Bronte – but Ed Hirsch thought it was by his grandfather.
Mother goose...
Dylan Thomas
The Highway Man, by Alfred Noyes: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171940
Gertrude Stein, a Rose is a rose...
Asbery: Flowchart http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/2239/ifrom-i-flow-chart-john-ashbery
**
My first poem was probably John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242552
or Walter de la Mare, ‘Some One ‘ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/some-one/
The rhythms and sounds captivated me.
I'll be away for moderating this one too...
Favorites posted by Poetry +
Spellbound by Emily Bronte
Love is Enough by William Morris (Elaine's pick)
The Gift by Li-Young Lee (an old favorite)
Mother Goose Self-Help by K. A. Hays
Sky Burial by Ron Koertge (suggestion from Don to discuss prose vs. poetry)
III from Tristan by Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYORkpArYxc
Enjoy all the links to the poets on the sidebars as well!
From the clip "First poem/poet you fell in love with": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJgiW_JmeU
Spellbound by Emily Bronte – but Ed Hirsch thought it was by his grandfather.
Mother goose...
Dylan Thomas
The Highway Man, by Alfred Noyes: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171940
Gertrude Stein, a Rose is a rose...
Asbery: Flowchart http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/2239/ifrom-i-flow-chart-john-ashbery
**
My first poem was probably John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242552
or Walter de la Mare, ‘Some One ‘ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/some-one/
The rhythms and sounds captivated me.
O Pen Poems for March 31
Elaine O. will share her favorite by Loren Eisley, A Hider’s World”
These poems were discussed in "Poems for Lunch"
For these two see discussion March 13:
Speakers of Wintu-Nomlak, by Scott Coffel
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
For these: see discussion March 6
he Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
One other thought on the Mueller poem:
Of the 7 things to invent in this charge to “Invent something new” why does she use old myths and references ? Can we re-invent our lives, our Heros with 1,000 faces? (Adam and Eve, Christ, Ariadne, Ulysses, David and Goliath, Lot’s Wife , etc.)
Summary:
Gallagher's short 12 line poem (The Barnacle and the Whale) gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
**
Just a few thoughts. What I love about poetry, is the reading aloud, the way the poem triggers so many different things — and in our discussion, how we find universals that link us all.
These poems were discussed in "Poems for Lunch"
For these two see discussion March 13:
Speakers of Wintu-Nomlak, by Scott Coffel
Sonnet for my Son, by Henk Rossouw
For these: see discussion March 6
he Barnacle and the Gray Whale by Cecilia Llompart
Yard Sale by George Bilgere
The End of Science Fiction by Lisel Mueller
Time Enough by Dennis O'Driscoll
One other thought on the Mueller poem:
Of the 7 things to invent in this charge to “Invent something new” why does she use old myths and references ? Can we re-invent our lives, our Heros with 1,000 faces? (Adam and Eve, Christ, Ariadne, Ulysses, David and Goliath, Lot’s Wife , etc.)
Summary:
Gallagher's short 12 line poem (The Barnacle and the Whale) gives a lovely sense of epiphany as she contrasts singular to plural, the idea of "clearing a view" with allowing the possibilities (every tree with an unseen nest!) inherent in the "messiness". A new term: OSEC: Openness, Snow-Elevated Consciousness.
The parable can be taken like that, but was written to address the Deep Water Horizon disaster. She thought the poems would be filled with anger. Instead, they turned out to have a quiet, contemplative, dreamy quality--an interesting comment on the process of composing poetry.
What pulls us, up and down.. how is it that conscience rubs against us like a barnacle.
Yard Sale allowed us a good discussion of "stuff", what we discard, the role of isolated facts unconnected to wisdom... -- what yard sales used to be like, and what they are like now... how we organize knowledge...
Just as an encyclopedia is "outdated" Mueller allows us to think about the "end of Science Fiction"
which has morphed into fantasy universes as the fiction of science is replaced by fact. 8 times, Mueller asks us to invent -- and yet the "new" calls on other myths: Adam and Eve, Ariadne, Ulysses, and then in the last stanza, "invent us as we were/before our bodies glittered/and we stopped bleeding.
David and Goliath, Lot's wife, whichever myth you want about a brother stealing his brother's birthright...
How do you invent something that once was? The harder reality speaks of slowing down, allowing emotion,
the difficulty of love. Mueller's poem raised many issues: what is poetry when it proselytizes? How do we live without myths-- and are we in danger of forgetting them...
The final poem, which looks a bit like a receipt, does not sermonize, but rather builds up everyday details, recognizable doubts only to conclude, the tongue in cheek conclusion that one lives, in spite of whatever thought you might have about it, one's life as it is, to its full.
**
Just a few thoughts. What I love about poetry, is the reading aloud, the way the poem triggers so many different things — and in our discussion, how we find universals that link us all.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Poems for Lunch March 27
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh (see comments from March 10)
Searching by Billy Collins
Cities in the Sky -- by Mary Jo Salter
Monody to the Sound of Zithers by Kay Boyle
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
Looking beyond tercets... quatrains, cinquains...
I won't be there to moderate but put some notes in the margin for Carol...
books, memory, to thought clouds, fear of loss, and an elegy which speaks of desire.
Knowing the group, good connections will be made. I’ve made a few notes in the margin to spark a few comments (or not).
For reading — it might be interesting for people to contrast the first two poems in tercets, the Kay Boyle poem in quatrains…
What keys us to “turning pages” — what kind of pages — what do we seek, and how do we deal with loss?
The Mary Jo Salter poem with clouds taking shape, to thought clouds has a very different affect than the more formal “monody” which technically is an elegy, and yet if you didn’t know, might not guess. How do both poems surprise ?
For discussion: I put this footnote under Wondrous:
This poem appeared in August 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine www.thesunmagazine.org.
The poem acts not only as elegy, but a reminder of the interconnectedness of memory. Why would E.B. White cry as he tried to record the words “she died alone”? Who can forget the selfless bravery of Charlotte, or this poem which so beautifully “does the math” of grief. Note the enjambed stanzas, the repetitions both of words and sounds which help tighten the emotion. Note how “ridiculous” with its patter of 4 syllables contrasts with the title, repeated twice, for both Charlotte “spun out of the silk thread of invention” and the mother.
Compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching: how does the form help each poem?
What makes both of the poems "accessible" -- which one moves you more?
compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching:how does the form help each poem?
How does the Anna K reference work, as opposed to the children’s story read by the mother (for the 5th time.) Both poems embrace life/death/transformation:
Anna K becomes “her” – becomes Snowflake and the poem ends addressing “you” – -- a different sort of metamorphosis than the life cycle of a spider, preparing her egg sack. Wondrous as title, weaves into the poem as opposed to the title, "Searching" which ends with the speaker turning pages looking for a "you" who may be as fictitious as Anna K, as ephemeral as a snowflake in Spring. What is it we look for when we read? How does that affect the reading?
With the Cities of Clouds, a different weaving and transforming occurs. One point of interest to me for a longer poem is how length can be dismissed if one feels engaged with the poem. How does Salter keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat? Where do you see these lines repeated but with specifics?
“Nowhere
somewhere changing to something.”
The weaving of "clouds" and "thoughts" (French, "Chateaux en Espagne" or castles in the air) goes along seamlessly until the wham on the final stanza.
Did the final stanza catch you off guard? Who is the house guest? Why ask such a question “idly”. How does that contrast with the real here and now: don’t die. The irony of “only 8:00am” as if that would mean business as usual. Where and when do we attach “business as usual” to circumstances? What other fallacies do we have in our “thought clouds” and actual thinking.
I picked Kay Boyle's 1922 poem, to contrast with the more free-form of both the Salter and Naomi Shihab-Nye poems.
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, μονῳδία could simply refer to lyric poetry sung by a single performer, rather than by a chorus.)
In music, monody has two meanings: 1) it is sometimes used as a synonym for monophony, a single solo line, in opposition to homophony and polyphony; and 2) in music history, it is a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment.
Boyle is clear about what she wants, but perhaps the form distracts us from the bluntness of "don't die, it's only 8 o'clock."
I love the masterful way that Nye can juxtapose the concrete detail with a sweepingly large universal: e.g. "Every Tuesday on Morales Street"; with "stars explode"
How does she develop her title? Lead us to explore it with her? What is it that cannot be named?
Searching by Billy Collins
Cities in the Sky -- by Mary Jo Salter
Monody to the Sound of Zithers by Kay Boyle
Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye
Looking beyond tercets... quatrains, cinquains...
I won't be there to moderate but put some notes in the margin for Carol...
books, memory, to thought clouds, fear of loss, and an elegy which speaks of desire.
Knowing the group, good connections will be made. I’ve made a few notes in the margin to spark a few comments (or not).
For reading — it might be interesting for people to contrast the first two poems in tercets, the Kay Boyle poem in quatrains…
What keys us to “turning pages” — what kind of pages — what do we seek, and how do we deal with loss?
The Mary Jo Salter poem with clouds taking shape, to thought clouds has a very different affect than the more formal “monody” which technically is an elegy, and yet if you didn’t know, might not guess. How do both poems surprise ?
For discussion: I put this footnote under Wondrous:
This poem appeared in August 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine www.thesunmagazine.org.
The poem acts not only as elegy, but a reminder of the interconnectedness of memory. Why would E.B. White cry as he tried to record the words “she died alone”? Who can forget the selfless bravery of Charlotte, or this poem which so beautifully “does the math” of grief. Note the enjambed stanzas, the repetitions both of words and sounds which help tighten the emotion. Note how “ridiculous” with its patter of 4 syllables contrasts with the title, repeated twice, for both Charlotte “spun out of the silk thread of invention” and the mother.
Compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching: how does the form help each poem?
What makes both of the poems "accessible" -- which one moves you more?
compare tercets in Wondrous and Searching:how does the form help each poem?
How does the Anna K reference work, as opposed to the children’s story read by the mother (for the 5th time.) Both poems embrace life/death/transformation:
Anna K becomes “her” – becomes Snowflake and the poem ends addressing “you” – -- a different sort of metamorphosis than the life cycle of a spider, preparing her egg sack. Wondrous as title, weaves into the poem as opposed to the title, "Searching" which ends with the speaker turning pages looking for a "you" who may be as fictitious as Anna K, as ephemeral as a snowflake in Spring. What is it we look for when we read? How does that affect the reading?
With the Cities of Clouds, a different weaving and transforming occurs. One point of interest to me for a longer poem is how length can be dismissed if one feels engaged with the poem. How does Salter keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat? Where do you see these lines repeated but with specifics?
“Nowhere
somewhere changing to something.”
The weaving of "clouds" and "thoughts" (French, "Chateaux en Espagne" or castles in the air) goes along seamlessly until the wham on the final stanza.
Did the final stanza catch you off guard? Who is the house guest? Why ask such a question “idly”. How does that contrast with the real here and now: don’t die. The irony of “only 8:00am” as if that would mean business as usual. Where and when do we attach “business as usual” to circumstances? What other fallacies do we have in our “thought clouds” and actual thinking.
I picked Kay Boyle's 1922 poem, to contrast with the more free-form of both the Salter and Naomi Shihab-Nye poems.
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, μονῳδία could simply refer to lyric poetry sung by a single performer, rather than by a chorus.)
In music, monody has two meanings: 1) it is sometimes used as a synonym for monophony, a single solo line, in opposition to homophony and polyphony; and 2) in music history, it is a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment.
Boyle is clear about what she wants, but perhaps the form distracts us from the bluntness of "don't die, it's only 8 o'clock."
I love the masterful way that Nye can juxtapose the concrete detail with a sweepingly large universal: e.g. "Every Tuesday on Morales Street"; with "stars explode"
How does she develop her title? Lead us to explore it with her? What is it that cannot be named?
O Pen : Poems for March 24
Every Day We Are Dancers by Mitch Roberson
(see March 13 + 20)
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
+ Parody
From Orient Point -- Marilyn Hacker
Era for Recovery by Lo Kwa Mei-en
We had a most "chuckling" discussion -- especially starting with the Roberson-- nine years old — does it feel fresh? Up-to-date? How does it stand up to the test of time?
How are we dancers in all aspects of our life -- from prosaic, to crossing a street with a mirror -- and how we mirror each other...
followed by re-imagining 4 chestnuts, with graphics, and two parodies.
For the Shakespeare... the group went much deeper than the graph provided...
and John brought up: I am but summer to your heart... Edna St. Vincent Millay: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21693
No matter the season, no matter the comparison, is Shakespeare giving us just another Ars Poetica -- without him, no poem, without the poem, no souvenir of "thee"...no poem who is a different "thee"... Memories of lyrics, “Believe me with all these endearing charms...” and "Maybe I should have told you..." (You are always on my mind... Nelson...) and the saying, "I love you not for who are, but for who I am when I am with you."
After admiring the color wheel of the analytics for Williams' poem, the group went in two directions: 1) Is this poem a joke? and disappointment-- the sort of poem that might discourage people from reading poetry. vs:
2) exquisite image... Kathy recalled Neruda's Book of questions. "Is there anything sadder than a locomotive in the rain."
Bobby brought up the joyful, unexplainable quality of children’s painting...
Haiku. Zen Koan.
Even those who didn't like it at first, felt it captured something, helped us focus on something that isn't said, but only intimated, on which an unknowable "so much depends on" waits.
For Dylan Thomas -- the system of having one person for each repeating line occluded the continuity within each tercet. We remarked how only the final stanza was an imperative and hearing Thomas read it (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377)
will convince you that it is not said as an imperative.
With Bishop's Villanelle, "disaster" is repeated, but not the entire line.
It is better read stanza by stanza. We had a long discussion about how to understand
(Write it!) with multiple valid directions, such as the urge to memorialize, or perhaps the urgency, the desperation, the pain of the loss so hard to put on paper, the poet's insistent voice speaking to herself. How do we wear the skin of another?
Marilyn Hacker's parody of it was fun... but after getting beyond the facile slipperiness of sounds, the advice is sound in such lines as these:
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her
to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept.
In other words, we cannot presume, assume anything about another.
"...Don't trust her
past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend."
What is it we must muster to live?
The final poem, we attempted to read as three sentences... which helped a little bit, the overwhelmingness of a single block and also to be able to look at long and short sentences and patterns. It might be the sort of poem that would turn someone away from poetry. However, John had the genial idea of reading it as a monologue which worked quite brilliantly.
What a group -- what a discussion. We could have kept going even after an hour and a half.
(see March 13 + 20)
Analytic Poetry: (Ali Shapiro) +
Shakespeare Sonnet 18
William Carlos Williams, So Much Depends
Dylan Thomas, Do not go Gentle
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
+ Parody
From Orient Point -- Marilyn Hacker
Era for Recovery by Lo Kwa Mei-en
We had a most "chuckling" discussion -- especially starting with the Roberson-- nine years old — does it feel fresh? Up-to-date? How does it stand up to the test of time?
How are we dancers in all aspects of our life -- from prosaic, to crossing a street with a mirror -- and how we mirror each other...
followed by re-imagining 4 chestnuts, with graphics, and two parodies.
For the Shakespeare... the group went much deeper than the graph provided...
and John brought up: I am but summer to your heart... Edna St. Vincent Millay: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21693
No matter the season, no matter the comparison, is Shakespeare giving us just another Ars Poetica -- without him, no poem, without the poem, no souvenir of "thee"...no poem who is a different "thee"... Memories of lyrics, “Believe me with all these endearing charms...” and "Maybe I should have told you..." (You are always on my mind... Nelson...) and the saying, "I love you not for who are, but for who I am when I am with you."
After admiring the color wheel of the analytics for Williams' poem, the group went in two directions: 1) Is this poem a joke? and disappointment-- the sort of poem that might discourage people from reading poetry. vs:
2) exquisite image... Kathy recalled Neruda's Book of questions. "Is there anything sadder than a locomotive in the rain."
Bobby brought up the joyful, unexplainable quality of children’s painting...
Haiku. Zen Koan.
Even those who didn't like it at first, felt it captured something, helped us focus on something that isn't said, but only intimated, on which an unknowable "so much depends on" waits.
For Dylan Thomas -- the system of having one person for each repeating line occluded the continuity within each tercet. We remarked how only the final stanza was an imperative and hearing Thomas read it (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377)
will convince you that it is not said as an imperative.
With Bishop's Villanelle, "disaster" is repeated, but not the entire line.
It is better read stanza by stanza. We had a long discussion about how to understand
(Write it!) with multiple valid directions, such as the urge to memorialize, or perhaps the urgency, the desperation, the pain of the loss so hard to put on paper, the poet's insistent voice speaking to herself. How do we wear the skin of another?
Marilyn Hacker's parody of it was fun... but after getting beyond the facile slipperiness of sounds, the advice is sound in such lines as these:
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her
to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept.
In other words, we cannot presume, assume anything about another.
"...Don't trust her
past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend."
What is it we must muster to live?
The final poem, we attempted to read as three sentences... which helped a little bit, the overwhelmingness of a single block and also to be able to look at long and short sentences and patterns. It might be the sort of poem that would turn someone away from poetry. However, John had the genial idea of reading it as a monologue which worked quite brilliantly.
What a group -- what a discussion. We could have kept going even after an hour and a half.
March 20
Paper Nautilus, by Marianne Moore
The Dance, by William Carlos Williams
With My Fish Drum, Yusef Komunakaa
Alexander Fu Musing, by Stanley Moss
Heaven by George Herbert
Hell by Stanley Moss
Some old, some new -- looking at the Poetic Analysis of Bishop's villanelle,
and her admiration for her mentor, Marianne Moore... the inspiration of Herbert's Heaven echoing on "Hell" by Stanley Moss, and in between, the "round" inspired by Breughel, and contemporary voice adopting the sounds of "shish & tap
of fish skin on waters of a lost road."
Writing up the discussion almost a week later, I know the brief snippets below cannot begin to recreate the fun we had reading aloud such diverse poems enjoying how title, form, sound, suggestion provided a feast of details to share.
We started off the discussion with "One Art"by Elizabeth Bishop -- the rich rhyming, the repetitions of losing, lose, lost, and how the graph captures the relationship of things lost with the difficulty... But more interesting in this Villanelle is the tone, both for the two exclamation points, but also for the words in parentheses.
**
comparing the use of form with Marianne Moore's Paper Nautilus, which has a floating sea-pull to it. The sounds, the odd line breaks (scarcely // eats... bitten// by a crab.... close-///laid Ionic chiton*-folds)the quiet way in which the 2nd and 5th line share end rhyme. The opening (incomplete) questions bring us to wonder about the Nautilus -- part of the family of Chitons*, which also happens to be one of the choices for feminine apparel* The delicacy of diction, intricacy of repetitions, (ram's horn-cradled; wasp-nest flaws... ) Hopes in the first stanza (authorities of the outside world) contrast with "perishable/souvenir of hope" of the natural world-- the wonder described only to end up with an image of love as small arms around folds/lines in the shell -- akin to the wonder of trust.
The ekphrastic poem, "The Dance", is somewhat like the imagist Wheelbarrow poem, but here Williams creates a marvelous symphony of sound to complete the image of a festival and dancing, rounds of sound...
Back to tercets with Kommunakaa, the oriental look of ampersands,(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Etymology
for more on the name and formation of Roman ET). A dream-like feeling -- a sense of displaced persons combined with caravans of old... a blend of Africa, Persia, caravans of history caught in an on-going dance, passed culture to culture.
(I write the line "shish & tap/of fish skin on waters of a lost road" again, so drawn am I to its exotic sounds, as if listening to Scheherezade).
Stanley Moss, also taken from the American Poetry Review March/April issue, has an amusing little poem referencing Alexander Fu, the Martial Arts Film star of the 70's... but who is "you-know-who"... and will it ever be possible for him to create his own lines-- and how do we relate to that?
The fun of contrasting Heaven by George Herbert (with Echo) and Hell (inspired by it) by Stanley Moss provided a discussion of idealization, and cynicism. We felt the Moss poem less successful with the echo, as repeat does not allow dialogue/development, but rather a mocking. Herbert brings back Light, Joy, Leisure.
It reminds me of Wendell Berry's quote: "Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts."
*(Structurally, the most elemental dress type is the chiton, which is constructed in several ways. The most commonly represented is accomplished by stitching two rectangular pieces of fabric together along either sideseam, from top to bottom, forming a cylinder with its top edge and hem unstitched. The top edges are then sewn, pinned, or buttoned together at two or more points to form shoulder seams, with reserve openings for the head and arms.
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