Discussion at Rundel January 22 -- 3 poems from Poets Walk

Linda Allardt: "It wasn't the wind"
Margaret Atwood: "They are Hostile Nations"
Ralph Black: "Notes for a poem about a Dream about My Daughter in which Moths Appear

If someone said, "surely you can discuss three poems in an hour", the response would depend on which poems and who is involved with the discussion.
The three poems listed above, all on Poets Walk invited a lively discussion among the 8 participants which carried over the hour. Reading poems line by line outloud, vs. chunked into syntax or stanzas allows "the sound of sense" to become a surprise beyond the words. The line breaks, the tone created by sound, phrasing, the role of title-- each one so different in impact, invited us to guess the poet's intent and share the effect on each of us as reader.

Both Linda Allardt and Ralph Black are poets living in Rochester, and I have matched their poems with possible paintings in a powerpoint I'll be presenting on Poets Walk on February 1st. I had met with Linda, now in her 80's, who thought the painting that best caught the spirit of her poem resided in her living room. When I showed it to the group after a lengthy discussion of the poem itself, all 8 participants were surprised, having envisioned something quite different. One had an image of a cartoon of solar wind, another an image filled with great light and found the abstract whites and grays too dense.
I didn't show the two possible matches to Ralph's poem, as it was clear the poem was doing the work of a good poem and not needing "illustration."


Today, I was reminded of the truth of Edmund Wilson's words: “No two persons ever read the same book”. So it is about seeing the "same" painting, or understanding the craft of the poem.

For the first poem, in which the title spills into the first four lines, we read it first sentence by sentence, followed by a small discussion of the movement through syntax. The poem, in 17 lines, four sentences, two first person pronouns, starts with a Keatsian sense of “negative capability”.
The first sentence is concrete, physical. "Chasing squirrels" can be both active, by an unseen person, animal, or simply the squirrels themselves chasing". The second sentences introduces an "I" and thought extended to solar wind. The third demonstrates the long sweep of travel "past planets, micro-impacts" through 8 lines to end on light meeting light between paired stars. The "I" comes back, stretched, as is the reader, who without being told, might also re-think one small clump of snow falling off the trees and power of the sun in the past, and wonder about in the future.
Our discussion covered everything from solar wind, the wetness of the sibilant sounds, the difference between reading the poem in four sentences, vs. reading it line by line where the feel of it becomes more apparent, carried by the sounds. Are the "I"'s the same-- the one thinking and the one after being stretched? How does "bent" which can be a verb, but used as noun add to a sense of invisible energy which combines a quality of insistent, but not straight?

** This same poem, discussed February 3, at Pittsford, with just 3 people, a delicious sense of traveling with the speaker of the poem in her imagination. What is the feel of sailing on solar wind? What happens to the I... and do we need to know about the paired stars? The Helen Suhr for them matched the mood perfectly!

For the Margaret Atwood: Written in 1974, They are Hostile Nations could well be about her own thorny break-up, although relationship here extends both one to one as nation as well as collective to Earth.
The three part poem demands a reader's attention. In the first stanza already the first three words,
"In view of" followed by "the fading animals"-- whose view, and who is "They" is in the title already establishing a distance of looking on disappearance remotely. The juxtaposition of sewers/fears--
the physical conduit for the unwanted coupled with the emotion most would prefer to dominate,
then leaps to the conclusion of forgiveness...
I think of the Teddy Bear Cholla in the 3rd stanza...what looks so cuddly, yet will bite...
we/ touch as though attacking-- and "we" starts a series of enjambments which call attention to the end word, such as "stay" (last line penultimate stanza) which means both keep off, and remain.

Here, a personal truth, her own private story translates into a universal about our selves within our selves, to the very real risk of being extinguished as we extinguish the very planet we live on.

** This same poem, discussed Feb. 3: We remarked the lines would be great in theatre! "Put down the target of me
you guard inside your binoculars. David's take on the three parts: a progression from
expository statement; imperative; present to future...


The final poem has an intriguing title -- is it a poem if called "notes for a poem"?
First... Next... Later... and a surreal dream is confirmed... the appearance of the daughter coming with the shift in weather, introduces "trilling" an unlikely way of describing captured moths, not in a net, but a sack. Each moth with "eye-spots like a world of vision." The capture is not as important as the vision and "how flowers can name themselves" and working the mouth shaped by trillium three times. This poem is delicious to say outloud, with the light touches of t's, the l's blooming,
lifting, entering flurries, fills... and we enter the dream of "what wings are" and the clever whirling world... child, moths, dream, all readying us indeed to be lifted.

More delicious details: The color of black as bruised plum; the personification of the planet "rocking in its tresses; voice like water; mouth like a dish of kisses"; the synaesthesia of trilling-- where music and movement combine. And more, and more. A comforting poem after the anguish of the Atwood.

*** Discussion Feb. 3: Effect of the word "Swing" -- air clearing after thunder cloud... strange... mood swing... (bi-polar planet)... sounds... breath... wind and motion...
I'd forgotten that cottonwood trees are another name for poplars... the beautiful shimmer of leaf... and how they are white underneath.

Poems for Jan 5

Gratitude by Cornelius Eady
Playtime by William Bronk
Holy Pictures by Finvola Drury
excerpt from "Ten Cheremiss (Mari) Songs by Anselm Hollo
Marina Tsvetaeva by Ilya Kaminsky
Winter Landscape by Judith Kitchen

These poems come from Poets Walk, the interactive cell phone connected stretch between Goodman and Prince St. on University in front of the Memorial Art Gallery.
The link to see a complete alphabetized list of the poems and bio on the poets: http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/poets-walk
There are 16 granite slabs, (Cornelius Eady is one) --
we have discussed the "poem slabs" of Sam Abrahms, Adelaide Crapsey, James Longenbach, Naomi Shihab-Nye and W.C. Williams.

For the poem tiles, we have also discussed in the past
Brooks, A song in the front yard,
Carruth, The Cows at Night
Emiot (trans. by L Zazulyer): As Long as we are not alone
Harjo, Perhaps the World Ends Here
Merwin, For the Anniversary of my Death
Hour Of Sadness by Israel Emiot, translated by Leah Zazulyer

**
The Selection Committee was interested in any poet that had a connection with Rochester at some point, whether they lived or had lived here, had come here to give a reading and/or workshops, etc. After that, members of the committee nominated specific poems by the poets, sharing and discussing them with the other members of the selection committee. They were looking for quality, diversity by gender, race, time period they wrote in, etc, in making our final selections. Finally we voted on the final selection, with the hope that we would have unanimous agreement from the committee, which in almost all cases we did.

In the selection, I chose the eloquent Cornelius Eady, whose long 5-page poem is only partially represented on the Art-drop site. I am grateful for all comments regarding information this site has (for instance, typos, updating obits, etc.)or in the case of Eady, giving a link to the entire poem.
Born in 1954, Eady’s poetry often centers on jazz and blues, family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class.

The old school, "let a poem speak for itself" does mean the entire poem! On the other hand, the biographical material can often help us better understand a title such as "Gratitude".
Eady acknowledges the education in a privileged private school, as his sentences ring with a Frederick Douglass eloquence and authority. His injunction to love, is not some Hallmark text. The tablet does not have this part of the poem:

I’m 36 years old,
a black, American poet.
Nearly all the things
that weren’t supposed to occur
Have happened, (anyway),
and I have
a natural inability
to sustain rage,
Despite
the evidence.

The form addresses both sustained/contained rage.


What a contrast with William Bronk's difficult syntax! The key for me was the quotation in which he says, "Poetry is about reality the way a lens is
about light". There are many ways the mind turns to make "We / Us" work in ways we are used to, and yet, the poem refuses logic. My question was to come up with labels for the tone, and the feeling this creates. Some answers: opaque/childlike/facebookish—revealing everything-nothing at same time, like a palimpsest... (presence that seems like an absence...) Other notes: Adult relationships – images we present to each other... God vs. minimized humans... not mocking... but attempts to understand... Play... and games... time-- what gives the “us” substance...yet Leaves us hanging...without hope...
The title itself condenses "Play" (theatre, as well as playground/game play) and time
another loaded word which can both tick chronologically, or sweep abstractly through seasons of life.

Thanks to Paul, we know more about Prayer and Mass cards, daily missiles... name of person for whom you will prayer. A fun poem with a fine use of adverbs and adjectives.
Mother’s face and Savior’s
muddied or tire-marked

I pick them up
grudgingly

wishing the faithful
were a little more careful

By the time the "do not put return address" appears, we were imagining all the Smyrna's... So many in the US, including NY!


The Hollo really had us stumped -- is it just part of something-- a smattering of notes, a Kerouac strip pasted to a love song, cut out of the apple tree....
It allowed a discussion on how things are chosen-- how possibly, the poet might well have chosen something different, the way Ravel really didn't want to be known as the "composer of The Bolero".

The Kaminsky became more real since Jim's wife knew him at Brighton High School
and we had a long discussion about the plight of Russian poetry after the revolution
and Fahrenheit 451 type atmosphere -- for instance Akhmatova whispering one line of her poem to each guest, who would assemble and put the lines together later out of earshot of the ones who could imprison her. A lovely ars poetica paying hommage to a poetess every much an equal to Akhmatova. It would be fun to FaceTime or skype him to ask him to talk about his poem-- does he write in Russian, which has such sensually meaty texture to it?


Judith Kitchen passed away in November of this year. Her winter landscape and musical texture needed no distraction or ornament, so I objected to the awkward enjambement in the next to last stanza.
This

is the meaning of white—a day

but on second read, the "this" works, rather like the Zen koan, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" -- the paradox of live atoms and immaterial souls...

Let us believe the impossible. Let us
slide between two griefs so easily
they seem remote as history. This

is the meaning of white—a day

**
How eager we are to want a poet to be like us! First I object to line breaks, and then John wanted "knit" instead of "weld" ...
ironically the words chosen for Poets Walk are "trees weld earth"


A wonderful, wonderful discussion. Heartfelt thanks to all as ever.

"Poetry Oasis!" Jan. 8 + 22 + 29

Starting the new year at Rundel with a new title and gorgeous flier!
Poetry Oasis: Unwind at Noontime”. The motto is “Experience poetry together.

The poems for January will be drawn from Poets Walk, partly to prepare my talk February 1 at the MAG which matches poems with works of art.
For a complete alphabetized list of the poems and bio on the poets: http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/poets-walk


Splitting an Order -- by Ted Kooser (repeat from O Pen, 12/29/14)
The Hydra by Mike Keith (repeat from O Pen, 12/29/14)
Winter Grace by Patricia Fargnoli (repeat from O Pen, 12/29/14)
The Coming of Light by Mark Strand, 1934 – 2014 (repeat from O Pen, 12/29/14)

from Poets Walk: DISCUSSED JAN. 22
It Wasn’t The Wind by Linda Allardt
They Are Hostile Nations by Margaret Atwood
Notes for a Poem about a Dream about My Daughter in which Moths Unexpectedly Appear
by Ralph Black

TO BE DISCUSSED
for January 22 !
Blessing of the Boats at St. Mary's by Lucille Clifton
Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perhaps the World Ends Here – Joy Harjo
Sestina d'Inverno by Anthony Hecht
The Angels of Radiators by Al Poulin
Boarding a Bus, by Steven Huff
Flip Book, by Tony Leuzzi
Late Fall, by Eleanor McQuilkin
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
**
For February

passage from San Ildefonso Nocturne by Octavio Paz
beware : do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed
Which Side Are You On? Janine Pommy Vega
Touched by Deborah Tall
Dear Father, Dear Sound, by Kazim Ali

poems for Dec. 29

We started with 3 of the poems slated for Dec. 15

Splitting an Order -- from Ted Kooser's ALP site
and the two from the December issue of Poetry.
The Forecast by Wendy Xu (p. 239 Poetry, Dec. 2014)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/249148#about
(poem appeared in Poetry, Dec. 2014)


I Wanted to Make Myself like the Ravine – by Hannah Gamble
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/249152#about
(poem published in Poetry, December, 2014)

The Coming of Light by Mark Strand, 1934 – 2014
The Hydra by Mike Keith (August, 1998)
Winter Grace by Patricia Fargnoli


In the First poem, I asked which particular details tickle your fancy...
and if the poem contained a spirit of the Christmas season. Beyond the
Norman Rockwell feel, the one sentence poem unrolled as if a ceremonial ritual
with a rhymical solemnity, giving each thing value. Who could not love the paradox that to Split //an order... brings together...

The next poem gave us a cubist challenge with mis-use of commas, scrambled grammar...
where distrust establishes a foothold that contradicts any "I love you" or pledge.
"Not still dead" is difficult to understand.

Now comes the discussion of poetry and what we expect from it. Do we want a message, embellished by craft that leads us to wonder... or can we accept messages that startle, surprise, refuse to provide a pathway to understanding. Imagine the listeners gathered to hear Stravinsky the first time. Is this poem as gripping?

Is it like a Motherwell painting where someone unaware of his reputation would say,
give me a paintbrush and I could do that too? What do we learn about ourselves?
Forecast. What is cast -- what chaos comes before? What contradiction that we try to predict outcomes.

To give a different light on the subject:
In a 2012 interview with John Hoppenthaler, Xu stated, “I think language is always waiting patiently on us to engage it, to play with it and arrange its parts, to build something weird out of it, but the hardest time to stop and think to do this is any space outside of poems. To ‘negotiate’ with a poem is right—it says things, you say something back, you say YES! or you say OH NO, but the two of you build the complete experience together. I always like when part of a poem’s contribution to the negotiation is a pseudo-‘normal’ syntax, if it seems aware and proud of its glitch, and if it wants to subvert my normalized expectations at every turn.”

The next poet does not have as much bio to draw on, aside mention of her recognitions and success in circles frequented by Bernadette Mayer and company.
OK... Ravine, lowly, at first wonderful, but then receiving everything, closure needs a man-made well with cover to a tight conclusion. No breathing space really or invitation to wonder about being a ravine, leaving me with a sense of "so"... what?

What a contrast to read Strand's 7 lines, each one containing something surprising, yet welcome. Opening to love, to life... opening to another person...
a cyclical sense of death to birth.

The Hydra is a poem of sheer brilliance imitating Blake's tyger, using the periodic table. What happens to the progeny of Satan... more fallen angels, devils.. or hydras...Beware! Such an intact poem... meter/Blake/memory... w/ metaphor of periodic table – comprises everything.

So different from the Northern climate winter meditation... ordinary particulars to galaxies, and pay attention to the watch over the cold; your own solitude.

Poems for Dec. 15

Hour Of Sadness by Israel Emiot, translated by Leah Zazulyer
When Giving Is All We Have by Alberto Ríos
Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye
A Debris Field of Apocalypticians – A Murder of Crows – by Dana Levin
Dear Sir— by Hannah Sanghee Park




**


I hope the local poet, Leah Zazulyer will come and tell us about her work translating the poet Israel Emiot. There is the school of thought to "trust the poem, not the poet", but as I prepare the selections of poems from poets walk and read the tidbits of background, it helps place the poem, to better examine it like a jewel in its setting. The hour of sadness takes the word "divorce" without hammering it down to mean only one thing... how would you finish the sentence,
"Even though I have given myself..."
what does it mean to give yourself a divorce? In the poem, perhaps a divorce from the loved one no longer present -- but one senses it could be just as well a divorce between body and soul...

What a contrast with Rios who provides the reader with truth put in overly neat phrases... however, beyond the smooth and simple surface, beyond the singsong,
the poem ends with a wonderful enjambement:
Together we are simple green. You gave me

now how are you going to finish that without sounding trite?
and then to say, "you gave me /what you didn't have"
do you expect the speaker to say " and I gave you
What I had to give—
without sounding important or self-righteous?

together, we made
Something greater from the difference

The poem has served him well, Rios explains, to emphasize the importance of giving without grudges/tallies.

How refreshing to return to Naomi Shihab Nye -- intriguing images told with rich sounds, making each line unusual:
"so little is stone" arrives after two stanzas of flammable examples --
a sense of celebration as absence occupies the air... and the delightful
"shuffle of losses and leaves," as if leaves is a verb as well as noun --
and the inviting crackle of all there is to do waiting...

The Levin poem reminded us with its contrast of registrations of something
Billy Collins once said: "slap the poem around until you know what it means." Interesting edges to illustrate the repeated line: "The fact of suffering is not a question of justice".

The poem by Park comes from p. 16 Fall-Winter 2014 Vol 47 of American Poet.
Word play, but without leaving a sense of ending "in wisdom" after delight,
to rephrase Robert Frost.

Poems for December 8 + December 11

For This Thanks by Sam Abrams
Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
An Apology for Using the Word 'Heart' in Too Many Poems by Hayden Carruth
Christmas Trees – Robert Frost
Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree by George Starbuck
As Long As We Are Not Alone by Israel Emiot, translated by Leah Zazulyer

for Dec. 11:
Poems at Rundel:

for more poems on Winter: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/238432
New England by E.A. Robinson
Snow-flakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Ballad of the Harp Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay
This is the Latest by Ange Mlinko


**
We had discussed the Carruth and Starbuck poems at Rundel Dec. 4 -- and it is fun to have a larger group cast new light on successful poems!

Because Marcie had complained about the somber tenor in the selection of poems before, this group of poems included some playful aspects everyone enjoyed.
Like the Alberto Rios poem discussed 12/15, the rhyming, Hallmark-y tenor of
"An Apology for Using the Word 'Heart' in Too Many Poems" perhaps has a coy wink at the old meaning of "apology" as defense for a word, much needed, if put to good use.


David Sanders, our Frost expert says this about Christmas Trees:
"I have a special edition of that poem--a small pamphlet with a beautiful set of engavings done for the occasion. And I believe that poem was used for the very first of the special cards that Frost would send to friends and patrons for a number of years--all of them now, of course, collectors' items, as was probably the intention. In short, Frost was clearly making some fun of his own commercial concerns in that poem. My favorite lines are "Then I was certain I had never meant / To let him have them."

**
The Abrams and the Emiot are both on Poets Walk, viewable on the art drop rochester site.

If you want to have fun with a Christmas tree, and our twisted pagan/religious traditions, the Starbuck allows one to see the visible trimmings in the boughs,
the nativity story bundled in the root. Fun, but deeper than a simple calligram.

The Emiot poem repeats "We shall rejoice", calls on the living hearing of plants, with the footnote that they grow better with music...
the Yiddish saying A stone also hears" comes from the Yiddish saying, "As alone as a stone -- a beautifully rendered music. We read as well
Hour Of Sadness

Hour of sadness
rain all the time
everything close
and full of goodbyes;
I am still living,
even though I have given myself
a divorce many times,
yet like a distant planet
I still spin myself around you
driven
by some unknown law;
with so many things,
like Saturn's rings you encircle me,
thus are silent
all the trees and all the branches
rising to the planets

and the next meeting, Maura brought us in stones -- as we had mentioned the tradition of placing stones on graves...

December 1

Please find poems for the first of December! I have finished galloping behind in the November issue of "Poetry" and in the email provided links to translators notes in this special issue on translation. To keep up the Irish spirit, you will find a translation of Seán Ó Ríordáin, but also Yiddish and French.
I was delighted to see a Chinese and Anglo name for Liu Xia's ekphrastic poem, UR's Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Sommer* for Jerzy Ficowski's poem and further to find out more about the poets themselves. Grotz alludes to George Steiner’s “total reading” where meaning and interpretation lie beyond the text and a quick look at Bonnefoy will yield this thought: poetry is less about saying something about reality than coupling with it, less an accidental formulation than a quest for a light that is beyond words.
Although Larry Levis writes in English, I like how he adopts 15th century French poet François Villon.


Empty Chairs (p. 110) by Liu Xia
August 5, 1942, (p. 112) by Jerzy Ficowski
The Museum (p. 123) by Yves Bonnefoy
Switch, (p. 136)by Seán Ó Ríordáin
What Will Stay Behind (p. 147) Abraham Sutkzever

Also considered, but not used:
François Villon on the Condition of Pity in Our Time (p. 116) by Larry Levis

The first poem implies connection, and a state of becoming in spite of repeating three times, "empty"
and "leave", where empty chairs seem to wait, trapped in their "frozen state". It's the sort of poem I like, because I read it several times, and start to see new relationships... ideas -- one doesn't question that the speaker of the poem is sitting in a Van Gogh painting, nor that he doesn't see her.

The Ficowski poem is memorable, with the repeated "I don't know", the doctor in the holocaust... the comparison with Charon, the "I know" at the end...

After it, it feels trivial to comment on the sounds of Bonnefoy's poem, or the changing registers of the Riordain.

In a way, all of the poems addressed the "mirror man" of our selves. Certainly the Sutzkever, one of the “Diary Poems” were, like his earliest work, a navigation through the landscape of the self. We closed with the In Memoriam by Alastair Reid 3/221926- 9/21/2014 printed on the inside cover of the November issue of Poetry.

Could it have been mine,
that face—cold, alien—
that an unexpected mirror,
crossed by a quick look,
flashed me back?

It was a moment’s chance,
since, at second glance,
the face has turned familiar—
my mouth again, my eyes
wide in surprise.

Now, though I verify
oddness of bone and eye,
we are no longer one,
myself and mirror-man.
Trust has gone.

I had thought them sure,
the face and self I wore.
Yet, with no glass about,
what selves, whose unsuspected
faces stare out?
-- from Poetry, February 1959
reprinted in the inside cover of the November 2014 issue