Ode to Bicycles by Pablo Neruda
Poets Walk poems: also discussed at O Pen Jan. 26
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
if time this one:
Telephone Repairman by Joseph Millar
**
In today's discussion, I didn't mean to be the one talking so much, instead of listening...
Ode to Bicycles: questions -- what would the Spanish sound like -- did the translator stay faithful to the form? is a phrase such as "giving/ their eyes/ to summer" an example of multi-layering with an antiquated feel?
I sense workers and girls giving... their eyes to summer -- as in, looking at summer...
only moving... allows us to feel alive -- we come alive when we sense we're needed -- like the bicycle... Lovely loping of lines... to tell a snippet of story...
see Jan. 26: Octavio Paz... Poets Walk poems.
If you don't know where San Ildefonso is, if you do not know the whole poem but only this passage, what do you understand? What keeps it from feeling like a sermon, or somewhat didactic diary? Is the translation imitating the original?
The back and forth of the lineation allows a sense of breath balancing between choices, ideas of what poetry, history, truth as revealed in our lives... A noun such as "sun-on-the-stones,
and the dissolution of the name in the "beyond of stones" is a beautiful place called "poetry"-- the suspension bridge between history and truth--- but then to find out history is not a path to somewhere... but a place where we are given a chance to know ourselves.
Jan 26 post:
Ishmael Reed's "Beware of this Poem" was a great hit -- the play of mirrors, the way the poem itself becomes alive, and when asking Ishmael about the poem, his response: Glad that you liked my poem. I didn't know how to end it. The statistic cited during a radio broadcast gave me the last lines. I don't think the broadcast could have come up with disappearance as "only
a space in the lives of their friends...
Brilliant!
Today, Feb. 12 -- Lincoln's birthday, black history month... and George mentioning that Ishmael Reed was the speech writer (he thinks) of Martin Luther King's speeches... 1968 as the radical year... year of assassinations, disappearances... a great poem to match with Beverly Pepper's "Vertical Ventaglio" or "Six Cubes" in the MAG's sculpture garden.
Janine Pomy Vega: see Jan. 26 comments
As a beat poet, she creates a poem which shows tangents, disconnections... the poem itself a "temple of possibility". What are "yellow helmets" -- symbols of war-- what you wear when you go into the deep caverns of self? helmets with lights on them to mine underground...
The poem tile is "gift on the altar" which is how the words feel. She mentions Kabir and Rumi,
with some contemporary spin: "Read the coins you've thrown down into the dirt,
they spell integrity"...
Now what does that mean? (see discussion Jan. 26) perhaps like being on both sides of a mirror -- the part of you put on for appearances or the part inside no one but you can see... Perhaps also a poem written in the Vietnam war period -- taking sides -- who is right? wrong? the sides... might include the "in" and "out" of sides... The question in both title and final line -- how can language help us find the answer?
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Poems for February 9 (originally for Feb. 2)
Tableau: 6:30 AM by Kath M. Anderson
See by Sally Bitter-Bonn, from her book Orange
Creation Stories by Tom Holmes
Amelia Bloomer’s Stride by Anne Coon
I Know a Man by Robert Creeley: Audio: access http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/content/i-know-man
All poems from Poets Walk:
How to read a poem...
Tableau 6:30 a.m. seems to ask the reader to dwell with it... associations with tableau,
early morning... I thought it would be interesting to allow each person to read the poem silently... you could have heard a pin drop, and there was an uncanny sense for me, watching people read, of being an observer, just as the speaker of the poem was observing a moment between husband and daughter. Usually we just plunge into a poem -- but the idea was to allow
each participant to "view" the poem, the way one might in a museum.
When I asked what picture was evoked, it was fun to see the different reactions -- just like picking up on different details in a painting. For some, a sense of action, others, a capture of nestling. Mentioned: Role of northern lights, associations and memories of a father's fierce love to a little daughter, curiosity about the mother, her role and relationship.
The title prepares us for a "staged moment". It is fitting that the poem tile reads, "flares porous" which brought us to discuss porosity... as two moments which fuse. wealth of past... to now. Time itself has openings as in "the unphrased wealth/
of her three-year old dreams" --
Whatever complication of relationship (perhaps the mother is jealous of the father) in the poem, we did not sense conflict... As reader, we felt invited to look, to be part of the poem...
See: This poem we read in different ways.
Choosing where to pause, so with a progression of readers ready to pick up where one voice stops without a break. Rather magical!
We noted the difference between blending the title into the poem... and not. How that effects "See" as both specific and universal.
One person suggested that the poem end without the
"she gathers clouds
tucks them into her pocket”
Of course, the poem tile has “she gathers clouds” — and it is a charming image, but the person who offered it, felt it edged a little on the “precious”.
We admired how grass tips could be read as one more thing her jumper touches, but also, with “tips” as a verb —as if the grass was the agent “tipping” perhaps both to the line before, and leading to the next line.
Creation Stories:
The first, one after that, and then the next becomes a plural "creations" Stanza break... the last... the verb "invented" is used except one in the second stanza where "created" (not invented)is not associated with things but with the verb consuming-- an ironic twist of
uncreating. If read anaphor by anaphor vs. two stanzas, a quite different feel, but the poem more cohesive in two parts, the first, not so much about "us" as creation; the second about what we have done and the use of kiss, caress, embrace ending in feeding ourselves back to the volcano... perhaps an endless knot -- but also a sense of true end, with a changed use of affection as survival. I've asked Tom to comment on why the poem is "after W.S. Merwin and Rob Carney."
Amelia Bloomer's Stride:
Strong but not strident voice, evocative of the strong women who protested restrictions on women's rights from Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. -- up to images of Amelia Earhart or Katherine Hepburn in pants. Discussion included a comparison between a man wearing a "tight" bathing costume, vs a women who was arrested for such... bloomers on table legs... refraining from saying chicken "legs, thighs, breasts, etc." The key word: stride which gives the poem a bigger scope -- the very thing despised, the very thing that moves us along.
I know a man: Creeley
We listened to Creeley's recording...
how lines are staccato with gasps... sighs... but what is the tone at the end?
angry? dispairing? Although the recorded voice is less flat than in other poems, the question comes up of whether a poet allows his or her poem to be all that it is conceived to be-- or all the reader wants it to be.
Whether or not one wants to read it as an overheard bar conversation,
a joke of "knowing a man" without knowing...or the speaker revealing himself...
to steal from a John Kelly in the article below: "Creeley’s poetry is sparing without being sparse, emotive without being emotional, spontaneous without being uncontrolled".
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/08/john_creeley_s_goddamn_big_car_reveals_the_power_of_the_perfectly_crafted.html
For such a short poem, we spent some high-powered time on it -- !
See by Sally Bitter-Bonn, from her book Orange
Creation Stories by Tom Holmes
Amelia Bloomer’s Stride by Anne Coon
I Know a Man by Robert Creeley: Audio: access http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/content/i-know-man
All poems from Poets Walk:
How to read a poem...
Tableau 6:30 a.m. seems to ask the reader to dwell with it... associations with tableau,
early morning... I thought it would be interesting to allow each person to read the poem silently... you could have heard a pin drop, and there was an uncanny sense for me, watching people read, of being an observer, just as the speaker of the poem was observing a moment between husband and daughter. Usually we just plunge into a poem -- but the idea was to allow
each participant to "view" the poem, the way one might in a museum.
When I asked what picture was evoked, it was fun to see the different reactions -- just like picking up on different details in a painting. For some, a sense of action, others, a capture of nestling. Mentioned: Role of northern lights, associations and memories of a father's fierce love to a little daughter, curiosity about the mother, her role and relationship.
The title prepares us for a "staged moment". It is fitting that the poem tile reads, "flares porous" which brought us to discuss porosity... as two moments which fuse. wealth of past... to now. Time itself has openings as in "the unphrased wealth/
of her three-year old dreams" --
Whatever complication of relationship (perhaps the mother is jealous of the father) in the poem, we did not sense conflict... As reader, we felt invited to look, to be part of the poem...
See: This poem we read in different ways.
Choosing where to pause, so with a progression of readers ready to pick up where one voice stops without a break. Rather magical!
We noted the difference between blending the title into the poem... and not. How that effects "See" as both specific and universal.
One person suggested that the poem end without the
"she gathers clouds
tucks them into her pocket”
Of course, the poem tile has “she gathers clouds” — and it is a charming image, but the person who offered it, felt it edged a little on the “precious”.
We admired how grass tips could be read as one more thing her jumper touches, but also, with “tips” as a verb —as if the grass was the agent “tipping” perhaps both to the line before, and leading to the next line.
Creation Stories:
The first, one after that, and then the next becomes a plural "creations" Stanza break... the last... the verb "invented" is used except one in the second stanza where "created" (not invented)is not associated with things but with the verb consuming-- an ironic twist of
uncreating. If read anaphor by anaphor vs. two stanzas, a quite different feel, but the poem more cohesive in two parts, the first, not so much about "us" as creation; the second about what we have done and the use of kiss, caress, embrace ending in feeding ourselves back to the volcano... perhaps an endless knot -- but also a sense of true end, with a changed use of affection as survival. I've asked Tom to comment on why the poem is "after W.S. Merwin and Rob Carney."
Amelia Bloomer's Stride:
Strong but not strident voice, evocative of the strong women who protested restrictions on women's rights from Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. -- up to images of Amelia Earhart or Katherine Hepburn in pants. Discussion included a comparison between a man wearing a "tight" bathing costume, vs a women who was arrested for such... bloomers on table legs... refraining from saying chicken "legs, thighs, breasts, etc." The key word: stride which gives the poem a bigger scope -- the very thing despised, the very thing that moves us along.
I know a man: Creeley
We listened to Creeley's recording...
how lines are staccato with gasps... sighs... but what is the tone at the end?
angry? dispairing? Although the recorded voice is less flat than in other poems, the question comes up of whether a poet allows his or her poem to be all that it is conceived to be-- or all the reader wants it to be.
Whether or not one wants to read it as an overheard bar conversation,
a joke of "knowing a man" without knowing...or the speaker revealing himself...
to steal from a John Kelly in the article below: "Creeley’s poetry is sparing without being sparse, emotive without being emotional, spontaneous without being uncontrolled".
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/08/john_creeley_s_goddamn_big_car_reveals_the_power_of_the_perfectly_crafted.html
For such a short poem, we spent some high-powered time on it -- !
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Oasis: Poems for February 5
You Reading This, be Ready by William Stafford
The Kindness by Jan Beatty
Travellers by Philip Larkin (compare it to Perlman
from Poets Walk
Dear Father, Dear Sound by Kazim Ali
Bus Stop by Laure-Anne Bosselaar (-- from A New Hunger. Copyright © 2007)
For a complete alphabetized list of the poems and bio on the poets: http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com/poets-walk
Sadly, not here to moderate, but I trust people will have fun with the poems.
Stafford:
read line by line. Then, re-read, stanza by stanza. It’s up to the reader to determine the pause or not at the end of the line. It’s like a fermata in music – the conductor is the one who determines how long, sometimes showing a new tempo before going on.
How does this change your understanding?
**is the sound is "softened" in a paradoxical way --
*** the waiting is drawn out?
**** this/the line: enjambment drops to New glimpse; as if to ask us to lift it up;
***** another “interval” of silence added before reading "reading'
He has used 14 lines --is it an unrhymed sonnet? The volta (turn) after 8 lines, is the actual word, "turn", repeats at the end of the poem. The "starting" begins the first and last line as well as in the first line of the 3rd stanza. The title warns us to be Ready. The starting brings us to "now" and forces the reader to re-examine the idea of "starting" which never ends.
The line breaks only contain one comma, in the penultimate line, which draws attention to the lines which seem to have an invisible comma, as well as give a "rubato" to the "now," -- a drawn out pause. Perhaps, one could argue that the comma turns "now" within the question. This rubato effect could be used to emphasize the words, "right now" (7th line) associated with the place of now, in the last line "right in this room"(say slower with emphasis) -- the R doubles in "right" and "room" as if to underline the meaning of right as "exactly" and "correct" -- a double underline on the understanding and value of "now".
Beatty:
In this poem, have one person read the italics so they stand out. Read phrase by phrase – so up to the colon; up to periods. AFTER DISCUSSION, read the author’s note –does it reflect the poem the way you understand it?
“In ‘The Kindness’ I speak about the breathlessness of the single gesture. The woman in the poem is transported between worlds inside of one moment—and then saved by the unassuming movement of the baby elk/the human hand.”
—Jan Beatty
Larkin contrast with Perlman (see discussion Jan. 5)
Contrast Ali with Bosselaer
Ali's poem from “The 40th Day” should be read in couplets. It might also help to know more about the entire book. At one point, Kazim decided to play with having a poem have couplets reduce to single lines.
Could any couplet in this poem be “reduced”?
Does it feel disembodied, with an “I” and a “You” that can’t converse with each other?
Do couplets establish any polarity? Any moment of surprise? Or is it a collage, where the sound covers like paint on a canvas. Does it make you curious, or frustrated?
Rochester connection: Ali lived in Rochester, taught at MCC, is a BOA poet, and gave a reading at Steve Carpenter’s Gallery before becoming an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College and teaching in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine and the Stonecoast MFA program. A founding editor of Nightboat Books, Ali is also the translator and author of novels, including Quinn’s Passage (blazeVox books), named one of "The Best Books of 2005" by Chronogram magazine.
Bosselaer:
This poem captures one moment of overheard conversation. How does the setting play (title); what do we know about the man both from his words, but also by the way he holds his cell as if holding a physical presence... A good narrative sets up a moment of surprise – how has Laure-Anne done it here?
Background: Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where she worked for Belgian radio and television. Fluent in four languages, she moved to the United States in 1986. She lives in New York City and is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. Her books of poems include "A New Hunger" and "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf," both published by BOA Editions. She read in the Writers & Books Visiting Writers Series
Poems discussed Jan. 29
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 see Discussion Jan. 26
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
We whizzed through 8 poems... only making slight reference to Anthony Hecht's "sestina".
the first two also discussed at Pittsford on Feb. 3:
Clifton's poem, with the action and setting announced in the title, allows for both the particular and universal in the sense of "our" -- perhaps a community of Fishermen off the coast of Ireland, or perhaps all of us, alive,
in our little boats, sailing through life. I am reminded of Joseph Bruchac's response to the Winslow Homer painting, "Paddling at Dusk" this way:
Have you ever noticed
how many of those
in Homer's paintings
are turned away,
their backs as eloquent
as any face as they move
into the landscape...
Like the artist himself,
their eyes are their own.
**
The anaphor, "May the... may you... repeated again in three different positions
please correct the line break:
certain that it will
love your back may you
Personnification: lips, face, kiss, back, eyes, and the marvelous water waving where it is both wave, and like a person's hand saying hello, goodbye...
The lines cannot be said quickly, but "bob" as if on the open sea...
What are the forces that carry us beyond fear? why we are so careful... and how do we allow
trust?
Brahma is not an easy poem. Whether "red" in the first line is Native American or Indian Indian warrior referring to blood underscores Emerson's persona as Brahma, container of opposites. Note how the rhymed poem in predictable meter leads up to address the reader in the final two lines. One part of the discussion was to address the difference between things that are "joined as opposite" vs. things are are the same... Shame and fame, is a different coupling than doubter and doubt...
The Harjo --
Not, the world ends here... but Perhaps the World Ends Here...
The world begins at a kitchen table... gifts of the Earth... vs. gifts on the Altar
From Babies teething, children playing, receiving instruction on what/it means to be human.
Our Dreams drink coffee is such a delicious phrase—and how clever to have them “put their arms/around our children” and how reassuring to keep a steady keel by having them “laugh with us at our poor/falling-down selves as we put ourselves back/together
(note how the line break emphasizes the unput-back togetherness).
It is a celebratory poem, unlike Emerson’s more philosophical “Brahma” which has the Indian God pronounce the indisputable oneness we see broken into opposites.
Kitchen table as altar, is an accessible, familiar place at which to consider life.
The discussion of the poem allowed people to remember how it was a center of the family, whether a place to play cards, do homework, and bear the marks of living.
Al Poulin’s “The Angels of Radiators” takes a cold night, where the speaker is awake with a sense of aloneness but turns the ordinary to heavenly. The stanzas increase in length as the radiators come to life once the furnace “rumbles with resurrection”.
The poem tile is “dancing wild allelujas” – and the resurrection indeed, “warm as spring”.
Skillful, truly a poem that begins in delight and ends in Wisdom, as Frost would have it.
Boarding a Bus is similar. If you only read the ending line, you would want to know what story it is that you are reading and how it compares with your life. It starts with an overheard conversation, then rolls like the bus by a lonely gas station, the changing of a flat tire. And that too, is like our lives.
So too, Tony Leuzzi’s flip book – I contrasted it with Norman Rockwell – although indeed, the “Soldier on Leave” is probably at the end of the war... relaxed legs,
and one suspects, he’s home with his honey... there is the strange angle... life could serve a curve ball... and the intensity of the little girl watching the young couple underscores such a feeling. Backwards—bare tree (winter) to kiss to spring... Spring to retract back to winter. kiss. Over. Either way the end is white... our page, blank. Uncanny, unsettling – can you pin this poem down ? The sense is, not quite– no matter how many times you slip the pages.
Late fall and Communion – see Open discussion.
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 see Discussion Jan. 26
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
We whizzed through 8 poems... only making slight reference to Anthony Hecht's "sestina".
the first two also discussed at Pittsford on Feb. 3:
Clifton's poem, with the action and setting announced in the title, allows for both the particular and universal in the sense of "our" -- perhaps a community of Fishermen off the coast of Ireland, or perhaps all of us, alive,
in our little boats, sailing through life. I am reminded of Joseph Bruchac's response to the Winslow Homer painting, "Paddling at Dusk" this way:
Have you ever noticed
how many of those
in Homer's paintings
are turned away,
their backs as eloquent
as any face as they move
into the landscape...
Like the artist himself,
their eyes are their own.
**
The anaphor, "May the... may you... repeated again in three different positions
please correct the line break:
certain that it will
love your back may you
Personnification: lips, face, kiss, back, eyes, and the marvelous water waving where it is both wave, and like a person's hand saying hello, goodbye...
The lines cannot be said quickly, but "bob" as if on the open sea...
What are the forces that carry us beyond fear? why we are so careful... and how do we allow
trust?
Brahma is not an easy poem. Whether "red" in the first line is Native American or Indian Indian warrior referring to blood underscores Emerson's persona as Brahma, container of opposites. Note how the rhymed poem in predictable meter leads up to address the reader in the final two lines. One part of the discussion was to address the difference between things that are "joined as opposite" vs. things are are the same... Shame and fame, is a different coupling than doubter and doubt...
The Harjo --
Not, the world ends here... but Perhaps the World Ends Here...
The world begins at a kitchen table... gifts of the Earth... vs. gifts on the Altar
From Babies teething, children playing, receiving instruction on what/it means to be human.
Our Dreams drink coffee is such a delicious phrase—and how clever to have them “put their arms/around our children” and how reassuring to keep a steady keel by having them “laugh with us at our poor/falling-down selves as we put ourselves back/together
(note how the line break emphasizes the unput-back togetherness).
It is a celebratory poem, unlike Emerson’s more philosophical “Brahma” which has the Indian God pronounce the indisputable oneness we see broken into opposites.
Kitchen table as altar, is an accessible, familiar place at which to consider life.
The discussion of the poem allowed people to remember how it was a center of the family, whether a place to play cards, do homework, and bear the marks of living.
Al Poulin’s “The Angels of Radiators” takes a cold night, where the speaker is awake with a sense of aloneness but turns the ordinary to heavenly. The stanzas increase in length as the radiators come to life once the furnace “rumbles with resurrection”.
The poem tile is “dancing wild allelujas” – and the resurrection indeed, “warm as spring”.
Skillful, truly a poem that begins in delight and ends in Wisdom, as Frost would have it.
Boarding a Bus is similar. If you only read the ending line, you would want to know what story it is that you are reading and how it compares with your life. It starts with an overheard conversation, then rolls like the bus by a lonely gas station, the changing of a flat tire. And that too, is like our lives.
So too, Tony Leuzzi’s flip book – I contrasted it with Norman Rockwell – although indeed, the “Soldier on Leave” is probably at the end of the war... relaxed legs,
and one suspects, he’s home with his honey... there is the strange angle... life could serve a curve ball... and the intensity of the little girl watching the young couple underscores such a feeling. Backwards—bare tree (winter) to kiss to spring... Spring to retract back to winter. kiss. Over. Either way the end is white... our page, blank. Uncanny, unsettling – can you pin this poem down ? The sense is, not quite– no matter how many times you slip the pages.
Late fall and Communion – see Open discussion.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Poems discussed Jan. 26 from Poets Walk
Choose by Carl Sandburg
A Woman and Her Dog by Stephen Lewandowski
Late Fall by Eleanor McQuilkin
passage from San Ildefonso Nocturne by Octavio Paz
beware : do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
Which Side Are You On? Janine Pommy Vega
Touched by Deborah Tall
The power of the spoken word is often ignored in poetry, where a line is read as if looped to the next like a sentence. However, pacing, pauses, intonation, dynamics are as important to the reading of poetry outlaid as the playing of music.
In the first poem, Choose, there is no way a reader can say the first line fast, or pronounce "clenched fist" without a feel of clawing, chewing and spitting. The second, "open hand held out waiting" has a breathlessly- tongued lightness to it. Not really onomatopoeic, but yet, the of meat of the meet, will depend on the how of our approach. Short and to the point... and worthy of being memorized.
See February 12 discussion of the Paz, Reed, Vega.
**
Lewandowski has been interested in Haudenosaunee folklore for a longtime, and so it was fun to hear the various
comments. His answer to the group about the inspiration behind the poem"
"I was struck when I first read this story by its similarity to that of the Wily Odysseus and his Faithful wife Penelope. You may remember that she was putting off the suitors who argued that "Odysseus must be dead after all this time so why not choose me?" She told them that she had to finish her weaving first, and each night she herself (though she did have a faithful dog who was the first to recognize his master's return) unwove what she had woven that day. Just to finish off that story, the Old Dog died after he roused himself to wag his tail at the master's return, and then Wily Odysseus slew all the suitors.
As far as I'm concerned all literature is contemporaneous, so I am just sticking another little poem onto an idea which has appeared and will continue to appear. Most native americans emphasize cycles in their religious and philosophical thinking (as contrasted with European thought that was/is either linear or opposing opposites). Also any of their thought of the moon is bound to also be about women's bodies and cycles."
What distinguishes a time-tested oral myth, such as "A Woman and Her Dog" alludes to vs. a poem. The opening stanza creates a dreamlike setting, woman and dog sitting in the moon... and there is a certain aggressive jolt
about the fire, where a stew boils while she embroiders.
Penelope, waning and waxing, unfinished business, renewed, still unfinished... I'm wondering if the question might be "Should she ever finish her work", vs. the prediction of the end of the world should she...
Where does certainty about the end of the world come from?
In a different poem, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo, there is a sense of the importance of the kitchen table as gathering place, as altar for food, as hearth around which everything from gossip to baby's teething at its corners happens. I love the line, "Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children." Such a warmth in this living poem, unlike the myth with a 3rd person, unidentified "woman" at a remove from us.
For the Eleanor McQuilkin, I was inspired by listening to Wallace Stevens reading his poem, "The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain" with all sorts of pauses that one wouldn't know to read without hearing him, as if the poem were gasping for ox y gen as if climbing the mountain it would become.
In this lovely 8 line poem, the title announced, "Late Fall" -- fall perhaps arriving late, or the end of the Fall... the tenderness of holding -- not just Fall, like the end of a life, a hurt bird, sensing the the contradiction of wings, not as springboards to another place, but folded, the way a bird will snuggle into itself to sleep, holding the center of itself, protecting its heart.
If you pause after the "just enough" in the 6th line, pause after "afternoon"/ in my hand/bird
watch the "stillness of autumn" broken, just like "breathing just enough" and "its wing folded"
the breaks not telling about breaking, and yet we sense it, knowing Winter is next.
To quote GB Shaw: "play fast to get the agony over with... play slow – to enjoy the glory".
Although we enjoyed the Nocturne, we felt limited by the fact it was only part of a passage.
Is it a reference to the town where in 1721-24 rose the splendid palace of La Granja, built for Philip V called "the Versailles of Spain"? Around the palace, Philip V ordered the laying-out of a huge garden with fountains which was also inspired by Versailles. Not a bad place to talk about what poetry is: laid out, with musical fountains, light/shadows, the dignity of human endeavor...
Ishmael Reed's "Beware of this Poem" was a great hit -- the play of mirrors, the way the poem itself becomes alive, and when asking Ishmael about the poem, his response: Glad that you liked my poem. I didn't know how to end it. The statistic cited during a radio broadcast gave me the last lines. I don't think the broadcast could have come up with disappearance as "only
a space in the lives of their friends...
Brilliant!
We ended on Jessie Rittenhouse, who presented the popular American mainstream poetry that Ezra Pound, modernism, James Sibley Watson and The Dial were reacting against. The another/smother embracing this inner line has something to be said for it, juxtaposing humans vs. cows...
One neck folded on another,
What superb complacency
Janine Pomy Vega: Comments included:
dramatic in its content. The opening stanza is a wonderful invitation:
Where does my anger come from
at the laziness, the prosaic?
How many times will you enter a room
and leave it vacant: in and out,
in and out, visiting a temple of possibility
and never leave a gift on the altar?
The poem tile is "gift on the altar" which is how the words feel. She mentions Kabir and Rumi,
with some contemporary spin: "Read the coins you've thrown down into the dirt,
they spell integrity"...
Now what does that mean? In this poem, meaning slips just like the "you" and placing it on "this" side or "that"
so that the repeat of the title as final line and question, is thrown back to you to think about -- how the "ordinary" and the "miracle" the "you" and the "wind" are no more "you" or "me" -- as she sums up:
Oh, so that's it, finally:
No more you or me than that mountain
and that mountain/there.
And no mountain.
(I can read this 3 ways -- how about you?)
Touched, by Deborah Tall gave rise to many stories and a lively conversation. What is it about a stranger thinking they can touch a pregnant woman's belly? How differently we treat each other now...or do we?
Would a stranger seeing a tag outside your clothing tuck it in for you, or has our
sense of space changed.
Comment about Japan subways which perhaps might be crowded...but in terms of how Caucasians are intimate -- they consider caucasians lick each other like dogs...
feel/field day.
meeting some one as stranger... but w/out touch
What a treasure this poets' walk is!
A Woman and Her Dog by Stephen Lewandowski
Late Fall by Eleanor McQuilkin
passage from San Ildefonso Nocturne by Octavio Paz
beware : do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
Which Side Are You On? Janine Pommy Vega
Touched by Deborah Tall
The power of the spoken word is often ignored in poetry, where a line is read as if looped to the next like a sentence. However, pacing, pauses, intonation, dynamics are as important to the reading of poetry outlaid as the playing of music.
In the first poem, Choose, there is no way a reader can say the first line fast, or pronounce "clenched fist" without a feel of clawing, chewing and spitting. The second, "open hand held out waiting" has a breathlessly- tongued lightness to it. Not really onomatopoeic, but yet, the of meat of the meet, will depend on the how of our approach. Short and to the point... and worthy of being memorized.
See February 12 discussion of the Paz, Reed, Vega.
**
Lewandowski has been interested in Haudenosaunee folklore for a longtime, and so it was fun to hear the various
comments. His answer to the group about the inspiration behind the poem"
"I was struck when I first read this story by its similarity to that of the Wily Odysseus and his Faithful wife Penelope. You may remember that she was putting off the suitors who argued that "Odysseus must be dead after all this time so why not choose me?" She told them that she had to finish her weaving first, and each night she herself (though she did have a faithful dog who was the first to recognize his master's return) unwove what she had woven that day. Just to finish off that story, the Old Dog died after he roused himself to wag his tail at the master's return, and then Wily Odysseus slew all the suitors.
As far as I'm concerned all literature is contemporaneous, so I am just sticking another little poem onto an idea which has appeared and will continue to appear. Most native americans emphasize cycles in their religious and philosophical thinking (as contrasted with European thought that was/is either linear or opposing opposites). Also any of their thought of the moon is bound to also be about women's bodies and cycles."
What distinguishes a time-tested oral myth, such as "A Woman and Her Dog" alludes to vs. a poem. The opening stanza creates a dreamlike setting, woman and dog sitting in the moon... and there is a certain aggressive jolt
about the fire, where a stew boils while she embroiders.
Penelope, waning and waxing, unfinished business, renewed, still unfinished... I'm wondering if the question might be "Should she ever finish her work", vs. the prediction of the end of the world should she...
Where does certainty about the end of the world come from?
In a different poem, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo, there is a sense of the importance of the kitchen table as gathering place, as altar for food, as hearth around which everything from gossip to baby's teething at its corners happens. I love the line, "Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children." Such a warmth in this living poem, unlike the myth with a 3rd person, unidentified "woman" at a remove from us.
For the Eleanor McQuilkin, I was inspired by listening to Wallace Stevens reading his poem, "The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain" with all sorts of pauses that one wouldn't know to read without hearing him, as if the poem were gasping for ox y gen as if climbing the mountain it would become.
In this lovely 8 line poem, the title announced, "Late Fall" -- fall perhaps arriving late, or the end of the Fall... the tenderness of holding -- not just Fall, like the end of a life, a hurt bird, sensing the the contradiction of wings, not as springboards to another place, but folded, the way a bird will snuggle into itself to sleep, holding the center of itself, protecting its heart.
If you pause after the "just enough" in the 6th line, pause after "afternoon"/ in my hand/bird
watch the "stillness of autumn" broken, just like "breathing just enough" and "its wing folded"
the breaks not telling about breaking, and yet we sense it, knowing Winter is next.
To quote GB Shaw: "play fast to get the agony over with... play slow – to enjoy the glory".
Although we enjoyed the Nocturne, we felt limited by the fact it was only part of a passage.
Is it a reference to the town where in 1721-24 rose the splendid palace of La Granja, built for Philip V called "the Versailles of Spain"? Around the palace, Philip V ordered the laying-out of a huge garden with fountains which was also inspired by Versailles. Not a bad place to talk about what poetry is: laid out, with musical fountains, light/shadows, the dignity of human endeavor...
Ishmael Reed's "Beware of this Poem" was a great hit -- the play of mirrors, the way the poem itself becomes alive, and when asking Ishmael about the poem, his response: Glad that you liked my poem. I didn't know how to end it. The statistic cited during a radio broadcast gave me the last lines. I don't think the broadcast could have come up with disappearance as "only
a space in the lives of their friends...
Brilliant!
We ended on Jessie Rittenhouse, who presented the popular American mainstream poetry that Ezra Pound, modernism, James Sibley Watson and The Dial were reacting against. The another/smother embracing this inner line has something to be said for it, juxtaposing humans vs. cows...
One neck folded on another,
What superb complacency
Janine Pomy Vega: Comments included:
dramatic in its content. The opening stanza is a wonderful invitation:
Where does my anger come from
at the laziness, the prosaic?
How many times will you enter a room
and leave it vacant: in and out,
in and out, visiting a temple of possibility
and never leave a gift on the altar?
The poem tile is "gift on the altar" which is how the words feel. She mentions Kabir and Rumi,
with some contemporary spin: "Read the coins you've thrown down into the dirt,
they spell integrity"...
Now what does that mean? In this poem, meaning slips just like the "you" and placing it on "this" side or "that"
so that the repeat of the title as final line and question, is thrown back to you to think about -- how the "ordinary" and the "miracle" the "you" and the "wind" are no more "you" or "me" -- as she sums up:
Oh, so that's it, finally:
No more you or me than that mountain
and that mountain/there.
And no mountain.
(I can read this 3 ways -- how about you?)
Touched, by Deborah Tall gave rise to many stories and a lively conversation. What is it about a stranger thinking they can touch a pregnant woman's belly? How differently we treat each other now...or do we?
Would a stranger seeing a tag outside your clothing tuck it in for you, or has our
sense of space changed.
Comment about Japan subways which perhaps might be crowded...but in terms of how Caucasians are intimate -- they consider caucasians lick each other like dogs...
feel/field day.
meeting some one as stranger... but w/out touch
What a treasure this poets' walk is!
Friday, January 23, 2015
discussion Jan. 12
The End of the Holidays by Mark Perlburg
Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris*
Trying Fourleggedness by Rebecca Hazelton
SOME POEMS FROM POETS WALK
Nighthawks by John Logan
The Lie – Anne Waldman
what we can’t know by James LaVilla-Havelin
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
A Lover by Amy Lowell
How simple to start with an airplane company name, "United" and the practical sign in the airport, "Departures". Perlburg takes the universals of leave-taking, adds a season, "winter barred its teeth", and contrasts contemporary speech with heightened language. The perfect line-break,
Shift/baggage, links the personal to a nautical practical, after the repeat "come together and divide" applies to summer leaf, and saying good bye to a thirty year old. The gentle tone has a tinge of humor in the acceptance of departing with all the unsaid parts of feeling united.
Insh'Allah appeared in Ted Kooser's site, American Life in Poetry, with this introduction:
"Just as it was to me, Insha’Allah will be a new word to many of you, offered in this poem by Danusha Laméris, a Californian. It looks to me like one of those words that ought to get a lot of use."
It captures for the non-arabic speaker more than a simple word, but the full gamut of life, lived with a sense that what will be, and what one hopes will be requires such an intercession. The automatic "God Willing" threads through the poem like beads on a rosary, as the reader follows birth, health, safety, the end of war. Without exaggerating the Middle Eastern connections, the final stanza captures poignantly the connection between "Insh'Allah" and hope.
"How lightly we learn to hold hope,
as if it were an animal that could turn around
and bite your hand. And still we carry it
the way a mother would, carefully,
from one day to the next."
Our discussion explored the ways we cope, both trying to avoid clinging to hope, yet not fall into the opposite realm of worry. What happens, happens, whether we hope or worry or do some of each. "Trust... but verify"... References to Kina Hora, to the function of talismans, magical incantations.
We all enjoyed the simple but strong message.
Trying 4-leggedness, (from poetry, 2013) by the title invites images of a toddler crawling, as well as horse, dog and more quickly dispelled with the first line: "The boy and the girl were mostly gesture," and then plunges into sexist innuendoes, if read from a feminist perspective.
A good exercise is to compare the Hazleton to Jane Hirshfield's "This morning I wanted four legs". http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20141231/
Nighthawks:
Who does not know this painting by Hopper?
(http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628)
Our discussion ranged from comparing poem vs. image; poem without image and what it evokes by itself. The consensus is that the painting is stronger than the poem because it is evocative, carries a sharp sense of unease, tinged with an anomie, empty loneliness... The poem is more didactic.
The bio on Poets Walk: Logan (1923-1987) taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Notre Dame, St. Johns College and other institutions. He received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He spoke as part of the Plutzik Memorial Reading Series at the University of Rochester.
I am not sure when Logan wrote this 15-line poem, but it would help to imagine the public viewing Hopper's America in 1942 with "hated, hook-nosed" inserting an anti-semitic reference. The flat, concrete language has some surprising assumptions: "squats" at the counter? The 8th line is not at all poetic, and why tell that "details abound" when 3 lines of details follow? In the painting, there is no sense of "all folks" which takes the reader out of the poem... but the final two lines balance the emptiness... but not hopefully... the hands almost touch. Perhaps our poetic expectations in 2015 have also changed.
The painting gives us a sense of the middle of the night, interior slanted against the exterior,
the handful of hangers-on. One can argue that the clatter of /k/ gives an edginess to the poem. Isolating the words, one can feel their slice: back/counter/capped/cook/complicated in the first two lines of the poem continues sparingly (coffee/look/customers/hook/cafe) only to disappear by the eighth line until the marvelous "tie around the neck of the cook" -- which feels like strangling, not just the bowtie. Folks, is the last /k/.
Anne Waldman's poem has the paver "I want a rare sky", words perfectly picked by Cochran for the poem tile, captures the sense of rare as a multifaceted adjective. How does "rare" work with sky? Something tending towards raw? clouded or unclouded, filled with lightning, painted with an unusual sunset or stars? To use the terms of the poem, "what we can’t know" by James LaVilla-Havelin, in Waldman's almost-villanelle, she shows "what we can't know" -- how lie uncurls* as we seek to understand what we think is knowable, such as a bird's heart, dirt's weight...
The rhyming link to lie, die, cry, and double sense of eye, I evokes a biblical mote in the eye... we never see what we think we see... The poem merits reading again and again, to discover the complexity of art, as vision, sight/insight and what this means about us as we wonder,
"How to fuel the world, then die
Distance yourself from artfulness"
We read James LaVilla-Havelin line by line... admiring how the poem's powerful images starting with
"the number of dead" leading to "a lie’s uncurling" ... only to end on "how we are remembered"...
The poem includes what we think is "knowable" -- yet invites us to go on to list 10 more things that are whoa-worthy...the strong emotionality of some of the lines put us in a feeling of thoughtfulness...
The Li-Young Lee poem reminded us of Keats' "negative capability" by the sensuous ambiguity.
How does freedom fasten one heart to each falling thing?
Finally, we arrive at the imagist Amy Lowell, dubbed "Amy-gist". But if you didn't know her, her background, how would you read her two lines? I challenged the group -- and offered a sentimental, Hallmark-y rendering, to which Judith answered, absolutely not, with a story about her grandmother meeting the big-voiced, big-boned Lowell, with a personality like an ice maiden, backstage.
Her comment, " “At Hallmark the bunnies do not have fangs..." which apparently excludes any romantic notions of the two lines.
It is interesting to contemplate What a poem brings out in us without knowing poet or context.
What we take in...what we think is expected of us to take in...
compare Pound's imagist poem:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris*
Trying Fourleggedness by Rebecca Hazelton
SOME POEMS FROM POETS WALK
Nighthawks by John Logan
The Lie – Anne Waldman
what we can’t know by James LaVilla-Havelin
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
A Lover by Amy Lowell
How simple to start with an airplane company name, "United" and the practical sign in the airport, "Departures". Perlburg takes the universals of leave-taking, adds a season, "winter barred its teeth", and contrasts contemporary speech with heightened language. The perfect line-break,
Shift/baggage, links the personal to a nautical practical, after the repeat "come together and divide" applies to summer leaf, and saying good bye to a thirty year old. The gentle tone has a tinge of humor in the acceptance of departing with all the unsaid parts of feeling united.
Insh'Allah appeared in Ted Kooser's site, American Life in Poetry, with this introduction:
"Just as it was to me, Insha’Allah will be a new word to many of you, offered in this poem by Danusha Laméris, a Californian. It looks to me like one of those words that ought to get a lot of use."
It captures for the non-arabic speaker more than a simple word, but the full gamut of life, lived with a sense that what will be, and what one hopes will be requires such an intercession. The automatic "God Willing" threads through the poem like beads on a rosary, as the reader follows birth, health, safety, the end of war. Without exaggerating the Middle Eastern connections, the final stanza captures poignantly the connection between "Insh'Allah" and hope.
"How lightly we learn to hold hope,
as if it were an animal that could turn around
and bite your hand. And still we carry it
the way a mother would, carefully,
from one day to the next."
Our discussion explored the ways we cope, both trying to avoid clinging to hope, yet not fall into the opposite realm of worry. What happens, happens, whether we hope or worry or do some of each. "Trust... but verify"... References to Kina Hora, to the function of talismans, magical incantations.
We all enjoyed the simple but strong message.
Trying 4-leggedness, (from poetry, 2013) by the title invites images of a toddler crawling, as well as horse, dog and more quickly dispelled with the first line: "The boy and the girl were mostly gesture," and then plunges into sexist innuendoes, if read from a feminist perspective.
A good exercise is to compare the Hazleton to Jane Hirshfield's "This morning I wanted four legs". http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20141231/
Nighthawks:
Who does not know this painting by Hopper?
(http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628)
Our discussion ranged from comparing poem vs. image; poem without image and what it evokes by itself. The consensus is that the painting is stronger than the poem because it is evocative, carries a sharp sense of unease, tinged with an anomie, empty loneliness... The poem is more didactic.
The bio on Poets Walk: Logan (1923-1987) taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Notre Dame, St. Johns College and other institutions. He received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He spoke as part of the Plutzik Memorial Reading Series at the University of Rochester.
I am not sure when Logan wrote this 15-line poem, but it would help to imagine the public viewing Hopper's America in 1942 with "hated, hook-nosed" inserting an anti-semitic reference. The flat, concrete language has some surprising assumptions: "squats" at the counter? The 8th line is not at all poetic, and why tell that "details abound" when 3 lines of details follow? In the painting, there is no sense of "all folks" which takes the reader out of the poem... but the final two lines balance the emptiness... but not hopefully... the hands almost touch. Perhaps our poetic expectations in 2015 have also changed.
The painting gives us a sense of the middle of the night, interior slanted against the exterior,
the handful of hangers-on. One can argue that the clatter of /k/ gives an edginess to the poem. Isolating the words, one can feel their slice: back/counter/capped/cook/complicated in the first two lines of the poem continues sparingly (coffee/look/customers/hook/cafe) only to disappear by the eighth line until the marvelous "tie around the neck of the cook" -- which feels like strangling, not just the bowtie. Folks, is the last /k/.
Anne Waldman's poem has the paver "I want a rare sky", words perfectly picked by Cochran for the poem tile, captures the sense of rare as a multifaceted adjective. How does "rare" work with sky? Something tending towards raw? clouded or unclouded, filled with lightning, painted with an unusual sunset or stars? To use the terms of the poem, "what we can’t know" by James LaVilla-Havelin, in Waldman's almost-villanelle, she shows "what we can't know" -- how lie uncurls* as we seek to understand what we think is knowable, such as a bird's heart, dirt's weight...
The rhyming link to lie, die, cry, and double sense of eye, I evokes a biblical mote in the eye... we never see what we think we see... The poem merits reading again and again, to discover the complexity of art, as vision, sight/insight and what this means about us as we wonder,
"How to fuel the world, then die
Distance yourself from artfulness"
We read James LaVilla-Havelin line by line... admiring how the poem's powerful images starting with
"the number of dead" leading to "a lie’s uncurling" ... only to end on "how we are remembered"...
The poem includes what we think is "knowable" -- yet invites us to go on to list 10 more things that are whoa-worthy...the strong emotionality of some of the lines put us in a feeling of thoughtfulness...
The Li-Young Lee poem reminded us of Keats' "negative capability" by the sensuous ambiguity.
How does freedom fasten one heart to each falling thing?
Finally, we arrive at the imagist Amy Lowell, dubbed "Amy-gist". But if you didn't know her, her background, how would you read her two lines? I challenged the group -- and offered a sentimental, Hallmark-y rendering, to which Judith answered, absolutely not, with a story about her grandmother meeting the big-voiced, big-boned Lowell, with a personality like an ice maiden, backstage.
Her comment, " “At Hallmark the bunnies do not have fangs..." which apparently excludes any romantic notions of the two lines.
It is interesting to contemplate What a poem brings out in us without knowing poet or context.
What we take in...what we think is expected of us to take in...
compare Pound's imagist poem:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Poems for Jan. 12 + Jan. 19 + Jan 26
The End of the Holidays by Mark Perlburg
Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris
Trying Fourleggedness by Rebecca Hazelton
MORE POEMS FROM POETS WALK
Nighthawks by John Logan
The Lie – Anne Waldman
what we can’t know by James LaVilla-Havelin
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
A Lover by Amy Lowell
(see discussion -- Jan. 12-- separately)
The poems below sent out for the next two weeks are from Poets' Walk: far too many to be able to discuss in two sessions!
A Coat of Faded Blue by John McNaughton
The Logic of Death by Dane Gordon
Sestina d'Inverno by Anthony Hecht
Emancipation Proclamation by William Heyen
Boarding a Bus by Stephen Huff
Flip Book by Tony Leuzzi
see discussion Jan 26 -- separately
Choose by Carl Sandburg
A Woman and Her Dog by Stephen Lewandowski
Late Fall by Eleanor McQuilkin
passage from San Ildefonso Nocturne by Octavio Paz
beware : do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
Which Side Are You On? Janine Pommy Vega
Touched by Deborah Tall
tabled for February 5
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
Blessing of the boats at St. Mary's, Lucille Clifton
Brahma, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
**
Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris
Trying Fourleggedness by Rebecca Hazelton
MORE POEMS FROM POETS WALK
Nighthawks by John Logan
The Lie – Anne Waldman
what we can’t know by James LaVilla-Havelin
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
A Lover by Amy Lowell
(see discussion -- Jan. 12-- separately)
The poems below sent out for the next two weeks are from Poets' Walk: far too many to be able to discuss in two sessions!
A Coat of Faded Blue by John McNaughton
The Logic of Death by Dane Gordon
Sestina d'Inverno by Anthony Hecht
Emancipation Proclamation by William Heyen
Boarding a Bus by Stephen Huff
Flip Book by Tony Leuzzi
see discussion Jan 26 -- separately
Choose by Carl Sandburg
A Woman and Her Dog by Stephen Lewandowski
Late Fall by Eleanor McQuilkin
passage from San Ildefonso Nocturne by Octavio Paz
beware : do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed
Communion by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
Which Side Are You On? Janine Pommy Vega
Touched by Deborah Tall
tabled for February 5
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
Blessing of the boats at St. Mary's, Lucille Clifton
Brahma, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
**
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