poems for January 20 + Jan. 28

Over in Montana by William Stafford
Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czeslaw Milosz by Matthew Olzmann
The Milosz Poem that inspired Olzmann: Dedication by Czeslaw Milosz
Cartoon Music by John Ashbury
Radical by Marianne Moore

I have interspersed a few comments from the Rundel Group below.


For the first poem, I had received this comment: "I especially enjoyed the Stafford poem and his treading in an out of iambic pentameter, the extension of which seems to add great heft to the final stanza." Rhythm is indeed important and dictated by stresses. It is interesting how Stafford varies both line length, but also enjambment. In the third stanza, the break enhances the action of the trees stretching out:
" ... Limbs
reach out. They touch and shiver."
allow a sense of physical stretching out.

In these line breaks, however, he creates a suspension, a chance to hang on to one meaning before its completion, like waiting for a surprise. How would you end these phrases:
They know what is
up where
They make
millions of

That fact that they invite multiple meanings seems to echo the sense of vibrancy.

what is.... coming.
up where... it's clear
They make... their strange signs

Assonance, rhythm add to a personified Winter unfolding in this visit to the big sky country.
There is mention of a house, but the grandeur of nature overrides any interference of humans.
Rather there is sense of a meditative reflection of a great story like Noah's ark... and all the parts of nature listen. We are included, and thus reminded to reflect on who we are "in our little lives".

A closer study of the textures of sound also enhances the sense of universal aliveness of "a great story", that continues in spite of Winter's "stop"-- the "dead" leaves cluster, actively. Perhaps the stars look to be in a rigid pattern -- but they sharpen, glitter.
a few examples -- but there are many more!
short i/long I:
winter, visit, is, listen, wings, in, shiver, glitter, rigid, millions, little
vs.
silent, gliding, nights, wide, lives

ch vs. sh: reach-touches/brush;
the liquids,aliterations
the sibilants alone and combined with st, sh, str,
more assonance..
hollow / burrow
houses/touches/
huddle/brush

The next two poems start out with the same two lines. Whether discussing Poland, WW 2, universals of human nature, city schools, and in both, a sense of impotence in the face of official lies... rhetoric...
"You whom I could not save,
Listen to me."

The opening lines sound like a confession will ensue, and yet neither poem takes that direction.
Rather the "shoulds" and wrongs done when we haven't followed their moral dictates, bring out the complexity and grief of untenable situations. How do we get ourselves so mired in wars, disagreements, perpetrate injustice and hatred pinned on a racist notion that one is better than another? Of what use are our words?
And yet, from the discussion, we agreed the words were so well put, they allowed us to speak,
share and by doing so feel a sense of salve as we face the unresolved and painful discrepancies of how the world could be but is not.
"That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim..."

Late -- too late? or the fact that we need many years to develop understanding as we open door after door... poetry allows a special consideration of what is on the other side of the door.

Ghosts will go away if there is nothing left for them to do...
classic image of ghost: coming to tell us something...
Emily reminded us of the poem by Mark Doty, "In Two Seconds" we discussed in July about the
boy shot by the policeman...
Don brought up the American “dream” as a myth... with the country built by the blacks...
and more discussion on human beings, politics, countries at work.

Dedication, was written soon after the occupation and destruction of Warsaw. Perhaps it an homage to those who died from one who survived. In it, Milosz acknowledges the difficulty of speaking about the unspeakable, dedicates himself to writing poetry that will grapple with history and memory.
But there is also another angle. If the "you" are the Nazis, "those who infuse hatred into beauty, blind force into accomplishment," then the writing is for them -- may they never visit again.
The second stanza gives hope: What strengthened me, for you was lethal -- Milosz aims for simple speech, images that are undisguised,open. He does not hammer a point or rant but quietly places his words on the grave, for the future.


“Do I wish none of this happened? Yes.” – Gov. Andrew Cuomo. This epigram's context is the hullabaloo on common core and teacher evaluations...
But it applies as well to the Milosz and Olzmann poems.
Reading the Ashbery poem line by line makes a wonderful collage of seemingly familiar words, with
a tongue-in-cheek, commentary with sound-alike words, a little French, and "buttered ramekins" out of context... that never are filled. The title and epigram set a humorous tone.

"You’re not going to have any trouble.
Standard stories of unrest drag on.
Was that a painful moment?"

Ashbery delights in such catch phrases, puns, contradictions."Buzzword conversation"-- but how do we understand it?
Is it painful to read? Perhaps if you stop and think about what lies underneath. Opposition to women's reproductive rights; gays' rights. Aging, disguised with ice cream and mirrors, safety and sickness, standard unrest... Perhaps as one participant says, the poem mimics a politician caught in the cartoon, side-sapping responsibility, so he'll keep his job.

How do we frame what we see, what we read? How do we share what we think?

The Pittsford Group ended on the radical as root carrot, read sentence by sentence.
the strange line breaks like mon / poly (-- mon oh! pole?)
stand / ing
con /
ditions of life pre /
determined

It reminded John of Elgar's Enigma variations: Who was the one with broken speech? And gave an imitation of Wm F. Buckley...
One can look up the poem and read "The poem shows many of Moore's best features: a syntax most readers have to work to decipher; careful if whimsical descriptive phrases, marked by colliding comparisons ("tail-like, wedge-shaped"); a moral at (or near) the end. (Moore's stanzas and lines count syllables, rather than metrical feet: All four first lines here, for instance, have three syllables, and all second lines have nine.)"
It seemed a suitable fit to the others. Radical... this idea of poet as root vegetable...

So much more to say and recount. Read the poems and comment please.

poems for Jan. 13

White-Eyes by Mary Oliver
Poem and Painting Pairing from American Academy of Poetry: The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak by Albert Bierstadt + Joy Harjo, "Remember"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_Mountains,_Lander%27s_Peak
Ice for the Ice Trade -- by Stephen Burt
A Short Testament by Anne Porter
To Days of Winter -- by W.S. Merlin
To the New Year - by W.S. Merwin


This selection of poems threads winter, but also a sense of transformation and meditative moments on connections.

The first poem by Mary Oliver, where the nine tercets drift lines out to imitate a bird's feathers and the wind's wings, hinges on the 5th stanza, dividing first an image of the bird's urge to make music and then ending with clouds falling like feathers from an "unimaginable bird" into snow, like the Indian "Great Spirit". Apparently, "White Eyes" could be a reference to an Indian Chief, and we tried to imagine what bird would have "white eyes" or whether it is a sense of white rings around eyes, and how this detail in the title works. White light, such as sunlight, contains all colors, and white in the poem seems to bind heaven to earth, spirit to nature.
Mary Oliver’s inaccuracy of detail regarding a nest as resting place, and clouds pushed North by the wind with a wishful thinking of “teaching them to be “mild and silent” leads to a certain sentimentality which some found distracting. The reading of the poem is slow, meditative, gentle and by the 6th stanza, she starts to use em-dashes, which further slows us down.

A poem/painting exercise is always instructive: how does a poet create the seamlessness of the absence of brushstroke? Is there an equivalent of anaphor in the painting? How does the idealization of the Rockies work with the incantatory urgency of "remember"? The intrigue of the poem for me is the image of all the colors of people's skin as what covers the earth, the sense of "aliveness" in motion, very unlike the stilled frame of an Indian camp in the foreground of high (sacred) mountain. Perhaps the poem was picked as Harjo was the Wallace Stevens Award winner by the American Academy. Carmen brought up the original which contains more details, and perhaps a clash between contemporary and traditional Indian.

The Stephen Burt poem brought up the idea of human trade -- and the analogy of ice as a chip of human being experience certainly works as a way of looking at how we feel "commodified", and lose our individual identity. The passage
"A few twigs and dragonfly wings got caught
near the center of me long ago; they serve
to distinguish me from others of my kind,
along with some bubbles of air."
reminded us of Harjo's "skin of the earth" and the multiplicity possible as we each gather different parts of life as our experience.

Discussion points: Thoreau: criticizing ice trade on Walden Pond;
Each stanza a different circumstance/person... and lines can be read in many ways depending on where you put the accent :e.g.:
Everybody wants a piece of me.
Do you accent the first word? the last? the idea of a "piece", or the wants, as opposed to no one noticing.


The next poem also has the supplication to "remember", but instead of asking for forgiveness, it seems more a petition to "make things right". Is "You" always God, or can it be read as a singular family member, a plural society?
Is she speaking about resurrection, linking her death to failed promises...
The formal capital letter that begins each line lends solemnity. Discussion brought up references to "My name is Earl..."; the fact that we don’t always know we have hurt someone and incantation of Jewish High Holidays... Tikkum Olam...
Confession – contrition,Christian prayer for forgiveness...
tossing responsibility back to God.

We read the two Merwin poems back to back -- both are from the same book, and share not only Merwin's characteristic "suspended lines" with no punctuation, but similar images: he blends passive with active, light both worn thing but also touching; stillness, hush, a "you" that speaks of an omniscient spirit infused in winter, in the passage of time, the here and now, the dove.

Concluding with Merwin allowed us to consider the meditative and metaphysical aspects of the poems shared. (we’ll be tabling the Stafford for next week), With one foot in a sense of history (particularly the idealized painting of Bierstadt and the problem of idealizing history, which Burt’s “Ice Trade” offsets with innuendoes perhaps of the Slave Tade) and secondly, the possibility of the new as we pass through our lives, connecting both ancient worlds to our own old year to the next year, already now, in winter.
The sense of greater story of the natural world comes through, looking at how it intersects in our tiny lives.

Elizabeth's comments: (email participant):
I would find interesting a discussion about anthropomorphizing in poems.
Does it bother anyone else (other than me)?
What can fairly be ascribed to nature?

Can we make of the world something like our own image,
ascribing mind and other human qualities?
Or does nature just serve as objective correlative, that we are not really saying other natural things do, think and say as we do?

poems for Dec. 16-- participants' picks

The Height of Love -- Taha Muhammad Ali (Thank you Elaine R.)
Out of the dust- 1961 by John Weisenthal
Going to see the new massage therapist – Bernie Shore
Praising Manners by Robert Bly
By the Waterfall in Watkins Glen, October -- Kitty Jospé

The poem by Taha Muhammad Ali comes from his collection, "Twigs".
I would love to be able to speak the original. The opening line is a brilliant line-break.
What makes me love
being alive

how is it connected for us that what makes us love, often has to do with loving being alive? And how do we spend our spirit -- and how could we not regardless of any suffering.

John's poem is a definite read aloud and captures the energy of a young man working with race horses. Bravo!
Bernie's poem touches on the universals of getting older... and a discussion of
how we deal with troubles... Discussion included mention of the
Dr. Seuss movie: 5,000 fingers of Dr. T.
Do-mi-do Duds...

The Bly received barrels of bullets... Blake: without neatness of execution,
precision of ideas (reflected in Blake's profession as engraver... metal plates... drawing...)
Bly interested in Jung... men’s groups.
narcissism... if you aren’t praising... you’re stealing...

get on your knees... if you please : John doesn’t like the preachiness...
a robin redbreast in a cage puts heaven in a cage. (has resonance...)

And we ended with a meditative whisper of words inspired by a leaf floating in the waterfalls of Watkins Glen.

last post of 2015

It's been another wonderful year of sharing poems...
On January 6 David Sanders will lead a discussion about the “biblical-modern interactions”: from The Gospel According to Matthew: 2. 1-12 and TSE's Gift of the Magi. The notes on the opening line:
"Adapted from a Nativity Sermon by Launcelot Andrewes at Winchester on Christmas Day of 1623: “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farther off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter.”

Why do certain images recur, charged with emotion?

In this season of winding up the old, preparing the new, I sent "A Short Testament" by Anne Portera for your private reflection. I will be glad to use it Jan. 12 as well!

For Marcie, I shared this poem, with condolences for the passing of her sister Salli over Christmas. Marcie arrived in time to find her awake and aware. In Marcie’s words: "We took her to an amazing Hospice facility - looked like an upscale resort - on Sun where I stayed with her until she died on Wed am."

I share with you the poem, Curtains by Ruth Stone, that makes me think of Marcie’s feisty spirit, and the loyal bond she has with her sister, the difficulty of digesting the fact that Salli’s long bout with cancer is over.

December 10

Happiness by Raymond Carver (also Dec. 9)
Paradoxes and Oxymorons by John Ashbury (12/9)
Sanctuary by Jean Valentine (12/9)

Major to Minor -- by Andrea Cohen (12/16)
Inspired by O Antiphons, a Dreidel, Shiva’s Third Eye, Peace Flag Symbol (12/9)
A Poem by Rumi (12/16)
Pelicans in December by J. Allyn Rosser (12/16)

This is a fine season for meditation. I received this one today.
“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

See Dec. 9 for the first 3.

For Sanctuary: it might be an interesting ice breaker to ask "What is it like for you... ask where "there" is, ask what fears.

We were running out of time, so only read quickly the poem from the New Yorker. I like the play on major/minor and how we distinguish them, and how observant we are of shifts and subtle chance. Twin beds, two ice bergs -- even July doesnt know how to melt.

We also read quickly the Rumi -- the importance of each person as part of a larger whole, but precious and unique.
Imagine if everyone would sing a love song to your existence!

The final poem evokes endings... the gawky pelicans, rickety... "old-world feathers"... weary of calling out... like an old couple...
it is difficult to stay dignified... gulls, scattered sand... quietly lodged complaints.

We'll need to start the year with a stork!

Poems for December 9

Dec. 9:
Happiness by Raymond Carver (thank you Carmin)
A Christmas Carol – by Christini Rossetti (Thank you Mary)
Introspection Leaking Out by Judith Judson (her original)
A Puzzler by Paul Brennan (his original)
Paradoxes and Oxymorons by John Ashbery (Thank you Don)
Sanctuary​ by Jean Valentine (Thank you Kathy)
Inspired by O Antiphons, a Dreidel, Shiva’s Third Eye, Peace Flag Symbol by yours truly


Carmin picked the Carver poem as she was reminded even when there is so much bad news in the world, if you stop to pay attention, you find good things. We were reminded of his poem, "Last Fragment" -- And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

That "even" is such an important word and reappears here, towards the end, in that minute, where "death and ambition, even love" don't enter. So, the given (we all die); the drive and "how" of engagement (ambition) and even the universal sacred without a contradistinction, cannot touch a singular moment when one feels a sense of "oh boy" (Judith's reference to Kipling's expression for the inexpressible "wow", part eureka of discovery, part delight without any strings attached).
Just as the boys "come on", so does "happiness/
unexpectedly and goes beyond, really"...
and back to the early morning talk, the usual early morning stuff milling in the mind.


The observation of the two boys hints at their happiness, but it is more a projection of the speaker of the poem.
There they are, delivering newspapers, together, perhaps an implied jauntiness with the caps and sweaters, one with a bag on his shoulder... and regardless if the reader is male or female, a memory of innocence, an idealization of childhood,
comes to mind. The boys are more alive than the news in the paper, deliver something extraordinary in the ordinary act of their job. Grace comes unbidden... Maura reminded the group of Dag Hammarskjold's remarks: a chase after happiness is like pursuing a butterfly-- the harder you seek to capture it, the more it eludes you.



At Rundel, Jim brought up the juxtaposition between the ordinary [newspapers (the headlines, the drudge of fact)], and the extraordinary, of an unbidden moment allows us to leave our "umwelt" of a private bubble to experience how we imagine the feeling we project onto the blithe togetherness of the boys. Oh Boy!


Mary's choice of the Rossetti, known in the setting of the music as a popular Christmas carol, was to offset the commercialization of Christmas with the original circumstances of Christ and the story of his birth. Indeed, what is the best gift we can give? Our hearts.

The next two poems speak to the spirit of amity and friendship. The context was merely that Paul was still talking when we started up discussion and Judith took his comment "... oh it’s just “introspection leaking out” to cummings-eque heights, replete with a dramatic performance. As he put it, Judith has provided him with the most artful way he's ever seen for being told to "shut up".

His poem reflects a fascination with puzzles and palindromes -- who can resist "racecar" as a symbol for life... Opening with "somebody" reminds me of Dickinson's "I'm Nobody who are you" -- or Cummings, "Everybody? Never met him."


From wit to surrealistic challenge. Ashbery in his inimitable way, plays with language, so the entire poem is a paradox, built of smaller paradox... The poem is concerned with language... but one step further -- concerned with language on a very plain level. However, he doesn't stay there. He plays with "it" as pronoun, with several possibilities of "you" (speaker to himself; understood you; you the reader of the poem; you the poem itself; an I in the second stanza, and the final stanza embracing both I and you, but still teasing... Try reading the poem backwards, and it makes just as much, if not better sense. The longer one spends with the words, the more one feels on the edge of understanding and yet, the rational part of the brain has difficulty with this...
How can you "pretend" to fidget? And how does this choice fit with a look out a window when "it" talks to you-- and which "it" is it? the poem, language? Is "it" the same throughout, or just as slippery as language, the poem and you? How do we change in our subjectivity and attitudes?
Unlike "happiness" is there something important or insubstantial being put into words? Is the main point the steam and chatter of putting it into being? Delightful, annoying, intriguing or perhaps maddening... but one takes away questions about what anything is "deeper outside", inside, dreamed, doubted, now you see it, bird in the hand, now you don't, the hand is the bush...


Kathy's pick of Sanctuary also picks up on the pronoun "you" -- who is speaking, and how does the "other" listen, or is it a divided self. Without the title or epigram would you find it a scary poem? Each word becomes a house, without one's own constructed house. Scattered appears three times -- twice in reference to the Antiphon 12 "Spare O Lord, your people so we do not scatter the voices" -- and the risk of "scattering life", not having listened, not having asked...
To die without having lived is to die without having created relationship.


My little poem is a gift of an ornament -- lots of numerology there -- but also, combining 4 religions and symbols
in this season of light and miracles as yet more unrest continues on the memorial of Pearl Harbor and this year the shared celebration of Diwali and Armistice Day.

Poems for Dec. 2

Pittsford:
Perfect for Any Occasion by Alberto Rios (and Rundel)
Thanks by W.S. Merlin (and Rundel)

At Rundel we also discussed poems by attendees whereas at Pittsford we also discussed
The People of the other Village, by Thomas Lux
Not Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Jennifer Hecht

**
A perfect post-Thanksgiving poem, and think about what it is we do, what we say... Perfect for Any Occasion -- whether it be Thanksgiving, Winter Solstice, any time we celebrate some ritual, any time we don't... How many expressions do you know with "Pie"? Easy (simple) as... apple pie order... pi... American as apple pie... pie in the sky...
and what do we do with pies? bake, eat, throw in a face, throw together whatever there is and cover with a crust...

Rios takes all these meanings of pie and organizes a two part poem. As one person said, it's a free-ride on acceptance, and part 2, of rejection; an exploration of fitting in or not, anthropomorphism of a pie as immigrant...
There is so much that is pleasing about this poem. We know immediately Mr. "I-can-do-no-wrong" and how funny he is a pecan pie... Think of Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution saying, "let them eat cake" -- although a pie has the rounds of a revolution, the 3.14 circular existence, sliced in so many ways.

Merwin's poem is much harder to follow as he provides a disturbing mix of "thank you" both like a prayer or supplication, and automatic habit, like the polite smile we paste on when we're scared. First stanza, we have no problem with the general, generic thanks... but the second stanza, thanks seems to be about personal survival, third, the news of the day, perhaps a "thank goodness it wasn't me", and by the fourth stanza, with the entire earth falling apart, as chaos of growing cities, felled forests, and no one listening, the darkness of such disconnection still has the ember of "thank you"... Gratitude is a powerful gift... what allows us to continue, sustains us. How do you read it-- as Candide filled with optimism in face of all the cruelty in the "best of all possible worlds" or as a Kafka-esque dirge where thank you is the one salvation... Listen.... we are saying thank you //... nobody listening...we are saying thank you...
How do you feel about saying "thank you" now? How do you feel about being more attentive?

"The People of the Other Village" starts out with an observation of someone not of that village... simply, "they hate us".
Three times the formula of doing this/that is repeated, but with a subtle change of pronoun:
We do this, they do that.
They do this, we do that.
We do this, they do that.

What happens before this is said? Both sides do harm to the other side. The final line:
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

10,000 years spelled out; written as numbers; doubled B of the paradoxical brutal/beautiful -- without any example of the beautiful-- this is a dark poem, in which "beautiful" is nothing more than a word which has not stopped, will not stop the brutality. And how will you act after reading this?

Not Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Jennifer Hecht gave me pause, until I read more about her, her work to help people contemplating suicide. Brilliant parody of Frost, a hint of Dante's dark woods, and deft turning of words.
David gave us some insight with this background: "Stopping by woods" was written in June on the anniversary of the death of his 4th child who died after a few days... Originally titled “New Hampshire” the long original turned into the familiar rhymed verse we have come to know.
Hecht takes it a step further, by deforming the familiar "promises to keep" to the opening "Promises to keep was a lie."
That it ends on "It doesn't matter where I sleep." stresses the fact that "home" as focal point is not the goal. Staying alive is.


"On Reaching the Age of Two Hundred" announces a mythical situation, reinforced by mention of the Sibyl at Cumae.
What is he trying to say?
What happens if you live forever...
perhaps it is a curse along the lines of "may you have 100 mansion with 100 bedrooms"
Given what happens to the speaker of the poem, living to age 200 requires either a large amount of acceptance or denial to want to continue another minute.


Dec. 3

The Rundel group admired Mike's long poem "Full Circle 2 -- Connectivity". Using the conceit of "one to one";
man to man' toe to toe, eye to eye, face to face, moment to moment, hand to hand, he takes us through a life, ending with dust to dust.
His poem, "And He calls Himself a Father" is a touching anecdotal poem with a surprise twist.

We saved Kathy's poems until she returns.