The Singing by CK Williams
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry by Howard Nemerov
They shut me up in Prose – (445) by by Emily Dickinson
The visible and the in- by Marge Piercy
The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches by Wallace Stevens
Chaïm Soutine: The Errant Road, 1939 by Cole Swensen
**
The poem by CK Williams was selected from the article about him by Mihaela Moscaliuc in the last issue of the American Poetry Review speaking of “contact zone”, i.e. of the need and willingness to meet, engage and be moved by the “other”. “You must suspend judgment, without assumptions, be willing to reconstitute and reconstitue your private truths,resist the temptation of constructing the other in your own image, embrace incertitude as you attempt to inhabit another’s way of being in the world.”
What do we recognize; how do words invite our thinking; what is mirrored back to us?
We spent a long time on the CK Williams — reading it both stanza by stanza and line by line, which brings out a lurching rhythm that corresponds with the feel of the story… One person thought it would be interesting to give the poem to a rap singer…
Add some feeling to the words, which by themselves point to a lack of connection… The longer lines feel like narration, the shorter ones like small notes… David put forth his theory that really, any poem is about the difficulty of writing poetry… and as Frost specialist, compared how “the road not taken” is like this poem — what “conventions” and the whole deal of “rectify, redo, remake” as revision.
A crucial part of the poem comes towards the end… 3rd stanza before: “No one saw / no one heard /all the unasked and// unanswered questions//were left where they were.
The fact that there is no punctuation makes the “meaning” difficult… just as he points out. All the unasked questions are both object of “no one saw/heard” and subject (left where they were), mirroring the two people — one “singing” the other “observing the song”.
One person described the long discussion as a Rorsach test, revealing everyone’s personality and how we respond to race, to what is in control or not.
The Nemerov is an example of all poetry can provide… the sound of zzzz starts with “sparrows”, moving to the weather (freezing and drizzle) preparing us for the silver “aslant” in “invisible”. What is the line? If it had been prose, the last word would not be fell, nor the rhymed couplet at the end.
For Emily, the unrhymed quatrains except for the last two lines, juxtapose a “they” which seems quite conventional, as opposed to poetry. If you pronounce capitivity, as “captivi -tie...” it will rhyme with “I”. The question came up of who “Himself” is – the bird, or God.
Marge Piercy is clever with her title that implies an “invisible” as the inner part, or part in which one enters. The anaphor, “some people”, repeated three times, “some” repeated twice, completes a catalogue of people, as well as how we notice the “other” or not.
Again, the responses of the group, revealed the variety of attitudes possible both towards the poem, but also the way we wear our visible selves, and to what extend reveal what is let in.
Wallace Stevens plays with a title that throws us into the 18th century, a world of dreams, and a question of what is real in our subjective way of understanding.
Rae Armantrout, a language poet, captures a similar idea... how we think we recognize something, re-cognizing it in multiple ways. The possibilities, discoveries, the unasked,
unanswered questions... the way language creates meanings. Associations...
Comments ranged from “A well-loved child has many names” to Plato’s opinions on poets, satisfaction of music, repetition...
paradox ... thinking we’re seeing the same person...
periclitus... Voorhees... Funestes Memorius...
The group agreed that the Chaim Soutine painting is more powerful than Swenson’s interpretation of it... what do we recognize in image? How is that different than from just words along?
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Saturday, April 9, 2016
March 30-31
How We Made a New Art on Old Ground by Eaven Boland
Poem by Thomas McGrath
Long Night Full Moon by D.A. Powell
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Blue Dementia by Yusef Komunyakaa, 1947
The Gardenia by Cornelius Eady, 1954
Again and again, I pinch myself-- how is it we gather each week and again and again, find such sustenance from poems? Given two groups reading the same sets of poems, I find it interesting how differently the discussions go. Whereas on Wednesday, there was an engaged discussion about "new art on old ground" and the mix of history/nature poem and how to separate them, Thursday's group was less interested in the conceit. I find it always mysterious that a well-crafted poem leaves so many paths to follow.
To start with Eaven Boland, the first glance reveals quatrains, staggered as if a dialogue: justified lines: history;
indented lines: nature.
Rhyme of Estuary and history... truth and turn... rust, (metal) and how blood, oaths, armor "are unwritten." It's wonderful to have an Irishman who tells about the "whin bushes" whose color does indeed change from electric yellow, depending on the weather. Also, filled us in on the Battle that took place on the Boyne in 1690 -- one that determined which king, which religion would dominate...
Lucky to have an English professor who reminds us that the nature poem until the romantic revolution was a celebration of historical interest...
Sweet corrosion as oxymoron,
a sort of "digestive process", with a lingering loveliness? Shadows, shallow ford, bushes, the hush of silence in the sounds of the poem.
What ground (in art) is ever new, entirely? We build on what we know, on what has been, and also, no matter the changes of landscape, weather, we build on recognizing repetitions. Words help us sort it all out. We see what the poems says... until a change of weather...
McGrath provides a foil for this poem -- I love the opening line -- "I don't belong in this century"
and indeed, if we do not belong to our land, its history... how do we belong? I love the tone he establishes in the 2nd stanza, "I don't mean"... ending with a one line word. "Lost". The intimate "thou" gives it a sense of love poem, in spite of the bitterness about false values, twice-mentioned emptiness, like "stability" our modern fallacy...
People brought up McGrath's background as a dock worker, people whom Martin referred to as "smart ass guys". Smart, down to earth, which reinforces the contrast with the more poetic "gold wheel, silver, sun, moon", the more intimate and sacred overtones of the ending line, "Be Tou these things."
The next four poems are powerful examples of words well-chosen and placed to tell a story that elicits shock, horror, empathy. The title, "Long Night Full Moon", although in the reader's mind, broken into "long night" and "full moon", combines struggle with lunar madness, and light. However, the light,in three sources (fire, full moon, and the implied television sets on which one sees the news) does not illuminate the fact of a murder. "You only watch the news to find out..." sets a possible recriminatory statement about how we respond to media, what touches us or not. The tone of "station identification -- "Forecast ahead, but first" but it is not a word from our sponsor.
The author-poet explains:
“This poem was inspired by the death of Michael Brown, particularly the way in which Brown’s death and the ensuing protests were covered (or, in many cases, not covered) on mainstream media. Social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement kept this story from being buried or ignored. This poem is about witness, the most powerful tool we have against injustice and state-sponsored violence, terror, discrimination, and murder. The poem is not an elegy. It is a report on America.”
—D. A. Powell
The next poem, "The Tradition", 14 lines with a rhyming couplet, matches trios that start with flowers and end with three names of those killed What we do to flowers... what happens to murderers, how complicated the world is, how police are doing a job no one wants... how truth and violence, and definitions get skewered in circumstance...
Komunyakaa's poem also brought a different flavor from each person. How do we hear a story, understand a life, read poetry of Witness... ? In the days... repeated, three times, and then today, and three men... How does one walk out of one's self/dreaming; lose oneself
all up inside love? The blues, the saxophones, or notes traded with ghosts.
We ended with Cornelius Eady's portrait of Billy Holiday. As Judith quoted Kipling, "If the daemon comes upon you, drift and obey" and extended the metaphor calling on an old fashioned water tap... to describe the quality of poem taking over.. Gardenia...the title, ends with the grit of her life, like a fist -- if a fist could sing -- a haunting image to consider.
I hope these few jagged notes will leave you wanting to read the poems again, and see where the "ponderings" take you.. I
Poem by Thomas McGrath
Long Night Full Moon by D.A. Powell
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Blue Dementia by Yusef Komunyakaa, 1947
The Gardenia by Cornelius Eady, 1954
Again and again, I pinch myself-- how is it we gather each week and again and again, find such sustenance from poems? Given two groups reading the same sets of poems, I find it interesting how differently the discussions go. Whereas on Wednesday, there was an engaged discussion about "new art on old ground" and the mix of history/nature poem and how to separate them, Thursday's group was less interested in the conceit. I find it always mysterious that a well-crafted poem leaves so many paths to follow.
To start with Eaven Boland, the first glance reveals quatrains, staggered as if a dialogue: justified lines: history;
indented lines: nature.
Rhyme of Estuary and history... truth and turn... rust, (metal) and how blood, oaths, armor "are unwritten." It's wonderful to have an Irishman who tells about the "whin bushes" whose color does indeed change from electric yellow, depending on the weather. Also, filled us in on the Battle that took place on the Boyne in 1690 -- one that determined which king, which religion would dominate...
Lucky to have an English professor who reminds us that the nature poem until the romantic revolution was a celebration of historical interest...
Sweet corrosion as oxymoron,
a sort of "digestive process", with a lingering loveliness? Shadows, shallow ford, bushes, the hush of silence in the sounds of the poem.
What ground (in art) is ever new, entirely? We build on what we know, on what has been, and also, no matter the changes of landscape, weather, we build on recognizing repetitions. Words help us sort it all out. We see what the poems says... until a change of weather...
McGrath provides a foil for this poem -- I love the opening line -- "I don't belong in this century"
and indeed, if we do not belong to our land, its history... how do we belong? I love the tone he establishes in the 2nd stanza, "I don't mean"... ending with a one line word. "Lost". The intimate "thou" gives it a sense of love poem, in spite of the bitterness about false values, twice-mentioned emptiness, like "stability" our modern fallacy...
People brought up McGrath's background as a dock worker, people whom Martin referred to as "smart ass guys". Smart, down to earth, which reinforces the contrast with the more poetic "gold wheel, silver, sun, moon", the more intimate and sacred overtones of the ending line, "Be Tou these things."
The next four poems are powerful examples of words well-chosen and placed to tell a story that elicits shock, horror, empathy. The title, "Long Night Full Moon", although in the reader's mind, broken into "long night" and "full moon", combines struggle with lunar madness, and light. However, the light,in three sources (fire, full moon, and the implied television sets on which one sees the news) does not illuminate the fact of a murder. "You only watch the news to find out..." sets a possible recriminatory statement about how we respond to media, what touches us or not. The tone of "station identification -- "Forecast ahead, but first" but it is not a word from our sponsor.
The author-poet explains:
“This poem was inspired by the death of Michael Brown, particularly the way in which Brown’s death and the ensuing protests were covered (or, in many cases, not covered) on mainstream media. Social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement kept this story from being buried or ignored. This poem is about witness, the most powerful tool we have against injustice and state-sponsored violence, terror, discrimination, and murder. The poem is not an elegy. It is a report on America.”
—D. A. Powell
The next poem, "The Tradition", 14 lines with a rhyming couplet, matches trios that start with flowers and end with three names of those killed What we do to flowers... what happens to murderers, how complicated the world is, how police are doing a job no one wants... how truth and violence, and definitions get skewered in circumstance...
Komunyakaa's poem also brought a different flavor from each person. How do we hear a story, understand a life, read poetry of Witness... ? In the days... repeated, three times, and then today, and three men... How does one walk out of one's self/dreaming; lose oneself
all up inside love? The blues, the saxophones, or notes traded with ghosts.
We ended with Cornelius Eady's portrait of Billy Holiday. As Judith quoted Kipling, "If the daemon comes upon you, drift and obey" and extended the metaphor calling on an old fashioned water tap... to describe the quality of poem taking over.. Gardenia...the title, ends with the grit of her life, like a fist -- if a fist could sing -- a haunting image to consider.
I hope these few jagged notes will leave you wanting to read the poems again, and see where the "ponderings" take you.. I
Friday, March 18, 2016
Poems for March 23
The Fiddler of Dooney by W.B. Yeats
The Host of the Air by William Butler Yeats
Girlhood by Jonathan Galassi
Ithaca by C.P. Cavity (Emily brought up)
Two Husbands Meet in Heaven by Susan Dworski Nusbaum
The last two poems are grouped this way in Eureka Street: "Mortality made articulate : Two Comments"
Following me, old footprints by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
A deceptive calm by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
A father's tenderness, seeing what's ahead for his girl, the taste of"the color of crushed time"; the multiplicity of "Ithaca" which gives you reason for the marvelous journey; the fun of imagining 2 husbands, with a snapshot of their wife (and
I trust the group will enjoy Nusbaum's volume "What we Take with Us".).
I chose the Galassi is because Katha Pollitt used an epigram he provides in her poem Archeology we discussed 3/9
"Our real poems are already in us, and all we can do is dig.”
-Jonathan Galassi : http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jonathan-galassi
I will not be there except in spirit...
A note about Yeats from Elizabeth Bodien: “The Host of the Air,”
the host of the air are the Sluagh Gaoith (versus the host of Sidhe).
And the host of the air that lived in clouds and mist were the worst,
apparently said to steal brides.
Yes, notes indicate that the story is based on an old Gaelic ballad
from a woman in Balissodare in County Sligo
but it also may be that the host of the air may be interpreted more generally to refer to the
shared heritage that floats in the air of Ireland, the heritage that Yeats was so eager to breathe.
Summary by Kathy:
Paul gave us a lovely reading/recitation of the 2 Yeats poems. He also played a recording of Yeats himself reading his work. The group was split about discussion of Ithaka as some remembered reading it before. Bernie provided a solution - we listened to Sean Connery reading Ithaka on YouTube We spent the most time on Galassi's Girlhood and thought it a poem worthy of more attention. Lastly, we enjoyed ending the session with the humor of Two Husbands.
Poems for March 16-17
Reading Plato - by Jorie Graham
Among Women by Marie Ponsot
Windchime by Tony Hoagland
Anti-Anxiety Poem by Carrie Shipers
Dirt by Jo McDougall
What happens with poetry,or any art, when you slow down, break it into sections, piece it together in different ways... The word "practice comes to mind... Right now I am working on a difficult prelude (Rachmaninoff #2, op 16)which requires slow, deliberate practice that doesn't sound at all the way it will once I take it up to tempo. But without it, the beauty of the fabric of the piece will be at risk with sloppy mistakes, missed notes and only an approximation of the piece.
We can read essays about poets, see their honors, but to find a poem and stay with it for 45 minutes in a group, allows discoveries (not answers). We took Jorie Graham's poem first line by line, which felt fragmented; the second reading, we read two lines at a time, allowing the phrasing to come out. The third reading was stanza by stanza. The group agreed, without such an approach, we might have read it, enjoyed it, but missed out on so much.
First, the title... What does Reading Plato have to do with making flies for fishing?
"Lie" and "lures" are first words... with "flies" rhyming with the unspoken plural of "lie".
A cursory summation would be the idea of fish taking the flies for something "real", and Graham's skill in creating a reflecting world.
As a big picture person, I love the idea of a well-crafted poem where each details adds to a satisfying unity of an important idea. She does this. Plato's allegory of the cave, recreated for fish... how "ideas" and imagination are what keep us afloat... how knowledge "skips across the
surface"... dis - member / re- member, as in put back together.
Comments from the group:
flashes... intentionality... consonants... fragmentations... like a fish... underwater...
what is reality... people in the cave only see the shadows...
rhythm... the fly fisherman’s rhythms...
mosaic (not abstract art)... they add up... water refracts.
fuzzy: where fish stop and men begin. like Escher drawing.
take what we learn from the group...
misrepresentation... fly.. men...
vivid... old man (perhaps going blind)... on his way to death... transfiguration deer hair
far in the lifespan of man... and specific man...
garden. symbol of the Virgin Mary. Eden: beautiful lie... What is your tiny garden?
ambiguous without being obfuscating.
The next poem also has an intriguing title. How do you understand "Among Women" -- exclusionary to men, or what it is like, "among women" as in Achilles, hiding so as not to fight... an unfinished reference of who among women is blessed...
The contradiction in line two is marvelous, calling on the various meanings of "wander" -- both physical and mental. Not many (physically impossible, restricted). All (escape in the imagination-- Dickinson's "No frigate like a book" comes to mind.) the close sound of "wander" and "wonder". The Peddler is allowed to wander, and brings the smell of the wild, unpegged life,
"sleep where you will... do whatever when, choose your bread and company...
Another enigmatic line: The Grandmother warning, "Have nothing to lose"... No one can steal your thoughts if you keep your mind intact, private and active.
How do you read the repeat of endure? to endure "endure", or simply the repetition of survival surviving. The parallel with the wild, once young man, and the imagination of his wife, "smelling" the lifestyle of the peddler. Reminiscent perhaps of the Raggle-taggle gypsies.
Curious how "man" is the end word rhyming with the final word of the poem. "as best they can" (women)
Tony Hoagland's poem is a tender love poem, speaking to that most annoying detail that endears someone to us. We had a good laugh when Paul shared his laugh about the wind chime inserted in the nightgown! Two stanzas of description. Then, the reflection of the poet... and the entry of the idea of absence of sound... that soundless urgency of trying to do something, with the "unfinished" business haunting us. That turn of thought allows the poem to dwell on why the poet will stay with this woman... the delicious language "problem scrunched into her forehead/the little kissable mouth/with the nail in it." Perfect encapsulation of opposition -- I love you, not.. I don't love you, but do...
The anti-anxiety poem gave us rise of laughter, perhaps in part, because it was filled with useless worries, and being told not to worry about them. But does it work? Is there intrigue?
Could the poem have ended on "nameless dread you'd do anything to avoid"? Perhaps a different title then... How to read the last line: Don't worry that worry might be all you have.
Glib? Moralizing -- don't waste your time worrying. But how is that "anti-anxiety"?
I far preferred Carrie Shipers' poem we discussed last week (In your next letter,/
please describe)
Following up on Jo McDougall from last week, ("This morning") we read the three sentences in this 7 line poem. Fierce... final. Dirt having arrogance...brings out a primal emotion.
Carmin brought up the song "Dustbowl Dance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvnhPhrqEag&index=2&list=RDKNLCKuz4EVs Mumford & Sons
Dirt, knowing she's from the dustbowl... a culture and life we don't know. Dirt... metaphor for what one goes through losing a daughter.
Each week, I write these notes, for me, to recreate in my mind the amazing energy of 17-23 people gathered, sharing the reading aloud of poems. I need to tell the poets how much we enjoy reading and sharing their words. How they are our honored guests.
Among Women by Marie Ponsot
Windchime by Tony Hoagland
Anti-Anxiety Poem by Carrie Shipers
Dirt by Jo McDougall
What happens with poetry,or any art, when you slow down, break it into sections, piece it together in different ways... The word "practice comes to mind... Right now I am working on a difficult prelude (Rachmaninoff #2, op 16)which requires slow, deliberate practice that doesn't sound at all the way it will once I take it up to tempo. But without it, the beauty of the fabric of the piece will be at risk with sloppy mistakes, missed notes and only an approximation of the piece.
We can read essays about poets, see their honors, but to find a poem and stay with it for 45 minutes in a group, allows discoveries (not answers). We took Jorie Graham's poem first line by line, which felt fragmented; the second reading, we read two lines at a time, allowing the phrasing to come out. The third reading was stanza by stanza. The group agreed, without such an approach, we might have read it, enjoyed it, but missed out on so much.
First, the title... What does Reading Plato have to do with making flies for fishing?
"Lie" and "lures" are first words... with "flies" rhyming with the unspoken plural of "lie".
A cursory summation would be the idea of fish taking the flies for something "real", and Graham's skill in creating a reflecting world.
As a big picture person, I love the idea of a well-crafted poem where each details adds to a satisfying unity of an important idea. She does this. Plato's allegory of the cave, recreated for fish... how "ideas" and imagination are what keep us afloat... how knowledge "skips across the
surface"... dis - member / re- member, as in put back together.
Comments from the group:
flashes... intentionality... consonants... fragmentations... like a fish... underwater...
what is reality... people in the cave only see the shadows...
rhythm... the fly fisherman’s rhythms...
mosaic (not abstract art)... they add up... water refracts.
fuzzy: where fish stop and men begin. like Escher drawing.
take what we learn from the group...
misrepresentation... fly.. men...
vivid... old man (perhaps going blind)... on his way to death... transfiguration deer hair
far in the lifespan of man... and specific man...
garden. symbol of the Virgin Mary. Eden: beautiful lie... What is your tiny garden?
ambiguous without being obfuscating.
The next poem also has an intriguing title. How do you understand "Among Women" -- exclusionary to men, or what it is like, "among women" as in Achilles, hiding so as not to fight... an unfinished reference of who among women is blessed...
The contradiction in line two is marvelous, calling on the various meanings of "wander" -- both physical and mental. Not many (physically impossible, restricted). All (escape in the imagination-- Dickinson's "No frigate like a book" comes to mind.) the close sound of "wander" and "wonder". The Peddler is allowed to wander, and brings the smell of the wild, unpegged life,
"sleep where you will... do whatever when, choose your bread and company...
Another enigmatic line: The Grandmother warning, "Have nothing to lose"... No one can steal your thoughts if you keep your mind intact, private and active.
How do you read the repeat of endure? to endure "endure", or simply the repetition of survival surviving. The parallel with the wild, once young man, and the imagination of his wife, "smelling" the lifestyle of the peddler. Reminiscent perhaps of the Raggle-taggle gypsies.
Curious how "man" is the end word rhyming with the final word of the poem. "as best they can" (women)
Tony Hoagland's poem is a tender love poem, speaking to that most annoying detail that endears someone to us. We had a good laugh when Paul shared his laugh about the wind chime inserted in the nightgown! Two stanzas of description. Then, the reflection of the poet... and the entry of the idea of absence of sound... that soundless urgency of trying to do something, with the "unfinished" business haunting us. That turn of thought allows the poem to dwell on why the poet will stay with this woman... the delicious language "problem scrunched into her forehead/the little kissable mouth/with the nail in it." Perfect encapsulation of opposition -- I love you, not.. I don't love you, but do...
The anti-anxiety poem gave us rise of laughter, perhaps in part, because it was filled with useless worries, and being told not to worry about them. But does it work? Is there intrigue?
Could the poem have ended on "nameless dread you'd do anything to avoid"? Perhaps a different title then... How to read the last line: Don't worry that worry might be all you have.
Glib? Moralizing -- don't waste your time worrying. But how is that "anti-anxiety"?
I far preferred Carrie Shipers' poem we discussed last week (In your next letter,/
please describe)
Following up on Jo McDougall from last week, ("This morning") we read the three sentences in this 7 line poem. Fierce... final. Dirt having arrogance...brings out a primal emotion.
Carmin brought up the song "Dustbowl Dance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvnhPhrqEag&index=2&list=RDKNLCKuz4EVs Mumford & Sons
Dirt, knowing she's from the dustbowl... a culture and life we don't know. Dirt... metaphor for what one goes through losing a daughter.
Each week, I write these notes, for me, to recreate in my mind the amazing energy of 17-23 people gathered, sharing the reading aloud of poems. I need to tell the poets how much we enjoy reading and sharing their words. How they are our honored guests.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Poems for March 9-10
Aristotle by Billy Collins
Abuelo by Cecilia Llompart
Archeology by Katha Pollitt
In your next letter by Carrie Shippers
Untitled – E.E. Cummings ("next to of course god america i)
This week's poems brought up the topic of accessibility - and its corollary, what gives us pleasure in poetry. Billy Collins has a knack for producing accessible poems, but most, I might hazard the guess, come from a very knowledgeable ledge where feet hang
in the deep waters of "telos", that wonderful Greek term for an ultimate object or aim.
What is it we seek to understand, seek to practice, achieve in our stories? How do we tell the beginning, the middle, the end? Using this as starting point, Collins provides us both an ars poetica of the creative process. The images for the "anything can happen" are pulled from bible, science, a humorous jab with "the first word of Paradise Lost" (which happens to be "Of" [ OF MAN’S first disobedience]) the letter A, which of course is the first letter of Aristotle, and a reference to the opening of a play.
Does it matter that it be a scene of Endgame with the heavy curtain rising, or Hemingway?
Indeed, the poem has many references which could act as large parentheses to explore...who are Miriam and Edward, and does one need to look up the comments about Sylvia Plath's suicide or know the story of St. Clement? The poem does not require us to know that Aristotle was a famous Greek philosopher, interested in the theory of causes,
or even to know the term "telos" which can be opposed to "techno" or rational method.
However, starting the poem with his name, and ending it with a six line sentence,
"This is the end, according to Aristotle", having watched an opera and a climbing party progress from beginning to middle to end, along with countless details. But, if you probe the end too deeply, you might lose the charm. Namely, the end, as what we wait for? (hmmmmmm...) what everything comes down to (pun?), the destination we cannot help imagining (fear?, reassurance to imagine how we will die?) -- perhaps a streak of light in the sky... but he leaves us with something familiar. We all can imagine someone's hat hung on the peg... still there after they are gone... we all understanding about falling leaves.
Abuelo is a beautiful poem which pays hommage to a Grandfather, filled with repetitions of "it is / here is" but broken deftly with line break. Here/
is your body...
It is// broken second line, of opening and penultimate stanza.
The tongue is not made OF stone, but "is made stone" ; the heart, a stone...
There is a mix of accessible, but also a sense of distraction -- what is the fortress without walls? what overturns what because it has loved it most? The ending image of the sky lowered to walk with the departed is beautiful.
Katha Pollitt spells "archaeology" with the middle A, and in two stanzas gives us a "you" that may well be an archeologist himself, but perhaps the reader or writer as well. What do we dig for? The epigraph by Galas (President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus, Giroux, translator and fine poet who reminds us that most poetry is destined to be forgotten) reminds us that the essential is to dig deep inside ourselves. The piling up of the dry sands, winds, the shards, the "random rubble you'll invent" mimics the creative process, but also the piecing together we do as we live our lives.
Carrie Shipers is a new poet for me, and all of us delighted by her fine poem, which captures a palpable longing, and the "stuff" that indeed makes "no place like home".
One person referred to it as "an artefact of nostalgia". What do we miss? Why does that last line strike home?
McDougall, like Shipers, also follows the technique of using the title as part of the first line. The set up of ordinary, and the sudden appearance of the daughter who "steps out of the radio" and grief, about which we don't know much, but feel catching in the throat by the end of the poem.
The Cummings which blends patriotic songs in a breathless 13 lines in quotations,
completes the sonnet with a line describing the man delivering them, and his rapid swallow of water. Much can be said of the political satire here. Pittsford will open next week with it.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Poems for March 2-3
Gratuitous Oranges by David Shapiro (read at Pittsford, but not Rundel)
Lullaby in Fracktown by Lilace Mellin Guignard
Cloud Fishing by Phillis Levin
Imaginary Morning Glory by C. D. Wright, 1949 - 2016
For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Candle Hat by Billy Collins
the Pittsford group also read the poem by Lia Purpura: Solitude
In this group of poems, we are treated to the power of form.
The first poem, with its whimsical title, takes the "unrhymable" word, "orange"
in a villanelle variation where it appears in every stanza but the penultimate one, and twice in the 2nd and final stanzas.
Orange/tinge/cringe
orange/garage/orange
orange/storage/cinge
binge'impinge/orange
linge/binge/cringe (although linge, in French, will sound have the one ugly vowel sound
in the language
expunge/orange/orange/cringe
A little surrealism (Earth is like a blue orange); rich rhyme (orange/orange -- and aren't you (oh, aren't chu) glad I didn't say orange again?)Irish playwrights and a suspicion that orange stands for a rather narcissistic opinion of food for gods alone with some entanglement with philosophy.
Fun, but one of those poems one reads, once, laughs, returns to to chuckle, but goes in the brain with knock-knock jokes until you look up the epigram and find out more about S.Y. Agnon, the nom-de-plume of a Hebrew Nobel prizewinner. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shai-agnon-a-mystery-wrapped-up-in-an-enigma/3/
There's more to oranges than meets the eye -- especially coupled with the adjective "gratuitous" !
This limerick added by Judith who helped edit the original by Steve Kirkpatrick
Limerick on Words
When a rhyme for orange is sought,
It’s much tougher than [when] first thought.
[If] a task’s [very] tall
We should start [rather] small
Rhyming kumquat, loquat and complot.
Judith's note: I have changed his rhyme scheme—the interpolated words are mine, to conform to the more usual limerick form. The If in the third line replaces his when, to avoid two of ‘em.
Lullaby in Fracktown is another villanelle:
shoes/lollipops/lose
kazoos/mountaintop/shoes
kangaroos/flip-flop
snooze/dropped/shoes
school/gumdrops/lose
coos/unstopped/shoes/lose
The word play, alliterations, mock-advice, overtones of the song, "Hush little baby" tell the story of people who work in fracktowns -- the hope of a job -- but under the shadow of here today, gone tomorrow. Hush, like the lullaby sings, "don't say a word, Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird... and if that mocking bird don't sing, mama's going to buy you a diamond ring... and if that diamond ring turns to brass, mama's going to buy you a looking glass..." all those promises, crooned to soothe what we know is dangerous.
Cloud fishing has a marvelous hour-glass form, with the arrangement of 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 line in each stanza, with slant rhyme. sky/swimming by/refraction catching its eye.
looking down, to looking up out of the deep.
The CD Wright was difficult. The repeat 7 words; fragments, allusions and the idea of "Imagination" which we will see in the Collins' interpretation of the light around Goya's head, or the idea of the "glory" which people see in the sky -- either Godlike, or perhaps connected to that "telluric" light. Enigmatic, layered, complex.
Thank you Kathy for sharing this essay by C.D. Wright: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_wright_concerning.php
I highly recommend it! This passage particularly struck me, in the context of poetry embracing doubt, vs. searching for answers.
"Poetry should not be the default for every writer's mess. Otherwise, it is a poem if I say it is.
.... Poetry dissolves boundaries—it is the finite that puts us in touch with the infinite—and, as languages and species vanish every day, it is a crucial vehicle by which we apprehend the urgency and precarious splendor of existence.”
The next 19-line poem plays with words that end with "philous", but also helps the reader by providing definitions without ever seeming pedantic. The interconnectedness, the swell of Greek to a line that reads like a film of a black man. Love/that: (darkness, stories). "Love that" repeated again as first two words, on the 11th line... (corner room/whatever is not there/all the clutter you keep secret).
The clutter of words is filled with love... a complex interweaving of unlike, living near each other. It could be black/white or male/female or simply a me/you or all three.
Please listen to the recording (follow this link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/242480
of “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers”. It allows us to imagine more than someone in love with words— a real person, and an invitation to guess his story. How do you see the poem after being touched by the voice?
How does the edgy C.D Wright compare with Billy Collins? Did Goya have a candle hat, or is that also part of the imagination? Note verbs such as he "appears" and you can only "wonder what it would be like" and you only have to "imagine him"... and three more invitations to "imagine". The power of such a poem lies in the power of the poet's imagination to re-interpret what is seen. Whether, in this case, a painting, or possibilities -- it leads to a broader, more generous interpretation of the world.
I did find quite a few enlargement/close-ups of Goya in the portrait provided, that show, indeed, a candle hat -- but he would not have had them lit. According to his son, when Goya painted his portraits, he worked “in only one session, sometimes of ten hours, but never in the late afternoon. The last touches for a better effect of a picture he gave at night, by artificial light” or candlelight."
I missed the discussion of Solitude, the last poem, and did not read it with Rundel.
The line "what a luxury/ annoyance is" attracts me with the 3-syllable words pulling at each other. The longest line is the final six-syllable one, but so cleverly given --
the annoyance is what gives us a bite of just enough of "what I think/I want to be endless". It allows a peek at annoyance, which often counters our subjective desires.
Peace, sure, all alone, but it is not until the dog barks that the poet re-considers it.
Judith had proposed to read Bumbershoot:
Bumbershoot
Night, a gun-blue umbrella tricked with distant suns and planets
Is not to be opened indoors—more bad luck, or worse.
Hold it to the mind’s sky, finger the trigger in its handle.
A meteor bullets the firmament. The universe falls shut with a whoosh.
Shake the drops of the stars from the loose skin of the darkness.
Think of nothing for which to wish. Step into a different house.
--Howard Hendrix
Judith's note:The author was written six novels, several short story collections
and a “whole bunch of poems.” He teaches English and creative
writing “at the college level” but the blurb in the anthology
did not state where.
The Nebulas are annual awards given by members of SWFA, the professional organization of science fiction and fantasy writers. The annual poetry awards are
named for the fictional poet Rhysling, a character created by Robert Heinlein back in the forties in a story first published in, believe it or not, the Saturday
Evening Post—where I remember reading it. He wrote several stories for that mag, which probably paid a helluva lot better than the genre magazines of the time!!!
(The irony is that Rhysling’s poetry, when given by Heinlein, is Kipling-and-water and more water than Kipling. Never mind…)
And from Paul:
I ran across a quip by W.B. Yeats last night and thought it would tranquilize some misgivings that I or we ( the Group ) have about dissecting the mental states of poets , correcting what they present and straightening their scrambled thought processes.
" If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility".
Lullaby in Fracktown by Lilace Mellin Guignard
Cloud Fishing by Phillis Levin
Imaginary Morning Glory by C. D. Wright, 1949 - 2016
For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Candle Hat by Billy Collins
the Pittsford group also read the poem by Lia Purpura: Solitude
In this group of poems, we are treated to the power of form.
The first poem, with its whimsical title, takes the "unrhymable" word, "orange"
in a villanelle variation where it appears in every stanza but the penultimate one, and twice in the 2nd and final stanzas.
Orange/tinge/cringe
orange/garage/orange
orange/storage/cinge
binge'impinge/orange
linge/binge/cringe (although linge, in French, will sound have the one ugly vowel sound
in the language
expunge/orange/orange/cringe
A little surrealism (Earth is like a blue orange); rich rhyme (orange/orange -- and aren't you (oh, aren't chu) glad I didn't say orange again?)Irish playwrights and a suspicion that orange stands for a rather narcissistic opinion of food for gods alone with some entanglement with philosophy.
Fun, but one of those poems one reads, once, laughs, returns to to chuckle, but goes in the brain with knock-knock jokes until you look up the epigram and find out more about S.Y. Agnon, the nom-de-plume of a Hebrew Nobel prizewinner. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shai-agnon-a-mystery-wrapped-up-in-an-enigma/3/
There's more to oranges than meets the eye -- especially coupled with the adjective "gratuitous" !
This limerick added by Judith who helped edit the original by Steve Kirkpatrick
Limerick on Words
When a rhyme for orange is sought,
It’s much tougher than [when] first thought.
[If] a task’s [very] tall
We should start [rather] small
Rhyming kumquat, loquat and complot.
Judith's note: I have changed his rhyme scheme—the interpolated words are mine, to conform to the more usual limerick form. The If in the third line replaces his when, to avoid two of ‘em.
Lullaby in Fracktown is another villanelle:
shoes/lollipops/lose
kazoos/mountaintop/shoes
kangaroos/flip-flop
snooze/dropped/shoes
school/gumdrops/lose
coos/unstopped/shoes/lose
The word play, alliterations, mock-advice, overtones of the song, "Hush little baby" tell the story of people who work in fracktowns -- the hope of a job -- but under the shadow of here today, gone tomorrow. Hush, like the lullaby sings, "don't say a word, Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird... and if that mocking bird don't sing, mama's going to buy you a diamond ring... and if that diamond ring turns to brass, mama's going to buy you a looking glass..." all those promises, crooned to soothe what we know is dangerous.
Cloud fishing has a marvelous hour-glass form, with the arrangement of 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 line in each stanza, with slant rhyme. sky/swimming by/refraction catching its eye.
looking down, to looking up out of the deep.
The CD Wright was difficult. The repeat 7 words; fragments, allusions and the idea of "Imagination" which we will see in the Collins' interpretation of the light around Goya's head, or the idea of the "glory" which people see in the sky -- either Godlike, or perhaps connected to that "telluric" light. Enigmatic, layered, complex.
Thank you Kathy for sharing this essay by C.D. Wright: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_wright_concerning.php
I highly recommend it! This passage particularly struck me, in the context of poetry embracing doubt, vs. searching for answers.
"Poetry should not be the default for every writer's mess. Otherwise, it is a poem if I say it is.
.... Poetry dissolves boundaries—it is the finite that puts us in touch with the infinite—and, as languages and species vanish every day, it is a crucial vehicle by which we apprehend the urgency and precarious splendor of existence.”
The next 19-line poem plays with words that end with "philous", but also helps the reader by providing definitions without ever seeming pedantic. The interconnectedness, the swell of Greek to a line that reads like a film of a black man. Love/that: (darkness, stories). "Love that" repeated again as first two words, on the 11th line... (corner room/whatever is not there/all the clutter you keep secret).
The clutter of words is filled with love... a complex interweaving of unlike, living near each other. It could be black/white or male/female or simply a me/you or all three.
Please listen to the recording (follow this link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/242480
of “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers”. It allows us to imagine more than someone in love with words— a real person, and an invitation to guess his story. How do you see the poem after being touched by the voice?
How does the edgy C.D Wright compare with Billy Collins? Did Goya have a candle hat, or is that also part of the imagination? Note verbs such as he "appears" and you can only "wonder what it would be like" and you only have to "imagine him"... and three more invitations to "imagine". The power of such a poem lies in the power of the poet's imagination to re-interpret what is seen. Whether, in this case, a painting, or possibilities -- it leads to a broader, more generous interpretation of the world.
I did find quite a few enlargement/close-ups of Goya in the portrait provided, that show, indeed, a candle hat -- but he would not have had them lit. According to his son, when Goya painted his portraits, he worked “in only one session, sometimes of ten hours, but never in the late afternoon. The last touches for a better effect of a picture he gave at night, by artificial light” or candlelight."
I missed the discussion of Solitude, the last poem, and did not read it with Rundel.
The line "what a luxury/ annoyance is" attracts me with the 3-syllable words pulling at each other. The longest line is the final six-syllable one, but so cleverly given --
the annoyance is what gives us a bite of just enough of "what I think/I want to be endless". It allows a peek at annoyance, which often counters our subjective desires.
Peace, sure, all alone, but it is not until the dog barks that the poet re-considers it.
Judith had proposed to read Bumbershoot:
Bumbershoot
Night, a gun-blue umbrella tricked with distant suns and planets
Is not to be opened indoors—more bad luck, or worse.
Hold it to the mind’s sky, finger the trigger in its handle.
A meteor bullets the firmament. The universe falls shut with a whoosh.
Shake the drops of the stars from the loose skin of the darkness.
Think of nothing for which to wish. Step into a different house.
--Howard Hendrix
Judith's note:The author was written six novels, several short story collections
and a “whole bunch of poems.” He teaches English and creative
writing “at the college level” but the blurb in the anthology
did not state where.
The Nebulas are annual awards given by members of SWFA, the professional organization of science fiction and fantasy writers. The annual poetry awards are
named for the fictional poet Rhysling, a character created by Robert Heinlein back in the forties in a story first published in, believe it or not, the Saturday
Evening Post—where I remember reading it. He wrote several stories for that mag, which probably paid a helluva lot better than the genre magazines of the time!!!
(The irony is that Rhysling’s poetry, when given by Heinlein, is Kipling-and-water and more water than Kipling. Never mind…)
And from Paul:
I ran across a quip by W.B. Yeats last night and thought it would tranquilize some misgivings that I or we ( the Group ) have about dissecting the mental states of poets , correcting what they present and straightening their scrambled thought processes.
" If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility".
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Poems for Feb. 24-5
Poems for February 24
1905 – by Marilyn Nelson + Portrait
On Friendship – Hegit Grossman (translated from the Hebrew, by Benjamin Balint)
The Heart Is a Foreign Country by Rangi McNeil
The Golden Hills of California by Susan Cohen
Near the End of a Day -- Anne Stevenson
Frond by Wendy Battin(from Poetry, March 1996)
Although some thought “Blue or Green” difficult to fathom, sometimes ideas come “out of the blue” — thanks to discussion. And what if every poem were some sort of Ars Poetica… ? What does a poem do? How does it do it?
Calling a poem by a year, opens up possibilities for parallel lives, in this case, two extraordinary men: Einstein and Carver. The writing is a pleasure-- oxymoron of "wild-haired/gentle eyed", the elevated register of "quotidian" for everyday, finger-smacking-licking sounds like the "preacher-pleasing mock-fried chicken" which says so much more than what was on the table, internal rhymes, imagery (platoon of skinny dogs) and the brilliant end which ties in Einstein with the locked glance of Carver -- indeed a whole century ahead filled with transformations, learned at the "velocity of light."
In the Rundel discussion, the 1905 Cotton convention came up, and the 1906 Atlanta Riots, and issues of race and history of lunchings, etc. What we remarked on the writing was how beautifully Nelson pads each sentence to say much more than one meaning.
2nd stanza next to last line: “free themselves” is not just about being a slave to coffee… ,
3rd stanza: “shoulder to shoulder” is not just about students/assistants in the cab, but working together, just like the internal rhyme of “braid/raised”, for through community connection, they could raise the standard and rise above slave conditions.
The glance meeting the eye is powerful — eye to eye, connecting — and the brilliant “velocity” (Einstein reference to speed of light) where light is more than the physics, but enlightenment!
The next poem has long lines, which slide into a recounting of a moment. Rules... and when not to follow them... Written in 2nd person, it is as if the woman narrator is talking to herself,
aware that a friend wouldn't come by for no reason. “On Friendship” announces an essay, and we were curious how it would be in the Hebrew original. There’s a sense of mystery — who are these people in this vignette couched in terms of conditional? Is Merhav a proper name or Arabic for “welcome”? The meditation paints a scenario of what will happen if you invite someone in if they call out to you, how precious that is. We loved the repetition at the end of “sublime” — rendering a simple, possible “quotidian” moment as something approaching sacred. The moral of the story that friendship is one of the most important things to honor. The common things, (pineapple juice, a little conversation) and the adjustments (the clean shirt, dealing with the children) support the offering.
The note to the McNeil poem sets a wry tone with a sense of humor. Why a tercet followed by a stanza of five lines? Perhaps like translating English/Danish, black/white, male/female
the heart is more than familiar, universal tendencies... just as words too have individual layers ... He chides himself, and acknowledges there is not guarantee -- the world "owes us nothing". And yet, how free is that -- equivalent to a specific parameter... "Wednesday".
The title reminds me of Pascal — “le coeur a les raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (the heart has reasons, reason cannot know) — rather like the contradiction of “familiar”(personal feeling) and “universal” (Reason). I love the juxtaposition of the world being an independent agent outside of us, and our business is to choose. "Call it:” The short, succinct sounds of a choice as opposed to the meandering and long first paragraph.
The next poem was a beautiful metaphor for what we consider to be the "fabled" "Golden State"...
and how light... repeated as first word of the first two sentences, becomes "it", at first sunlight, then fire... the sh sounds predominate -- burnishing torching, shingle, latch, ash, combustion, and the final word in poem, "crushing". All that gold, and burning. However, it's hard to see burning as crushing except in the sense that both transform, and produce some good after the damage is done.
The delicacy of the Anne Stevenson repetitions, which slow us down, allow a slow unfolding as one thing is confused for another, butterfly/leaf; feather/fur and the idea of a cyclic process, reassuring because of possibilities which metaphors give.
The “f” sounds float in the choices… butterfly,feather, but not in caterpillar and wheels of life, where the reassurance is the sense of discovery. The repeated words, “leaf”, “feather” — what falls, is discarded yet also part of living also will repeatedly fall.
The final poem captures the Zen spirit of "one-hand clapping" , and again, the subtle repeat of "Applause. Applause" as the final word which could not happen if a twin frond had not appeared !
The first stanza reads a bit like a riddle (How can there be a cherry without a stone), and it takes a bit of work to see that the frond has first cradled, then left the "globe of water". Who could discard a drop of water that can hold the sun as it rises?
1905 – by Marilyn Nelson + Portrait
On Friendship – Hegit Grossman (translated from the Hebrew, by Benjamin Balint)
The Heart Is a Foreign Country by Rangi McNeil
The Golden Hills of California by Susan Cohen
Near the End of a Day -- Anne Stevenson
Frond by Wendy Battin(from Poetry, March 1996)
Although some thought “Blue or Green” difficult to fathom, sometimes ideas come “out of the blue” — thanks to discussion. And what if every poem were some sort of Ars Poetica… ? What does a poem do? How does it do it?
Calling a poem by a year, opens up possibilities for parallel lives, in this case, two extraordinary men: Einstein and Carver. The writing is a pleasure-- oxymoron of "wild-haired/gentle eyed", the elevated register of "quotidian" for everyday, finger-smacking-licking sounds like the "preacher-pleasing mock-fried chicken" which says so much more than what was on the table, internal rhymes, imagery (platoon of skinny dogs) and the brilliant end which ties in Einstein with the locked glance of Carver -- indeed a whole century ahead filled with transformations, learned at the "velocity of light."
In the Rundel discussion, the 1905 Cotton convention came up, and the 1906 Atlanta Riots, and issues of race and history of lunchings, etc. What we remarked on the writing was how beautifully Nelson pads each sentence to say much more than one meaning.
2nd stanza next to last line: “free themselves” is not just about being a slave to coffee… ,
3rd stanza: “shoulder to shoulder” is not just about students/assistants in the cab, but working together, just like the internal rhyme of “braid/raised”, for through community connection, they could raise the standard and rise above slave conditions.
The glance meeting the eye is powerful — eye to eye, connecting — and the brilliant “velocity” (Einstein reference to speed of light) where light is more than the physics, but enlightenment!
The next poem has long lines, which slide into a recounting of a moment. Rules... and when not to follow them... Written in 2nd person, it is as if the woman narrator is talking to herself,
aware that a friend wouldn't come by for no reason. “On Friendship” announces an essay, and we were curious how it would be in the Hebrew original. There’s a sense of mystery — who are these people in this vignette couched in terms of conditional? Is Merhav a proper name or Arabic for “welcome”? The meditation paints a scenario of what will happen if you invite someone in if they call out to you, how precious that is. We loved the repetition at the end of “sublime” — rendering a simple, possible “quotidian” moment as something approaching sacred. The moral of the story that friendship is one of the most important things to honor. The common things, (pineapple juice, a little conversation) and the adjustments (the clean shirt, dealing with the children) support the offering.
The note to the McNeil poem sets a wry tone with a sense of humor. Why a tercet followed by a stanza of five lines? Perhaps like translating English/Danish, black/white, male/female
the heart is more than familiar, universal tendencies... just as words too have individual layers ... He chides himself, and acknowledges there is not guarantee -- the world "owes us nothing". And yet, how free is that -- equivalent to a specific parameter... "Wednesday".
The title reminds me of Pascal — “le coeur a les raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (the heart has reasons, reason cannot know) — rather like the contradiction of “familiar”(personal feeling) and “universal” (Reason). I love the juxtaposition of the world being an independent agent outside of us, and our business is to choose. "Call it:” The short, succinct sounds of a choice as opposed to the meandering and long first paragraph.
The next poem was a beautiful metaphor for what we consider to be the "fabled" "Golden State"...
and how light... repeated as first word of the first two sentences, becomes "it", at first sunlight, then fire... the sh sounds predominate -- burnishing torching, shingle, latch, ash, combustion, and the final word in poem, "crushing". All that gold, and burning. However, it's hard to see burning as crushing except in the sense that both transform, and produce some good after the damage is done.
The delicacy of the Anne Stevenson repetitions, which slow us down, allow a slow unfolding as one thing is confused for another, butterfly/leaf; feather/fur and the idea of a cyclic process, reassuring because of possibilities which metaphors give.
The “f” sounds float in the choices… butterfly,feather, but not in caterpillar and wheels of life, where the reassurance is the sense of discovery. The repeated words, “leaf”, “feather” — what falls, is discarded yet also part of living also will repeatedly fall.
The final poem captures the Zen spirit of "one-hand clapping" , and again, the subtle repeat of "Applause. Applause" as the final word which could not happen if a twin frond had not appeared !
The first stanza reads a bit like a riddle (How can there be a cherry without a stone), and it takes a bit of work to see that the frond has first cradled, then left the "globe of water". Who could discard a drop of water that can hold the sun as it rises?
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