2. 13 Questions for the Next Economy, by Susan Briante
3. Approach of Winter, by William Carlos Williams
4. The Last Word of a Bluebird, by Robert Frost
5. The Last Thing, by Ada Limón
6. Perennials, by Maggie Smith
7. To the New Year, by W.S. Merwin
Only as the day is long…
There is something haunting in the title, that reminds us that nothing lasts forever.
The six-line first sentence filled with analogies of who “she” or any of us, will be once
We die, is followed by an octet of a second sentence filled with anaphora of atoms which point
To the not-quite vanished life ending with the word “slippers”. A final question, repeats that final word, which tumbles out of the string of liquid sounds – laughter, cruelty, lies, lilies, to slippers.
The group had images of abandoned shoes, gathered in a bin in the holocaust museum. Slippers… the most intimate footwear, which “she” will not need – but echo our human concern
About finding where we have put things we use daily, but cannot find… as if with her death,
She has taken even this reminder of who she is.
As Rita Dove describes it, “it is a sonnet, albeit unrhymed, still singing,
A fitting vessel for this litany of conflicted sorrow. Indeed, we are all bags of contradictions…
juxtaposition of what is circling the earth with what is not: boozy atoms, with piano concerto atoms… Evanescent, yet permanent, the poem provides more than broad look at humanity…
with an inventory of particulars of a specific person
13 questions: 13 is a number rife with associations… the 13throll in a dozen (lagniappe);
Jesus and his 12 apostles… 13 ways of looking at a blackbird..
“The next economy” identifies the measurement of a time period not by the reign of a monarch,
But what drives the social order: money. Large spaces leaves holes in some of the couplets;
The line breaks create suspense but also uncertainty. What metaphor// (line and stanza break)
(indentation) can I use to describe …
The spaces pull apart – as the poet says, she is not interested in “smoothing over crisis”
And wonders if there is potential for transformation in staying within what’s uncomfortable.
What would YOU cross out, on this list of questions?
My favorite sound is the fragment: “a break-the-state twig-quick snap” (referring to a revolution
The group responded with these observations:
Feels like a warning. Uses questions in times of crisis…. to open mind.
poem of oppressed… French revolution…
gestures through her examples – what is around her… turns into ominous symbols…
Measure for measure… I’ll tell everyone… will you believe it anyway???
Omission of sentence… What price, salvation now?
WCW: The poem is an 11-line sentence, also filled with l’s.
(The unpronounced one in “half”), all, leaves, flutter, drily, let, hail, bitterly, fall, salvias, leaf.
Play with plural to singular, all falls… leaves fall…
The r’s also lend a liquid sound: stripped, trees, struck, together, drily, driven, stream, hard, carmine bare garden.
The line breaks provide some pauses, and then the m-dashes mark a hard finality
of a final resting place. The group summarized, “when hard times come, the best you can do is hold on.” The rhyme of the red carmine, like living blood, and the garden, waiting for the
bareness of winter.
The last word of a bluebird: delightful scene between a wise Crow, and the fair-weather
Bluebird that Robert Frost wrote to his young daughter. The assemblage of advice ends with the delightful “And do everything!” which captures the spirit of the poem
There is no predictability that the bluebird will return… the “perhaps” softens such certitude
With the conditional in the final line: “He would come back and sing.” A sense of “God willing”. Not up to us to say what will be.
The Last Thing: The title announces a sequence, and the first three details set a scene with a jay, a mouth, and a roaring quiet. The jarring note is that these are not “happenings” so much
As “noticings” in the mind of the poet shared with “you”. By the end of the poem, it
Feels not so much as eavesdropping on a dream than overhearing a dying mother talking to
a child, or someone being visited in a nursing home; two old people. The confessional “I” does not discount her own “big deal” of noticing. The term “love poison” came up.
It is an unsettling poem as if on purpose, and makes me wonder, about what I would want
To notice as the “last thing” in my life, in another’s, or simply in a day, a passage of time…
Perennials: Two lines at a time: slows us down… as we take in ghost towns… and wind, praise of ruin, what survives and this real voice of a child calling to her mother in a real garden, “pretend I’m winning”. Effective set up to address the need for someone to bear witness.
To the New Year: W.S. Merwin talks to the New Year as gently as to a new born.
Each line, suspended without punctuation.
First light of the New Year, still… a dove, whether or not anyone is aware,
The here and newness, our hopes such as they are, still possible.
