Jan 9-10

Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot

The Magi. by W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Two Set Out on Their Journey. Galway Kinnell, 1927 - 2014

My Father as Cartographer by Natasha Trethewey, 1966

 Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today by Emily Jungmin Yoon

elegy with linden tree three-years' dead still standing by Nina Puro

The Pittsford group profited from David's reading of the Eliot.   As he puts it, " I had been thinking and practicing this poem-- seeking to understand the feelings and changes of feeling, the recognitions and realizations in the speaker, and trying to get them into voice—over the last couple of weeks.  Once begun, the poem wouldn’t leave me alone. So, to have this work so richly affirmed is gratifying.  I did the work for myself of course, but I have always looked forward to sharing it, and how good it feels to have it so deeply shared.".  Indeed, hearing a poem recited by heart,

where the speaker has clearly invested himself into the voice, makes a tremendous difference.

The context of the poem: it paraphrases a 1621 sermon by Andrews… who humanized the Magi.  "what a helluvah journey…", we understand, as we listen to the  old man remembering… possibly dictating it to his scribes.  Why is he telling this story late in life?   
and  what questions does the poem raise for you?

I love the last line of the first stanza:  
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Imagine undertaking a journey, with no assurance that this new "king" will be found,

what kind of "new" is involved.  We all undertake quests...  but little information...

The words, arrived, "not a moment too soon" , and the understatement, "satisfactory"

also create a mystery of what expectations were involved.  The Magi's question,

"were we led all that way for Birth or Death?" is not an easy question.  Birth of the Christ,

with premonitions throughout the poem of his death -- the three trees, the old white horse (Indian

myth of sacrifice), the dicing for pieces of silver... death of the old ways, and promise of the new,

and ending with "I should be glad of another death."

The discussion in both groups was rich and rewarding.  Transformations are hard times... and yet,

we gain from them... and would go through them again because of the value of what we learn,

even knowing of the pain.  n possibly thinking about his own moral dislocation after WWI.  glad for another change.  Eliot did search for religion. Magi managed to survive revolutions…  reading stars… magistrates and magicians.  Had to leave older way of thinking.  Could be placed around the time of the crucifixion.  A little premature for the “good news” of Gospels

n humanizing: very much like Amahl and the Night Visitors.  poignant story… dealing with things way bigger than the narrative… delicacy…. 

n Martin: difficult.  key words. Magi. journey.  regrets. hard time of year. Guides disappear; light disappears…  Eliot using the story of the Magi… Why did they go on the quest.

n no mention of the gifts of the Magi.  Not emphasis on King.  Desescalate the legend.

n exploration into primitive Christianity… Jesus as healer… 

Magi like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. taken out of traditional play and made into characters with whom we can relate.

Paul, with his inimitable pluck and savvy then imitated WB Yeats to a T in the next poem.

Is "I" the outsider, as in today, witnessing a creche scene... again this word "satisfactory" but this time as turbulence unsatisfied. I should think Eliot knew Yeats' poem... both thinking of WWI...  both familiar with "bestiality."  The key word in the last line,  for me is "uncontrollable"... The universe has its own plan... 

Galway Kinnell:

contrasts:  odd / even

desolate / cheerful

happy / encumbering...  how is it that with a happy beginning, an unknown end, the time in between seems to be lumbering?

The key word, "If" -- which is no assurance at all... 

which is the new laughter that allows us freedom from being dead serious?

Everyone will live the life they have.  Each start a good one.  Open to it with "yes".

Respond with "thank you".

The Trethewey:  Indentations… services the message.  choppiness of mood.

Professor expounds territory… but at the end of his life, country of loss, colony of grief,

continent, desire, borderland regret... and joy is untethered... no guarantee there.

And the horrifying sous-entendu of a man's daughter who would be glad should he perish...

but what is monstrous, is to be two-faced -- the negative feeling unspoken, and the reader

doesn't know what masks them both.

Yoon:   Today is the key concept in the poem.  Short sentences.  A reminder that Korean is

a language based on tones.  The confusion of subjects -- who is "you"?  "I"?  "We"

From the five meanings of Chada, I think of a mother, expecting a child, kicking inside her...

The metaphors of the longer sentences... the cold, worn, going from Fall to the longest day 

of Winter... and yet... inside, in the heart, the "you" worn like curtains....  Lovely contrast of the two.

Nina Puro: The title and rest of poem evokes ruins of Germany.  the "seam" in the first couplet

like seeing a part of a garment... the key point of the poem for all was the subjunctive set up

of wishing "I meant enough" -- what was the photo?  Who or what was snipped out?

Why would the speaker of the poem have wanted to be in it?

Some though the "go on without me -- don't look back" was a courageous statement,

that was then, on we go.  (Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead).  Some interpreted it

as, "let me be here, left behind in my grief."  The poignant last couplet, reinforces the

sense of a defiant voice -- those who hear it may feel it as affirmation to continue to ignore her

whether in a positive or negative way.  

These are only thoughts culled from very rich discussions of the poems.

I am so grateful for each contribution!

  

Poems for Jan 16-17

two poems with illustrations:
-- The lines of poetry here are by Otto Rene Castillo, a Guatemalan poet murdered by the army there. The photo and handwriting are by Mary Anderson.

Winter Scene by Naomi Shaw (sketch by her son, John Wiesenthal)

Winter Scene — which is illustrated by this sketch:

A House Called Tomorrow  by Alberto Ríos

These Poems  by June Jordan, 1936 - 2002

Those Winter Sundays

Time to be the fine line of light  by Carrie Fountain

To the New Year by W. S. Merwin side by side with his poem, "For the Anniversary of my Death"

See  by Christopher T. Brown (son of Almeta Whitis)

As the Rundel group commented-- Each of the poems provide words for the wordless but important concepts that guide us to good living… 

We just received a New Year card from friends who have decided to trade in competing for collaborating, adopt contributing vs. consuming.  Each day presents us with choices...
and in some cultures is considered a separate life, started anew with each sunrise.
I love that poetry invites us to explore  collective experience and reflect on deep feelings.

The picture and lines by Otto Rene Castillo, hand-written by local Rochester photographer,
Marilyn Anderson remind us of the return of seasons... both physical, like Spring, and metaphorical, the season of hope.  

 Naomi Shaw provides a beautiful "sound-scape" of Winter: crackle of frost; silver drippings, “each twig resplendent  in its brittle rig”, aristocratic mien of birches in a winter scene.” –

the length of the longer words remain delicate with the liquid "r's" and regal L's.

Her son, John Weisenthal, mentioned that she worked with Walter Winchell… 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Winchell

House called Tomorrow:

Like sermon  or baccalaureate address to a young person… but heard by whole congregation…  Reminded some of the tenets of Lao Tsu, and  a reminder  we are all connected… our choices determine what we bring to each day in ourselves… When you hear thunder,

hear it as the applause of those who came before you.

What is bad?  trouble?  Genetics... society... and are our options for good only to write books, cure disease... what makes a person proud?  How do you choose the words that become your own?

We discussed at length the merits of the poem in terms of the simple language, the trustworthy

tone... but at first blush, not particularly poetic in terms of craft.  It is approachable, appealing,

and as Elaine said, the discussion about it was as rich as one about a poem that pulls out all the poetic stops.

These Poems… written for whoever you are… intimate sharing of what it’s like to write poetry… Do you know how to respect “the other” –

what’s involved with “worship”… learning to worship as stranger, (not knowing what future self we will be) or the the strangers around the self.  

We are all process… starting in “the dark”... the river of words catch on lines,

like arms for longing and love.

Lovely progression from a long first stanza...  to the shorter second stanza with the metaphor of the flow and cycle of water and the difficulty of catching a thought, working it into a poem that will

have meaning for whoever might read it...  

The reverence in Hayden’s poem, echoes a sense of  sacrifice in getting ready for church… 

It isn't only the last line that resonates-- but the last line of each stanza.  We discussed

chronic anger... (either with the overtone of how it feels to be black in America, or the universal complexity of anger and its effect on children) the "no one ever thanked him" -- a short sentence that prepares  the cold splintering  in the next stanza.  How can we "drive out the cold" so that we know something

 "of love’s austere and lonely offices" before it's too late? 

Can be read both with the layer of the world as a black man in America

Time to be the fine line of light… we read between the lines… try to understand the fine line between difference/similarity… metaphor of blinds… the light

comes in through the slats….  the blinds… and the sill as resting spot. 

The structure of the poem is like blinds... accentuated by line breaks, where the words fall

through  to the start of the next couplet. -- the same metaphor of words/water:

All I want /

is to be the river though I return

again and again to the clouds. 

All I want…. 3 times... each time different.  The first, all I want... as in "lack" perhaps... or being something one isn't.  Then, self-evaluating and realizing she needs to think about wanting...    and

the impossibility of  knowing such a largeness, which confirms wanting  the moment at hand is enough.  to be... to practice being, are given a spotlight in the lineation.

to be/

the fine line.  to practice being

the line…

Merwin:  side by side:  

I found the idea of an anniversary of a death coupled with a meditation on the light of "new"
whether it be a "new year" or a "new day", helpful.

To the New Year sounds like an Ode, but as Kathy pointed out, it isn't, and comes from

Merwin's book, Present Company published in 2005,  where each poem starts with "To  xyz"

 Calendars are arbitrary… Merwin starts with a look at the stillness of the New Year,

arriving at morning… whether you see it or not…  The poem ends  on hopes, "invisible, untouched,

possible" 
Both poem are infused with his humility… and inspire a sense of awe…

The suspended lines allow meaning to slide in several directions of meaning, 

for instance:

your first sunlight reaching down   (the new year's start...)

to touch the tips of a few                (a few (people)... then line break... a few high leaves)                        

high leaves that do not stir /

**

so this is the sound of you              (how do you hear "hush" ? silence? a new year?)

here and now whether or not      (is here and now the sound, or the adverb?  does it contrast

                                                    here and now /with whether or not?   It's as if several things

                                                    are happening all at once.)

add the next line:   "whether or not/anyone hears you at all." and the meaning shifts.
and again, anyone hears you at all.  This is --and again...

We discussed at length how to understand an "anniversary of my death" spoken by a living person.

   this poem was written in early January – 1967 – and appears in his book,  The Lice.

from Stillness to Sound:   

The ending lines are coupled with "and no longer surprised"

As today writing after three days of rain      (3 r’s in the names with r in hearing: rain. writing, wren 

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease 

And bowing not knowing to what

Reverence... gratitude...

The final poem, written by a Christopher Brown in 1988, when he was 23, is a hopeful statement

of inspiration:  

We discussed the ending, and if the final stanza supported the message.  Just know.... 

and the reader will fill in the blank...?  Just know what?  

It was suggested:  "Know your sense of purpose--  Know everything that I’ve just said to you."

I don't know what to say to you

But watch close where you go

Don't be blind on roads to come

Just be sure and know

   

Jan. 2, 2019

Ancient Music by Ezra Pound

A Walk Around the Property by Tony Hoagland

In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

Silver Filigree  by Elinor Wylie

Things We Carry on the Sea  by Wang Ping

What Counts in the End by Carol Flake Chapman

Pound: He is having fun with the mid 13th century song, "Summer is I-cummin in" --
to survive the winter.  We played the music of the summer song, with the  growing seed and meadow bloom, cavorting farm animals, bursting woods.  Indeed, the "ancient" song is like a medieval wiki site, with reference to medical texts, herbs... although, what we retain is the refrain,
"sing cuccu".

Hoagland. Brilliant gem of a poem!  The title sets up the idea of "what is proper to man" --
a sort of self-assessment, in the midst of disconnection and loneliness... What brings us to the  "heart of the matter" -- but feeling... in spite of doubt, fear of being abandoned, the repeated "heart" in the
final stanza reminds me of the ivory carvings of an elephant, within an elephant, within an elephant... how, beyond the small talk, we continue inside, to carve... Love that the poem comes from a book
called "Priest Turns Therapist
Treats Fear of God".
It is not a sermon, nor a therapy session, asking us to "Sing a Song of the World", but a poem
showing how we construct narrative, replete with satisfyingly deft craft.

Roethke:  Like Hoagland, knows how to manipulate sound, metaphor.  Starts out like Dante... the quest, the search.  Depression has a way of distilling things to their essence... "A man goes far to find out what he is..."
Which I is I?  Again, a sense of one, nestling in the larger One.

Wylie:  We will have a session which shows the brilliance off this poet, who like Millay, unfortunately was relegated to a minor status in anthologies as a ladi-da, trivial rhyme-ster.
That aside, both on and beneath the surface of icicles, Wylie (1885-1928) celebrates art and beauty.

Wang Ping:  The anaphor, "We carry" morphs into "We're orphans, refugees" and a poignant plea
that others know the experience of leaving homeland, filled with words of hope in the mother tongue-
a sense that love, peace, hope, also is drifting in rubber boats, searching for a poem.

Chapman:  What counts?  How do we bank our experiences?  How does this change us?
How can I show you my experience?  Not just the pretty memories, but the hidden nuggets which wait to be "panned like gold".

Highly satisfying discussion in both groups.  

poems for Dec. 20-21, 2018

1. Just Delicate Needles ---by Rolf Jacobsen

2. A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day by John Donne

3. Lines for Winter by Mark Strand
4.  Basho Haiku

5. Winter is Good (1316). by Emily Dickinson

6. A Spell Before Winter    by Howard  Nemerov

7. Birds At Winter Nightfall (Triolet) by Thomas Hardy

8.  Departed Days by Oliver Wendell Holmes
9.  Winter Complains  by Ogden Nash

1.  Just Delicate Needles

Such a beautiful poem… but written by a nazi supporter in Norway.  So… does the poem change once we know that fact?

What if he wrote it before the war -- or what if he revised his stand?  I wish I knew the actual Norwegian version-- whether

"Just" is adjective, as in, "fair" with the paradoxical "needle", (sharp, perhaps painful ) and "delicate" (as in fine, a sense of seeing through beautiful stitchery of pine needle).  

The poem immediately corrects any implication in the title.  This is a poem about light-- needles of light, 

in the huge vastness of dark...  Be gentle with "it" -- cherish "it", focusses on a way of being.  "We hope" as last line

can stand independently, and is associated with this gentle cherishing that makes hope possible.

2.  A Nocturnal:   Difficult poem -- perhaps more understandable knowing Donne was in his metaphysical stage...having a romp with negativity?

I had the group respond with a question for Donne... why are you writing this?  What is this really about?  What do you

want us to understand?  St. Lucy: light; and Lucifer, the angel cast out of heaven... again, dark and light.  

Martin proposes the "I" of the poem is the voice of the old year passing, and St. Lucy the hope of the new year.

3.  Lines for Winter:

 Strand seems to have taken the idea of dark, to write to "you", perhaps his friend for whom he wrote the poem, perhaps the reader, perhaps himself, encouraging "us" to go on.  Our positive messages to ourselves help us survive.  Carmen shared a story of her friend who used this technique -- when things fall apart, really fall apart, and it feels nothing is left -- the body has fallen apart, everything 

one loves to do is no longer possible, everything one has is taken away... you still have the power to

"tell yourself... that you love what you are."

4. "When the winter chrysanthemums go,// there is nothing to write about// but radishes. 

Basho seems to be tongue-in-cheek.  Visual beauty gone, but you can still eat Daikon.

Perhaps up to us to make even the lowly root vegetables a  worthy subject? 

5. Winter is Good

 Winter is good - his Hoar Delights

Italic flavor yield 

... a certain slant of light... critique of "good"... contradictory quality 

Generic as a Quarry                       

And hearty - as a Rose - 

6.  A Spell Before Winter 

I love how the first two stanzas weave a magical "spell" and end with

The old hills hunch before the north wind blows.

The abrupt transition from "nature" to  our human nature, with the arrival of a capitalistic Santa Claus is jarring.  Our human need to believe in him 

Conceals the thinness of essential hunger, brings out our own

Vanity and the void.

The 4th stanza with the prism-like meanings of suffer, as in pain, but also to invite, 

and overtones of Christianity, is followed by a vicious couplet which stabs at corruption

of religious intent -- as if to confirm the mention of the Bishop of Myra degraded into the fat gift-bringer in the preceding lines.

7. Triolet

The form and Hardy's treatment, give a light treatment of winter from a bird's point of view.

I love the description of the indoor human as "crumb-outcaster" and  different treatments

of "flakes fly faster" and all the berries gone -- same words, but the arrangement and punctuation make all the difference!

8.  Departed Days

Chosen by guest editor, Carmen Giménez Smith,  who curated the Poem-a-Day series for December.

Final line asks the perfect question on which to meditate: Day breaks,—and where are we?

The poem suggests that memory cannot restore old hopes as we are  drawn further away from ourselves… Discussion included mention of the Native Indian vision pit:  when come out… have your name.

9.  Ogden Nash

How to have fun-- let the winter cold speak!

  

 

poems for Dec. 12-13

1. Only as the Day Is Long, by Dorianne Laux
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 13^throll 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.

poems for Dec. 5-6, 2018

1. The Poem Said, by Michael Dickman (New Yorker, Nov. 26, 2018 issue)
2. Transubstantiation by Susan Firer
3. In This Country, I Hear, by Bertolt Brecht. (translated in new volume of his poems, 2018; 11/12/18
4. Autumn Passage by Elizabeth Alexander
5. Equinox by Esther Morgan
6. A New National Anthem, by Ada Limon
7.Let America be America Again, Langston Hughes
(I too,
Spanish next to the English translation of Roque Dalton, "Like You"

**
Comments:
1,  I love the title -- it's the poem that said these things --
so what does that mean about words and how we use them?  about poetry.
Hallucinatory quality -- is grass marijuana, lidocaine, a numbing street drug,
ramen and coke a substitute for rum and coke or cocaine... breathe sugar--
Like Kubla Khan, the sounds weave around... and there's a pleasant sense of entering a bath of wit.

The experience of waking up in the morning.


2.  The next poem got caught up in petrichor

And one thing becoming another, until

rain ribbons the windows, and rocks

deepen and shine their colors in the rain,

the smell of the rain like ichor, which runs

in the veins of the gods.

The tone felt baptismal, sacred... but the lineation and sound was not very poetic.

A cycle of life... finding beauty in sorrow.

3.  Long discussion about how "not-smiling" is apathologized in America.

Role of sales in America.  That this is an old poem, written by a social activist

who wrote 3-Penny Opera... reprinted in the Nov. 12, 2018 New Yorker. 

The jab of the poem is the problem with blind acceptance... "buying into" a culture
without question, at risk for self-deceit.  What is happiness?  What traps us into
believing something is "successful"?  If we all hide behind the mask of a pleasant smile,
we cannot distinguish the reality of people.  We dare not not smile.

4.  A totally accurate description of the beginning of death.  The repetition of the fragment introduced by "on" has a feel of an ode.  Unusual juxtapositions:  miraculous dying body; dazzling toddler; the body magnificent as it dims, shrinks, turns to something else.  A sense of autumn, the glory (repeated 3 times) of the vibrant colors, passing into death of winter... On… as in onwards… through the passage… urging… 

5.  A totally accurate description of the innocence of a baby sleeping-- and beautifully poised
with 8 lines about a child balancing on "I feel the earth's pause" (see title) followed by 8 lines, all about nature.  Love the "lifelong tilt...."

6. The start is "ineloquent" but when she starts to speak about the flag, and all that needs saying
in a true National Anthem -- that could be sung in all countries if we could understand "my bones
are your bones..."  Wonderful poem.

7.  I had the group read the words in parentheses like a chorus.  No black people attended.  We were like trespassers, adopting the words of black people like outsiders.  We also read "I too Sing America" written 9 years before, in 1926 which was more hopeful.

8.  The Roque Dalton -- the Spanish revealed the problem with translation in the opening lines.
I love love. vs.  Like you I love love, life.