O pen March 6; O pen and Oasis March 13-`4

March 6:  Elaine O. kindly led the discussion:

Poetry and the Weather by Tom Speer

 The Simple Truthby Philip Levine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5qAbVVa_A8

 Errata by Tom Speer

The Oystermen by Joanne Clarkson

Sonnet 18. Retold  (by James Anthony) to Left, Original, R.

https://www.james-anthony.com/shakespeares-sonnets-retold/

At a Window  by Carl Sandburg

On Why I Must Decline To Receive The Prayers You Say You Are Constantly Sending  

by Tony Hoagland

Fox News  by Dawn Lonsinger

After He’s Decided to Leave  by Elizabeth Acevedo

I Never Figured How to Get Free by Donika Kelly

I Stop Writing the Poem byTess Gallagher

Poems in the Tribute to Tony Hoagland in The Sun,  March 2019

Candlelight

America. (use March 21-2)

The Social Life of Water

Special Problems in Vocabulary

Message to a Former Friend

Birdhouse

He trusted the reader to understand that there is ugliness and beauty in all of us.  

"Into the Mystery: : published a little more than a year before his death, Tony writes of

"a time of afternoon, out there in the yard

an hour that's never been described.

... Now you sit on the brick wall in the cloudy afternoon and swing your legs,

happy because there never has been a word for this."

He gave us words to describe that for which we have no words.
**
The  first stanza of the Sandburg is surprising.   "Give me hunger" sounds like it will go the way of Emma Lazarus and the statue of liberty speaking to immigrants, but doesn't.  Instead, Sandburg intensifies the hunger, adds pain, want, shame, failure and finally clubs the hunger with superlatives, "shabbiest, weariest."  One arrives at the second stanza, feeling full relief of the BUT...
What a  technique to set up "love", which in turn is meekly requested only for  "a little".
The diction and imagery also become more textured:  "in the dusk of day-shapes"
and the changing shores of shadow... and inverting the watch  to day-shapes of dusk...
the wait.  The W's of window, wandering, western star... the liquid l's "little love, long loneliness...
blurring... the small engine sounds of ch-ch-ch in touch, shapes, watch all add to the pleasure.

The discussion focussed on suffering as a necessary component to understand compassion, recalling

 Horace,  "If you would have me weep, I must shed the tears."  

One has the sense of daylight fading to black and white… 

The quite formal title contrasts well with the tongue-in-cheek tone and wry humor of the Hoagland,  and brought up the discussion of the difficulty of expressing sympathy, the trite excuses and language of Hallmark cards.

I don't know which I prefer:  the  2nd stanza:

Prayer as a radar-guided projectile mounted on the hinged-together wings of several good intentions,

propelled by the flawed translation of a Rumi poem  

or, after the arrival of the mother wren in the mailbox who sets to work, to mention of  the idea of prayers with the feature of "endoplasmic vibrational voltage in the fifth stanza.

Indeed... in this day of "virtual reality" it is refreshing to blame "poorly aimed prayers" for

causing late tires on the freeway.  I love that he sneaks in "bees wax" at the end... 

yes, we do need to "work our shit out"... and make time to sit still, watch the colors of the changing sky.  It's high time to leave behind empty phrases and automatic responses that contain little emotion.

How patronizingly apt to put it this way: 

I understand that you are doing your best

to hoist yourself up toward a spiritual life,

even if it is through the doorway of a kind of pretending.

Lonsinger's poem weaves together both a real fox and Fox News.  I found it so amusing that

in cutting and pasting it, deception's d printed as c l... there is no cleception!

It's hard not to mention current politics with such a poem... Kathy brought up a new collection of poems in the book  Urban Nature :

 Poems About Wildlife in the City [Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Emily Hiestand

The Acevedo poem brought up a long discussion trying to sort through the ambiguity and confusion experienced by the Poet X a champion spoken word poet who tells her story in a novel composed of such poems.  

"I Never Figured How to Get Free"  brings up the guilt of being American, and all the undeclared wars  in which America engages. As the poet expresses, "I wanted to write about how it felt to be a citizen of a nation seemingly always at war when the war is distant and on a screen, and the ringing distortionI felt while being financially comfortable for the first time and living in isolation in Western New York.”

She does, but it didn't feel so much a poem, as a diary entry... without really exploring how one "learns" freedom

if one does not have control of the circumstances.

The final poem is a touching elegy... Gallagher's surprising title "I stop writing the poem" makes sense after reading what goes into the folding.  She blends memory, as a woman, folding her deceased husband's shirt, remembering their shared tenderness.  She uses the future tense to mention she'll get back to the poem and being a woman.  

Then in give short lines, the size of her grief... the giant shirt, meets her smallness as a little girl,  going back in time  

watching her mother, to see "how it's done".  We are left holding emptiness, grief with her.   

For February 27-28

Peach Picking by Kwame Dawes

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

Florence, Kentucky  by Adam Scheffler

The Children of the Poor  by Gwendolyn Brooks

 Running,by Joy Harjo

"We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface, but connected in he deep."  Wm. James

The first poem swept us away with the sound play... the idea of peaches as bodies... easily scarred, bruised, which brings to mind memories of slave days...  the basket of peaches like a boat, sailing

all the way from Africa, where there are 800 varieties of Acacia trees.  Every detail of the poem

points to more than peach picking... the ache... the sorrow,  in the background of what is 

"unremarkable" where a house rises like a dream... 

the closing couplet is haunting. 

in the middle of nothing: a body with no context

just the language of loss haunting as a low country hex.

Comments about the Langston Hughes poem:  it reads like a song; sings yet is solemn as a sermon. 

The "I" in poem is eye of history.  3 rivers: Nile, Euphrates, Mississippi...  I love the rich paradox of

the muddy river, shining golden in the sunset... how do we know rivers?  the flow of life, history?

We would have wanted to hear Adam Scheffler read his poem to hear how he pronounces the first two words:  So what.  vs.  So what if... As he explains in the note "about this poem", Florence, KY

has nothing of the splendor of Italian renaissance, but rather this town on the Ohio river where the areas of  Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky merge, represents  the ugliness of prisons, gun stores, Walmart.

In this glimpse of a stories of an old man, a bald man hectoring a young infant-carrying girl, a nurse...

it is not the river, but TVs which "spin despair’s golden honey—".  

The poet calls us to empathy.  Ending on the memory of walking out on the ice... which

miraculously/mercilessly… does not break... reinforces  suffering that will continue.   Perhaps the noticing leavens it.  but someone quoted  Thomas Hobbes: " Life…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

The discussion of the 3-part poem by Gwendolyn Brooks  brought up mention of Annie Allen (1949) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Allen

How to deal with indifference... the quandary of not having means to help one's children... and the final stanza...  Shall I ask them to pray?  If that doesn’t work…

hope they will figure out how to survive and wait… holding the bandage.

Patience… 

Running,by Joy Harjo   Poem from July 9, 2018, New Yorker.  resignation… 

It came up today to wonder how Joy Harjo would read her poem, “Running”.  Here is the audio link

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/running

poetry: structure for understanding the world, and perform rigorous studies of the human soul.

Agile music… it doesn’t travel in a linear way… it interanimates matter and spirit… us and them…

(from reading at Cornell.)

As Native American, Harjo takes us through history, violence, and running, running... ending

" It was my way of breaking free. I was anything but history.

I was the wind.   "

And yet, the  poem seems to indicate  just the opposite… 

Powerful discussions about racism, prejudice, injustice...  

The question remains... how do we, with so much privilege act to change this?

poems for Feb. 20-21

 We did not finish discussion of the last two poems in the February 13-4 packet:

The line up for Feb. 20-1
  Poem for a Lady Whose Voice I like

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48226/poem-for-a-lady-whose-voice-i-like

(You tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EO_nP2QjI

And Black Boys Play the Classics.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42877/black-boys-play-the-classics

What Make a Man by Geffrey Davis

On Anger  by Rage Hezekiah

The First Book by Rita Dove

Giovanni:  What an unusual way to  portray racism, sexism and accomplish a portrait of a real person at the same time.  The "Lady" in question is Nina Simone, who changed her name, bore the criticism of her parents for having played in cocktail lounges, and had plenty to sing about in full voice.

The reference to Genesis, the "Black" within, the big "Black" greasy rib, where "Black" has a capital letter (no where else in the poem... is filled with overtones about what "black" is... the void from which we all come from... the dark side of us, the prejudices of "adam" and how did he get a big Black greasy rib, and who is calling it so and why... 

and what is sapphire and is the 4 part divide 4 part harmony?

The last two lines changed in the youtube to "i'll show you an empty person"... hungry is stronger,

and works with the chitterlings, good things to eat, the black within, the song... the desire to feel

complete.  As Judith put it, the woman's voice is pulling a "going to church lady" on him.  She also brought up The Creation, by James W. Johnson.

for the Derricotte: beautifully set up poem to address stereotypes.  The kids playing classical music

are wearing ratty sneakers... but the most popular act in Penn Station... 3 reactions to the fact they are black:  White businessman don't stop, listen, notice and just toss in coins;  Brown workmen stare in amazement , and a three year old white boy transforms them into angels... 

the trembling... could be these three voices... or the strings of the violins and cello, the rumble of the train station... or the tension of being a reader, pulled into this, one of the "us" experiencing the trembling.  Only two choices ?  What is left out?    What if A had been B and ended the poem? 

Beautiful, regular rhythm, but set up in uneven lines... pun of "bar"... the admiration of the workmen for people of their race achieving... the indifference to the music... which is as good as being indifferent to the soul each of us carries inside... 

The next poems:

What Make a Man:  the format really helps the flow of contradictions... 

What make?  a man.  It is not written that way.  But then, the closing line is not written so we assume

"you are my sun!"  Shine each dark step... both a sense of "shine on", but the act of polishing,  (Jim calls it an "encouraging imperative").

like shining shoes.  Rich poem... What make:  second stanza the man... what make him see, open him, offer... what get the man loaded, is no longer what make... 

There's a difference between choice and decision... the --no-- two lines down from choose...

stanza break... to the next line:  what make a man decide...'

how we can be contradictory things…  A beautiful poem about humanity; Martin brought up control over others evokes a pathology in the brain…  which could explain the first action... the refusal to ask forgiveness.  

We don't know the circumstances that would make this man park the car two block away--

nor do we know what it is "away from" ...  the poem closes on the intimacy of  his arms filled--

one hopes, with his child...  the mystery of a soul.  

On Anger, written by Rage whose last name means "God is my Strength and is one of a King. 

The capital letters, italics, the words of the therapist are outside her.  Why should Rage have the job of
"sating" a therapist?  I love how armor sounds and looks like marrow... how her emotions, which includes anger
fill her with a sense of herself which seems to serve her.  

The First Book unfolds the mystery of the endless road of  shared knowledge... 
I love that you can read the last two lines two ways:
Just the world as you think...

You know it.

Do we know how the world as we think we know it really is?
Fabulous questions to think about!

Poems for Feb. 13

How It Seems to Me by Ursula le Guin
American History by Michael S. Harper
Coherence in Consequence by Claudia Rankine
A Brief History of Hostility  by Jamaal May (excerpt)
 apologies!  Only PART of A Brief History of Hostility was shared.  See the full poem (and do scroll down!!!) here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/brief-history-hostility.  It is a 5-part poem.
On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley
Won't you Celebrate with Me by Lucille Clifton

Please do read the commentaries of the poets commenting on each poem here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/12-poems-read-black-history-month

You will also find poems we do not have time to explore.  Robert Hayden’s Middle Passage, for instance, which expands on the details of the incident Michael Harper

refers to.  

The discussions are rich and hopefully will continue.  Harper calls on the fallacies in what is called “American History”, conveniently sinking truth out of view.

Rankine’s poem leaves a feeling of struggle between black and white — and at least three ways to read the final stanza, where one senses the antonyms of coherence at work.  I did call the Phillis Wheatley library to find out if they might have any of her original manuscripts.  I gather from the commentaries, that the italics used are here’s. 

**
Pittsford discussed the poems above as well as
Lost Dog by Ellen Bass
("joy does another lap around the racetrack/of my heart")... loss opens us to greater appreciation.
One Way Gate by Jenny George
(vivid language: "It was cold and their mouths steamed like torn bread."  It is the month of January, but the herd can only face one way, unlike Janus.  One fate for them.  Perhaps at the end, it is the 
girl leading them to the slaughterhouse telling herself to "get on..." do the job she must do.  A richly
layered poem.  

**
Brought up in discussion this Mary Oliver poem.

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

**
Le Guin has braided self, soul over time, like strands of DNA... the grounding of the ethereal soul in the rock, the transformation. from before time to after.  The O sounds.  Omega… slowness, the liquid l's,
softness of the sibilants increase the pleasure of this poem, which embraces our appearance,  allows acceptance of our eventual disappearance.

Last book by LeGuin: So far so good.  One of her stories… “Slow time”

Also recommended: 

Stroke of Insight:  Jill Bolte Taylor

.The Golden Helix – by Theodore Sturgeon

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers 1st Edition by Mary Roach (Author)

(task of spiritual journey, to get rid of hardening into our selves. ) 

**
The commentaries of the black poets on the work of black poets are wonderful.  What I loved about
each group discussion was the organic nature of working towards understanding.  In the Rankine, Martin brought up "being vs. not-seing"  in the first stanza as a way of understanding how we are if we cling to our rigid orthodoxy of belief... how can we arrive at knowing the other, if we don't see them?

3 ways to phrase the final stanza.
Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other,
as the same pulsing compassion,
___  would break the most orthodox heart.  (this knowing, as the unstated subject?)

Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other as the same pulsing,
compassion would break....

Were we ever to arrive at knowing,
the other as the same pulsing compassion,
would break the most orthodox heart.

The fact is, the  struggle between whites and blacks has been one of unfair treatment,
insidious and unaddressed abuse of power...
we each have a pulsing heart... the possibility of compassion that comes from knowing
the other...
The poem begs us to examine what undermines coherence, unity, face what we avoid...

In The Phillis Wheatley, I loved that Jim coined the phrase, "the bi-directional sentence" --
"once I redemption neither sought nor knew" --
regulating the syntax to
"Once I neither sought nor knew redemption" precludes the rhyme with "too" is excluded...

Poems for February 6-7

After the Angelectomy by Alice Fulton
Dead Stars  by Ada Limón
Poem from Holderlin by Susan Stewart

Clouds Gathering by Charles Simic

Snow Angels by Max Ritvo

It was a pleasure to hear Alice Fulton read her poem, in a measured, thoughtful tempo, with

beautiful diction... things like "mini-a-ture" allowed three syllables, the pacing of the line breaks

done as she intended.  audio https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/89890  

I find it interesting the the Poetry Foundation misspells Fluorescent in the 4th couplet, but in the this  fine review of the poem, replete with background on Angelos, it is spelled "florescent". https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/mondays-poem-after-the-angelectomy-by-alice-fulton/46716

"Fulton is exactly the kind of poet Shelley had in mind when he said 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Alice Fulton reimagines the great lyric subjects―time, death, love―and imbues them with fresh urgency and depth.

I was not present to facilitate the Pittsford discussion, but enjoyed these comments from the Rundel group:

Title: original -- implies our divinity removed.  Followed by "organ" which could be the one played in a church,

the first couplet also provides an original slant to the meaning of "angel" as "organ of veneration.

The richness of the homonyms is pleasing -- instead of Whalebone, wailbone as is the slippery nature of words.

Grudge sliver looks almost like silver, and the 5th stanza, "I'm so dying"...

written instead of so tired.  The reader to invited to think about such expressions -- and clichés... I'm dying to go to XYZ; I'm dying to eat... to do... to like a last wish to experience before dying, as opposed to the fed-up-ness of I'm so tired of XYZ, so tired of feeling XYZ, doing, eating, XYZ.  

All these things point to the deft use of craft and an effective use of vernacular to support the more latinate, theological abstractions.  The pacing as well, for instance, two one syllable words in the 8th stanza, the double meanings of
phrases with line breaks (Everything happy goes /.  Everything happy goes /to many decimal places.. which means
not a disappearing, but dispersion.  The use of the word excarnate -- the infinite, not incarnate in word, but endangered
because of the nature of our finite selves.  I love the humor of limited liability, night with no dilution anxieties and day
duty cubed.  

One person mentioned the sense of reading Freudian slips... a sense of someone coming to grips with dying, but also questioning faith.  For such "heavy" material, we all concurred the poem was accessible and a truly enjoyable read.
What is happy, and how is it infinites are so?  It's not because they go on forever.  But there's an ease... when asleep,
dreaming only that one is asleep, everything existing at the courtesy (not the expense) of everything else.
Indeed, let us be grateful for the kindness the infinite bestows... 
The poem invites the reader to contemplate what life was like before the "angel-ectomy", why the speak of the poem tells the infinite you're kind.  How too, travels from kindness, to all the angels, those who have them, and those who don't.

Ada Limon: Under the Stars is in her book, The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)
To get a feel for Ada, after the discussion, I found this interview: https://www.guernicamag.com/ada-limon-connected-to-the-universe/.  It doesn't surprise me that she moved to Kentucky from NYC, where she can be closer to nature and see the stars.

I love how her poem,  embraces the big questions juxtaposed with the everyday mess of the moment.  For instance,   the apt 
detail of taking out the trash... with"learn some new constellations" relating to Orion, one of the 88 in the sky, as well as the dictionary definition: a group or cluster of related things. We looked at the constellation Antlia which is the latin for Pump.  If you look at an 18th c. drawing of an air pump, at the time Antlia was made, you can imagine the "mental doodling"  to join the stars into a coherent image.

We've come this far, survived this much.  Have we decided not to survive because of our poor stewardship of the Earth when she asks What/ would happen if we decided to survive more?  She doesn't  spell out  global warming, per se, although I sense  it in rising tides, and many mute mouths of the sea, of the land. 
 Her appreciation of the capability of human beings to comfort others, even while they suffer themselves, comes as a question of choice.  What would happen if...

The image of constellation returns, the implied "pointer stars" of the Big Dipper towards the North Star, we see now,
in future generations-- Imagine indeed... "If we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big/
people could point to us with the arrows they made in their minds,/

and here I pause... to dwell on the possibilities of big that include big-hearted, as big as the sound of time painted in the opening lines.

We did not have time to discuss the Poem from Holderin.

Clouds Gathering:
In a way, the couple feels like America.. a nation after World War 2, getting the "good life"... and 2019, wondering
if we are not headed for an unhappy ending... However, to stick to the poem... it is a couple... 
the "naked" in the first stanza could be that they are open, exposed to each other.  The red of fire and blood 
in the second stanza points to the foreboding storm prepared by the title... 

We have our little moments, some have years where everything seems to run smoothly.  The ending stanza
blows ominously, as if to remind us, nothing is forever.  
Lori shared this quote from Tennessee Williams:

“The world is violent and mercurial--it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love--love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”

We ended with Snow Angels
If you didn't know Max died of cancer, it might be hard to see a parallel between the poison of chemo, 
numbing of pain killers and "parts of God" in this complex poem.  As Jim put it... a real "snow job".
It comes from his book Four Reincarnations.  A good review: https://www.kenyonreview.org/reviews/four-reincarnations-by-max-ritvo-738439/

If the snow is chemo, bringing suffering to cancer... 
no... if the snow is this whole process of being alive...

It took us a while to work through the syntax... arrive at the mystery in the words small, smallest, small enough -- the calm sibilance like the sound of a child's snowsuit as he or she sweeps small arms
and legs into an angel. 

poems for January 30-31

American Sonnet for the New Year by Terrance Hayes

Eunomia- Poem by Solon

snow by Patty Crane
Hummingbird Abecedarianby Aimee Nezhukumatathil

From the Book of Time (excerpt)

When Death Comes  by Mary Oliver

Breakage by Mary Oliver 

The American Sonnet, published in a recent issue of The New Yorker, has the audio recording of Terrance Hayes reading, which makes for an interesting contrast of how a reader might interpret this 14 liner,

filled with repeating words, ingenious adverbs, and absolutely no advice from the traditional use of

line endings or punctuation, and how the poet does.  We discussed at length the choices a poet makes

by giving such information or not, and how that influences the message of the poem.  Perhaps it is

an insidious method, to allow an emotional layer of rage with overtones of what makes an "ugly American", not just the ugly "things" .  Our eyes lined up "things" as the un-capitalized subject of unpunctuated sentences; noted the placement of ugly, present in each line, except the penultimate one (regularly truly quickly things got really incredibly/// saving "ugly" as first word as the beginning of the last line).

The possibilities for contradictory meanings are amazing.

The next poem, by Solon, (638-558BC) one of the seven wise men of Greece were well-known, both to each other and to the general public reflects his law-making background and rhetorical skill. When Anacharsis, one of these wise men, came to visit Solon in Athens, saw Athenian democracy at work, he remarked that it was strange that in Athens wise men spoke and fools decided.  Our current

New Year in America would be characterized by Dysnomia, named in the poem for bringing 

"countless evils for the city".  I love the rich discussion that ensues from each person’s observations as we discuss poems.  What makes a poem a “successful poem” varies for each. After reading Solon (in translation,) How does this response to the one above strike you?  https://thepoetryprojectsite.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/eunomia-by-solon/  

 Both poems point to the role of poetry to address politics and the common good.

Snow, a poem found on Verse Daily, speaks as well to the structure of poetry to address the tendency to lump a noun into one term.  The first stanza arranges the rhythm -- repetition of snow, the 

breathiness of flakes fallen, each labelled snow, 

                   " Not a single flake alike
but all of them       spoken for                   
                and we think nothing of it"

the breath before the "naming" and the "thinking nothing of it" applying to the nuanced layering of both. naming, individuality.  The second stanza with its measured mention of three birds,

followed by                 "Think bird is bird is bird is" has the same nuance -- is it the three birds

who think this, or is it a command to the reader to apply "bird" to the different names, or both

and more?  Like the Hayes sonnet, how do you emphasize the words:  Think bird.... is bird... 

is bird... is... or Think.... Bird is... bird is... bird is... or perhaps bird is bird.... is bird... is

Oh the power of words!  We delighted in the lineation of the final stanza where the bird

is set free from "word cages"!  

The Abecedarian met with less success.  More like a clever exercise applied to understanding the rhythm of her father's language... but did not move the heart. 

The three Mary Oliver poems contrasted her style.  Most know her from "Wild Geese", "The Journey",  and poems like "Mr. Death", or in this case, "When Death Comes" which also mentions

each life as common/singular flower... each with a "comfortable music in the mouth", "precious to the Earth".  She first wraps the reader in a sense of acceptance, belonging, value, hen invites the reader

to contemplate how the gift of life is used... Her lines "I was a bride married to amazement./

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." have been often quoted.    She sets up

the formula, "When it's over... I don't want" -- but beyond this anaphor, variation.. twice, when it's over,

and twice positives... but  "I don't want" comes three times... as if our power to choose will ensure

the last line, "I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world."

Indeed, her poems show us how to live so we won't feel this way. One of the group felt so discouraged...

as if indeed she hadn't gotten beyond "sighing, feeling frightened, judging whether she had  made of my life something particular, and real."  And so I quoted Wild Geese -- "You do not have to be good...."

"From the Book of Time" is the title of  Part Three in the book-long poem, "The Leaf and the Cloud".

The book is masterfully arranged in 7 poems, and Part 3 also has 7 parts.  I only used the first two,

which are positive.  Here we have the "philosophical" and spiritual Mary Oliver, inviting us to 

consider the particular leaf, the cloud, so often treated "cloud is cloud is cloud".  I love that the nouns

"leaves" and "clouds" are also verbs in both singular and plural -- not the only pronoun in English

that makes them sound singular, is 3rd person singular.

I chose "Breakage" as an example of Oliver's fine craftsmanship. She hints at "the whole story" in the title, the mention of gulls, creates a coherence of images of particular shells resonant with voice.  It convinced

the more professorial in the group that  Mary Oliver is not "just a sentimental poet,  good for people who read poems for healing."  And what is wrong with that?  Her poems are memorable, accessible... 

and well-crafted, imbued with a generosity that acts like a salve on the soul. 

Poems for January 23

 Snow  (cinquain by Adelaide Crapsey)

Velvet Shoes  by Elinor Wylie

Full Moon  by Elinor Wylie

True Vine by Elinor Wylie

At the Hospital  "           "

Sonnet. - untitled. "      "

Pastiche 

**
Judith  Judson prepared a "tract" on Elinor Wylie, born around the same time as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan and made the selection of the poems -- the Pittsford group had one more
 piece, Lament for Glasgerion.  Even Judith admitted, "it is hard to get the narrative"... 

Because Wylie had such an extensive vocabulary, which smacked of "Upper Class", often with archaic words -- (who says "forlorn" in the 20th century?)  a diamond-sharp wit with which to work impeccable form, she was not considered a poet who had more than a "thin theme" delicately
rendered.

The idea of the session, started with Judith's reaction to "Silver Filigree", selected by the New Yorker as an old chestnut

in their end of 2018 issue of selected old favorites from long ago.  It’s wonderful that she shared her passion to  "rescue" Wylie from the misdirected  classification.  It confirms my belief  in diving deeply into someone who grabs your attention!  

Perhaps others in the group might follow suit,  sharing thoughts on a poet who grabs their attention, and diving deeper

than the one or two poems we get to.  The spirit of the  group invites everyone to participate, whether or not everyone does… honoring that all  ways of responding to a poem are valid… and two-way-street- beneficial!

The Rundel group (smaller, only 6)  loved the selections.  I shared the thought of Wayne Higby on "lenses" having

seen that when Judith gave us the background of Wylie, it colored the discussion, especially of Velvet shoes.

As David responded to Judith, the New Criticism shuns biography, as interfering with the poem--

but that is at the risk of establishing a different purist  noose.

"It was a fine overview, all the better for being a fine piece of writing in itself.  It’s great value for me is that it helps me to understand some of what goes on in the verse itself.  There’s always a fine line between allowing life-stories to illuminate verse and reading them into the verse, and it takes good discipline in reading to know the difference.  I was educated in the heyday of the New Criticism, which minimized and almost banished biographical context from literary interpretation, and a few of my grad school profs exemplified just why that was important.   I had to live a while before I realized that such a view sometimes made an important principle into a purist noose.  My own literary criticism, book and many articles, makes clear the amalgam that I have come to.

Anyhow, as you might have seen from my comments yesterday, I found what you told us about EW to help with reading her poems, confirming and  expanding significantly what I saw and sensed without that knowledge.  It also helps to explain some of her stylistic tendencies, worth understanding and appreciating whether or not they happen to be one’s “‘cup of tea.”

So thanks.  I’m pleased to read at leisure what I first heard with pleasure"

Rundel's  responses were deep, thoughtful, and every poem was respected before I shared any background.  

Velvet Shoes:  the ear immediately senses the sibilance, which supports a sense of peaceful quiet... like entering

a winter ballroom... One reader felt that the last stanza, "We shall walk in velvet shoes" flipped the balance away

from the power of those able to afford such shoes, inappropriate for winter, to nature providing us with her own

velvet shoes in this magical setting of a winter ballroom.  

There is no conflict in the meter, the orderly rhyme perhaps contributes to the reputation of Wylie as a charming writer, but with little pith in the theme.  One person felt the presence of a convalescent wandering out into the night, sleepwalking,

in her flimsy shoes.

Neither group felt this.  I am intrigued by the ambiguity of "we".  Is it lovers, one in silk, one in wool, therefore, 

of different classes?  Is it a message of the importance to tread softly, with rabbit feet?  Perhaps that could be

a message about the environment... or perhaps it is a commentary about how women need to behave?

I don't find this one as "frivolous" as the critics perhaps believe. The title is intriguing.  The shift from "Let us, to

"we shall, and what the walk in the white snow snow implies for someone with such a daring personality perhaps

is not to be meek and effaced, but rather, to face the cold, the loneliness, as resolutely and relentlessly as the repeated first and last 'line .  Then again, Judith proposed that seeing too much into the critics, defending Wylie as a bonafide poet as good as any modernist applauded at the time, could be like seeing Polish Nationalism in Chopin's Nocturnes!

Comments on Full Moon:

The title invites associations with myths of this moment when werewolves appear and howling madness heretofore hidden, dictates a dangerous lunacy.  The first stanza establishes grieving... unable to get what she wants.  The Harlequin,

as mute mime, lozenges with a hint of medicine, duality ... reduced to "rigmaroles".  The walking now, is accompanied by

rage.  A ravaged, skeleton, consumed by anger.  The repression of self, to meet  the duties of mourning where  rage is not allowed.  Perhaps referring to her first husband's suicide -- or her father's, or her brother's. 

Judith:  anger only emotion women not allowed to feel, but men. yes. 

David:  current situation in politics… problem of accepting aggressive women… 

True Vine:  the multiple-syllabled adjectives, refined vocabulary may well have stirred 

resentment against her as "one of those hoity-toity intellectuals" -- and yet, the sounds,

the well-chosen words... overtones of Eve, the sense of a problem with "truth" when demands

are made to appear "perfect".  Her poem is not "pretty" but has the substance of beauty --

the rich realm of contradictions, where trouble, noble (upbringing/act) comprise life .

Normally we say, "a pack of lies" -- but here we have the "pack of truth" -- like a raggedy

savage animal... 

At the Hospital:  a narrative criticizing  a scornful youth who shuns an "untidy" man in a shabby coat, who attempts to strike up a "tragic" comradeship.  Not easy to follow the thread... a sense of victim/rescuer -- and strange idea of clutching the "little (good) man" in order not to strangle the

comely (unmoved, contemptuous, cold, dull) and sleek one.  Note, the little man and the monosyllabic adjectives, "spent and grey" whereas  the sleek seems to hiss his nature through

the description of his lip -- silent, scornful.

The rhyme is still strong... but brilliant juxtaposition of rhymes:  comradeship/scornful lip; coat/throat

to juxtapose the two men.  

It's a sonnet, but shows  depth of feeling-- a radical departure from describing neutral ground like moons, snow, metaphorical vines. 

Sonnet (untitled)

Use of word, "Motley" as noun: an incongruous mixture... 

I     Again, the juxtaposition:  feather-witted / spitted as end-line... her INvulnerable joint... 4 historical novels... countless poems, publications, fine accomplishments... that provides her arrmor.

Pastiche:  imitation.. collage... people brought in a picture of the cocatrtice -- part dragon, part rooster... a fitting title for caricatures of composite animals... and the final spitted question:

"Is there not lacking from your synthesis / someone you may occasionally miss?

Indeed... having a chance to look at what happens in the craft-level of the poetry, allows an admiration for her skill.