Poems for April 17-18

In a Stuart Davis Neighborhood, by Gretchen Schultz
Post Impressions (VI)  by E.E. Cummings
Dislocations— Seven Scenarios  by Adrienne Rich
The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth
Pinned in Place by Thomas Reiter

The first poem is an ekphrastic poem responding to a Stuart Davis painting, Report From Rockport.  We have at the MAG another lively work of his— eye-popping color, a sense of humor as he plays with what seems to be familiar, but painted in as improbable unless having

a surrealist dream.

— see http://magart.rochester.edu/Obj333

Landscape with Garage Lights by Stuart Davis (1894 – 1964)

Gretchen Schultz provides us with eye poetry. Her adjectives are lively, sensual and unusual.  Like the art.  

The Cummings poem also had a playful tone… but addressing the “strenuous briefness” of life before the final “solongs and ashes” — where the word “dashes” is unmistakable…enthusiastic statement about the varied nature life.  or challenge conventions? and how ? His use of colors also a painting. like entering an impressionist painting.

Is he mocking convention?  weddings and the “I do” world…? How about the many different meanings of the title? Post Impressions (VI) — A fence, telephone post, after the fact impressions (is he writing this after he has died?), part of the post-impressionist movement?

The wit is rich and the reward is the constant revelation of surprises… but not without some work.

interpolated dichotomies. Cheerful + darkness. painting strenuous briefness of life; speaking back to life after he’s dead. truly Post.   even though anti-semitic , married 3 times including Scofield Thayer’s  wife (a complicated and complicit arrangement of his good friend, and editor of the Dial Magazine w/ James Sibley Watson. which is why Cummings, E. E.  may my heart always be open to little (p. 2-3)is on Poets’ Walk.)

Adrienne Rich: Dislocations in 7 scenarios

http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/nizan_5_aden_1.html

Philosophy in Aden by Paul Nizan 

SOURCE: Nizan, Paul. Aden, Arabie; translated from the French by Joan Pinkham (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 126-131. (French original published 1960, English translation published 1968).

“A thought wants something. It desires a concrete end

So life is reduced to the shallowness of the past and the dust of a future made up of habits and systems, the madness that combines the elements of poverty and excludes melons in bottles, seasons in hell, and free women. A chess match in which the living lose to the dead. 

The demands of man are simple

An allusion to a popular French anecdote that tells how Columbus used an egg to confound envious critics who said it had taken no great wit to discover the new world. It had been a simple matter, they declared, the only trick was to think of looking for it in the first place. Columbus is supposed to have replied by taking an egg and asking which of the company could make it stand on end. When everyone objected that the feat was impossible, Columbus crushed one end of the egg just enough to flatten it and stood it on the table, rebuking his enemies with the words, “That too was simple—one had only to think of it.”

Rich ends up there in the 7^thscenario… Simple… 

Many ideas of this seem to be in Adrienne Rich’s poem, 

Dislocations: Seven Scenarios

I.              What is this word, “Home”: What it is like to be an immigrant, homeless…

II.            a sense of “law of the jungle”. tiny mandibles of rumoropen and close 

III.          city as “infection” like an alcoholic drinking what it can… then wanting stronger stuff //sucks at the marrow of selves 

IV.         the shrinking lines… For recalcitrancy of attitude/ the surgeon is transferred
to the V.A. hospital     

V.                 look at the scars
            reality’s autographs 

VI.            you can turn a blind eye… but can you afford it?

VII.       and home no simple matter
of hearth or harbor 
bleeding from internal wounds 

From a poem rife with details of the world and it’s messy undersides of injustice, crooked solipsists and corrupt governments… a lovely lyric moment with Wordsworth:

Solitary : a favorite word. Alone is not bad… the reaper sings… and the idea of a song, produced by working that speaks of universal sorrow, welcome,  although the details are not known… He only hears the voice, but does know the subject… 

voice reminds him of what it is like to be human.

Invitation to do that… empathy for another person’s sorrow…

snapshot of an experience? or just showing how he brings attention to his day.

Making up a story from diary from Thomas Wilkinson.

Delight of “Pinned in Place” — days of yore… playing games..

“Could anyone make it through those days 
untouched?

Haunting last lines.

running with bed sheets in their arms,
running like firemen rescuing children.
All night those sheets lay draped
over furniture, as though we were leaving
and would not return for a long time.

Kathy brought in a beautiful book, Lost Words: a spell book From bestselling Landmarks author Robert Macfarlane and acclaimed artist and author Jackie Morris, a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations to help readers rediscover the magic of the natural world.  To find a word, like  bluebell… first you find the letters, in blue, that spell it.. then turn the page to see an illustration

of a field of bluebells… To think that 23 words were taken out of a dictionary because they weren’t pertinent in reflecting the way language is used… 

Bramble, acorn, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren… not necessary????

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words

A fun picture from the Washington Post 

speaking of Laundry…(for the last poem, “Pinned in Place”

April 10-11

Taking Turns  byJeanie Greensfelder
Bracken  by Kai Carlson-Wee
Emily Dickinson:   #67 Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
"   " 1016: The Hills in Purple syllables
"   "  89 Some things that fly there be, —
"   "  69 Low at my problem bending,

Emily Dickinson # 514 (Her smile was shaped like other smiles)

I Don’t Want to be a Spice Store by Christian Wiman

Dor by Nathalie Handal 

May will mark the Bicentennial of Whitman !
“The grandiose does  not appeal to me.  I dislike the simply art effect— art for art’s sake, like literature for literature’s sake, I object to, not, of course, on prude grounds, but because literature created on such a principle (and art as well) removes us from humanity, while only from humanity in mass can the light come. ”

The poems this week indeed call on our humanity—however, Whitman would be pleased that the craft involved is secondary to the delivery of snapshots of how it is to be human.

In the first poem, “Taking Turns”  Ted Kooser explains, “I like this poem for the way it portrays the manner in which we study the behavior of others and project our own experiences onto their lives.  It seems to be a simple poem.  Two stanzas. The first  assumes someone else’s position.  The poem itself, fulfills the title, takes a turn to retell the story. The fact that the woman “holding the sorrow” is sitting near a cairn, or trail marker has a small unspoken subtext of someone pausing on a journey. Comments from the group:

David: transactional exchange: (your anxiety is filling the room…has a toxic effect vs. asking someone if they’d like to talk about how they feel…)  Being aware, allows us more choices in how to behave.  Martin (as Jungian psychologist) believes that empathy is inborn and natural to want to see how another sees… Bernie remarked on the use of the definite article where Joy and Sorrow are just part of the permanence of living as universal elements, not individual. 

The admission (and turn) I’m wrong, allows the reader also to consider how the writer arrived at the idea that someone was actively searching for an antidote to sadness. Allows the space to arrive at a more true idea, that we all have turns dealing with sadness. Mystery of people. Ambiguity:  she doesn’t know, nor do we— which leaves us with the feel of having witnessed an authentically real moment.

April 3-4

It’s National Poetry month and the American Academy of Poets has selected a poster that responds to Tracy K. Smith’s poem, An Old Story.   If you wish a copy of Julia Wang’s poster, a 10th grader from San Jose, CA ,whose work was selected, you can order here: : https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/form/poster-request-form

She uses the last five lines of the poem.

And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color

Judges:  Naomi Shihab Nye:  “We are navigating a deep forest together but there is hope in the grieving, the persistent light, the many colors of thought and being, the shared human responsiveness.  We may still be struck awake by inspiration.  I felt tears of hope for each word and knows instantly, thanks to a young artist's visionary skill, this was my choice.”  The co-judge, Debbie Millman said this.  “The integration of message and meaning is wise beyond her years, and the overall sentiment embedded in the illustration is stunning.  The response to this year’s student poster competition gives me great optimism for the next generation of poetry lovers, designers and artists.

ELEGY FOR A WALNUT TREE  by W.S. Merwin

A Door  by W.S. Merwin
An Old Story by Tracy K. Smith*

Pieces on the Ground by Marianne Boruch 

What Can I Tell Her I have Learned  by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

In a Time of Peace  by. Ilya Kaminsky

We closed with Hillaire Belloc [month Of] April - and

The spring is sprung, the grass is riz.

I wonder where the boidie is.

They say the boidie’s on the wing.

But that’s absoid. The wing is on the bird

**

**

Commentary:

We will miss Merwin... his lines that refuse to be hammered in by punctuation, his unusual thoughts

that allow such titles as "On the anniversary of my death".
Merwin’s strength as a poet is the profundity he creates out of the simplest of words, as in “A Door,” in which “somebody would come and knock/on this air/long after I have gone/and there in front of me a life/would open.” His themes of birth, time, human separation from nature, and the delicate balance of the earth as a human home are rendered in mysterious yet exquisitely clear and exact imagery, as evidenced in the poem below about a walnut tree, trees being one of the great loves of his life. 

The Elegy for the Walnut tree is such a beautifully crafted tribute to life... and to Merwin, who accepted that this tree became, by his careful attention to how it lived the seasons, the changes, wars, centuries,

becomes the way he sees the world...   An elegy can be a  a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. Given Merwin's respect for the environment, it is both.  Many people shared other references to trees.  Bernie brought up Overstory 

http://www.richardpowers.net/the-overstory/?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_040619&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd6739524c17c1048007ee1&user_id=31791468&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily

Maura brought up the children's book As an Oak Tree Grows by G. Brian Karas much on the same lines.

A Door is another fabulous image for possibility... where every poem can be a portal... the poem felt to some like an old person saying, “a door will appear for you to walk through that will shape your destiny.  Each decision we make is a door. Merwin works the  “air” sounds…creates a sense of magic of doors in shadows, like fairy tales which summon the supernatural  in a particular way. 

An Old Story: + the Poster for National Poetry month from American Academy of Poets

uses the final lines of Tracy K. Smith’s poem .  You can see the image of the vision of

 10th Grader, Julia Wang from San Jose, CA here :https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/form/poster-request-form. She explains: "Since music (singing) seemed a key part, I wrote the first half of the excerpt onto five lines like those in sheet music, then the second half as well.  The music is flowing and passing by, bringing the rain with it.  However, the droplets could not only represent rain, but also teardrops.  To contrast the dark background, I drew the teardrops with bright colors. The droplets act as a source of light, and their colors radiate and seep into the areas behind them.  Combining the light and color of the droplets, the music lines seem almost transparents, like a shimmer of hope.  The teardrops light up the bleak forest with light and color, creating a landscape that is quietly beautiful in its tragedy."

Judges: Naomi Shihab Nye: “We are navigating a deep forest together but there is hope in the grieving, the persistent light, the many colors of thought and being, the shared human responsiveness. We may still be struck awake by inspiration. I felt tears of hope for each word and knows instantly, thanks to a young artist's visionary skill, this was my choice.” The co-judge, Debbie Millman said this. “The integration of message and meaning is wise beyond her years, and the overall sentiment embedded in the illustration is stunning. The response to this year’s student poster competition gives me great optimism for the next generation of poetry lovers, designers and artists."

the poem:  The use of enjambments is striking:  "We were made to be believe it would be/ terrible..

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful /Dream. 

She sums up in a short poem, the volumes of history... and post apocalyptic visions… brings up terrible fears… a long age… passed.  (little ice age in 14^thc. black plague… ). glibly optimistic…

We wondered, "How would Merwin write this?"

Dalai Lama: Call to revolution for the millennials… avoid pathological individualism…

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/affect-theory-and-the-new-age-of-anxiety

dystopian literature has gone on forever…

Pieces on the Ground by Marianne Boruch : delightful... but restless.. Wonderful craft, like antinomia-- (crossing:

pause and rush, rush and pause) a hint of Cummings. with "know thing..." and "nothing"... "The remember isn't a road"... the mother "rinsing knife and spoon and the middle of her life."

We discussed the urge to find "meaning" to "peg what a poem is about". Perhaps this one addresses ebb and flow of life… the random thoughts—but there are no overriding concepts… 

A hill full, a hole full, you cannot catch a bowlful.  FOG… rinsing the middle of the life.

Eliot.  measuring your life by coffeespoons… 

Am I right if I have the idea…  + zen master. throw away the idea.

what is real… philosophy… 

What Can I Tell Her I have Learned  by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

a complex poem, as if overhearing a mother and daughter discussing love songs of the Lebanese singer Fairuz.   The arabic under the title is something along the lines of “your love is sleeping, I’m afraid, forget me Fairuz”  (Lebanese singerhttps://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128431817    All the possible things she can tell her are questions... love, wind, fog, raid,

and then... conclusion in the final stanza:  

"That in the eye of an unravelling we’re still singing,
as those before us did, that it buries or sustains us,
we cannot know. "

In a Time of Peace  by. Ilya Kaminsky. 

This poem from  Deaf Republic follows the events of a small town named Vasenka. Here, the townspeople have chosen to act as though they are deaf as a form of resistance. Kaminsky’s new book begs the questions: in a time of perpetual war, how do we say anything at all? Even worse, why do we stay silent about the commonplace atrocities happening everyday? 

The contradictions are so apparent, the choice of dental appointments as part of the everyday "numbing" not a bad choice !

March 27-8

Place by W.S. Merwin

 What Was Told, Thatby Jalal al-Din Rumi, 1207 - 1273

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? by Mary Oliver

How the Milky Way Was Made Natalie Diaz

Luxury by Albert Abonado

The Cuttlefish  by Maryan Nagy Captan

email : Dear all,

There is no shortage of poems. Below this email, suggestions of new titles from the Academy of American Poets.

Kindly mark your calendars: Poet Ralph Black, reading from his newest poetry collectionBloom and Laceration, which received the 2017 Hopper Poetry Prize from Green Writers Press, 2018. Book-signing to follow the reading. Thursday March 28th 2019 at 7:00 p.m. St. John Fisher College https://map.concept3d.com/?id=287#!m/63394

In memoriam: W.S. Merwin:Naomi Shihab Nye, referring to Merwin, says. "How is it possible that poems which are a little bit mysterious help us to know so much more about our own lives?” Two articles about his life: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/opinion/w-s-merwin-poet-trees.html

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/15/509122300/poet-w-s-merwin-who-was-inspired-by-conservation-dies-at-91

"Suddenly using punctuation felt like nailing words on a page… "He was seeking something like the movement and lightness of the spoken word. Then, as he became more involved in the ecological movement, his poems began to root themselves in the Earth. And one of the most amazing things in this work is by the time he became a poet of old age he had sort of morphed into a poet of praise."

Place: (title) could be a noun or a verb.  The poem leaves us with a sense of space, simultaneity.. time to reflect.  contemplate.  cause and effect.  Each garden a world. What is the last day of the world?  When you die?  When our planet dies? … space forces you to slow down… reverently… as if walking in the serenity of the cemetery; 

Brought up:  *“You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.

Bernie:  not about his death… but planting a tree… thinking about the end of world. Buddhist… interested in this moment now… 

Martin: appreciate the earth now… because it will be gone.   

 John Weisenthal brought up this video  "with the guitar’s greatest poet."

https://youtu.be/8dXID4GM4oQ Go to minute 35: You will hear Segovia say this “folkloric poem”

The sigh told the tongue, 

“go and search the words which could say what I cannot.”

a minute before, he explains poetry in Andalusia is a way to express what is felt in the heart. 

Rumi: Check Shahin’s translation of the Song of the Reed. Our 20^th  century nature strives to fulfill its potential.  but here in 13^th

^{we have been given the good advice -- be the "what" you are!} 

^{Oliver: This poem is like her credo... all that you need to know...  with a few chiding remarks, like}

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you? Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

In many ways, she is echoing Rumi and Merwin.  Lovely poetic phrases, (curl of music) yet accessible.  

"To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

 While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep."

Diaz: At first, the opening line is puzzling given the title, until the fish metaphor starts to make sense.

Achii Ahaan ;to the true fish.  The discussion included:

Juliet about Romeo… Dalai Lama:  A call to revolution (of compassion)

2014.   Waterways to have rights.  Lake Erie… Glen Canyon… River Dam

Why Dam is now a 4 letter word. 

Leave it to beavers. video.

Said the River, I gave you… 

you damned me… 

Albonado:   local poet, his poem published in the Colorado Review.  Wonderful repetitions, a listing of all he does NOT want to think about (but how can one not)... the luxury of feeling grateful...

The Cuttlefish  by Maryan Nagy Captan

Interesting comparison of the three-hearted cuttlefish (octopus family) with being an immigrant...

the third heart being the one who can reconcile the other two from different countries.

March 20-1

In Blackwater Woods  by Mary Oliver

The Butterfly Houseby Frank Ormsby

My Father in English. by Richard Blanco Listen to audio https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/my-father-in-english. 

High Dangerous by Catherine Pierce

Eating Grapes Downward by Christian Wiman

**

We read the first poem Oliver by stanza, which for all its ambling quatrains, is only in three sentences.  The first sentence has two end-line commas, and a third separating "is" from "is".

The second contains one colon, one comma.  The third, a colon, two semi-colons, a comma between the repeated "to let it go".  Although the line breaks at first seem arbitrary, both groups agreed

the short lines, frequent stanza breaks give a quiet sense of flow, a simplicity of form and is less forbidding to read. 

The enjambments act as springboards that land lightly as if to paint the images:

,,, trees
into pillars

of light
**
tapers
of cattails

...ffloating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds

A lovely meditation on specifics observed in nature  (you love, hold onto with all your life)
and when it's time, to let go.  The transience of life, passage of named to nameless... the mystery
of beginnings, passages, where nothing is forever.   Salvation, like the scent of cinnamon
blended with fulfillment, is not something we can know.

The Butterfly House we also read by stanzas.  In the first quatrain,  we are introduced to an almost overabundance with the drama of the enjambed "They spend their days..." floating through the stanza break to "being exquisite in a history without wars."  We are able...
and wouldn't you love to read, "capable of such exquisite existence"... but no... an un-named snake
appears, and we forget its existence because of the beauty of the butterflies.

In the tercet, any negativity of "too many butterflies" becomes "a thousand bright sails opening"--
a sense of transcending danger, emerging like the butterflies, often a symbol for the soul.

Do listen to Richard Blanco read "My Father in English".  This You Tube gives you the start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfgzVQZFz8

The New Yorker link https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/my-father-in-english
 may or may not work if you have used up the "free articles..." The gentle, lilting tone as he reads Spanish in the first six lines is filled with the beauty
of nature in Cuba... a long pause after "island home he left" although there is no stanza break,
em-dash or indication or the long pause before the 7th line begins
"to spell out the second half of his life in English--" which does have the directive to pause because of
the em-dash.
Each six lines, we see a different part of his story.
 His life in New York, in six lines... which includes learning 15 new words each day.  The play
on indeed,  where he practices them mixed in with Spanish.  Another six lines, we hear the repeated
misuse of indeed, and the fact that he refuses to use English to tell his wife I love you.
Curious that the enjambment of that line is such that you wonder how or if he expressed his true feelings to others aside from his wife.
indeed, the husband who refused to say, I love you
in English to my mother, the man who died without
true translation.
The last six lines, the son translates  indeed for him.  The wording is such that a true translation is the truth the son tells of his father.

The poem is shaped like a rectangular container, with no breaks, no breathing space, which
made me think how it must feel to live in a reduced space in a city filled with skyscrapers,
neon, glass,  and a job polishing steel 12 hours a day.
On the 31st line,  indeed has the last word.  It left many of us moved to tears.


High Dangerous by Catherine Pierce is a marvelous "mondegreen"  http://www.uh.edu/~mbarber/mondegreens.html
say slowly:  Hy- drangeas... and it does sound like hi dangerous...
Later "tender age shelters" sounds like ten (and under)age; elders.  "district-policy" sounds like "this strict policy".
What do you have in your "fear-box"?  What are we teaching our children about trust, stewardship of the planet?  About beauty?

"Eating Grapes Downward" is a delightful romp of what might be found in a writer's note-book,
which does not usually follow any common sense order.  The language such as vile up speaking
of political opinions... and the description of the cousin who sounds like a fearsome karate champ.
We could feel the sun slamming the blacktop, the pump jacks beaking like prehistoric crows
down there in Midland, Texas in 1973...

The mention of Samuel Butler, 19th century author of the satirical novel Erewhon,  and his passage
about eating grapes, https://biblioklept.org/2015/03/31/always-eat-grapes-downwards-samuel-butler/

As reader, we want to repeat the line "In truth, I don't quite follow the logic..."
and then go on to read the final stanza which romps through four more things in the notebook...

Most of us ended the poem in stitches... happy to have petted the impossibility of a half-baked ironic symbol... but, knowing full well, the wounds we might feel come from the absurd sorrow in the present in which we live.

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?