Poems for December 3

Taking the Hands -- Robert Bly
Gone & Gone by Rodney Wittwer
Here, Bullet -- by Brian Turner
A Soldier’s Arabic -- by Brian Turner
Arboretum – by Louise Glück
Benjamin Britten: Ceremony of Carols-- (excerpt: Spring Carol by William Cornish)

December is filled with secular and sacred celebrations -- I'd be pleased if you have any poems that come from traditions you would like to share.
I included an excerpt from Benjamin Britten's "Ceremony of Carols" which is based on Middle English poetry and some links so you can hear how the music surpasses the words. (It's on my mind as I'm singing the Soprano part Dec. 8th!).
If you do not know the music by Benjamin Britten, A Ceremony of Carols, you can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CB2JOQkRBw -- first half.
“The majority of the text is taken from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, and is in old English. Because of this, a translation is provided as well as notes by Tom Ajack.
http://www.choralnet.org/view/222462
Note that in the middle ages, Christ’s birth was celebrated in Spring.

**
Gone are my notes from the wonderful discussion... so I will try to reconstruct an echo of the discussion. We started with looking at our hands, considering what we "cage", protect, receive, give touch, further to Bly's 5-fingered poem. Thanks to Maura who sent a follow-up picture of hands.

Wittwer's seven stanza poem uses ampersands for "and" which for some was disconcerting, for others, creating a hieroglyphic sense of mystery. The dreamlike sequence and fine use of sonics support a sense of elegy, the "we" turning to "everyone" in the final stanza, which challenges our belief that we have an idea of where we are, what we are doing, until we are "gone." Are there more than two senses of "gone" indicated in the title?

Brian Turner returns -- we started the year with "Eulogy",one of his poems from his book "Here, Bullet" published in 2005. The title poem, discussed Monday takes the bullet's message but of course, admitting that "here is where I complete the word you bring/
the way it is..." "A Soldier's Arabic" reminds me that one cannot paraphrase a good poem -- of course, one can point out from title to last word,
the pinnings of language to words, that begin and end, starting with the word for "love". It moves to how we write, English from left to right, and Arabic from right to left, and puts into question beginnings, ends, as veiled and unknown as death, written by "cursives of the wind."

Much is written now about Louise Glück. Her teacher Stanley Kunitz, remarked in 1966 about her intensity and strong voice, and since, critics have awarded adjectives such as “chilling,” “supremely reticent,” “distant,” “scrupulous. Perhaps -- but I find poems such as "The Purple Bathing Suit" and "Arboretum" point to her ironic humor that is most pleasing. To start a poem with "We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger." after the title, "Arboretum" sets up a few sparks about what it is we try to "plant for the future" or try to preserve -- or indeed, plant and then crowd out, not to mention celebrate only to find out our zeal to promote something we find attractive is invasive... The mock humor of "we asked/so little" repeated with different line-breaks and completions is highly effective,
mirrored in the ultimate question "How did we manage to do so much damage..."
In the same way, in a counter-pull is the repetition of "we were correct" which pulls at "checked", which could be countered with the repetition of desire.

The harp and two sopranos capture something beyond the words in the Benjamin Britten duet based on the Spring carol. I'll play it on 12/10.

poems for November 26

The eyeless gene in Drosophila melanogaster – by Robert Pesach
Thanksgiving Thanks – 2009 (Robert Pesach)
Ode to the Vinyl Record by Thomas R. Smith
Advice to my self – Louise Erdrich
Yes - by Aaron Fagan
Around Us by Marvin Bell
Still by A.R. Ammons

Thank you all for the wonderful discussion! I love that we have some detail oriented folks, so now we can refer to the common fruitfly as the black-gut "friend of dew"! How special to be able to talk about what scares us, what makes an impact on us, how we use mirrors of words to see what is significant to us,
What leads us humbly to say "yes" to magnificence we might have missed.

Pesach's poem brings up GMOs, a way to look at the smallest thing and think that could be us... we’re unstable... liable to be experimented with ...
I love how a science poem can lead to a new epithet "black-gut fruitfly Friday..."
a comment about Eisenhower's presidency where he was determined not to let people know what he was thinking, a fresh look at "eye/I" where "it is easier to see in the dark and the dust -- I is difficult/
to pin down.

The Thanksgiving Thanks also turns a scientific eye past artificial intelligence and black holes to the balance of what we think we know, and the power of uncertainty to allow us to embrace immensity without knowing.
"This Knowledge that dots the darkness with Light.
This Ignorance that preserves the Wonder."

Thomas Smith's poem brought up many memories of vinyl records, the way the scra-ritch of the needle against the label at the end is used in films to create a sense of ending that doesn't end. The language captures the sounds of hearing music in this "old-fashioned" way --
"Not only the music, but
the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable
funneling blackly down into the ocean
of the ear—even the background
pops and hisses a worn record
wraps the music in, creaturely
imperfections so hospitable to our own.

and provides the image of the perfect fit of a vinyl record as cloak of flaws --
a crackling unclarity (note the sounds! So much better than the heavier syllabic "lack of clarity" -- with the associations of "un" -- as if undoing the actual playing by translating real sound to a recording played back on a vinyl disk.


Louise Erdrich's poem captures the frenzy we can enter with battling clutter.
Her humorous "Advice to myself" provides a model for all of us to create a list of what we do, and perhaps are better off not doing.
"...decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out."


Sounds so simple, and yet... and yet... some examples of avoiding inventory of the heart (just what would we find?): the way Farmhouses own the farmers... possessions possess us... how we buy/consume even if we don't need something, including eating when we're not hungry, and the fallacies around the "purpose" of stuff,

We noted line breaks, a rhythm of prayer and the density of the summary of stuff.

We closed with "Yes" -- having started the month of November with "No" --
and a discussion about "special" linked by AR Ammons' poem, "Still." Significance is how we classify what matters to us, and can lead us to appreciate magnificence which lies in all things. The dualism of "being unique" but not unique creates unresolvable tension worthy of reflection.
We did mention the easy way we praise in current society, as hypocritical as saying
"Bless your heart"... before you say anything negative...

So much more discussion revolved around these poems.
In this season of thanksgiving, I remain grateful for such a gathering of bright and thoughtful people, responding to the power of poems.

discussion of November 12

11/12/12... not quite ready for 2013!

We did start with the Tom Leonard "Jist ti Let Yi No" contrasting with the William Carlos Williams, "This is just to say" -- the two poems mirror the structure, but what a contrast in tone: the unapologetic, almost angry Dr., vs. the heartwarmingly honest beer snitcher which the Scottish accent (to me) makes even more appealing. What draws us to a poem and how to understand it? What makes a poem new?
It is surprising to stumble across a poem written in the early 19th century which can be so universal, one thinks it has just been published almost two centuries later!
So it is the case with Thomas Hood's "No!" It must have been a bad day for him, or maybe he is observing someone in an apocalyptic mood...
How different the contemporary "Last November" by Jason Miller, which in three parts gave us almost 25 minutes of discussion. First images, looking to see links, and how the verbs advance the narrative. What is it about the last line "between her teeth" that continues to gnaw at us. The final part which starts with Shakina, who lives without similes (that mark the first two parts in an irksome way) allows a re-reading of the world and the poem with her eyes, where "leaves" are potato chips, handful after handful crunching between her teeth. The paucity of her life, compared to the crab-scuttle of oaks, minnow-scatter of willow, barbed-wire vines help us rethink the world. Read the poem and enjoy the auditory effects, the different ways of imagining a war scene, a suburban scene, the nature of leaves... and the mechanical crunching, the feeling of caught, just like the paratroopers...

Job Search by Prija Keefe, a local poet, is a brilliant use of ads, of jargon and captures not only the wierdness of looking for a job, but catalogues an overtone
of what kind of jobs are out there... and would you want any of that?

Although I had to leave for the discussion of the last two poems, my question for the Nin Andrews was to ask if it was a prose poem, or simply a passage -- and would that change your feeling about it? Apparently a discussion about a bipolar girl, or typical adolescent came up. The knock-your-socks off last sentence, is haunting to me -- real enough to apply to anyone, not just the girl: "empty rooms inside her and someone hiding in every one." If we are a body, holding in spirit, what is it that
we make "room" for -- what lies in wait?

In praise of Noise certainly has music going -- and made me want to write a poem
using the rhythm of Psalm 100 -- so I did -- to allow the last line -- the song of everything -- which cannot be sung, but yet plays each day through.

Poems for November 12, 19. 26

No! by Thomas Hood (b. May 23, 1799 in London.)
Last November by Jason Miller
Job Search by Priya Keefe
Making the Sun Rise – by Nin Andrews
3 poems by James Arthur : In Praise of Noise; In Defense of the Semicolon;
Rapid Transit
4 poems from Aperçus 2.2 (November 2012) http://www.apercusquarterly.com/Apercus_Quarterly/Main.html
The Nightbird’s Apprentice by Jennifer K. Sweeney
Barn Owls – Jennifer Sweeney
Total Lunar Eclipse – Robert Pesich
The eyeless gene in Drosophila melanogaster – by Robert Pesach
Thanksgiving Thanks – 2009—by Steve Coffman

poems for November 5

The Hurricane by William Carlos Williams
Poem in October -- by Dylan Thomas
Writing: Howard Nemerov
Sonnet #5: Shakespeare
Latin Lessons by Floyd Skloot
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost


I can't remember now why I chose these poems... Was it to contrast music, form, old and new... indeed, those are things which interest me, and the discussion today came back to Frost's essay "The Figure a Poem Makes" which talks about music and meaning and that sense of wildness we want pure. But in the end we need ideas or else all poems sound alike. I also trust a group will find meaning in a collection of poems no matter what poems come to mind.

We started with the Hurricane, well, of course, because we had Sandy which opened up many questions... just like the poem. I asked several people to read, and then to silently think about how each person would read it, and what to make of it.
How often do we lend attention to a poem this way? What do you make of the "it" in the last line: "it said, go to it." Is it the tree? the hurricane? How many ways can you say, "go to it"? is "it" Heaven, or part of the idiom, "get started". What fun to romp through two sentences and five lines and realize the game could last a long time. But, we do want to pin it down. Pin our human associations to the tree,
imagine ourselves as the "you" as easily felled as the tree, be grateful that our haven of a home was perhaps safe, and only the garage damaged, or... or...

The Dylan Thomas published in Poetry magazine in February 1945 is so filled with music and image, no matter if you prefer one to the other, there is no rivalry here.
David mentioned the form as pindaric ode and a very wordsworthian celebration of childhood...and some commented on how the music is very nice, but what's the point-- a certain impatience that is satisfied by the penultimate stanza.
Marcie pointed out that descriptions of the present (the poet's 30th birthday) are in rain, whereas his past is remembered in sun.
Whatever reason we loved this poem, we marveled at the intensity. Rich brought up whether it would be a dated poem, too rhapsodic for now-a-days -- and a musical parallel comes to mind. Why do some pieces of music never age -- maybe interpreted slightly differently in different ages, but still strike the heart?


Nemerov: David came up with the perfect sentence: This poem is about how we trace ourselves, trace our thoughts. Look at the hard C's, that reproduce the sound of the skates.
World and spirit... physical and cerebral are connected like our bones linked to nets of stars—our tiny efforts of creating symbols to something much more vast! Through writing, like the bat, we can figure out
just what our thoughts are; figure out how to communicate something larger than ourselves. What is the “point of style” – the stylus point; the reason for... and what is character – the physical form of a symbol
or temperment. How beautifully put that each of us try to understand the world, but can only understand
what we can reproduce through out hand, our thinking. Miraculous, repeated, this time to think of the world as a great writing. And with all this powerful presence and creation, we know it cannot last.

Wow! I love this poem. It is not disheartening, but an almost tender way of reminding us, for all our efforts, all our pen scratching, we will not be able to preserve a record of human presence, let alone start
to scratch the surface of understanding the large universe in which we live. And yet... this tool of writing,
this writing that writes us, this writing which leads us on journeys, is a key to something much more.
Such beautiful skill!

Shakespeare: Sonnet #5
what a sonnet! Who would have thought that "unfair" is a verb? And what about "Leese" in the final couplet? Much can be written about this early sonnet with no personal pronouns. Although we did not discuss the structure, (3 quatrains that end with a colon), the repetition of the same thing first objectively, then emotionally,
we appreciated the role of memory -- that the savoring of love is best before we forget.
Show cannot be preserved, but substance can.


Floyd Skloot: Latin Lessons -- a tour de force, where it is not clear it is an elegy at first and what leaves a mark on us.

Frost: After apple picking.
Delightful -- with unexpected surprises in line length, meter, rhyme, and how Frost can take an ordinary detail and make it apply to a larger meaning. We talked of the natural rhythms, of sleep, dream, and the fatigue of a life spent, where, even with all that red-cheeked possibility of apple, enough is enough, and next year... humbly, we accept, there will be new apples, but we understand "what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is."

As ever, I am so grateful for so many shared understandings of these poems.


PS. David shared the differences of the Frost poem with the final version:
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight /I cannot rub the strangeness
a that was "the" and Magnified apples appear and reappear, / ... and disappear
It could be an earlier version... poems are process, metamorphosis, like apples...

Poems for October 29

A fire drill cut short our discussion of poems for October 22.
So... trying again.
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems

**
We read again "The Courtesy of the Blind" and the discussion embraced both the poem, references to blindness ranging from Corinthians "for now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face..." and Acts, "and immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales", Amazing grace to general considerations about "the blind".
As ever, it is helpful to sort through subjective associations by close examination of the poem. Is the tone the same in the title and the penultimate stanza where it is repeated? Is there a note of irony, perhaps a comment not about the blind, but a comment about a poet who is reading to a public of blind people, and suddenly aware
of images provided in poetry -- two careful quatrains, and then an enumeration of details he'd like to skip -- but does not in two stanzas of five, much longer lines.
We don't have the original Polish, but it would be probable that the last two stanzas would resonate in the original as they do in English -- the penultimate stanza is formal as opposed to conversational (one wouldn't say" hey, great is the courtesy of the blind" and in the final stanza, we are left with the mystery of the "unseen autograph". Each participant brought a different angle which reflected a slant sense of autobiography on how each individual understood the poem --was it presumption on the part of the speaker that "blind people don't get what they can't know by sight", or enthusiastic hyperbole, or perhaps a way of looking at poetry, which is a way to bring music to language when read out loud, a way to bring an emotional connection which is beyond the "meaning" or content of images.

Just as the line "the naked stranger standing in the half-shut door" in the Szymborska poem elicited some laughter, so did many lines in the Ashbery poem for instance:
Because if it's boring //
in a different way, that'll be interesting too.
That's what I say.

In both cases, I wonder if the source of the laughter was more like having a sneak, surprise view that allows the poem to mirror a part of ourselves we might not have considered recently. Last week, after reading the Ashbery, Marcie offered the comparison of walking through a cocktail party and overhearing pieces of conversation
which gives a sense of disjointed and out of context flow. It reminded Sandra of dealing with people stricken by Alzheimers. Whether surrealistic tomfoolery, or a dream viewing reality (or it that our reality IS the dream?) there were spaces in the poem where people could hang on to a sense of understanding something. Marcie called on the quote from the Ashbery interview in the Paris Review, "I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him".
Ashbery is mindful of how he plays with us. The big question, "how do you know what is" brought forth many fine points from physicists-- "why does it appear that there is something..." "objects are just cast from other ends of the universe, the shadow is the reality"; Don referred to Freeman Dyson "What can you really know" NY Rev of
Books (11/8/12) p.18 -- a review of Jim Holt's "Why does the world
exist?: an existential detective story." John suggested that the first sentence is the short answer to the question... what is consciousness.
Perhaps to get to the "point" of the short answer, one needs to write a poem like this, which will allow meanings to mushroom, until the lightbulb goes off.

..
The next poem by O'Hara, "why I am not a painter" brought up a multitude of examples from current art and literature. Emily brought up the example from a book she is reading, and sharing a quote on how the author wrote with an artist, who said -- that's it! It is not about having a fixed idea of what you are about to create,
but shaping words and paint as they arrive. O'Hara compares this process in the poem. John brought up rage as one of the building blocks of art, to get beyond a varnished presentation of something presentable... yet aside from "terrible oranges..." the poem had little rage. Martin brought up the distinction between rage and the energy and motivation that comes with it. The poem is an art of assertion... work responds to the idea... Carmin cited the experimental GeVa where the work in progress eliminated one character. Just as the painting denied the essence of Sardines (which Mary said, she at that point had a real hankering for!)by using just giant letters... Martin: all humans have rage... not the motivation... energy... Emily ( I believe) brought up the first person who told us NO.
More on O'Hara triggers: NY School film: Painters Painting. Tom Wolfe: The Painted Word. New Art City... Untitled (movie)
(1971)

We ended by reading the 5 i poems. And what if they weren't called "i poems" --
would that change how we read them? I asked each person to pick their favorite.

Poems for October 22

Poems for October 22

In the October 2012 issue of Poetry, Wiman shares his task of “reading a century” and selecting poems from the last 100 years. What makes a poem memorable – and what helps it “last”? What helps the reader to navigate a poem, enjoy the puzzles, or conversely, give up in desparation? Below is a selection of poems to test, some relatively new, reflecting new experimentation, some relatively familiar in form, although perhaps novel in scope... Read what gives you pleasure and I look forward to hearing from you!


Without a Word – Richard Wakefield
Two Translitics of Louise Labé (16th C. French love sonnet #8: translitic – an experimental form of translation)
The Courtesy of the Blind -- by Wislawa Szymborska
The Short Answer –John Ashbery
excerpt from an interview with John Ashbery that tells about Frank O’Hara and Auden
Why I am not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
5 i poems

**
The discussion was disrupted after we read the Sibyl James.
People enjoyed the Wakefield, who unlike the Washington author of the Coyote poem last week offers THE way to pronounce it, albeit with a large dose of humor. What do we put in our "lexicon" and why? What is food, what is foe? What does an animal understand about us? We discussed how do we organize reality by words but not scent and the force of syntax moving through rhyme with no commas.
A little Robert Frost imitation cum humor in the last 7 lines: "If coyotes shrug away an unconcern/he did, and took up his unhurried gait./A hundred yards away I saw him turn/his head to give a last, dismissive look,/then glide without a sound the way he came,/begrudging me the little time he took/ to find that I was nothing he need name.

The idea of translitics takes translation into a different direction. What happens to 16th century Louise Labe's sonnets in a contemporary voice. The first imitated an imitative reference, keeping the sonnet form; the second, from the book "The White Junk of Love Again" by Sibyl James concentrates on the voice of the original poet, not the form, and somewhat regarding the theme, but certainly capturing a sensual unconventionality. An example:
So don’t ask me how I am,
just hand that ragged girl in the gutter
roses, and watch her salt smile,
laughing like all that red must hurt.

the speaker's "salt smile" is a new way of saying "smile through tears";contrast of red: ragged and roses and rhyme girl/hurt.


There's a blues song feel to lines like "Love loves changes, leads me/on a leash. Some days so choked/I get beyond this ache like breathing.
the sun turns to "that hand/pulling my face close, that old heartbreak/unfolding like a creased schedule of trains.".

Interspersed in the translitics are poems which are totally original based on the overall character of the poem sequence, the Labe persona and interplay of James/Labe voices. They grow out of wanting to speak out on other side of her life than love.
But do they? For instance 05.

If I owned it, I could burn this house.
I'd tie firehoses into knots
so the water wouldn't come, let the flames
lick up like State Farm money. They'd buy
a ticket somewhere, rent any room
in any interchangeable hotel.

I'm sick of this suburban, off-the-hub-of life.
I'll rent a flat in Paris, talk literary in cafes.
I'll make my heart a map and change direction
easy as a weather-vane in love with wind.
Sunrise will bring strong London tea, half cream,
and set behind the mariachis in my plaza.
I'll love the one with dark eyes.
I'll throw camellias from my window.

I hear Beijing, Oaxaca, names
like night trains in my head,
that hard sweet rhythm like good-bye.