5. Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames] by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
1. MacCaig: both referenced in the introduction and in the book Joy edited by Christian Wiman.
Wiman refers to the "kinetic clarity" of this poem, and indeed, the "k" sounds (back, coated, colored, jocular, Loch cantering. crumbs, miracles, clearest, considering, concept) thread the poem. Delightful repetitions -- the Joseph-coated frogs like colored ideas, ... and repeat of the mountain, folded in with the frogs for us to "tinily consider" as a huge concept.
Many of the poems worked with this idea of small particular with a enormous universal...
The "cantering crumbs" make a lovely echo of what it is like to see a landscape with the far away depicted on a 2-D plane as a small dot... how deer, so large close-up become just a "crumb" of themselves. Joseph's many colored coat is a novel way to describe leaping peepers!
I love this Spring poem, filled with excitement, not so much the sound frogs make as visual accompaniment of a release of miracles. One of the many days... not at all humdrum, but to be celebrated, consecrated as the possibility of all
the days!
Paul adds this
note on mention of Ben Dorain. It is a low mountain (1235 ft,) in the Grampians of the West Highlands and near to later mentioned Loch Lyon, in the same Grampian range.
Ben, in Gaelic, is a peak or a point, There is the Gaelic language lesson for the day.
2. You can read a bit of biography about Glück which perhaps echos the physical challenge of snowdrops poking up through the earth's crust at the first moments of Spring. Marna pointed out the lovely sandwiching of vowel sounds-- the e
of earth, expect (twice) respond, open, remember in the middle longest stanza and the w's in the first and last.
know, what,winter, raw wind, world... the lovely enjambments which suspend and double the possibilities of meaning.
You know... first line could be the answer to the first question, and continues with an assumption that the "you" is able to comprehend the "I". Is it the speaker of the poem or the snowdrop? Both? Humbling to feel despair and confession of
expectation of death, only to see again, repeated twice, where life breaths in each separate word
but / among / you / again / //crying/ yes / risk/ joy... Snowdrop, symbol of rebirth.
3. Plutzik. I love that we have a Rochester connection with this wonderful poet who died so young. (1911-1962.)
The title and first line give us a clue that he is able to have fun poking fun at himself. Similarly, the words in quotation marks look like they could be from his own poems, or words of students analyzing his poems. Once a poem is
out... who know who will read it, or how it will be understood. How far away it might travel, or be misunderstood.
David shared the story of a student who concluded after a semester in his course on First Person narrative,
"To write well, I have to strip." We discussed at the length the repeated question, "Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?" Why not both? How interesting the syntax. Usually we put off an action... but would take off the clothing. Are his words in quotes a parody -- putting off the possibility of words coming to explain what they mean? A poet has no control over how a reader will "take" the words. We all loved the closing lines: to fashion a fistful of words out of a life... open the hand and they fly away. But he didn't say it quite that way. He chose the verb "fashion", like the clothes... and one thinks again, putting that fist in the air... what will bring the words alive? the opening allowing them to take off.
I love his take on poetry which for him started as beautiful language. "Then a way of communicating the nuances of the world. More recently, poetry, as the great synthesizer... the humanizer of knowledge."
4. Characteristics of Life. A perfect Earth Day poem... start with the ocean... its creatures, one of whom can be considered a living fossil... Rich mentioned the underneath connections of roots, fungi...the whole poem feels like
a painting of the interconnectedness of life. He recommends the film Fabulous Fungi. As reader, I feel like the jellyfish, moving with the current, filtering what
to make of the world... We remarked the line about the changeability of being -- this today, that tomorrow -- "as consistent as anything alive on earth".
Is you the citizens of the world? If in a cubicle is "you" the person working only in an office, or a narrow-minded, straight-backed, follow the rules sort of person? The final you is the one longing for another, desiring (with impossible hope).
When was spinelessness first frowned upon? Bernie brought up the scientist who researched the success rate of publishing papers about invertebrates...** and discovered a bias most of us might not be aware of. Spineless -- does not
assert, take position, reflect the fine values of our species! Rhymes with mindless... the beautiful useless--
we did not discuss, but could have gone on about "I will be silent.... beautiful, useless ... if that's all you know to ask of me.". Is this not to warn us of limiting ourselves to prescribed questions? It echoes in the last line about judging...
"to say it is mindless is missing the point."
The final poem by Ferlinghetti is only part of an entire book called "Poetry as Insurgent Art" which Barbara brought .
This one section is "I am signaling you through the flames".
Indeed... things will burn in the revolution... like the end of the world. David brought up the problem of words -- so often they contain lies. Example: Manifest Destiny. The concept so labeled is anything but true or fair to the indigenous people in the Americas.
Marna brought up a beautiful Children's book: Can poetry save the Earth by John Felsteiner.
Bernie brought up the lines from William Carlos Williams (Asphodel... that greeny flower)
"Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
David concluded the session, reminding us that what is unique about poetry is how it expressed an individual voice. You need not agree with it, and even if you do, it is only one voice. Truth is more complicated than words can demonstrate.
And yet words are what we have and must use -- for they are indeed capable of changing the world.
**
** more from Bernie on the invertebrates. Not sure I found the original article I'd seen about a researcher miffed at being placed lower on the Researchers Hall of Fame d/t his invertebrate research focus, but I found a few interesting titles.
