September 23, 2020

 Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry by Jericho Brown: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/books/review/jericho-brown-say-thank-you-say-im-sorry-poem-coronavirus.html

Venus & Serena Play Doubles On Center Court  by Kate Rushin https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS5794638452.mp3?key=0705ab06c9cffb25d0a07d6fa9f9922d

Today God  by Starr Davis

Morning Song of Senlin  by Conrad Aiken (1889–1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk1EM7YNLW4  (Tom O'Bedlam reading)

Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Breathing Field by Wyatt Townley

Nutshell:

Say Thank you  Say I'm Sorry: these two expressions... of gratitude and apology introduced in the title  shadow the unspoken thanks for those who toil for us, whether in hospitals, service industries, grocery stores.

The discussion picked up on a tone of controlled anger... the unspoken references to racism, pandemic. ex. Surprising line breaks: for my big black/Car to quit; 

surprising combinations --at least one field trip /To a slaughterhouse. 

juxtapositions of high class touches, like gnocchi with those who wash their hands for us, return home on the bus.

What is it that any of us want in that "little"?  It doesn't have to be the  fancy items like the leather bound

Book, gimlet,  and real bread...  The humor and cynicism in having "PTSD of the Lord" -- PTSD meaning, a long term and recurring condition, coupled with  biblical plagues, floods.  The strength of the clipped speech, the theatrical pauses indeed makes it seem like an introduction to a complex play with many moods.  Many allusions, such as "who wears the mask".  Have we forgotten to say thank you? I'm sorry?  Inserted in the jumble, a request, " I’d like us to rethink
What it is to be a nation."  

Venus & Serena:  Although we didn't listen to Kate read her poem, the link is above.  The "about this poem" sums it up: "there you are, enjoying yourself, living your life, going about your business, and then, when you least expect it, someone is trying to put you in a color box, a gender box, a femininity box with their assumptions and limitations.”

Can't a tennis match just be a tennis match?

Thank you Kate for celebrating two classy sisters, " pounding history".

Today God: I only printed two lines of the longer poem, but they do stand by themselves. to read: https://poets.org/poem/today-god

It brought up discussion about how things have changed since 2016, both good and bad.  

Morning Song of Senlin: This is part 2 of the second section of Senlin: a Biography

Part 1:  His Dark Origins (8 sections )

Part 2: Futile Preoccupations. (10 sections)

PART 3: Cloudy Destiny ( 3 sections)

about the reader: an anonymous fellow one person believes is from Australia but has adopted a "received pronunciation" actor's style.   I love that he takes his name from the 1620 poem, rather of the same lilting sort as Aiken's style here.

Discussion involved admiring the music of the poem, as one critic says, "shimmering with ambivalences and ambiguities";  a certain sentimentality, Rosetti style;

 a "Chagall-esque" mystical upside-down-ness, and overtones of Eliot's Prufrock.

Perhaps one aspect of Aiken's persona... Senlin is held together by his routine... Echoes in Madeleine l'Engle's children's book, Swiftly Tilting Planet; Beatles' Fool on the Hill;

Two Countries :  I love that a poem can mean in such a variety of ways!  Knowing Naomi has a father from Palestine, it was helpful to hear Elaine's application of skin as border, and the many losses

as those suffered by Palestine.  What imagination to use skin as character -- the largest "organ" of our body... the separation of inside/outside; visible/invisible... and the remembering of "something larger" and people go places, "larger than themselves" -- which is not as straightforward as you might think.

Both Lori and Martin though of two countries as a man and woman;  we all felt the human need for touch...

Breathing Field: lovely "fields" of stanzas enjambed like connected pieces of a vertebrae... 

Yoga allusions... the pacing cannot be fast, like a walking meditation... the double-entendres

of "So much is still /. So much is still to be seen".  One idea behind final sentence:  a question for

guided meditation:  "What was your face before your grandmother was born?"

September 16

The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Indispensable Lessons by Saad Ali

Human Habitat by Alison Hawthorne Deming 

If Covid-19 Wasn’t a Stain in the Wind, Would the Earth Bleed Any Less? by Anthony Okpunor

The Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire by Sarah Kay

No Nutshell discussion this week.  Please feel free to comment on the poems!

 Elaine mentioned “Indispensable Lessons” generated a lot fo good conversation without any reference to the fact it was an ekphrastic response.   Her research into the poem: 

The ekphrastic challenge using the painting “Potato Theatre” by To Yen.https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-toyen

Of interest perhaps  https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/tell-it-slant-poetry-festival-2020-schedule/

Marna wanted to share this poem by Verlaine, The Exquisite Hour she heard on public radio,  The YouTube of the song is called, Renaldo Hahn L’Heure Exquise The Exquisite Hour.translated,  I’m not sure it was this, but you can hear the music and English subtitles here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl22CLqxwus

September 9

Today, When I Could Do Nothing by Jane Hirshfield

The Check In by Nandi Comer

To be of use by Marge Piercy

Boarding a Bus by Steve Huff

Dying Towns by Joshua Martin

Of the Surface of Things  by Wallace Steven

 Today, When I could do nothing: thank you Marna for suggesting this poem.  

It was clear from the wealth of angles brought up, that this is one of those “good poems”, that happily increases possibilities of meanings— as David S. put it so poetically, “its palette of possibilities”.  Written at the beginning of the pandemic, (this first day when I could do nothing), the title and juxtaposition of the 4 words “I saved an ant”, could also be about any day, as well as the first day of some major change that forces one to re-think what  can be done.

It appeared in an article in Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-true-thing/202004/poet-jane-hirshfield-today-when-i-could-do-nothing

The poem is filled with small twists of humor, such as the ant as "the loosened ink taking the shape of the ant).  A small chuckle at the sentence arises (or a small glub) reading “I am not an essential service”… also invites us to think about what is… (all the while enabling us to face fear our diminishment more easily…) The “silence enough to fill cisterns” takes me to a Cistercian abby (for Trappist monks… more rigorous in practice than Benedictines)-- back in (unspoken) time, and a chance for deep meditation. The details, observations, seem offered with gratitude, an appreciation of and compassion for the ordinary;

To quote Hirschfield https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-seekers-forum/202006/the-perfection-things-they-are

"What a reader finds in a poem is often a mirror, both of the person who is looking and listening and of the particular weather of that particular moment of listening."

Ants are fascinating to observe… fast climbers, intrepid… To elaborate on the question, “what good does it do”,  Bernie shared the Starfish Story: https://www.countryschool.net/news-detail?pk=1250796 (the link includes a few words of advice about “catching kindness from the headmistress).

The final line, “I did this” is both self-referential, “I wrote this”, as well as referring to “saving the ant”.  You do not need to be convinced that the ant might have been able to survive without her help, or readily finds comrades… the idea of a small act of kind attention… the comparison of ant to human, lends to meditating on the worth of all life… 

The question, “What then did I save” can easily extend to saving perhaps a part of herself—ah…but I see many more paragraphs ensuing and will stop here.

 

The Check-In:  

We remarked on the form which reflects different modes of anger. The last two sentences deal a real punch.  The “helplessness” in the flimsy  “I am so so sorry”, (akin to the uselessness of changing anything by saying I’ll pray for you) seizes the “so”…hurls it to so white… and three times, so late.

Nandi Comer writes in “about this poem”: “I wrote ‘The Check In’ as a response to a strange phenomenon I was noticing during the pandemic. After the murder of George Floyd and the uprisings that followed, I and other Black friends began receiving calls, texts, and emails from white people that weren’t necessarily close friends. Their attempts to connect with me really felt as if they were seeking an explanation or comfort for their own anxieties. Isn’t it always the case that Black people end up caring for white fragility? For me these messages felt like another kind of violence to endure. They made me anxious. I could not answer them, so I wrote this reply.”

To be of Use  by Marge Piercy

This is a wonderful poem to discuss “what work is”, what kinds of work bring out desire to “jump in head first”, “do what has to be done to move things forward”, do those things “worth doing well.”  Her metaphors for meaningful work can be used for all types of “work” — whether chasing a sunset, and recording it in music or painting,  writing, teaching,  as a way to increase a student’s confidence, develop clarity in thinking;  Preaching as ministry like speakers, hoping to inspire, participate in work for social justice.  Elaine brought up Levine’s poem as contrast— https://ariegr1.edublogs.org/2009/03/19/poem-analysis-what-work-is-by-philip-levine/

The ending two lines are memorable — and invite us to continue the possibilities of the circumstances— The pitcher cries for water to carry/and a person for work that is real”.  what do we make… and how can it be used? Yes, we cry for work like the pitcher, the work without which leaves us feeling empty. 

Boarding a Bus: It is wonderful to hear Steve’s voice reading his poem.  What is it we can’t afford NOT to do?  David quoted Cesare Pavese, “Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world.”

Dying Towns:  The 14 couplets deliver a fabulous word painting of the disappearance of towns… and then, the kapow of the last line — "nobody asking, who the hell I was, where the hell I was going.”  Clever line breaks, the play of “where the living went” as both the way to make a living, as well as living people; the poetic names of towns (with possible undertones of  puns on bluff, ash, popular, may), which contrasts with the harsh fact of bulldozer and inconceivable idea of a father forgetting the color of his daughter’s eyes. Susan brought up the image of a rorschach presentation…

What are the towns we carry with us from childhood?  Who were we? 

On the Surface of Things:  it was wonderful to have a personable account of Wallace Stevens, and his daughter “ready to get out of this daughter business” of handling his posthumous work and affairs.

Estranged from his family, going upstairs after dinner to his study,  his observations understand that our perception can invite the imagination.  Carolyn quoted from The Great Modern Poets in their own words edited by Michael Schmidt.

“It is possible to read Stevens for years with intense pleasure and never to care what the poems means because the sense of sense is so strong and the movement of feeling so assured.  If we do question his meanings and try to tie the poems in to them, we may displace the poetry itself.  The subtlety of his thought is less compelling than the magic of his effects on the ear and eye, his ability to rouse the ‘intellectual emotions.”

The three stanzas have a sense of “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (last line of The Snow Man).  His imagination creates worlds for us… and I love that he tucks in what seems to be “a looking out” to reveal he is  actually “looking in”, reading what he has written — both act and the words describing “The spring is like a belle undressing” .  

 **

As ever, thank you to all.  I hope I have done justice to the lively conversation.  Martin, I invite you to add your comments, please!  You always have valuable insights, and although it was easier to hear you without the image, I know I missed your “hand” wanting to add.  This goes for everyone who “attends as a black box”.

We are all learning new lessons in patience.  Hence, these nutshells — to allow those who want to say more to be able to.  

September 2

In Envy of Cows by Joseph Auslander - 1897-1965

When the Virus Comes by Angelo Geter

The Children of Beslan (To My Children) by Irakli Kakabadze

Nostalgia  by Joyce Carol Oates

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka 

Choose by Carl Sandburg 

By the Stream by Paul Laurence Dunbar - 1872-1906

we did not discuss: Climbing China’s Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver

Nutshell summary:

In Envy of Cows: Joseph Auslander

Written in 1923, hence, at the age of 26.  We remarked the lush sounds, the variable line length which helps disguise the end-rhyme, the complexity of image and the fun of “poetic register” with words like kine (archaic word referring to cows collectively) and pellucid, and poplar trees referred to as frieze.  It is a healing poem both in subject and sound. Ah! Cows!  From the first line, we feel each movement— as if we too are cow, swinging our head, plunging into a decadent Roman feast which in 5 lines swells from “web-washed grass” to wine…   David S. prompted us to think of Keats, Ode to Autumn — commenting on the “substance in syllables” (density of sensory detail)…Indeed —the delight of the poem is that a Cow is the subject written  in the elevated style of an ode!

David H. shares this thought and Lazy Afternoon: "The poem  "Envy of Cows"  immediately brought to mind the exquisite lyrics below to a ballad called "Lazy Afternoon," from the 1954 Broadway musical "The Golden Apple."  The lyrics were by John LaTouche (with music by Jerome Moross). The imagery in the lyrics captures the same relaxing feeling as those in "Envy of Cows." The song has become a standard in the Great American Songbook. 

Song lyrics are often simpler than poems, relying on the music to elevate them, but I believe that these lyrics stand on their own. Many of the most famous popular singers have recorded "Lazy Afternoon,"  including Barbra Streisand Shirley Horn, and Tony Bennett."

It's a lazy afternoon

And the beetle bugs are zooming

And the tulip trees are blooming

And there's not another human in view

But us two

It's a lazy afternoon

And the farmer leaves his reaping

And the meadow cows are sleeping

And the speckled trouts stop leaping up stream

As we dream

A far pink cloud hangs over the hill

Unfolding like a rose

If you hold my hand and sit real still

You can hear the grass as it

Many people have sung this tune : Tony Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8syJ9kwje4

Shirley Horn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh5yakbQXLQ

Barbara Streisand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nmeiWp2OpU

 

When the Virus Comes  by Angelo Peter

On the surface, the poem allows us to consider what we have been experiencing for 5+ months…yet plays between present and future which indeed could contain a “last time”.  I wish we had a “spoken word” delivery of the poem for if we could hear his voice, perhaps that would confirm the level of satire we detect in the style, the linebreaks, the “cleverness” factor in 2^nd and 3^rd stanzas… the implied play on empty shelves/emptying shelves; empty selves.  Perhaps the most enigmatic part of the poem is the lacing of things that should be good— a lover’s kiss; dancing, singing, laughing — not frivolous laughter— but the laughter that understands the depth of joy.  I hope he is not toying with “who has the last laugh”… at the end… but I prefer that than to think, knowing what joy feels like, this is the last time to feel it. 

If anyone can help with the last line, I’m all ears!

The Children of Beslan (to my Children)  by Irakli Kakabadze Translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs

I wish I could read the original to doublecheck the tense.  Why the switch from present tense to past (16^th line: “We left toys…”) then return to present until the penultimate line —?

I like that people found parallels between how the Russian government dealt with the 2004 massacre and how governments (especially ours)  now are dealing with multiple issues of unexplainable murders coupled with a resurgence of racism, the pandemic, not to mention ignoring ecological causes of natural catastrophes.  I appreciate also that Rose brought up how easy it is to forget… and that if without knowing the time or place of the poem, one could read it in a much different light.   

Wilted smiles…flowers for the dead… the children who “were supposed to open the door of life’s wisdom”— not for them — but for us — as if the older generations in charge have not learned the necessary wisdom to carry on… join with the  ironic “flowers have chosen a better fate” .  Yesterday was September 1^st.  I am haunted by this poem to ask myself, just as a date, September 1, starting the traditional school year, the month of the Jewish New Year… (and a few days before my birthday, so yet another yearly anniversary) what is it I hide behind— and those in my culture?

Nostalgia by Joyce Carol Oates. The Poem we heard included two lines that are not in the July 27, 1998 published version of Nostalgia in The New Yorker.The printed copy does however, have a different spacing, which changes how you might read it, although the reader did seem to pause … Here is how it looked judging from the New Yorker ( I couldn’t copy it) with the additional 2 lines:

Nostalgia  by Joyce Carol Oates (rural district school #7, Ransomville, New York)

Crumbling stone steps of the old schoolhouse

Boarded-up windows   shards of winking glass

Built 1898, numerals faint in stone as shadow

Through a window, obedient rows of desks    mute

Only a droning of hornets beneath the eaves,

The cries of red wing blackbirds by the creek.

  

How many generations of this rocky countryside grown & gone

How many memories     & all forgotten

& soon to be razed.       & goodbye America

The flagless pole,         what relief!

I love it, the eye lifting skyward      to nothing

 

Thank you Elaine for mentioning FOXFIRE. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/193917311.pdf

She is a prolific poet and complex for sure.  In the above link the idea of nostalgia proposed by Svetlana Boym is different than the desire to recreate a (usually positive, often sentimental) version of the past.  It is an interrogation of the notion of truth.  I am fascinated by all the levels and tones we could find in the second part of the poem.  Indeed… just like a haiku technique of turn as Marna pointed out… “an ironic twist” of multiple  turns… different types of punches.  

How many ways can you understand the “hand over my heart, as if I had one”?  A critique of those who do the gesture when saying the pledge, or a personal statement?  And “lifting skyward— to nothing…

The razing of America, as in removing all traces of old towns and ways of life to make room for new suburbs and replacement of community with shopping strips comes to my mind.

 

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka (former) LeRoi Jones)

 The title itself deserves volumes!  If writing a preface to something so large, which will end in death — indeed, one feels the ground open… and the desire to count stars… just to get some fact in the enormity of what is dismissed as countable… and count the holes they leave when you can’t… leaves me exhausted…

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to see the ending line as not the same kind of despair… There might not be answer for the daughter… but she is finding her way to cope…Of course, the isolation, the possible futility of praying, peeking into one’s own clasped hands is scarcely uplifting.

Choose by Carl Sandburg (skipped discussion)

By the Stream by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Such a beautiful, formal poem, but as David S. pointed out… knowing who wrote it and when, helps to understand the layers and see actually two very different poems.   If we read it as a timeless “White Western Canon” poem, we might come to some sad social truth… but reading it as an expression of a  young black in turn of the century America changes our lens.   Snowy-hued… white-robed… even the armored knights with silver helmets… are part of the Western White way of reading clouds.   So what sparkles (verb used twice)… and what things are mirrored? 

learning more about Racism

I joined the 21 day challenge on learning more about racism :

• For 21 days, do one action to further your understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity.
• Plan includes suggestions for readings, podcasts, videos, observations, and ways to form and deepen community connections. Suggestions are in the following categories

Well... after 6 days... discovered this which seems a little less abstract.
https://www.jewishclimate.org/21day-challenge

Day 1:
The first word that came to mind after reading an article, "How White People Got Made" left me feeling exhausted — a word worthy of examining.

What makes us feel EXHAUSTED?  What saps our energy… makes us feel less vital?  

The etymology goes back to “drained out” — the French “fatigué” as in tossing a salad with dressing — you take  freshness out of the crisp greens, adding flavor of oil and vinegar or lemon.

to reduce, extenuate, This is where I love thinking in French.  A synonym is “éreinter”: Rompre ou fouler les reins, et, par extension, battre, rosser.  To break your kidneys!  beat up violently.

Looking in the mirror is hard work.  

Day 2: James Baldwin The Fire Next Time

Day 3: The Fire This time

(see my goodreads write up.)

Day 4: June 22 issue of the New Yorker:  see the cover.

I am a man:

How can we get a country to understand what it means to be a human being?

NO MAN should be lynched.  No man should be enslaved.

One of the cartoons:  Make sure you can see how insignificant I am.

Well... two white people on the edge of a canyon at night, looking up at the moon, and the man

asking the woman to take his picture.

Day 5:  The Uprising: by Luke Mogelson:

"It's not just about George Floyd.  It's about all the unseen shit, where we don't have the video."--Simon Hunter, 19.

Photo of the vigil site with mural.  Shawn Dunwoody's BLACK LIVES MATTER around the corner from us.

Photo of protesters lying down outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art for 8 min. 46 seconds.

the amount of time Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on George Floyd's neck.

See other issues.

Day 6:  Flannery O'Connor article.  1943, she appears as a bigoted young white woman.

How can anyone refer to a person with black skin as "nigger"?

To know yourself, you must know your region.

KKK: Grand Dragon; Grand Cyclops and "hundreds of men stamping and hollering inside sheets.

It's too hot to burn a fiery cross, so they bring a portable one made with electric lights."

She doesn't like the "philosophizing prophesying pontificating James Baldwin kind of Negroes.

Very ignorant but never silent.  ML King not the age's great saint but he's at least doing what he can and has to do.  Ossie Davis.. Would this person be endurable if white?  If Baldwin were white, nobody would stand him a minute.  I prefer Cassius Clay.  "If a tiger move into the room with you and you leave, that don't mean you hate the tiger.  Just means you know you and him can't make out.  Too much talk about hate."

to read ? Toni Morrison: (b. in Ohio, 1931): Playing in the Dark:  Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992):  The fabrication of an Africanist persona by a white writer is reflexive... an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly consciousness.

So... is O'Connor working through her racism understanding it as a form of evil, from the inside, practicing it?

"Posterity in literature is a strange god--

how not to address her racist passages...

Measuring Man: Josef Mengele’s malignant “science”.

pretense of empirical rigor armored the Nazi study of racial difference.

“All ideas, ideals, are capable of being twisted into their opposites.  Religious doctrines praching nonviolence and loving thy enemy quickly turn into a search for enemies not to love. 

this practise:  hypocrisy.

1894: Dreyfus

Day 7: from https://www.jewishclimate.org/21day-challenge

https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

List 50 ways in which your whiteness is a privilege. What can you do to change things so such a list does not depend on skin color?  How will you expand your circles?  Help others realize barriers they put up as do you?  How do we get to the HUMAN we all share?

Day 8:

Enzo Silon Surin, Haitian-born poet, educator, speaker, and social advocate, is the author of When My Body Was A Clinched Fist

“‘When Night Fills with Premature Exits’ was inspired by a meditation on Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet and the idea that Black people cannot conceive a world, even a different planet, where they are not feared. The ‘premature exits’ referred to in the title echo a lifelong sentiment that we die at too fast and at too high of a rate, especially as Black men, because we are not deemed worthy of being free or carefree and because those who target us, as Claudia Rankine eloquently puts it, have a hard time policing their imagination. The poem is written in the form of questions because I am on a daily quest for the answers myself, especially as the father of two beautifully radiant sons. I wanted to express the deeply rooted exasperation and exhaustion that comes with always trying to live and build a life in the gurgle of goodbyes.

Day 9: mldunham@gmail.com writes about Suburban racism.  I just subscribed to his blog.  Why these suburbs and redlining?  

AND NOW... over a month later... 

https://bostonreview.net/race/melissa-phruksachart-literature-white-liberalism?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8d609c011b-MC_Newsletter_8_25_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-8d609c011b-40737165&mc_cid=8d609c011b&mc_eid=e7c55ddda2

Wading through this article was difficult, having read many of the titles.

Day 10:  see my goodreads review of "The N Word" by 

Day 11: see my good reads review of White Fragility

Day 12.  Started, but decided not to finish Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

452 pages.  Perhaps the style is passionate, "razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor" as the Booker Prize judges say... but I found the lack of capital letters for any sentence disconcerting and only after getting to the third section of the first family felt I was getting snippets and snapshots of one family and not a hodgepodge of unrelated observations.

Day 13-23 .  Black Nature - anthology of 4 centuries of African-American Nature poetry.

The 23 page Introduction will get you thinking about the relationship between eco-poetry, and politics; how a black person and a white person, in different time periods and places will write differently about "nature".  I feel sad that skin color has to enter into appreciation of good poetry.  Any good poem should be loved first because it is a good poem.  What you learn about the poet is secondary.  I saw many familiar names about whom I didn't know anything except that I enjoyed their poems.  I'm not sure knowing they are black changed how I read the poem, but suspect something changed.  I was however glad that in August, many of the poets I hadn't known before appeared on poem a day with biographies,

as well as unfamiliar poems by many of the familiar poets.  

The book is divided into "Cycles" each with an introduction.

1. Just Looking

2. Nature, Be with Us

3. Dirt on our Hands

4. Pests, People Too

5.  Forsaken of the Earth

6.  Disasters, Natural and Other

7.  Talk of the Animals

8. What the Land Remembers

9. Growing Out of this Land

10. Comes Always Spring.

The book will be discussed at the end of Sept. in the Newark library.

And here is another Boston Review article... I'll say more on this later.  LOVE the opening paragraph:

There is a long tradition of white people thinking they can read their way out of trouble. Examples abound, from sentimental novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)—which engaged white antebellum readers through appeals to sympathy and Christian sentiment—to sociological readings of race novels by mid-twentieth-century middlebrow book clubs, the formation of “U.S. ethnic lit” during the canon wars of the 1980s and ’90s, and the explosion of “global literature” in recent decades. As Jodi Melamed noted almost ten years ago in Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism (2011), “The idea that literature has something to do with antiracism and being a good person has entered into the self-care of elites, who have learned to see themselves as part of a multinational group of enlightened multicultural global citizens.”

https://bostonreview.net/race/melissa-phruksachart-literature-white-liberalism?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=11d1375ae8-MC_roundup_8_31_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-11d1375ae8-40737165&mc_cid=11d1375ae8&mc_eid=e7c55ddda2

August 26

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa 

Mending Wall by Robert Frost 

The Bridge  by Rodney Jones 

La Quercia Caduta   by Giovanni Pascoli—(tr. Arturo Vivante) The Oak Cut Down

Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy 

 

The first three poems came from the website of the poetry journal Cobalt whose editor shares Ten Poems that send him “into a Mild Arrhythmia”.  To see the whole list:

https://cobalt.submittable.com/submit/142569/poetry-the-cobalt-weekly-ed-jonathan-travelstead

Kommunyakaa was #2; Frost #7 and Jones #10. I could not find a link to “Bearing Witness” so picked a different poem by Rodney Jones.

 

Facing It:  

Several people attending have been to the amazing Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and shared the experience of entering underground, the sense of being part of the work of art that combines the experience of being present, while reflecting on the past.   The mirror effect of the granite, can be seen in some of the pictures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial

 

The title calls on the same effect of the memorial to make us face the past, the facts of war, where the actual facing towards the monument draws us in.  What else is in the “it” indicated in the title?  Our discussion looked at the layering of language, with double-entendres of “clouded reflection”, “depending on the light”; booby trap; brushstroke/brushing image.  

I can’t imagine how overwhelming it could be to go down 58,022 names…but certainly, in Komunyuakaa deftly allows the reader to feel the truth of his words “half-expecting to find his own name in letters like smoke” as if alluding to something in him died in the war.

The touching of names becomes a way to bring alive both what is and what isn’t — 

“touching” the name Andrew Johnson, could be an army buddy, but echoes the name of the Southern Vice-President selected by Lincoln https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction.  The white flash… his black face… the image of a white vet…black mirror… how real that a one-armed vet has lost his right arm inside the stone… and how touch is not erasing… whether it is a name or a real boy, it brushes him… how earlier, names shimmered on her blouse, but stay as she walks away… brushstroke of red wing.

A good poem cannot be “retold” this way.  In our discussion, we entered the poem as in this memorial, each one feeling its touch.  

 

Mending Wall: Marne started us off with labeling the tone as playful… the surface simplicity, the twists of wisdom… the way Frost navigates “both sides of the fence” as David pointed out… 

both wall builder, and wall denier… how mending a wall, in Spring, takes on a hint of gospel,

with no stone unturned, but also the difficulty of building with stones as loaves…or balls (which makes me think of muskets and what one finds in Vermont fields from Revolutionary days!)…

The word “balance” for repairing is perfect. What do we wall in, out? What is mended or not, by the fixing?  The discussion included the wall that protects a father’s saying, behind which a son might hide.  

 

The Bridge:  Although this was nothe actual poem as one of the 10, but by the same poet, I was glad Emily brought up  that she had listened to him read other poems.  You can hear his soft

Alabama accent in this short clip.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0-z9hhzwhE

Called the United States, of course, a totally different subject, although timely. He prefaces the poem by speaking of our two principles as humans: our wildness and our desire to make things well.  

 

As Jan remarked about the first poem, Facing It, this poem, The Bridge allows us to create quite a complex illusion of reality.  Here the adjective real is important, used in the first lines, leading up to the false name of a real man.  Names… “those fulsome nouns” are indeed “not real” —echoed after the superhero rescue in the line “there is no name for that place…” and even the bridge is “not real”, since it was replaced but a wider bridge.  The school is “air”— what it had been, now a parking lot…. Who is the “you” too far from the valley for it to become “all the way true, although it is not true.”?  We wondered about the feel of a digression about Clyde Maples — although there too, the creek “is not/real, and the valley a valley of words.”

So, in all this “not real” all 120 pounds of Arthur Peavahouse is smart to run from huge tackles?

“unthinking to throw himself into that roiling water and test the reality of his arms and lungs.”

 

What really happened?  Is the third jump to save another child trapped in the car, or is Arthur the one in an unbreakable harness?  What is this country of words where you wonder if “everything you have said or thought was a lie… ”  and the lie that stands for truth.

 

Emily thought of Janis Joplin… https://www.iheart.com/artist/janis-joplin-79631/songs/ode-to-billy-joe-2527220/  (lyrics beneath)

Bobbie Gentry singing the Ode to Billie Joe - Tallahatchie Bridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoMF_mSeWJo

 

Haunting poem.

 

The Oak Cut Down:

Such a contrast to read this short, “morality”  poem.  A tiny tragi-comedy/comi-tragedy poking fun at the mindlessness of people, who never noticed how big, how good the tree— or that it served as home to the chickadee… but how good each now has a bundle of wood!  David was reminded of the short story by George Orwell about shooting an elephant

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/

Thanks to Judith for recommending.

 

Characteristics of Life: 

Camille picked this poem to read at the Democratic National Convention, speaking of the need for environmental and social justice… how economic crisis cannot be separated from climate crisis; calling on us to draw strength from our differences… 

 

A pearl of a poem, with the anaphor : ask me… at first, ask me if I speak and then saying what she would say (although not asked to, but imagining perhaps someone might… which sets us up for the longing at the end).  The set up allows her to paint with beautiful details all the backboneless world we probably have not noticed… and with humor… a little jibe at

the human tendency to be inconsistent, saying one thing today, another tomorrow…

following the dig at our vertebrate human dominance that frowns on “spinelessness”—

(associations legion here…)

 

Is she sarcastic to the you to whom she asks, “What part of your nature drives you?”

So… we house ourselves in cubicles, snails in shells… but I’m in stitches seeing her

 filter, filter, filter.  Now come a few more “punches” — the display version

of ourselves… silent and on the shelf… beautiful, useless — she doesn’t quite say

empty… devoid of any soul, life.  As a woman, I feel her position of “sure, I can play

that part, if that’s the game on the stage”.  You might be interested in this article:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/06/not-finished-yet

 

We ended with the focus on that “candle” that lights the firefly, searching in the dark,

seeking connection, that contrasts so sharply with the you, alone at a table, one chair,

the candle burning.  What is longing?  Where do we feel loss?  

 Wordless does not mean mindless when applied to desire as we search… 

 

This is only a cursory assemblage of remarks.  Please feel free to add!

August 19

Subject to Change:  Marilyn L. Taylor

Transcendentalism: Lucia Perillo

The School Where I studied:  Yehuda Amichai

When the Time is Right: Tammi J. Truax (poet laureate of Portsmouth)

Elegy in Joy [excerpt] : Muriel Ruykeyser

little prayer:  Danez Smith

Rally:  Elizabeth Alexander

Summer Meadow:  Tomas Tranströmer

So… I stumbled on this quote from GK Chesterton and loved how it uplifted my spirits and opened by session by sharing it.

“Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.

Nutshell summary:

Taylor:  If, as Wordsworth argues  the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, then Marilyn Taylor provides it for us in this poem published in Poetry in August 2002.  As poet Barbara Crooker notes, “she mutes her exact rhymes 

with slant and half rhymes, increasing the music, and doubling the delight.

Not only the pleasure to the ear, but to the heart, as the reader identifies with the universal theme of how students grow up and move on; the aging process perhaps as well; and pleasure for the mind, watching how the form, which relies on the same words of a line, by changing position, and particularly in the 4^th stanza, changing the verb and punctuation, also does not “remain the same”.  Most of us concurred that the final stanza presented  more than a few puzzles.  vertical direction, as possible

“grow up, grow taller” or perhaps the ups and downs as innocence travels through experience; Does the delusion of beautiful and young include the flowering personhood we prize in old age?  why blackmail?  We enjoyed headlong

remembering perhaps our own youth.  A meditative invitation on the fleeting nature of and transformative power inherent  life, (and here, I think of the proverbial “the more things change, the more they remain the same” with the

paradoxical  constant of “change” itself).  

 

Perillo: I liked John’s idea that perhaps the professor satirized in this poem could have been the one writing “Subject to Change”.  It softens the overblown parody of the student describing the teacher.  David brought up how often Emerson has been parodied- see illustration here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_eyeball

For the poem, the self-absorbed student, transcends from a personal insufferable past the view of Emerson as insufferable to the person who writes the more confessional final stanza… revealing how it takes time to understand how we’ve been influenced. Perhaps there is a flash of awareness in stanza three, just before quoting the opening stanza of Emerson’s poem, Brahma https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45868/brahma-56d225936127b

If the red slayer think he slays, 

Or if the slain think he is slain, 

They know not well the subtle ways 

I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Perillo knows her literature.  Her metaphor for postmodernists as wolves, where self is dismantled for the sake of text.

The work is hard… I wished the last line had been the penultimate one — “from his yard into my life— remains a mystery”.  

 

Amichai: Changing countries, a different school experience.  We read the poem in three parts, not that any stanza break demanded it.  The school… what is said in the heart… the loving in vain of all “I didn’t learn”, which could be,

all that wasn’t taught, or all that the student was not ready to learn.  We noted the particular details that make 

learning a living “currency” — not just the names and phylems, but shapes, functions, pests, parasites of plants.

From there to the “botany of good and evil” … and the metaphor of windows. Transcendental twinges… as everyday

we are learning, understanding — these open windows to the future you cannot pin and label, this school will yet

allows us to view the past yet continue to grow.

 

Truax.  This is where I found the poem.

 

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2020/08/14/poems-can-comfort-and-inspire-during-covid-so-send-yours-us/3365870001/

Other poems quoted in the NYT article:

To nursing school graduates in Nichinan, Portsmouth’s sister city

As you finished your formal studies

the world has demonstrated

what an enormous responsibility

is being pinned upon you

along with a pretty white cap.

 

and Transitions

Today I find the mask useful

along with sunglasses

to hide my tear-streaked face

not wanting to scare the barista

who has enough to deal with

behind his own mask

 

Even though we thought a line or two missing, we discussed “When the time is right” as a concept… the choice of how to look at the world… the waiting involved… not just with a tomato… the vintage linen… the idea of a gift

you want to send, understanding, perhaps hoping, it will be unwrapped “when the time is right”.  We did not mention the sprinkling of salt or grace.  These same details, found in the poem, speak more deeply to all of this.

 

A recurring theme in the poems:  “The best time to climb a tree was 20 years ago.”  Ah… but the realization of that…

takes a long time to catch up. 

 

Rukeyser:  Her poem is words of nourishment… we noted metaphors, images, assymetry… how beginnings are what we must nourish… how flesh, nourish, blest, are echo together.

 

Danez Smith:  A little prayer.. How we respond to a plea for love and peace will depend on how we “hear” it.

Some felt it needed to be more fervent; some felt it lacking in other ways… the ending line 

 & if not      let it be  not strong enough

 

Alexander:  who penned the Inaugural poem for Obama and speaks of a rally for him in 2008 in Miami, when it was not sure he would win.  We all concurred 2^nd stanza first word should be jog.

12 years later, this poem encourages me still — to listen, dream, hope for a human tilt of we.

 

Tranströmer:  We didn’t really discuss, but had a good feeling . Yes, reality does wear us so thin,

And yes, Tomas, thank you for your refreshing fantasy!

 

And thank you everyone present  — please add comments.