Sunday, June 8, 2014

Extra Session Features Festive Luncheon

In our extra session on June 5, we enjoyed an excellent luncheon, courtesy of the Penny Byrn retirement community, and good discussion of poems by Laura Kasischke, Janet Warman and others.

In "Hospital Parking Lot, April" we found a haunting and complex interweaving of images, the world of nature and the sad world of hospitals, but winding up in the "Parking Lot of the Sun." "Our Father's War" seemed appropriate to the anniversary of D-Day.

Our annual "Shepherd's Center Poetry Anthology" will appear in September or October. Thanks again for sharing your talent and insight with the group. We expect to reconvene in January 2015.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Journeys of Place and Time in Session #6

In our last regular session of the term, we saw two poets use detail and image to open new worlds for us. Janet Warman's "Gaffney, South Carolina" tells the story of that painted water tower you see driving along I-85 toward Atlanta and how the peach economy came to that part of the world. Knowing the :"inside story" behind all this helped us enjoy a warm and kind poem.

Affection is also what Toi Derricotte feels for Julia in "Weekend Guests from Chicago, 1945," a celebration of the success of an African-American family ("the clunky music/of a pound of real gold charms....shoes soft as old money..."). A poem rich in physical detail hints at contrasts through juxtaposition ("an apron over a French cotton dress"), and we puzzled some over the role of Marilyn Monroe in the final stanza.

We will gather this Thursday at Penny Byrn in High Point. Again we appreciate the hospitality of Penny Byrn in hosting us, and thank Lee, Barb, Carol and Elmer for arranging it. We will look an another poem by Janet Warman, and "Hospital Parking Lot, April," by a poet highly recommended by the critic Stephen Burt, whose "Flooded Meadow" we read earlier in the spring.