In our second session for Winter 2015 we read poems by Pulitzer Winners Rae Armantrout (2010) and Natasha Trethewey (2007). The spare lines and stanzas of "Prayers" offered many contrasts and opportunities for interpretation (we took seriously the responsibility the "Language Poets" give us to "bring meaning out of a poem"): between praying and asking, between the personal and the global, between verbal shots and real shots--"the fear/that all this/ will end./The fear/that it won't."
Trethewey's poem is based on the experience of her maternal grandmother in Mississippi in 1937. We see the details of time and place through specific choice of words (e.g., Octagon soap), but are left with a much broader theme: "dandelion spores, each one/a wish for something better."
This Thursday we will consider airports and air travel as metaphor, again with poems of descending difficulty.
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