In our fourth session we found games played by the young to be an effective background for serious thought. In Sherman Alexie's "At a Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School," the basic contrast is set in the first two lines: "The football field rises/to meet the mesa..." Native boys enjoy a game that is not theirs ("Everyone is the quarterback") and the fathers enjoy "stomping red dust straight down." But one cannot miss the wistful sense of isolation, echoed by the Greek chorus of the eighth-grade girls' track team: "wild horses, wild horses, wild horses."
In considering "Air" by Donald Halpern, we worked to understand "time made simple by the loss of detail." Again a team of young girls underscores, if only by contrast, what is going on. ("Maybe she knew they were there...") Whether of actual life or perhaps cognitive life, this is an arresting poem of loss.
With Elmer we again had the privilege of sharing an experience of college years in Indiana. Congratulations again to Martha on winning first place in the Light Verse category of the Burlington Writers Club contest.
Here are a couple of links for further reading on George Bilgere
:
http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2012/05/george-bilgere.html
http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/02/george_bilgere_americas_greate.html
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