Kooser, Koertge Yield Genuine Insights

In our fourth session we considered two poems chosen by Billy Collins for the Library of Congress' online collection Poetry 180. In Ted Kooser's "After Years" we found genuine insights that are more than "small,"  regarding loss and time and the causes and impacts of things that go barely noticed. Collins describes "After Years" as "a love poem in which the poet's imagination flies far from his own experience."  One further thought:  I think there's a definite connection between the falling of the ancient oak and the old women scattering corn. 

Another piece of information about Ron Koertge that supports the impression of him that comes through in "Do You Have Any Advice..." One of his books is a novel written in free verse, narrated by a 14-year-old, titled Shakespeare Bats Clean-Up.

Next week we will see how two poets draw the work of visual artists. For this you may need to be "dutifully at your desks."

Link to Poetry 180: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-home.html
In Poetry 180 you will find poems by Jane Kenyon, Kay Ryan, Natasha Trethewey, Franz Wright, Debora Greger, Mary Oliver, Thomas Lux, Sharon Olds, Donald Justice, Linda Pastan, Mark Irwin, Eavan Boland, Steve Kowit and many others.

Link to Ron Koertge: http://ronkoertge.com/

Hirschfield Poems Embody Mindfulness

From morning unlocking the lake to the turning of doorknobs, one year into the next, Jane Hirschfield's poems caused us to focus on "the magnification of being."  We noted the importance of Buddhist teachings in the poet's life and work, but should also keep in mind the following observations:

"While many reviews mention, even make central, Hirschfield's Buddhism as the prevailing filter of her work, Hirschfield has expressed frustration in multiple interviews. 'I always feel a slight dismay if I am called a Zen poet for being so labeled. I am not. I am a human poet, that's all.'"

We also enjoyed a poem by Helen Deutsch which Pat had brought to our attention, and Martha's poignant "The Road Not Taken."

Next we will look at two poems from the online collection "Poetry 180," put together by Billy Collins.

We Hobble Off, Pondering Zeno

In our second session on May 2, we saw again how Billy Collins can weave serious issues into an entertaining narrative. Just as we compare the Cornish hen and the trout amandine, we note the differences between an abstract philosophical/mathematical proposition with "the world where things do arrive."  The tone of the poem shifts several times, from the satiric setting of the scene in the restaurant, to the tragic circumstances of St. Sebastian and the wife of William Burroughs; then, in the world "where people get where the are going," to the loved one arriving in your arms--but then back to Sebastian. Among many good points offered in our discussion was the contrast between things that may happen and things that do happen. Below is a link to the various artistic representations of St. Sebastian, including the one that is said to resemble "a hedgehog bristling with quills." In using the word hagiographer, the narrator reminds us that he is a college professor as well as an ironic observer. I think I'll have the trout.

We puzzled over Terese Svoboda's "Neighborhood Watch," noting from the outset clever word play ("a weather of sweaters mostly moth-woven...").We were left with a picture of a narrator  who is lonely, who describes an urban setting with perverse images of the everydayness of the world we live in--as one person put it, a poem "of thanksgiving and complaint." And maybe just a bit of hope at the end: Boot it up.

Dave began our session with an inventive collection of everyday sayings that led nicely into Collins and Svoboda. Elmer provided us with a very different setting and tone, another sensitive evoking of a Midwest boyhood. Notice that the poet does not have to say 'this happened in Indiana in about 1930'. He accomplishes that with a single word: horehound.

Next week we will explore two poems by Jane Hirschfield, a poet thought to be influenced by Buddhism. She says, "I always feel a slight dismay if I am called a Zen poet. I am not. I am a human poet."

Link to images of St. Sebastian:
https://www.google.com/search?q=St+Sebastian&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=vMaDUdr9LZTm8QTo9IG4BA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=800&bih=509

Spring Term Begins with Laureate

The Shepherd's Center Poetry Group began the Spring Term with a series of "bittersweet, conflicted" poems about fathers, perhaps flawed, but nonetheless loved. We examined "Elegy for my father" by current U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, as well as Harvey Shapiro's "The Generations." Martha had introduced Harvey Shapiro to us in the Winter Term and at my request read again the poem she wrote on learning of his death. More reading on Tretheway and Shapiro below.

Next week we will consider some verbal pyrotechnics: first, a Billy Collins poem, an entertaining narrative involving history, philosophy, social commentary, and perhaps a bit more. Then, of Terese Svoboda's "Neighborhood Watch,"  I'll say simply watch the pyrotechnics.

For further reading:

Tretheway: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/how-poet-laureate-natasha-trethewey-wrote-her-fathers-elegy/261126/

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_02_012353.php

Shapiro: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/books/harvey-shapiro-poet-of-new-york-and-beyond-dies-at-88.html?_r=0

We conclude with Apocalyptic Images, A Terse Summation

In our concluding session, we considered the apocalyptic, cinematic imagery of Nicholas Christopher's "The Graveyard Shift" (which appeared in The New Yorker March 19, 2007) and John Hollander's terse, perfectly framed meditation on writing.

"The Graveyard Shift" examines the role of the functionary who is complicit in terrible things, ending on a note of a little hope, or perhaps none at all. Christopher may have in mind a larger metaphor, the place of the individual who either will or will not go along with society's program. Finally, we considered, as we always do, the personal level: Christopher's father had worked on the Manhattan Project.

Hollander suggests that our fidgeting with the "worry beads of words" is what defines the poet's task: as Dave aptly reminded us, the right words in the right order.

In Martha's poem the antiheroine misjudges the pitch and crashes again, unlike Sisyphus, sentenced only by her own actions. We agreed that the five-line stanzas make it a more complex and compelling poem.

The visitor to the art museum has greatly enjoyed our six weeks together. I hope we can say, with Melanie Rehak, "here,/I was here and I knew it." For those so inclined, we will reconvene on Thursday, April 25, at 10:45 a.m. at First Baptist Church on West Friendly Avenue in Greensboro.

Songs of Self and Perception Highlight Fourth Week

This week we looked into two poems that offered challenges and opportunities for insight and interpretation.

In Elizabeth Macklin's "Three Views of a Woman Inhaling," we were dazzled by images of sound, sight and small as we pondered "the mysteries," which. we concluded, referred to the wonder and necessity of sensory perception. I found an interesting critical appreciation of Macklin's work:

Elizabeth Macklin is a poet of the city. Her subjects are everywhere: inside apartment houses and alongside towering buildings, on streets and sidewalks, or beneath them, at the water's edge and in the changing heavens. Here the large questions are posed, the small joys celebrated. 'Here a loving sky's come out of a deep clear blue.' From beginning to end, in her able hands, through her painterly eye (Italics mine) and rich vision, the odd scraps of urban life are converted into a sort of Platonic dialogue of fruitful enigmas, paradoxes and playful epiphanies."

Melanie Rehak's poem held for some a deeper resonance, a love poem of a sort, certainly a carpe diem poem--reminding her and us to "seize the day"--balancing the seasons of the "sweet green park" with the individual who longs for the near-misses of her life. The trees, "certain their time has come," are aware that they are part of a perpetual cycle (their "delicate arrogance") and we have only once shot. Or is there more than that?

Regarding the title and subtitle: Clear enough why these are appropriate musings for a birthday. Modernism refers, in part, to a movement in literature and the arts following World War I that challenged the traditions and assumptions of the past--poets like Pound and Eliot; novels such as James Joyce's Ulysses; Picasso, Dali and Duchamp in art; and the composer Stravinsky are all examples. You see the phrase "the modernist impulse" in book titles, such as The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, and The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry. So how Rehak sees 'the modernist impulse' applying to her life and narrative is still not completely clear, and may even be used ironically.

In Kathy's poem--Walt Whitman on Facebook--there is a layer of social commentary ("aisles of tuna, paper towels), but beneath that, phrased mostly as questions, a tender evoking of what is truly important.

Remember that we will not meet on Thursday, February 21. For our last session on February 28, please note two corrections to the text, in "At the Art Museum": in the sixth line, tips should read tops, and the second line in the last stanza should read "...in the Rodin courtyard."

Great Kindness in Poems of Fathers and Daughters

The poems of fathers and daughters we read this morning held a sense of warmth and caring—a favorite line by Howard Nemerov says, “May great kindness come of it in the end.”

In Dan Masterson’s poem we see a father preparing his child (maybe nine or ten)for what will come, strong images of things heard and seen. We puzzled over the last two stanzas, and conclude that the pronouns they and them refer to the rainbows, the term the little girl uses to describe the halos of light she sees around objects, a sign that things are getting worse. The parents had meant to explain this in advance. But they would be there nonetheless. “She wonders if we can see them (that is, the way she sees them)…and we say/we do.”

Note the power of the two lines with just two words: “And sit” in the second stanza and “we do.” What is most poignant is not just the fact but the process of losing vision.

And Emma was right—it is the kitchen lamp, not camp.

It is possible the child suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, an inexorable disease over a long period of time.

We meet a different kind of loving and likeable family in “Fish Fry Daughter.” Here “the double knot of father and daughter” includes “haddock-scented hands.” Even the sub-plots of who said what to whom and why have a cheerful tone. The wise daughter knows that a father has many obligations.

We also felt warmth and kindness in the poems of two other wise daughters, Cynthia and Kathy. Memory is often the beginning of a poem, but we saw here how care in selecting and arranging the details is what makes memory into poetry.

Next week we will continue to observe sensory perception in Elizabeth Macklin’s “Three Views.” I suggested the views are of the same person. You may read it differently—we’ll discuss next week.

Links:

Articles about Dan Masterson

http://nyack.patch.com/articles/masterson-teaches-poetry-life-at-rcc

http://rockland.lohudblogs.com/2011/06/01/ten-plus-two-things-poet-dan-masterson/

More poems by Dan Masterson

http://capa.conncoll.edu/masterson.onearth.html

More poems by Sara Ries

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM8fOtov0uY

:

Articles about Sara Ries

http://www.tleavesbooks.com/ries.htm

http://www.examiner.com/article/buffalo-books-sara-ries-on-poetry-at-the-diner