March 3, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable

1. Welcome
2. News and Jabber
1. Reading on March 31, 2016
1. Who will attend
2. I want to focus some on the process of writing
3. Regarding how to write a poem

Interview with Howard Levy

Note especially the following:

HL

That is hard because I don’t really have one. I usually begin writing by reading poetry, I find I need that to begin to shift how I am thinking about language. And some days, a line or a series of lines will come to me. I write them down, and in writing them, I seem to see whether or not they have any real life to them. Mostly, they don’t, but if they do, I just keep going. I try not to censor anything until I have maybe half a page and then I start to see if I can make a poem. Most of the early stuff goes and new directions start to sprout. It takes, normally, for a rather short poem, about 3 or 4 months for me to have something that might survive.

HL

The biggest challenge is silence, the willingness of the self, myself, to hide in the tundra. What I love and hate most is the same thing – the unbelievably hard work of doing this. I am jealous of friends that are painters and dancers, whose work makes them move. I sit in front of the white paper or the white screen of the computer (when revising), I sit in absolute silence since I am concentrating so much on the music of the line, and I try to pull stuff out of me. That is hard and hateful, but when I do get something, particularly an image that is utterly new, I am so at the top of the world.

HL

Nope, no rituals. When I am really caught in a poem, I work on it almost continuously. On the subway on the way to work is one of my favorite times. I think the rhythm of the train helps me and you are never more in your own box when you are on a crowded subway.

The Steam of Tea

a pot of tea

that usual restaurant white ceramic

with the single restrained dark green equator

in the spread yellow sunlight

of the February morning

centers the table with its heat

as she remembers and tells him

of her father, a pilot,

taking her at twelve to Paris

how up on the Trocadero

in the plaza of the Musee De L’Homme

looking down on the Eiffel Tower

he suddenly took her wrists

twirled her so fast

that she became a straight line out

and she learned

what he wanted her to learn:

her complete freedom in the air

and how that brought her

to a sumptuous freedom on the ground.

Across the table, he listens to her

and looks behind her

out the window at the rusted

railroad bridge over the river

that drains, just here, into the bay.

This is the ramshackle part of town

old pilings, dilapidated docks,

the broken hulk of a ferry

that gives weight

to his falling in love in February.

4. Poems and the movies

Hollywood has used a lot of poems and I’ll leave it to  you to figure out what they are since there are many online references to such. In looking for poems by movie stars I found at oprah.com an item in which various stars cited poems that they found personally arresting and the selections and comments were most interesting. Click this link. Here is Steven Spielberg’s selection:

For the Artist at the Start of Day

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;

Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,

Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse

That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,

When the gift within you slips clear

Of the sticky web of the personal

With its hurt and its hauntings,

And fixed fortress corners,

A Morning when you become a pure vessel

For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know

The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,

And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all

The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields

And something original begins

To stir toward your senses

And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth

In a clean line of form,

That claims from time

A rhythm not yet heard,

That calls space to

A different shape.

May it be its own force field

And dwell uniquely

Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye

By how deftly it fits

About its secret loss.

–John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Check out this one too: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Study-of-the-Object-by-Zbigniew-Herbert

I also found this wonderful poem by Auden, but not at the above site.

Funeral Blues

W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

5. The Current Assignment
1. Did you write something funny?

A sample from Robert Frost

Canis Major

by Robert Frost

The great Overdog

That heavenly beast

With a star in one eye

Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright

All the way to the west

And never once drops

On his forefeet to rest.

I'm a poor underdog,

But to-night I will bark

With the great Overdog

That romps through the dark.

2. The Next Assignment
1. The exercise will be a bio-poem. Now, I hate the term because the googlers will find some really watered-down information about such poems. The key for me in this process is to use the bio-poem lens to get into the writing process itself rather than any interest I have in bio-poems per se. Particularly at our respective positions in life, self-evaluation (and self-valuation), contextualizing our existence grows in importance and it is this depth of concern I want to encourage in our  poems.

A biopoem typically includes the following information:

Adjectives that you would use to describe yourself.

Relationships in your life (e.g. friend, brother, daughter)

Things you love.

Important memories

Fears

Accomplishments.

Hopes or wishes.

Home (location)

Begin with taking a sheet or two or three of paper and thinking about all the items listed above  that may be included. Censor nothing. Just jot down everything that comes to mind as it comes to mind. After 20-30 minutes of this look at your notes and see what patterns seem to emerge, what elements look like they could come together to make a decent poem. Only then begin writing.

2. Next Meeting
1. March 17, 2016
1. This will be our rehearsal for the reading, about 30 minutes, no more
3. Other Notes