July 7, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable

The meeting was good although we missed a few of our regulars, certainly doing something summer-y or just staying out of the heat. I look forward to seeing those we missed.

1. Welcome
1. It has been a long time.
3. News and Jabber

At the End of Life, a SecretRelated Poem Content Details

BY REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS

Everything measured. A man twists

a tuft of your hair out for no reason

other than you are naked before him

and he is bored with nakedness. Moments

before he was weighing your gallbladder,

and then he was staring at the empty space

where your lungs were. Even dead, we still

say you are an organ donor, as if something

other than taxes outlasts death. Your feet

are regular feet. Two of them, and there is no

mark to suggest you were an expert mathematician,

nothing that suggests that a woman loved

you until you died. From the time your body

was carted before him to the time your

dead body is being sent to the coffin,

every pound is accounted for, except 21 grams.

The man is a praying man and has figured

what it means. He says this is the soul, finally,

after the breath has gone. The soul: less than

$4,000 worth of crack—21 grams—

all that moves you through this world.

This poem first appeared in New England Review.

Source: Poetry (November 2012)

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-decade-after-prison-a-poet-studies-for-the-bar-exam

1. I include the following poem to remind us of the surprising rainbows in surprising places:

I have a wish

that I could see a person

of real royalty

and that he would say

that I should stay

and that I shouldn’t go away.

I have a wish

that I could know

as much as any genius knows.

I would give advice

as my knowledge grows.

I have a wish

that I could hear the birds’ beautiful song

and the river clearly,

the stream that runs way down below,

the birds say that will grow.

I have a wish

that I could be a person of real royalty

that knows as much as any genius knows,

that can hear the birds’ beautiful song

and the river clearly.

I include this poem also to remind us how young we are and how wise children can be. This was written by Brenna Young, ten years old.

4. The Current Assignment
1. Who did it?
2. How did it go?
3. My poem:

On the State of Armament Availability, July 4, 2016

Dear queers,

there will be more

because so many don’t like you.

Another Louisville Slugger,

another chain tying you to the fence,

more drunk laughter leaving.

Dear children,

there will be more

because someone

doesn’t like himself.

Another Bushmaster,

another suicide bomber,

another drone

mercilessly misguided,

another kid with a gun and a dead mother

knocking.

Dear brown person,

there will be more.

More good guys with guns

gunning for you

because someone there is

who cannot abide your vote.

Dear Christian,

there will be more.

Dear Muslim,

there will be more.

Dear Buddhist,

immolate yourself

for there will be more.

Dear Russian,

dear Chechen,

dear Jew,

dear Palestinian,

dear Soldier, universal

seething toward your next victim,

fear not,

there will be more.

Unpublished work Copyright 2016 Emerson Gilmore

4. Sherman Poultney
5. 
   

Morning in Midwest

Who? Who? ….Who? Who?

Who died today?

The mourning doves

ask each other.

Farm tractor accident,

Motorcycle crash on highway,

Holdup at the Jack and Jill,

Meth Lab explosion,

A battered bride,

Hunting blind shot.

Who? Who?

© Sherman Poultney  1 July 2016

JEANNE MEINKE

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth...

—from “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden (1907-1973)”

Aurora, Blacksburg, Columbine, “towns that we believe and die in”: easy as A B C. Charleston, Killeen, Newtown sound as musical as San Bernardino, San Ysidro, and now Orlando. Every time the blood gushes, people turn to poetry, as they should. Poetry’s the emotional history of the world, and what causes more emotion than the slaughter of innocents? It has always been thus. One of our great Biblical stories is about the slaying of the male babies by Herod the Great (the Great!) in Bethlehem; the weeping was great, and the art that followed, such as Pieter Breughel’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” was also great. Statisticians have told us that more poems were written after 9/11 than at any other time in the history of America.

http://www.cltampa.com/news-views/poets-notebook/article/20826407/poets-notebook-when-poetry-isnt-enough

5. The Next Assignment
1. The next assignment is to write a poem based upon a dream. Really get the dream quality of it, the irrational flow of images and events that seem so heavy with meaning yet elude our capturing. Here’s one I wrote some time ago:

Dream Sequence, July 22, 2007

The fat man sat on my lap

and signed his charge slip;

Five dollars for three tee shirts

for his kids.  He was a

traveling salesman,

drove up in a black golf cart,

settled for clothing

because we were out of tomatoes.

We used a lady’s blue hat

to mark the rest room

and were closing up for the day

when the black carts arrived,

all with tourists hunting

for native produce.

Across the street

ships with sails docked

and the fat man marveled at them.

The tourists were bored and didn’t care.

After work my mother pushed

my kids from her lap

and told them to think about

what they had done.

I had never seen her so violent.

Laughing, my sister stole gloves

and shirts from the teams

playing ball in the park.

I never really got to close the stand.

the carts kept coming,

kept coming and I

had a responsibility.

6. Next Meeting
1. The next meeting will be on July 21, 2016
7. Other Notes