December 1, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable

Another sterling meeting although we still wish a few more were able to join us. The quality of poetry, conversation, repartee and regard for one another continues to amaze.

I urge you to follow the links below and take a thoughtful perusal of the stories. And while you are at it, check out Paul Muldoon’s work. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner and a future nobelist whose profile remains surprisingly low.

Welcome

News and Jabber

Follow this link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/05/emily-dickinsons-singular-scrap-poetry to a New Yorker article about Emily Dickinson’s “Gorgeous Nothings” a title that refers to the scraps of paper found and recently made available that she left. They are interesting as much for their visual artistry as for their poetic features. Among other things they show corrections, changes, choices of words and phrasing both used and rejected.

Here is an image from the collection:

It is only coincidental that this poem may be considered winter-oriented.

Here is the published version of the poem beginning “Glass was the street”

Glass was the Street - in Tinsel Peril (1518) Related Poem Content Details

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Glass was the Street - in Tinsel Peril

Tree and Traveller stood.

Filled was the Air with merry venture

Hearty with Boys the Road.

Shot the lithe Sleds like Shod vibrations

Emphacized and gone

It is the Past’s supreme italic

Makes the Present mean -

Emily Dickinson, “[Glass was the Street - in Tinsel Peril]” from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. Copyright © 1998 by Emily Dickinson. Reprinted by permission of The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

And here is the published version of the other poem appearing on the same envelope. I can only imagine the gratitude of the envelope that bore the two poems. (Not unlike my own for being next to Allen Ginsberg in the index of a book I am in.)

It came his turn to beg—

1500

It came his turn to beg—

The begging for the life

Is different from another Alms

’Tis Penury in Chief—

I scanned his narrow realm

I gave him leave to live

Lest Gratitude revive the snake

Though smuggled his reprieve

Book: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

This link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/books/johnny-cash-the-poet-in-black.html is to another collection of scraps and other things from a newly released book about Johnny Cash. It resembles Emily Dickinson’s book but, being about someone I didn’t consider a poet per se, I would have skipped it except for it having been edited by Paul Muldoon, one of the great living poets.  I include this quotation:

In an interview, Mr. Muldoon put Cash alongside Leonard Cohen, who died on Monday, and Paul Simon as examples of songwriters whose words hold up on their own. Even so, he added, the “pressure per square inch” on lyrics “can be a wee bit lower than in a conventional poem.”

“But that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” he continued. There are occasions when the simple, direct phrase is the one that works.”

Taken together, Mr. Muldoon said, Cash’s poems have a broad sweep.

“You still see the same scenes — love, death, loss, joy, sadness,” Mr. Muldoon said. “The great themes of popular songs, and, indeed, poetry, which we welcome hearing about and making sense of as we go through our lives.”

Go to the links and enjoy the trip.

The Current Assignment

Did anyone find this confusing? My fault. Actually, I wrote a poem but didn’t like it enough and so my own contribution today is one from a few years ago that I resurrected. Not only that but I can’t tell whether it favors Christmas and so I don’t know how to approach the next assignment which is to write a poem expressing toward Christmas the opposite sentiment of the one in the assignment for today.

The Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem about the worst Christmas present you ever received or simply to write another Christmas poem.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, December 15, 2016.

Other Jabber