Poets’ Roundtable
The meetings continue to be successful although without as many attendees as we would prefer. We have heard from a couple who are unable to attend and are going to reach out to others. Nonetheless, we are writing some pretty good stuff. The quality of the poetry is rising and the artistry is evolving nicely.
Welcome
Welcome to our Seasonal Affective Disorder reclamation meeting. Hopefully you have all made it through the noel with, if not joy, at least health and equanimity. My own season was good despite a New Year's dinner absent of guests and a hit-and-run driver who did a thousand dollars of damage to my side-view mirror. Best Christmas I’ve had in years.
Bob Reed-- I ran into him at Stop and Shop. He is okay, devoting his energy to a screenplay. He acknowledges that since his heart problems in the summer he is moving much more slowly than he used to and finds this challenging to accept.
News and Jabber
From an editorial in USA Today:
“2016 was also a tough year for those who believed in the power of everlasting love. America's celebrity royalty, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, finally called it quits after 12 years as a couple. Pitt was once engaged to noted scientist Gwyneth Paltrow, who this year declared that negative words and sounds can hurt water's feelings. Paltrow was following the lead of Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto, who believed that shouting at rice can spoil it.
Following the election, traditional media outlets blamed Trump's victory on the spread of "fake news." As if visited by the gods of irony, after printing a lengthy piece exposing the nefarious reach of such disinformation, The Washington Post issued a correction admitting their article had, in fact, relied on information from suspect news sources.
Yet the greatest threat to humanity's collective intelligence in 2016 happened to be the spread of actual news. In Wisconsin, "Pastafarians" gained the right to wear colanders on their heads in their driver's' license photos. In Washington, three people sued Chipotle over the restaurant chain's labeling of a 300-calorie burrito, claiming it made them "excessively full" (perhaps because it may contain more than 300 calories). In September, a 21-year old Australian man was bitten on his penis by a poisonous spider — for the second time.
In August, an 18-year old correctional center escapee contacted police on the department's Facebook page to request they use a better photo of her in their "wanted" alerts; she was quickly captured. In November, the New York Review of Books called the Beach Boys' song catalog "problematic" because their songs relied heavily on "beach privilege." Yet society saved its most biting criticism for those who thought "Lady Ghostbusters" was pretty good.
It's possible that the greatest subtraction of brainpower will be felt with the passing of genius over the year. The deaths of Scalia, David Bowie, John Glenn, Pat Summitt, Muhammad Ali and countless others have left a permanent hole that can't be filled. Sadly, when God buys a ticket to a personal Prince show, humanity is left significantly less sexy.
It is unclear whether this golden era of anti-knowledge will continue unabated. Perhaps an optimist would look at 2016 and claim we did learn something. Much like the realization that you're stupid almost makes you smarter, we can only hope learning that we don't know anything will be a valuable lesson in 2017.”
Christian Schneider is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow him on Twitter @schneider_cm
Read the entire article here:
Another article of interest, to me anyway, since I’m always looking for software of interest to writers, preferably freeware as well as being interested in how others write:
There is some garbage you’ll have to swim through in order to get to what is still ripe but it’s worth it.
For the second meeting in a row I bring a movie recently discovered. The last time it was “Neruda.” This time it is “Paterson” which is about a bus driver who is also a poet. The review I read is in Vox, online edition. The movie follows Paterson through a week in his life. The connections of the man’s name, the town he lives in (Paterson) and the poet William Carlos Williams who wrote several volumes of poems entitled “Paterson” is not an accident. Nor it the fact that the poems Paterson writes in the movie were written by the poet Ron Padgett. The link will take you to a bio of him and a video of him talking about his poetic beginnings. Worth watching. Here is a poem.
Poem
BY RON PADGETT
I’m in the house.
It’s nice out: warm
sun on cold snow.
First day of spring
or last of winter.
My legs run down
the stairs and out
the door, my top
half here typing
Getting back to the movie, I’m looking forward to it. It opened December 26, I don’t yet know where.
The Current Assignment
Who did it? I found that I was not able to address a specific person. Rather, I found myself addressing my usual audience, which is to say a group of people from various places I have been. This includes vague images of college roommates and professors, people I have worked with, people I knew at the Leesburg Senior Center and people I know here. So you are all in a way and with many others addressed by not only this poem but by all I write. Nonetheless, as Gerard, I had a good season, writin-wise.
The Next Assignment
The next assignment is to go to the dictionary and find five new words, words that are new to you and use them in a poem. The five must include at least one noun, one adjective and one verb.
The Next Meeting
The next meeting will be in two weeks-- January 19, 2017.
Other Jabber
I will be in touch with the Westport Senior Center this coming week about promoting ourselves to them to see if there is some interest in any of their members coming here. Also, let’s get serious here about putting our poems out in ways similar to what Gerard has suggested. I’m sure we can get others interested in joining us. Once the see us, we usually keep them.
1-6-2017
ReplyDeleteGérard Coulombe
Out for the Evening
Longhaired, long-legged college girls,
In their late teens, wearing jeggings,
Enter a South Norwalk Music Bar,
Slip out of their white, moon cut, shawls,
As they suck on striped accordion straws.
Each heads for a spot at the bar;
Their proud chests spangled in bling
From their grandmothers’ jewelry boxes,
Order tall Margueritas, which they toy-sip
While picking a better spot along the bar.
As the evening upcycles toward midnight,
The bar’s groove returns to its evening’s mood;
The bravest of them all, is helped up
To the bar’s counter where, full of crunk style,
She dances and writhes to yipes of the crowd.
vocab:
DeleteFive New Words from Dictionary: adjective, noun, verb….
*crunk -- adj. – full of energy
*jeggings – noun – tight fitting stretch trousers on women
*bling – noun – expensive, ostentatious jewelry
*upcycle – verb – reuse discarded objects or materials
*yipes - noun - expression of surprise
Reply:
ReplyDeleteThis is Biff Burns saying this is Biff Burns signing off. (Can anybody tell me where that came from?)
Go To: Wikipedia: Bob and Ray -- Source The New Yorker, “Looking Back at Bob and Ray, March 26, 2013, first paragraph.
By Joshua Rothman,
RE:
“…they impersonated various characters, like the incompetent journalist Wally Ballou, the food expert Mary McGoon, who had a recipe for “frozen-marshmallow and ginger-ale salad,” and the [incompetent] sportscaster Biff Burns, who signed off by saying, “This is Biff Burns saying this is Biff Burns saying goodnight.” G.
ReplyDeleteGérard Coulombe
1-14-2017
On Reading Donald Hall
I loved Maine, but I could not live there.
When I first came upon Donald Hall
Late in my life as a poet apprentice
I realized that reading Hall was a call
To develop my own, useful appendix
Of native observations and recollections.
Mine would have been a different
Compilation of feelings regarding
My appreciation for strong women
In a rolling county with an ambient
Ruralness and occasional, rewarding,
Scenes such as those on curving country
Roads, off any cross-county highway
Where all one sees, in the summertime,
Are green or plowed fields at alternate
Stages of usage relying upon rotation.
Perhaps, I should have had the luck
To meet a she poet when I was struck
By the idea of poetry and poet lover,
Not just for the acts of love as writer-
Creator, but for the erotic pleasure
Of sensing through skin the live culture
Of cumulatively living the poetry together.
Gerard,
ReplyDeleteThat final stanza is a knockout.
Emerson