Poets’ Roundtable
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News and Jabber
Interestingly, I came across this poem oblivious to the assignment. It makes me wonder if subconsciously, after working with fire consciously for ten days, I was subliminally predisposed to finding this. This is an operation that I think occurs in poems as we write and read them. The layers of meanings (polysemy) seem to coax us in the direction the poet indicates.
Nigerian Poet Ben Okri Pens A Powerful Eulogy to the Grenfell Tower Victims
06.27.17
by JACQUELINE TRAORÉ
LONDON— Nigerian award-winning poet and novelist Ben Okri, penned a heartfelt poem in memory of the victims of the Grenfell Tower Fire.
The poem vividly captures the grief and anger of the survivors and denounces the underlying causes of what is arguably the biggest preventable tragedy of this year. Okri writes:
Residents of the area call it the crematorium.
It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.
The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.
The poor who believed all that the papers said.
The poor who listened with their fears.
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name.
Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation
From its secret shame. And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.
Watch his impassioned performance below:
Grenfell video
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-definitive-work-on-marianne-moore-and-other-best-poetry-to-read-this-month/2017/06/27/8bb51200-569f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.f441abb4c846
Books
A definitive work on Marianne Moore and other best poetry to read this month
By Elizabeth Lund June 27
“New Collected Poems,” by Marianne Moore (FSG)
New Collected Poems of Marianne Moore (FSG), edited by Heather Cass White, gives readers a fresh perspective on the legacy of Marianne Moore, considered one of America’s most influential modernist poets. Moore, whose awards included a Pulitzer Prize, was hailed for her precise language, penetrating descriptions and keen observations. She was also known for incessantly revising her poems, much to the dismay of editors who tried to create definitive editions of her selected and collected poems. In this new volume, White, a professor at the University of Alabama, presents what she believes to be the best version of Moore’s work, along with copious notes, and various versions of poems that Moore tinkered with over years or even decades. Readers and writers will benefit from seeing how Moore, who died in 1972 at age 84, drastically cut some of her most famous poems, including “The Steeple-Jack” and “The Frigate Pelican” and “An Octopus.” With this book, White has not only given readers an authoritative compendium of Moore’s work but an insightful critique of her writing process. “I think Moore, in later decades of her life, did her readers a lasting, and compounding, disservice by altering and suppressing the writing she published as a younger poet,” White comments.
[Best poetry collections — to inspire, challenge and spark the imagination]
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Monthly book reviews and recommendations.
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“Scribbled in the Dark,” by Charles Simic (ECCO)
Charles Simic, a Pulitzer winner and former U.S. poet laureate, has always challenged and delighted his audience with writing that is beautiful and surreal and forces people to consider the validity of their own perceptions. In Scribbled in the Dark (Ecco), Simic presents short, tightly crafted vignettes filled with a variety of people in oddly mundane settings. Among them are a judge asleep in the courtroom, a person lost in the snow and a young boy watching a stray white cat peer into people’s windows. As with Simic’s previous collection, “The Lunatic,” the poems here convey both a sense of whimsy and a sinister undercurrent, as if to suggest that no moment is completely joy-filled. A cherry pie cooling by a window, for example, is soon marred by the devil, who sticks his finger in it. That duality runs throughout the poems, as the speaker recalls childhood memories, considers world news, the occupation of his native Yugoslavia and becomes increasingly aware of his own and others’ mortality: In the poem “Many a Holy Man,” the speaker describes a man struggling to “make peace with everything/ that can’t be changed,/ understood or ever properly resolved —” and, later on, to “devote his remaining days/ to minding that inner light/ So that it may let him walk without stumbling/ as little by little night overtakes him.”
14
“Tough Luck,” by Todd Boss (NORTON)
Tough Luck (Norton) is the much-anticipated third book by Todd Boss, who is widely regarded as one of the best poets of his generation. His first two collections — “Yellowrocket” and “Pitch” — established his reputation for using brilliant wordplay and portraying the people and landscape of his childhood in Wisconsin with clarity and hard-edged grace. Here, readers will find some familiar themes, as in the first section, which highlights some of the life lessons Boss learned from his parents, hard-working cattle farmers. In “When My Father Says Toughen Up,” Boss explains that “He doesn’t/ say it to berate you, he says it to/ hike you up an inch or two, like/ when he took you by the collar/ when you were little to zip you/ into that boiled wool jacket he/ sent you out to chores with.” Those memories couldn’t prepare the poet for a painful divorce or for his reaction after the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, minutes after he crossed it. Those experiences contribute to the sense of loss and foreboding that permeates the writing. What readers will most appreciate, however, is the speaker’s unflagging determination to endure and to keep moving forward. In “A Hoard of Driftwood,” for instance, he describes the wood as “All dry-weight, drier than stone but thin as air, finer than/ hair and softer than skin — as if despite the unintended sin/ of being broken down, they’d been born again, beauty-strong.”
Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry every month for The Washington Post.
Evening Walk - Poem by Charles Simic
You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late-summer evening
When every one of you is a steep staircase
The night is slowly descending.
The high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
Charles Simic
For summer reading as suggested by the Washington Post.
While these are all great reading, I suggest looking at Charles Simic, one of the few poets I can listen to for longer than fifteen minutes. He is a contemporary and we should be glad of that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-definitive-work-on-marianne-moore-and-other-best-poetry-to-read-this-month/2017/06/27/8bb51200-569f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.f441abb4c846
Books
A definitive work on Marianne Moore and other best poetry to read this month
By Elizabeth Lund June 27
“New Collected Poems,” by Marianne Moore (FSG)
New Collected Poems of Marianne Moore (FSG), edited by Heather Cass White, gives readers a fresh perspective on the legacy of Marianne Moore, considered one of America’s most influential modernist poets. Moore, whose awards included a Pulitzer Prize, was hailed for her precise language, penetrating descriptions and keen observations. She was also known for incessantly revising her poems, much to the dismay of editors who tried to create definitive editions of her selected and collected poems. In this new volume, White, a professor at the University of Alabama, presents what she believes to be the best version of Moore’s work, along with copious notes, and various versions of poems that Moore tinkered with over years or even decades. Readers and writers will benefit from seeing how Moore, who died in 1972 at age 84, drastically cut some of her most famous poems, including “The Steeple-Jack” and “The Frigate Pelican” and “An Octopus.” With this book, White has not only given readers an authoritative compendium of Moore’s work but an insightful critique of her writing process. “I think Moore, in later decades of her life, did her readers a lasting, and compounding, disservice by altering and suppressing the writing she published as a younger poet,” White comments.
[Best poetry collections — to inspire, challenge and spark the imagination]
Book Club newsletter
Monthly book reviews and recommendations.
Sign up
“Scribbled in the Dark,” by Charles Simic (ECCO)
Charles Simic, a Pulitzer winner and former U.S. poet laureate, has always challenged and delighted his audience with writing that is beautiful and surreal and forces people to consider the validity of their own perceptions. In Scribbled in the Dark (Ecco), Simic presents short, tightly crafted vignettes filled with a variety of people in oddly mundane settings. Among them are a judge asleep in the courtroom, a person lost in the snow and a young boy watching a stray white cat peer into people’s windows. As with Simic’s previous collection, “The Lunatic,” the poems here convey both a sense of whimsy and a sinister undercurrent, as if to suggest that no moment is completely joy-filled. A cherry pie cooling by a window, for example, is soon marred by the devil, who sticks his finger in it. That duality runs throughout the poems, as the speaker recalls childhood memories, considers world news, the occupation of his native Yugoslavia and becomes increasingly aware of his own and others’ mortality: In the poem “Many a Holy Man,” the speaker describes a man struggling to “make peace with everything/ that can’t be changed,/ understood or ever properly resolved —” and, later on, to “devote his remaining days/ to minding that inner light/ So that it may let him walk without stumbling/ as little by little night overtakes him.”
14
“Tough Luck,” by Todd Boss (NORTON)
Tough Luck (Norton) is the much-anticipated third book by Todd Boss, who is widely regarded as one of the best poets of his generation. His first two collections — “Yellowrocket” and “Pitch” — established his reputation for using brilliant wordplay and portraying the people and landscape of his childhood in Wisconsin with clarity and hard-edged grace. Here, readers will find some familiar themes, as in the first section, which highlights some of the life lessons Boss learned from his parents, hard-working cattle farmers. In “When My Father Says Toughen Up,” Boss explains that “He doesn’t/ say it to berate you, he says it to/ hike you up an inch or two, like/ when he took you by the collar/ when you were little to zip you/ into that boiled wool jacket he/ sent you out to chores with.” Those memories couldn’t prepare the poet for a painful divorce or for his reaction after the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, minutes after he crossed it. Those experiences contribute to the sense of loss and foreboding that permeates the writing. What readers will most appreciate, however, is the speaker’s unflagging determination to endure and to keep moving forward. In “A Hoard of Driftwood,” for instance, he describes the wood as “All dry-weight, drier than stone but thin as air, finer than/ hair and softer than skin — as if despite the unintended sin/ of being broken down, they’d been born again, beauty-strong.”
Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry every month for The Washington Post.
Evening Walk - Poem by Charles Simic
You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late-summer evening
When every one of you is a steep staircase
The night is slowly descending.
The high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
Charles Simic
Comments
Definition of imbricate
- : lying lapped over each other in regular order imbricate scales
- I like the thought of using this regarding words, meanings in poetry
noun 1.
a condition in which a single word, phrase, or concept has more than one meaning or connotation.
Polysemy (/pəˈlɪsᵻmi/ or /ˈpɒlᵻsiːmi/; from Greek: πολυ-, poly-, "many" and σῆμα, sêma, "sign") is the capacity for a sign (such as a word, phrase, or symbol) to have multiple meanings (that is, multiple semes or sememes and thus multiple senses), usually related by contiguity of meaning within a semantic field.
The Current Assignment
Have someone else read the poem first.
I lost control of this assignment and ended up writing ten poems about fire in ten days. It was fun, actually. I also, as indicated above, made the assignment based upon a list of writing prompts I was reading, not (at least consciously) in light of the Grenfell Towers tragedy although I will be the first to say that I rely on the hidden vectors that guide my writing. At any rate, I came up with a variety of takes, some good, some bad, but all interesting.
I lost control of this assignment and ended up writing ten poems about fire in ten days. It was fun, actually. I also, as indicated above, made the assignment based upon a list of writing prompts I was reading, not (at least consciously) in light of the Grenfell Towers tragedy although I will be the first to say that I rely on the hidden vectors that guide my writing. At any rate, I came up with a variety of takes, some good, some bad, but all interesting.
The Next Assignment
"Tell me again how ..." Write a poem using this phrase anywhere in the poem
The Next Meeting
Other Jabber
Regarding the slaughter of pigs, I found first the review (second link below) and then the documentary itself, first link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EctUYzvUYvI It's quite fascinating if you stick to it.
And check out this link to an article I found very interesting:
It's about killing pigs but don't let that put you off. You see, it's a film review about a movie about killing pigs. It's well-written and may make you want to see the movie. An excerpt:
"But Trump doesn’t come into it. George Orwell does, with Ralph Steadman’s illustrations. Plus Lord of the Flies (“Kill the pig! Cut its throat!”), Margaret Atwood and Christopher Hitchens. Angus Macqueen’s thoughtful, beautiful, poetic, genuinely original film trots about in time and place. Through literature and art, as well as history and science."
Grammarly Check out this spell checker and editor. I like it a lot although it removes a lot of formatting. It checks for grammar and typograpical issues too.
When I was twelve, I entered a novitiate. The school was also a farm. There were the usual animals. Whenever cook needed meat for the table, he would have a slaughtering of the animal. And so we were all witnesses to the slaughtering of pigs, cows, etc. We were tutored in everything from the blow or bleeding and evisceration.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher I had an outdoor education program wherein we took a group of students to a wilderness camp. Once, I spoke to a nearby farmer who had cows and asked if we could witness, as a group, the slaughtering. And so we did.
As a result a group of parents complained to the board of education about their children, high school seniors, who had been subjected to this inhumane exhibit. I heard about it but never reprimanded. Although, I felt the irony.
Would you read and comment? I spent yesterday afternoon and evening, and again third morning, revising. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteTell me again how I was born and how you know this.
Well, as this is a story, plain and simple,
I will tell you the story of who, what, when, and why.
You were born to a French-Canadian couple
Who lived in a textile mill town in the State of Maine.
They already had had fourteen children.
Four had died from influenza, in all likelihood.
They might have been your sisters, had they lived.
Your dad and mum decided to do something drastic.
You were born in a dangerous time, at home.
Your daddy helped your mommy to care for you.
But then, when she became blind with cataracts,
They decided, reluctantly, to leave you at the church door.
Do not cry, for they have done the crying for you.
Don’t you know that your Sisters, Rose-Marie and Germaine
Cared for you in their orphanage until you were of age?
Then, an honest man in need of a wife took you home.
* * *
Now you can tell your own story of what happened.
Your parents died years ago, already, as you served
As an indentured servant, we suppose, having read reports,
And this you confirm in your introductory letter.
Eugénie, your oldest sister, took you in when you arrived home
Carrying an old, cloth satchel with your prized possessions.
Mother had never talked about you, to our surprise.
An unknown to the family for all of seventy-four years.
We heard, that following the death of your patron, his children
Threw you out of the house, having always remembered
That you were never their mother: just the animus to remember.
Those you had reared as yours turned you out the door
“Mother, tell me again how I was born?” Said I, having heard
The story, of having been a colicky baby visited by a faith healer.
“And, Mom, who was she?” “A toddler who had never been told,”
Said mother to the mirror, while adjusting a flying saucer hat.
Comments on notes: I always enjoyed Moore whatever version of a poem I read of hers. I never knew what version I happened to be reading. It was unlikely, that I would have read and thought more [sorry] of a poem upon reading it for the first time, and liking it. G
ReplyDeleteI also admire your many years of thoughtful reading and careful reflection on those you poets and poems you admire. I don't know when you decided on a style of your own or where the determining factor came from. But it has worked well fort you because, it seems to me, and you have said, that you go through many revisions--even so, your poems may never be finished.
ReplyDelete