August 17, 2017

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

News and Jabber

My Papa’s Waltz

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy. 

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself. 

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed 

My right ear scraped a buckle. 

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz" from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.  Copyright 1942 by Heast Magazines, Inc.  Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1961)

I include this as one of my favorite teachable poems. What is it about? I get a lot of people who think it is a somewhat rough but still touching poem, a memory of the father. Others find it to be about overt abuse. I mention it in light of discussions we had last week about what was and was not consciously put into Trish's poem. Despite Roethke's talent he was probably not fully aware of all the nuances and outright overt meanings in this  poem. Any comments? Consider too that when Rotheke first wrote the poem, it was of a girl dancing with her father. Why did he change it in revision?

For a remarkable look at the evolution of the poem, follow this link that details the author's revisions.
http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html. As you read this consider how carefully you choose your own words.

The Current Assignment

The Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem to your father. Pick a substitute of equal importance if you wish.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, September 7, 2017

Other Jabber

August 10, 2017

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

News and Jabber

The NYTimes book review recently published several meaningful articles about poetry. One I find particularly interesting shows drafts of poems by six contemporary poets as they went from original through revision to final form. The notes are very revealing regarding the process. Read the poets' comments with particular care. They show how the poet things about the art, particularly the struggle between the craft and the art. I like this paragraph:

The Map

By Marie Howe

A poem has its own body — it comes into the world and I feel most often like a midwife. And a poem has an unsayable center around which its body grows. The first draft had one or two or three things going on (too talky) but hadn’t found its organic heart, its unsayable necessity. A friend suggested starting with the statement “the failure of love...” Then the map appeared and in the space between the two (the statement and the experience) the poem appeared.

Here is the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/books/review/corral-collins-zhang-poetry-works-in-progress.html

Another article, same issue and same issue, is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/books/review/a-little-book-on-form-robert-hass-american-originality-louise-gluck.html.

Ponder and enjoy.

The Current Assignment

Who did the current assignment? I've done it many times over over the past decades. I guess I'm re-examining the unformulable experiences of love and lovers in an effort to make them formulable. It's interesting to me how to move from intense passion to written craft, a topic referred to so often in the above articles.

The Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem in Skeltonic verse. Here are the rules:
Skeltonic verse
This poetry form is a fun way to introduce rhyme. Some people shy away from rhyme. It conjures up bitter memories of that third grade poetry unit. There comes a time to fight those fears and give it a try again.

The following definition of Skeltonic verse comes via Poetic Bloomings.

“Skeltonic verse is named after the poet John Skelton (1460-1529).   It consists of short rhyming lines that just sort of flow on from one rhyme to the next for however long one chooses.  Skeltonic verse generally averages less than six words per line.  The challenge is to keep short rhymes moving down the page, in an energetic and engaging way.”


“It almost rained today”

It almost rained today
like I almost sneezed last May
my nose in a bouquet
of yellow daffodils
on the window sill;
I stuffed it back in. Still
it almost rained today.
One stray cloud, gray
and rare, too lonely to play
in the rain. It drifted away
down-sky, like down-stream
leaving airy blue between
more airy blue—a dream
for sunbathers and the flood
wounded wrestling with mud.
I’d give a pint of blood
for an ounce of rain
instead I frame
the cloud in my window pane

and continue to complain.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be next week, August 17, 2017.

Other Jabber

Who reads your poems? Whom do you read them to? I show mine to nobody, as a rule.  I ask readers to occasionally read manuscripts for me but my daily work goes largely unread. I am frustrated by this, have always advocated having a someone who can read all your work. There aren't many I trust that much. I have been writing a lot lately, something every day, much of it pretty interesting, and I cannot imagine asking anybody to read so much. In this reader, one should not look so much for critical reading as much as for just an agreement that time was not wasted, or that it was. And IT SHOULD NEVER BE FAMILY!

Also another poet has released a piece on the Grenfell Tower disaster. This includes a rap video featuring some of the residents.  Link is here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/a-poet-who-lived-in-a-tower-next-to-grenfell-has-released-a?utm_term=.mnLGG22Gv#.ny6WWbbWV

And also,

There is a new, apparently good, film made about Emily Dickinson. Check this review from Japan Times (go figure). https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2017/08/09/films/quiet-passion-cynthia-nixon-portrays-poet-emily-dickinson-true-grace/#.WYsjkFGGPcc

And furthermore in my endless search for useful software I find PureText https://stevemiller.net/puretext/. I told you earlier about difficulties with copying and pasting text blocks with different formats and how I worked around it. PureText is a godsend that I now use when putting together my blog posts. Once installed (tiny program), a link rests in your quick launch bar at the bottom of the screen. Highlight text and left-click the PureText icon and paste your now-un-formatted text immediately. It performs the task instantly, replacing the process of highlighting, copying, pasting into Notepad, copying again and pasting again. It's wonderful.