January 11, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

We'll meet both today and next Thursday so I'll make the assignment short, or maybe not.

News and Jabber

The last couple of meetings have, while fun, devolved into too many competing conversations, sometimes at the expense of whoever was trying to read. I counted twice when we had three distinct conversations going on around the table at the same time, all while someone was waiting to read. Let's return to a more attentive respect to the reader and the poem. We'll all be the better for it. I take this new year moment to remind you too of the words of my good friend, former Director of The Robert Frost Center for the Performing Arts, Don Sheehan, that when the choice is between intelligence and compassion, choose compassion and the result will be a higher intelligence. I also remind myself and you that we critique poems, not poets. 

Don remains one of the few saintly men and women I have been privileged to know. This picture is from a review of a collection of his essays. It is a religious work but I urge you to check out the review since the language in it is the very language this wonderful, gentle man used when he spoke. 

Here is the link: http://myocn.net/grace-incorruption-selected-essays-donald-sheehan-orthodox-faith-poetics/

 A quotation from the article:  “...the ruining oppositions of actual experience are held within the musical disciplines of lyric art...”  Don believed this simply, beautifully and lived accordingly.

The Current Assignment

This assignment was somewhat of a revelation to me, something I'll get to when we read. I suspect many of you had fun with it. I didn't so much have fun as I made a discovery-- a re-discovery really-- as a by-product of the project. 

DaCosta Muckenfuss...I still await a second response from him on Facebook. He has confirmed that he did basic training in 1968 at Fort Jackson  so  I'm certain I have found him.

The Next Assignment

Write a Shadorma:

I recently discovered a poetic form called shadorma (thanks to P.J. Nights via Tammy Trendle) that I had no record of in my two poetic form handbooks [kind of like my recent posting about hay(na)ku]. Shadorma is a Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines respectively. Simple as that.

Also, you can link multiple shadorma (shadormas? shadormae?) like in my example below:

“Miss Shadorma”

She throws birds
at the school children
on playgrounds
made of steel
who run intense spirals to
the chain-link fencing.

Sad teachers
watch as they spiral
into air
like reverse
helicopter seeds searching
for their maple trees.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be one week from today on January 18, 2018.

Other Jabber

Although Richard Wilbur died in October, 2017, and I spoke of him then and included a remembrance from some other source, in a recent (January 10, 2018) edition, The Times of London printed an excellent piece on him that has brought me to reconsider my somewhat cool attitude toward his writing. One of the quotes I like is:

"Wilbur’s Walking to Sleep opens thus:

As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,

Or a general raises his hand and is given the field-glasses,

Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.

Something will come to you."

This is how I write. 

Here is a link to the article:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obituary-richard-wilbur-zd8p6klb2

And, consider this poem:

First Snow in Alsace

The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.

Several things to note about the poem:
Rhyme scheme, very tight.
The almost drowsy texture against the fury of war
The age of the soldier-- it is not given but we know him to be young
The presence of the children in a war zone, both as civilians and soldiers
The presence of beauty draped over the scene
"Absolute snow" implying absolution
The presence of white, a heavenly cover
The chilling feel when the poem is done.
The contrast between the last line and the 14th and 15th lines, which come at the center of the poem.