Poets’ Roundtable
Welcome
Ed will not be with us today. I don't think he sent me a poem.
News and Jabber
I started this section with "another good poet, unknown to me, dies." This led me to Paula Meehan and then to Carolyn Kizer. I had never heard of Macdara, Meehan or Kizer just as I had never heard of poets I discovered and mentioned in the last couple of blog posts. I guess my point is that there are a lot of good poets; poetry is alive and well. And undiscovered. Given the number of ways to get published nowadays, there is also a lot of bad poetry, too much of it discovered.
The following link goes to an article in the Irish Times about Macdara Woods that gives more information about him than his Wikipedia listing.
Macdara Woods
WHEN ALL THIS IS OVER . . .
After all the heads have rolled
and the young insurgents put up against the wall
by the firing squads
when the puppet masters
have taken their seats in the boardroom
and the bombardiers are sipping drinks
with the chiefs of police
when the journalists change sides again
and the commentators
redefine what they meant in the first place
and the judges sell their shares
in revolutionary understanding
and the clergy decide
that forgiveness was always forgiven
and educators rediscover
the meaning behind the meaningless
when poets grow tired
of too long battling futility
when arrogant financiers
have poisoned all the blood banks
and the drug companies
have rendered us venomous
unfit for social consumption
when we see that things have returned again to how they are
we want to believe
that the ruthless men in the big black cars
are lonely as sin
behind their bullet proof glass
and that it means something
that they may have doubts
in the middle of the night like we have
only worse
we pray
because maybe they can do something about it
before the eagle
stoops and tears their liver out
© 2013, Macdara Woods
From: Irish Times, 2013
Paula Meehan
Paula Meehan is an Irish poet and playwright. Born in Dublin in 1955, Meehan studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Eastern Washington University.[1]
Paula Meehan was born in Dublin in 1955, the eldest of six children. She started school at St. Elizabeth's in Kingston upon Thames, England, where her parents had travelled to find work. She subsequently attended a number of primary schools around Dublin. She finished her primary education at the Central Model Girls' School in Gardiner Street.
She began her secondary education at St. Michael's Holy Faith Covent in Finglas but was expelled for organising a protest march against the regime of the school. She studied for her Intermediate Certificate on her own and then went to Whitehall House Senior School, a vocational school, to study for her Leaving Certificate. Outside school she was a member of a dance drama group, became involved in band culture and, around 1970, began to write lyrics. Gradually composing song lyrics would give way to writing poetry.
At Trinity College, Dublin, (1972–77) she studied English, History and Classical Civilization, taking five years to complete her Bachelor of Arts degree. This included one year off, spent travelling through Europe. While a student she was involved in street theatre and various kinds of performance.
After college she travelled again, spending long stretches in Greece, Germany, Scotland and England. She was offered a teaching fellowship at Eastern Washington University where she studied (1981–83) with James J. McAuley in a two-year programme which led to a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry. Gary Snyder & Carolyn Kizer were among the distinguished visiting writers to have a profound influence on her work and on her thought. She returned to Dublin in the mid-eighties. Her poem "Seed" was used in the 2010 Leaving Certificate examination as the unseen poem, although (critically) the department misprinted 'useful' as 'useless' which somewhat diminished the meaning of the poem. In September 2013, Meehan was installed as the Ireland Professor of Poetry by President Michael D. Higgins. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/paula-meehan-named-ireland-professor-of-poetry-1.1526752[2]
OLD SKIN - Poem by Paula Meehan
staggering towards me
I've cast you off
years ago
shrugged you off
left you, put you down at the side of the road
for ravening
by any passing predator
old skin - when your face splits open
in recognition -
you know me now
but not what bar you left me in -
what else would you say but
‘how're ya, me oul skin'
Seed - Poem by Paula Meehan
The first warm day of spring
and I step out into the garden from the gloom
of a house where hope had died
to tally the storm damage, to seek what may
have survived. And finding some forgotten
lupins I'd sown from seed last autumn
holding in their fingers a raindrop each
like a peace offering, or a promise,
I am suddenly grateful and would
offer a prayer if I believed in God.
But not believing, I bless the power of seed,
its casual, useful persistence,
and bless the power of sun,
its conspiracy with the underground,
and thank my stars the winter's ended.
Paula Meehan
Carolyn Kizer
BY CAROLYN KIZER
for John
At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist,
And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free.
Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet.
All life’s awfulness has been grist to me.
We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal,
While sorrow is a nourishment forever.
My new environment is California Dreamer.
I’m fearful I’m forgetting how to brood.
And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:
I’m not drinking as much as I should . . .
At home, I want to write a happy poem
On love, or a love poem of happiness.
But they won’t do, the tensions of every day,
The rub, the minor abrasions of any two
Who share one space. Ah, there’s no substitute for tragedy!
But in this chapter, tragedy belongs
To that other life, the old life before us.
Here is my aphorism of the day:
Happy people are monogamous.
Even in California. So how does the poem play
Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss?
I don’t have a jealous eye or fear
And neither do you. In truth, I’m fond
Of your ex-mate, whom I name “my wife-in-law.”
My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny,
So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly
Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation
Of marriage. Which may be the best part.
Darling, must I love you in light verse
Without the tribute of profoundest art?
Of course it won’t last. You will break my heart
Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that.
But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills,
The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating,
My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace
As from below comes a musical cursing
As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course
I could pick a fight; there is always material in that.
But we don’t come from fighting people, those
Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate.
No, love, the heavy poem will have to come
From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps
Detonated by terrors far beyond this place
Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters
Rise in the east to erode our safety here.
Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift
And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,
There is only this useless happiness as gift.
Carolyn Kizer, “Afternoon Happiness” from Cool, Calm & Collected. Copyright © 2002 by Carolyn Kizer. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Paula Meehan
Paula Meehan is an Irish poet and playwright. Born in Dublin in 1955, Meehan studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Eastern Washington University.[1]
Paula Meehan was born in Dublin in 1955, the eldest of six children. She started school at St. Elizabeth's in Kingston upon Thames, England, where her parents had travelled to find work. She subsequently attended a number of primary schools around Dublin. She finished her primary education at the Central Model Girls' School in Gardiner Street.
She began her secondary education at St. Michael's Holy Faith Covent in Finglas but was expelled for organising a protest march against the regime of the school. She studied for her Intermediate Certificate on her own and then went to Whitehall House Senior School, a vocational school, to study for her Leaving Certificate. Outside school she was a member of a dance drama group, became involved in band culture and, around 1970, began to write lyrics. Gradually composing song lyrics would give way to writing poetry.
At Trinity College, Dublin, (1972–77) she studied English, History and Classical Civilization, taking five years to complete her Bachelor of Arts degree. This included one year off, spent travelling through Europe. While a student she was involved in street theatre and various kinds of performance.
After college she travelled again, spending long stretches in Greece, Germany, Scotland and England. She was offered a teaching fellowship at Eastern Washington University where she studied (1981–83) with James J. McAuley in a two-year programme which led to a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry. Gary Snyder & Carolyn Kizer were among the distinguished visiting writers to have a profound influence on her work and on her thought. She returned to Dublin in the mid-eighties. Her poem "Seed" was used in the 2010 Leaving Certificate examination as the unseen poem, although (critically) the department misprinted 'useful' as 'useless' which somewhat diminished the meaning of the poem. In September 2013, Meehan was installed as the Ireland Professor of Poetry by President Michael D. Higgins. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/paula-meehan-named-ireland-professor-of-poetry-1.1526752[2]
OLD SKIN - Poem by Paula Meehan
staggering towards me
I've cast you off
years ago
shrugged you off
left you, put you down at the side of the road
for ravening
by any passing predator
old skin - when your face splits open
in recognition -
you know me now
but not what bar you left me in -
what else would you say but
‘how're ya, me oul skin'
Seed - Poem by Paula Meehan
The first warm day of spring
and I step out into the garden from the gloom
of a house where hope had died
to tally the storm damage, to seek what may
have survived. And finding some forgotten
lupins I'd sown from seed last autumn
holding in their fingers a raindrop each
like a peace offering, or a promise,
I am suddenly grateful and would
offer a prayer if I believed in God.
But not believing, I bless the power of seed,
its casual, useful persistence,
and bless the power of sun,
its conspiracy with the underground,
and thank my stars the winter's ended.
Paula Meehan
Carolyn Kizer
Awards[edit]
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1985), for Yin[10]
- Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize (1988)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters award
- Award of Honor of the San Francisco Arts Commission
- Borestone Award (six times)
- Pushcart Prize (three times)
- Frost Medal
- John Masefield Memorial Award
- Governor's Award for the best book of the year, State of Washington (1965, 1985)
BY CAROLYN KIZER
for John
At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist,
And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free.
Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet.
All life’s awfulness has been grist to me.
We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal,
While sorrow is a nourishment forever.
My new environment is California Dreamer.
I’m fearful I’m forgetting how to brood.
And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:
I’m not drinking as much as I should . . .
At home, I want to write a happy poem
On love, or a love poem of happiness.
But they won’t do, the tensions of every day,
The rub, the minor abrasions of any two
Who share one space. Ah, there’s no substitute for tragedy!
But in this chapter, tragedy belongs
To that other life, the old life before us.
Here is my aphorism of the day:
Happy people are monogamous.
Even in California. So how does the poem play
Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss?
I don’t have a jealous eye or fear
And neither do you. In truth, I’m fond
Of your ex-mate, whom I name “my wife-in-law.”
My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny,
So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly
Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation
Of marriage. Which may be the best part.
Darling, must I love you in light verse
Without the tribute of profoundest art?
Of course it won’t last. You will break my heart
Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that.
But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills,
The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating,
My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace
As from below comes a musical cursing
As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course
I could pick a fight; there is always material in that.
But we don’t come from fighting people, those
Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate.
No, love, the heavy poem will have to come
From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps
Detonated by terrors far beyond this place
Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters
Rise in the east to erode our safety here.
Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift
And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,
There is only this useless happiness as gift.
Carolyn Kizer, “Afternoon Happiness” from Cool, Calm & Collected. Copyright © 2002 by Carolyn Kizer. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.
The Current Assignment
Was it a joy? Who did it?
The Next Assignment
I have long used phrases and words from other poets as prompts to get me going. So, I thought why not make an assignment of it. I'll provide you with a source and the assignment is to write a poem prompted by any selection of consecutive words within "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by Yeats. Here is the poem:
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Thursday, July 5, 2018.
I missed an appointment today, rescheduled for tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI do not recall or where I can find our next poetry meting.
I do not recall our next assignment which I usuallay do the day I get it and then some.
I do know that today is Monday because a missed appointment reminded me.
I'm looking for the current assignment and for the next date we get togther.
Any help I might get will be appreciated
That is, if I remember that I sent this messare or if anybody happens to read this post and remembers to help me. G