Poets’ Roundtable
Welcome
As we read and speak today, let us remember to listen attentively. We, in our enthusiasm, at times talk over one another and this causes us to lose time and insight. It also does violence to the poem which is meant to be the center of our focus.
News and Jabber
This link will take you to a New Yorker article about Donald Hall's writing life after age 80. The many links will take you to further samples, info, etc. about that remarkable period in Hall's life.
One of his later poems, linked to in the article is nine stanzas of nine lines of nine syllables. Rather than that, let's just write poems of any length with nine-syllapble lines and nine-line stanzas of any number. Please make it more than one stanza long.
Additionally, here is a link to another New Yorker article, this one about Tony Hoagland, whose death I noted recently noted in an email. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/peaceful-transition.
The Current Assignment
I found it manifesting itself in various ways and wrote three contenders for the assignment. I'll present the one I think best exemplifies transfiguring language.
The Next Assignment
Write a poem of at least two nine-line, nine-syllable stanzas.
The Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Thursday, November 15, 2018.
Other Jabber
I am re-reading The Bow and the Lyre by Octavio Paz. It is one of my bibles. When we looked at prose poems a couple of months ago I spoke about poetic language as an outstanding feature of the prose poems. Poetic language has more to do with the making of the poem than almost any other feature. Paz, in this book, spends a lot of time speaking of the language poets use. I like his assertion that poetic language that is transfigured. If the language is transfigured, then we find that ideas rhyme. It is not unlike magic. So, look into your own poems to find where language is transfigured. If it is not something more than ordinary language, try to make it so. Language moves from representing something to phrasing that declares something unnameable. Read from pages 28 and 29.
If time permits, discuss the encounter with Elizabeth Bishop.
Between Going And Coming - Poem by Octavio Paz
Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
The walk home,
ReplyDeleteBetween visiting
With my close
Friend
And my
Return walk
To my own home,
I stopped at a pub
For pint
Of beer.
Later,
After some
Reminiscing,
My eyes
in the bar’s bottled
mirror,
Spied me sipping
Beer
From a tumbler.
Call me a fool,
I signed,
An other.
Drank it down
With a sob
And chaser.
Barman
Called me a cab,
Sent me home.
©gcoulombe 92 11-02-18
Very moving
ReplyDeleteMorning has risen…
ReplyDeleteI started
This brief trope
Mesmerized.
As I walk
With my head bowed
To see
Where my thoughts
are headed
This morning.
The hour
Before
Noon is slow ticking.
I have to decide.
The mind
Is dull.
Age dampens
My thinking--
Irks my soul.
© gcoulombe92, 11-05-18
A feeling for and ending.
ReplyDeleteThe yard is leafed,
Some trees bare
This noon.
The sun has hid.
The sky is grey.
Fey.
’tis time
For contrition,
Penitence.
On this long voyage
Home
Life struggled.
Faith has not been strong.
Failures, long.
Gone.
The heart
Fibrillates.
It’s muscles shake.
© gcoulomhe92 11-05-18
An old friend
ReplyDeleteFound him
In the shower,
A dead man.
Meaning,
That I did not:
A cop did.
He was my
Friend—
Not literally.
Although,
We say, “He was!”
Stuff like that,
Some friends
lie about friends.
When they want.
Say just what’s
Necessary
To say.
©gcoulombe92@mail.com
11-1-18
This away and that away walls
ReplyDeleteComing from Maine
I would not
have thought
To use potatoes
To build.
A wall.
We were driving
Down a highway
East…
A sudden turn
Up a
country road
With this away
And that away
Fields
Took us up hills
And flowing
Fields,
Bordered by
Connecticut “tato”
Stone.
Miles of them,
Stacked so high,
for stone walls
To enclose large
Farms or tall
Green crops.
{Ct. Potatoes are round shaped stones no smaller than a baseball but no larger than a softball…an educated guess. G.}
©gcoulombe92. 11-04-2018
Untitled
ReplyDelete“Rancor is rarely simple…”
Amy Clampitt in “Cloudberry Summer”
Eighty-one syllables from now, I
will have riffed on the ease of rancor
well enough to convince you that it
may not be simple but is easy.
Amy was speaking of something bi-
ological as swamp gas and mos-
quitoes in a poem torquing its
way toward an end that says “illu-
sory van of pleasure had moved on.”
Well, Amy, it always does and that’s
the fact that drove John to walk in his
pajamas along the ocean floor
until he drowned beneath the boat the
authorities believe he jumped from.
For him, rancor was simple. Simple
as the bullet that tore his father’s
brains out in Atlanta on the porch.
One finds rancor easy after that.
(November 2018)
Unpublished work Copyright 2018 Emerson Gilmore