June 20, 2019

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

Neither Rich nor Ed will be with us today.

News and Jabber

The New York Times reviewed a book by Campbell McGrath, a poet I've mentioned before. I think his base is Chicago. As the article points out, McGrath writes about America and American things. He is rightfully a poet who believes:

In the world of some poets

there are no Cheerios or Pop-Tarts, no hot dogs

tumbling purgatorially on greasy rollers,

only chestnuts and pomegranates,

the smell of freshly baked bread,

summer vegetables in red wine, simmering.

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/books/review/nouns-and-verbs-new-and-selected-poems-campbell-mcgrath.html>

He has long sung of the pedestrian things that make up Americans, the everyday Americans. His father, Thomas McGrath, was a poet as well. Both are worth reading.

The above link will take you to the NYT review of his new book, Nouns and Verbs.

The Current Assignment

Mary Grace's poem:

GOSSIP AMONG JUNE FLOWERS

by me.

Mary

Monday I went out in my garden

And decided to go for a walk,

When I saw a Mum bend to a Daisy,

And I listened … and I heard it talk...

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,

I do hope that all is quite well,

So much has been happening around here,

And oh, I have such news to tell!

Did you hear about Patty Petunia?

How she’s gotten herself in a fix?

Seems she’s fallen in love with a Four-O’clock

Who’s so lazy, he gets up at six!

And what about young Larry Larkspur,

With that wife of his naggin’ and naggin’,

Well, we warned him that’s what would happen

If he married that snippy Snap Dragon!

Terry Tulip told May Morning Glory

Not to get tangled up with Fred Fence,

Seems he’s always taking advantage

Of flowers without any scents.

Hal Hibiscus is going to get married

To Dee Dandelion, I hear it said, 

But his parents are very unhappy,

They just don’t think that Dee is well bred.

And, oh that young Gerry Geranium!

When I saw him his face was quite red,

Do you know what he went and did last night?

He got potted again … in the shed!

Irene Iris got mad at the Queen Bee

'Cause she buzzed about what Irene did,

Seems the Queen Bee caught Iris pretending

That she was a blooming Orchid!

And oh, such sad news about Fanny,

Our lovely young Forget-Me-Not,

Got engaged one night to Pete Poppy,

And the very next day ... he forgot!

Well, that’s all my news, dearest Daisy!

Any news you've got, I'd love to hear -

You can trust that I’ll tell every bud-dy

Everything that YOU tell ME, my dear!”

So, next time that you're in YOUR garden,

Tip toe, and you also might see

A Mum speaking hushed to a Daisy -

All full of news ... and gossipy!

From <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/KtbxLthpxvvfQpCvNbXBlnRfBLRlDSkzNq>

Dru Martin's poem:

there was a time when I would just kick the dirt

and watch it fly

it was so damn dry

that it would exceed my height

and dust my face

and i loved it

now i’ve taken to throwing down some water

and seeds

and seeing

what green

i could coax from the earth

taking it for all its worth

i cant lie

the rain has helped

the hand ive been dealt

and made my job easy

and i can see quite a yield

thats coming my way

from treading the same grounds

day after day

and making sure there are no weeds

in my way

and i love it

From <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/KtbxLthpxvvfQpCvNbXBlnRfBLRlDSkzNq>

The Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem about the town your were brought up in.

The Next Meeting

Pending approval by the CEnter, the next meeting is re-scheduled to WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2019.

Other Jabber

June 6, 2019

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

Rich and MarLou will not be here today, MarLou due to illness, Rich for reasons unknown.

News and Jabber

May 31 was Walt Whitman's 200th birthday. I missed it. I didn't see it on the news anywhere. Enough said. 

From "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd)

I think of D-Day in the light of this poem. I also reflect on what Keats called the "horrid relationships" of things. Also of the friends, the comrades, I have lost.

16

Passing the visions, passing the night,

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,

Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,

Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,

As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,

Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,

Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,

As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,

I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease from my song for thee,

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,

O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,

The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,

And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,

With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,

With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,

For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,

Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,

There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

 From the Martha's Vineyard Times:

https://www.mvtimes.com/2019/06/05/arts-beat-billy-collins/

Billy Collins. Where art and entertainment collide. He’s the country’s most celebrated living poet, yet he “doesn’t care that poetry is relatively unpopular.” He figures the people who do love poetry love it intensely, and that’s good.
His poems are accessible, written in plain speech, but he’s not surprised when people say, “It doesn’t seem like poetry.” Poetry it is, though, built on his desire, developed in high school five decades ago, to be a poet. “I was taken with the romance of it, of being aware of the effects of putting words that have never been put together before, of strange language combinations, or unusual comparisons.”
Collins has twice been the U.S. poet laureate, about which he claims, “I love saying that. It’s a great way to start sentences.” We began our conversation with the question “How do you define poetry?” I figured that would set the tone, one way or the other.
Happily, Collins responded immediately, saying “There are lots of cute ways to define poetry,” which Collins, stealing from fellow writers, rattles off. “‘The clear expression of mixed feelings,’ or ‘the dancing of an attitude,’ or ‘meaning that moves.’” With a quicksilver turn, he continues seriously, “There is only one airtight definition that I know of. ‘A poem is an arrangement of lines whose length is determined by some principle other than the width of the page.’ Henry Taylor’s definition, by the way.”
We discussed reasons why most people don’t readily take to poetry. Aimee Mann, a singer-songwriter who first met Collins at the White House, has shared the stage with Collins. She says, “I think like a lot of people, I always thought you had to be a real egghead to read poetry.”
Not that there isn’t plenty of “egghead poetry,” poems that cannot be understood without prior knowledge of specific references. Poems where illusion, metaphor, allegory, imagery, or nonliteral structured language can make the reading of them, for some, seem like work.
Collins, who studied the “difficult” poets in grad school, became attracted to poets of a different practice, who write in “plain English,” saying, “There are dozens of them, really.” He describes his work as “writing about everyday life, in the vernacular, with language that sounds like conversation. I write with a sense of rhythm with the words as music, getting the vowels in the right place. I don’t usually use end rhymes or meter, but use ‘speech sounds,’ as Robert Frost said.”
Collins continues, “My poems tend to appear on the page in one sitting, if the poem is cooperating. Getting the beginning right is key. I’m writing and revising as I go, hearing it without saying it. If I can’t get to the end in one sitting, finding no forward motion, I can lose interest.” Rewrites happen on a different day, thinking about the roll of the sounds, the internal logic. Plain language, but with plenty there within the currents of suggestion. Before publishing, he often reads new poems in public, learning things he can’t figure out on the page.
Collins is “not a crusader,” but he did come up with an ingenious way to share poetry during his time as the poet laureate, which he says “has a rather vague job description.” “Poetry 180” and “180 More” are two anthologies Collins designed to provide a poem a day for high school students, to be read at the end of each day’s morning announcements. Thanks from unintended converts have come from schools “all over the English-speaking world.”
He believes, “Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives. Poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race. By just spending a few minutes reading a poem each day, new worlds can be revealed.”
What makes poetry different from other art forms? What makes the idiosyncratic elements of poetry — any kind — appealing? Perhaps because you can read it, reread it, enjoy the solitude, the contemplative atmosphere, the silent rhythm, one’s floating imagination, or the words as they are spaced on the page. Or you can hear it read, sharing the language, poignancy, laughs, or silences with the reader and fellow audience members. In any case, I get the feeling Collins is saying, in the silence or blank space at the end of a poem, in a most friendly way, “Know what I mean?”
Billy Collins reads his poetry at Featherstone Center for the Arts, in partnership with Noepe Center for Literary Arts and Pathways Arts. Sunday, June 9, 6:30 pm, $25, open seating; featherstoneart.org, 508-693-1850.

The Current Assignment

Expectably,  I didn't do the assignment. Who did? My reasoning was that I should write something in a style not  my own. Which I did. How did the rest of you do?

 The Next Assignment

The next assighment is to write a poem about your garden as it is in June. Could be flowers, vegetables, any other kind of garden.

The Next Meeting

 

The next meeting will be on June 20, 2019.

Other Jabber