November 7, 2019(1)

November 7, 2019

Roundtable

Welcome

No word on absentees

News and Jabber

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/books/review/oblivion-banjo-the-poetry-of-charles-wright.html

An article about Charles Wright's new book Oblivion Banjo.

Charles Wright is he who told a group at The Frost Place to write every day and at the end of the year select the five or six decent things you've written and work on them. He said that we need to practice our craft no less than the concert pianist. Since then I have endeavored to write every day.

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard

• Charles Wright - 1935-

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
                                        looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
                      I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
                 Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
                                          up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

And this, an Autumn poem, unlike Keats's ode which I read almost every year but haven't yet.

Words and the Diminution of All Things

• Charles Wright - 1935-

The brief secrets are still here,
                           and the light has come back. 
The word remember touches my hand,
But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel
Against the occluded sky.
All of the little names sink down,
                           weighted with what is invisible,
But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair. 

There isn't much time, in any case.
There isn't much left to talk about
                           as the year deflates.
There isn't a lot to add.
Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels
Wherever a thing appears,
Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable
                           in their mute and glittering garb.

All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us
                                     out of the
     Blue Ridge.
All afternoon the leaves have scuttled
Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.
And now the evening is over us,
Small slices of silence
                 running under a dark rain,
Wrapped in a larger.

From Buffalo Yoga by Charles Wright. Copyright © 2004 by Charles Wright. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All rights reserved.

Today's Assignment

I had a little fun with this, a little work, a little disappointment and less success than anything else. It was an assignment that I wanted to do, which is why I assigned it. I want to work with longer, more disciplined lines than I usually use. I read some Shakespeare, some Wallace Stevens and found that they rarely wrote perfect lines of iambic pentameter even when they wrote iambic pentameter. So, exceptions will be allowed.

Who did the assignment?

The Next Assighment

The next assignment is to write a poem about tomorrow, any tomorrow, but especially, the next day.

Other Notes

AppleTV is doing a series (I think) on Emily Dickinson. It seems to be getting good reviews. Someone can let me know.