February 20, 2020

Welcome

Ed will not be here today. 

News and Jabber

We need to get a couple of new writers to join us lest we lose our moorings. I think MarLou was going to post a couple of things. How can we draft?

Of note is that on Saturday, February 22, 2020 poet Eamon Grennan will be reading at the GAelic Club at noon. Registration is requested. Here are the details:

Join us as we welcome Dublin-born renowned poet Eamon Grennan on Saturday, February 22 at 12 noon. Eamon Grennan is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry, including There Now, Matter of Fact, and The Quick of It, and a book of essays, Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the 20th Century. He is a retired Professor of English at Vassar College and divides his time on both sides of the pond. Q & A session will follow the reading. Please help us with planning. RSVP via e-mail to
social@gaconline.org

Grennan is the real deal. He is now retired from his  professorship at Vassar. 

Cricket Trees Thunder 

What the cricket is saying with its high-pitched fire-alarm cheep

           its thin silk-line dividing night from morning is hard to place

till you look beyond the bedroom window and see the trees

           (locust oak dogwood maple ash—those patient beings

our dear upstanding companions in every weather) are wearing

           (this cloudy morning with thunder thumping at intervals among

gun-metal cloud-masses) an air of resignation as if on the way

           to mourning the matter of that moment when (the cricket knows)

they’ll strip stand stark and shake their skeletal fists at heaven.

Here is a link to a NYTimes article which preview several books of poetry the author of the article believes will be helpful in illuminating what is right now a dark America.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/804880385/keeping-the-dark-at-bay-a-2020-poetry-preview.

The authors are worth taking the time to check on.

Today's Assignment

Any comments? I had difficulty in that I have embarked upon a series of  poems to my thirteenth grandchild, Mara, born on the 10th.

Next Assignment

What is the best thing about your life today/now?

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, March 5, 2020.