March 5, 2020

Welcome

I have no reports of absentees, a report that posters now advertise our meetings and hope that new faces appear.

News and Jabber

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/29/john-carey-history-of-poetry-interview

The above link leads to an interesting article about the author of what should be an interesting book. John Carey seems level-headed and I can understand why he didn't become a poet: 

"When I was at school in my young teens I fancied myself as a poet. I actually sent off poems to the Listener. They were terrible, obviously. There was a bloke in my class at grammar school, Dennis Keene, who later became a published poet. I remember we were asked to write a poem about the atomic bomb. Dennis began with the line: “Who took the sun and hung it in the trees?” I thought I could never write a line as good as that, so at that point I gave up."

Follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hy_-KU_MSQ to a four-minute video interview with John Carey. He begins saying "Poetry is to language what music is to noise." Worth  a listen.

Poet Lisel Mueller died at 96  this past month. She is another of those wondeerful writers I had never heard of until looking for news items to share today.

Here are two poems of hers:

Moon Fishing by Lisel Mueller

When the moon was full they came to the water.
some with pitchforks, some with rakes,
some with sieves and ladles,
and one with a silver cup.

And they fished til a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
to catch the moon you must let your women
spread their hair on the water --
even the wily moon will leap to that bobbing
net of shimmering threads,
gasp and flop till its silver scales
lie black and still at your feet."

And they fished with the hair of their women
till a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
do you think the moon is caught lightly,
with glitter and silk threads?
You must cut out your hearts and bait your hooks
with those dark animals;
what matter you lose your hearts to reel in your dream?"

And they fished with their tight, hot hearts
till a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
what good is the moon to a heartless man?
Put back your hearts and get on your knees
and drink as you never have,
until your throats are coated with silver
and your voices ring like bells."

And they fished with their lips and tongues
until the water was gone
and the moon had slipped away
in the soft, bottomless mud.

What a wonderful poem. Here is a link to the NYTimes article about her:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/books/lisel-mueller-dead.html.

Sometimes, When the Light

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles

and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion

completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks

and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,

under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,

so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,

you would die, or be happy forever.

Today's Assignment

I may or may not have something of my own, given that I have been finishing a chapbook for my new granddaughter. TBD.

The Next Assignment

Describe yourself five years from now.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, March 19, 2020.