Hail Poetry!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the Spender poem, Piffka and Jjorge. It is a favorite of mine.

Something Happens
by Elizabeth Spires (for William Meredith)

A man sits beside me at a party,
trying to speak, each word
brought forth after long searching.

I want to speak but cannot speak.
I can't say the words.


Long ago, he wished the wish
all poets wish; to be struck
by lightning. But not like this.

I can't read books.
I read the Digest. Terrible!

Netted like a ghost, his voice
rises off a spinning record our host
puts on. Words spoken years ago:

There is a flaw in your design
For you must fall...

He was an airman then, writing
from the other side of the world.
His letters took years to get here.

The nodding law has time enough
to wait your fall...

Trapped in the country of no
and yes, he perseveres.
And teaches us how to.

I am getting better.
Something happens.

Poetry provides no rescue.
Yet I'll say these words while I can.
Something is happening to us all.
---------------------------------------------

(I just read that Meredith served as a naval aviator during WWII and The Korean War. )
"Something is happening to us all." I like that.

Oh Piffka, we talk about different things!

You talk about poetry written down in rigid form, born when the pen hits the paper.
I talk about the poetry all around, everytime we open our eyes and just see.
It is everywhere, in the very atoms and molecules, and it dies a horrible, frozen death when put into words.

It is not meant to be still, and it cannot be, even if it tried.
Living poetry is living life. It is the actual substance within ourselves,
changing with each moment.

As example, on another thread I left behind a description of the snow today!
It's only a moment and then it is gone.

I can't stand to read any poem more than once, because then it does injustice to the next moment in life.
There is so much else to see and do, and the movement is everything.

I cannot be without the poem that is in each and every moment,
because by definition(!) then I would be dead.

Where do you find poetry? Does it have words? Does it have form?

Dennis O'Driscoll's Exemplary Damages includes a 15-part poem called "Time Pieces," which would have made a perfect contribution to one of jjorge's "Thoughts on Time" threads. The whole thing is too long to post here, so I'll just post a few excerpts. I debated with myself whether posting excerpts would do violence to what I'm sure was the poet's carefully crafted structure, but I decided it's too good not to give you at least a taste of it.


TIME PIECES (excerpts)

I

How long a day lasts.
It starts at dawn,
goes on all night,
right into the small
hours, finds time
for each minute
individually, wastes
no second,
however swift.


II

How long days take.
An evening waiting
for the phone to ring
as if for a watched kettle
to come gasping
to the boil and sing.
A week in which your lover
mulls the situation over.
A summer marking time
before exam results.
The breathing space
the lab requires
to prove your GP
right or wrong.


....


VI

My contributor's copy
of The New Younger Irish Poets
already liver-spotted with age.


....


VIII

Seems only yesterday
you woke in this same
bedroom and dressed
for the same steady job,
here where you will wake
again for work tomorrow,
your yesterdays adding up
to thirty years of waking
since you were waved off
by hands it now takes
memory to flesh out.


....


XIV

How briefly a day
lasts, unravelling so fast
you can't keep pace.
You are at the morning
bus stop, wondering
if you definitely
locked the hall door
when, what seems
like seconds later,
sunset struts by
in all its sky-draped
finery, its evening
wear, and you are
unlocking the hall door.


XV

Wiping clean the day's dark slate,
sleep sweeps you off your feet,
leaves you dead to the world
in your bedclothes, shrouded in sheets.

RaggedyAggie -- That poem reminds me of how my father was after his stroke. At parties (while he was still willing to go) all he could do was struggle to find the words, trapped in the nodding world of yes and no. I wonder if that is what Elizabeth Spires was writing for William Meredith? It brought it all back for me.

Well, we certainly are talking about different things and I wonder... do you refuse to listen to music more than once as well? Are you limiting your "poetry all around" to what you can see?

I am not putting down what you are calling "poetry" for we all love the world in its spectacular beauty. You suggest that there is a rich enjoyment of the wide variety of life and I heartily agree. That is a wonderful thing but it is not all. There may come a point in your life when you realize that no matter how much you want it, you will never see everything; that even if you could, you won't see it in all seasons and with all the persons you love. Here is one of my many favorite poems, read a hundred times and I hope I'll read it a thousand times more.

AFTERNOON ON A HILL
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
ESVM

To my way of thinking, enjoying the world shouldn't preclude the ability to sit and enjoy some written work. I am sorry that you characterize the poetry here as horrible, frozen and dead, for I can assure you, it is not that way to me.

edit -- I meant to say, CB, that your description of a day in the snow at Tahoe was lovely. The moment of intense personal contact with the woman dancing across the snow was compelling. Those moments are worth savoring, worth remembering, worth, in fact, a written poem, possibly with rhyme, definitely with rhythm and certainly with language that could allow another person in an entirely different time to feel a similar feeling and say to themselves, "Ah, contact."

Perhaps you will be assimilated yet.

Bree -- Thanks for excerpting O'Driscoll's Time Pieces. I understand your reticence to pull short bits out, I worry when I do so myself, but how else to offer a taste? You did a great job of it and I'm sure even the poet would not complain. I was able to get a flavor of his work and yet it leaves me wanting to know the whole. There does seem to be a quiet despair there. I hope he has some higher moments of joy. (Does he?)

I have loved reading this thread, it's a saver. What a treasure you folks are, with your poetry experiences to share.

I have been looking for an old favorite of mine, a small poem by John Ciardi about describing a pear; it turns out I don't have the knack for looking it up. I had copied it into my little book when I was learning calligraphy decades (aack!) ago; it had been an assigned poem in my first english class in college. The tenor of it was how can I possibly say I love you (and know what it means) when I cannot even describe a pear. Simple, and it got to my seventeen year old self. I don't know where the little book is either, probably somewhere in my still unpacked unshelved cartons.

I sympathize a little with codeborg re poetry in every minute of every day, but differ in that I don't shut out the words that try to embrace it.

Re-reading my previous post, I'm afraid the tone was more abrasive than
I intended. I'm just exploring the idea that poetry becomes horribly frozen
and dead if static words keep meaning the same thing over and over.

Semantics! To me poetry is in the reading, not in the actual words themselves.
(So, we may be saying exactly the same thing, I'm not sure).
Instead of arguing semantics, I'll toss in a few more ideas.


One view: DYNAMIC EXPERIENCE

I challenge you to read the same poem twice.
I don't think it can be done.
Ones thoughts, experience and meaning are different every time.
So the poem (the reading) is constantly breathing, changing, growing, alive.

I love your poem AFTERNOON ON A HILL, but after trying to read it
twenty times, it won't sit still. It keeps changing and squirming,
and now I have twenty different poems, so I'm afraid to look once more
and see what else it is, when other thoughts are tapping at the door.


Another view: POETRY EVERYWHERE

There is poetry in everything around us, and even in the written word.
I don't shut words out, but don't cling to or require them either.
Poetry is so much larger than that!

Words are great reminders, and even food for creative new thought,
but there is more abundant poetry in each raw experience, so why dwell
on the same thing over and over, unless it's slightly different each time?
Enjoy all of it!


Another view: TRANSLATION

I cannot think or live in English, so an English poem is never as
rich as the original moment. Rather than trying to record a moment,
better to create a poem that is nice and interesting by itself, just
for what it is.


Another view: OUR MISSION IN LIFE

Each moment is precious to me, for no other reason than to enjoy the
moment as it is. It will never return.
You might call it a moving meditation, or just a sweet letting go.

I don't try to see and experience everything, or try to "do it all".
Life is not a competition or an achievement in any way.
It's simply being aware and appreciating whatever there is.

Written poetry is a very nice experience. The experience of the day
(without writing) is also very nice, and often even more poetic
than if we read a page in a book. It's all in how you look at and
approach whatever you do.


Another view: PEER PRESSURE

So many people push us to do things a certain way. You must play a
song correctly, you must read the correct interpretation, and to
express yourself you must speak the correct language or you will go
all wrong.

I'm tired of all these built-up forces crushing my soul, always listening
to the proper and correct same-old songs. So yes, I do avoid listening
to the same music twice. Life is too short!

Every time I play the piano I play something different. I've trained
myself so I can't play any song twice, even if I tried! With enough practice,
I don't know how. I refuse to memorize preapproved "songs" anymore
because each moment is more precious than that. I just can't play sheet music anymore, because it actually destroys the ability to play my own.
And the incredible(!) music that results is well worth it, even though it's
not written, recorded, simulated, pretended, or "performed" ever again.

No one may hear what I sing, but at least it was sung.



Yikes! I got philosophical! (sorry) I ramble far too long...

Piffka -- To answer your question, O'Driscoll's poetry is not all as melancholy as the poems I've posted so far might lead you to believe. In fact, I was starting to worry about having giving the impression that it is, so the next poem of his that I intend to post is a humorous one. I'll post it either this evening or (I may be home late tonight) tomorrow evening.

Piffka, thanks fot that piece by EVSM It's exactly how I feel today, so grateful to be alive. (This being my 1st day of 10 weeks of summer vacation has a lot to do with it) That's a poem to be read again and again, like music, which is my forst love.

Here's one by May Sarton that may be apropos:


To an Honest Friend

Thank God for honesty and anger
And let soft words go hang
For there is more good danger,
More thrust in honest words
Than in love's lightly handled swords
Or the song the sirens sang.

You'll never be my stranger,
O dear destructive friend;
The truth lasts so much longer
Than beauty or than charm.
It cannot break or come to harm
And it will never end.

So thank God for your honesty
For when all's done and said,
We build on rock though bitterly,
And friendship follows after
With its ironic laughter
When truth is brought to bed.

bree

Thanks for posting 'Time Pieces'. I found it very moving -it resonates with me in multiple ways right now.

You are right of course, it would have fit in perfectly on one of the 'Thoughts On Time' threads.

I will be looking for a copy of 'Exemplary Damages'.


BTW, my face is still a little red that I didn't recognize Dennis O'Driscoll's name after earlier posting the article about him.

Hello Ossobuco - you've wandered into Poetry - Welcome! I searched around a bit for you, but the best I could come up with was this citation:



Somewhere in that book is your poem about a pear. I love the idea; that if you cannot describe a pear in a poem, how can you describe love? I think that in that conundrum is a part of what CodeBorg feels. Thanks for mentioning this poem and what we know is the inability to fully express the experiential sensations of a pear.

If/When you find the poem, I hope you will share it with us.

CodeBorg -- You bring up so many excellent things. First off, the idea that each time you read a poem it is new... YES... that is what we like! Just as a friend is not exactly the same person from one meeting to the next, a poem (a good poem) will surprise and delight us. I laughed to hear that you'd read Afternoon on a Hill twenty times. Each afternoon, each hill is meant to be different and resonate memories within us.

I am convinced that there is poetry all around us and that it may be our mission in life to experience it. Did you ever see the early a2k topic "Have you ever experienced the Numinous?"
Numinous Topic

What better way to pass on some of that experienced knowledge to others than through poetry? When I read some of the old translations of Taoist poetry, I am moved more than I can say that an elderly Chinese gentleman who lived ages ago can reach me and his ideas express what I feel today. Despite it's being old and translated, the contact is there.

I think that music, being even more immediate, may have a stronger claim to this poetry-of-being-alive. I am fond of old songs that remind me of different places, so I'll not give up hearing my CD's but I love my own made-up songs as well. There is nothing like a live performance, particularly if you're giving a concert to yourself. There can be a comfort in the old as well as the new.

I am pleased to have you wax philosophic on this topic. There is a lot of truth in what you're saying. I hope that no one here feels peer pressure to think of a poem (or poetry) in a prescribed way... I doubt they do.


from Invocation to the Muses, ESVM

...In the last hours of him who lies untended
On a cold field at night, and sees the hard bright stars
Above his upturned face, and says aloud "How strange . . . my life is ended."--
If in the past he loved great music much, and knew it well,
Let not his lapsing mind be teased by well-beloved but ill- remembered bars --
Let the full symphony across the blood-soaked field
By him be heard, most pure in every part,
The lonely horror of whose painful death is thus repealed,
Who dies with quiet tears upon his upturned face, making to glow with softness the hard stars.

And bring to those who knew great poetry well
Page after page that they have loved but have not learned by heart!
We who in comfort to well-lighted shelves
Can turn for all the poets ever wrote,
Beseech you: Bear to those
Who love high art no less than we ourselves,
Those who lie wounded, those who in prison cast
Strive to recall, to ease them, some great ode, and every stanza save the last.

Recall--oh, in the dark, restore them
The unremembered lines; make bright the page before them!

Dream -- Glad you liked Afternoon on a Hill. It is funny how her few short words can mean so much, isn't it? Congratulations on ten (10) weeks of well-deserved vacation - wonderful, wonderful! What are your plans? I hope you'll fill your time with fabulous experiences. What about Spain? (Too hot!) How 'bout the Pacific NW?

Thanks, also, for the May Sarton poem. If friends cannot be honest, then what good are they? When someone tells me "You're such a witch" then I know I've done my job. How'd you happen to find something so totally appropriate and wonderful, so quickly?

Bree -- Looking forward to some light-hearted O'Driscoll. He is Irish, isn't he???

Jjorge! You haven't yet noticed that my new signature is from one of the poems you posted. <sigh>

Dream

I too liked the May Sarton poem.
It made me think of the following quote from (my heroine) Emily Dickinson:

"Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir. "
ATTRIBUTION: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Letter, July 1862, to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The Letters of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2 (1958).


Piffka,

You rascal! You slipped that one past me!

I read EVERY WORD of yours on these poetry threads, but sometimes my eyes forget to drop below the wavy line!

Here's the last poem by Dennis O'Driscoll that I'll post. I chose this poem partly to make it clear that there's plenty of humor in his poetry, but mainly because it perfectly captures my feelings about most of the social invitations that come my way these days.

By the way, every other line of the poem is supposed to be indented. I can't figure out how to make it look that way on the screen: I've tried leaving spaces before the line, but the spaces disappear when I go to the "Preview" window, and using the tab key doesn't help either (it just takes me to another field). So when you read the poem, please try to imagine that the even-numbered lines are indented, because I really do think it works better that way.


NO, THANKS

No, I don't want to drop over for a meal
on my way home from work.
No, I'd much prefer you didn't feel obliged
to honour me by crashing overnight.
No, I haven't the slightest curiosity about seeing
how your attic conversion finally turned out.
No, I'm not the least bit interested to hear
the low-down on your Florida holiday.
No way am I going to blow a Friday night's freedom
just to round out the numbers at your dinner table.
No, I'm simply not able for the excitement
of your school-term coffee mornings.
No, strange though it may seem, your dream kitchen
holds no fascination whatsoever for me.
No, there's nothing I'd like less than to get
together at your product launch reception.
No, I regret I can't squeeze your brunch into my schedule
--you'll be notified should an opening occur.
No, I don't appear to have received an invitation
to your barbecue -- it must have gone astray.
No, my cellphone was out of range, my e-mail caught a virus,
I had run out of notepads, parchment, discs, papyrus.
No, you can take No for an answer, without bothering
your head to pop the question.
No, even Yes means No in my tongue, under my breath:
No, absolutely not, not a snowball's chance, not a hope.

The Rules of the Game

José Carlos Becerra (1939-1973)

Everyone should enter his own destruction, retouch his breath,
cultivate his exceptions to the rule, the mollusks of his sun,
abstain in the most cruel and diaphanous way
because light must break, eternity must drop a pebble into that lament.

Remember the childhood of your mother, the childhood of your death;
away from the world and all desire,
made immune by the lizard and the bird confronting each other in all of blood’s intentions.
You have felt the mask and its forgery: the face
in greenhouses of small and useless ceremonies which still move us.

Under the light of a moon that resembles the nakedness of ancient words,
listen to this rhythm, this rolling of the waters,
night is moving its dark wheels, these words are its meaning,
and I let myself be carried by what I want to say: what I ignore
and this is how the word ponders its silence.

Oh casual night of the word,
oh fate where the word returns to its silence and silence to the first word
the first snails, the first starfish appear once again in language,
and creatures of for place their breath in new mirrors.

He who utters the first word shall drop the first glass,
he who strikes violently at his amazement shall see fire in his hair,
he who laughs aloud shall be the first to remain silent,
he who wakes before his time shall surprise his bones in semaphore with the trees;
and the sea, like a broken symptom, returns once more to hear itself in the distance
and in its breathing we hear once more the sound of the door
banging in the wind of infinity.

The moon is born over the sea like man’s ancient look.

The first lights
go on at port.

Bree, I found this poem by Emily Dickinson , which compliments yours, and also reflects a big truth in my life:

'The soul selects her own society'


The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.


Piffka, I would love to go to the Pacific NW, as I've done for the past 5 years, but this year my sister is coming out to stay with us (she's from Oregon) and we're driving up to Maine. The rest of the time I'll spend taking my daughter to day camp and music ;ssons and ensemble. Saturday, I'm playing with a pick-up group for contradancing, a first for me. I'm a classical music player, but have always wanted to try something else. Ten weeks off can go by fast

Great Bree, really great.... if grumpy!!! I didn't realize O'Driscoll was so modern as to be writing about computers. Funny too, those feelings I consider more a female perogative, not a man's. It showed his humorous side but also a dark anti-social attitude. I'm not SUCH a misanthrope, but none of those social opportunities sounded good to me either. Thanks for sharing. (How 'bout Brunch?)