Wynne McClure

Reading at RIT, Global Village Gift Shop,
April 25, 2012

NaPoWriMo — April 26

TODAY IS POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY!  

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” — Benjamin Disraeli

 

Some of you may have attended the Poetry Jam that embellished the Saturday, April 21^st  performance of Superior Donuts, a must-see production at GeVa.  Geva and Writers & Books had asked ten local writers to select one poem by one ten poets mentioned in this play by Tracy Letts and respond to it.  

 

Reenah Golden (reading Maya Angelou, The Lesson) and filling in for Robert Ricks reading  Dope  by Amiri Baraka)

Chandra McKenzie (reading Langston Hughes, Consider me)

Arlette Miller-Smith (reading Gwendolyn Brooks, Of DeWitt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery)

Tokeya Graham – (reading Ntozake Shange, enuf)

Grace Flores (reading Alice Walker, Be Nobody’s Darling)

Henry Ignacio Padrón-Morales (reading Nikki Giovanni, Ego Tripping(there may be a reason why)

Steve Huff (reading Lucille Clifton, The Thirty-Eighth Year)

Ralph Black (reading Yusef Komunyakaa, The Deck)

 

 

Below Vincent F.A. Golphin shares his selection by Countee Cullen and his response.

 

Yet Do I Marvel by  Countee Cullen, was first published in the 1925 book, Color. My assignment was to write and perform a 2012 response to the piece. You will see that I did my best to match tone, meter and rhyme. Also, you might note that they were read as a complete piece, even though I noted that they were separate poems. 

 

 

YET DO I MARVEL  — by Countee Cullen

 

I doubt not God is good, well meaning, kind,

And did He stoop to quibble could tell why

The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,

Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus

Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus

To struggle up a neverending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune

To catechism by a mind too strewn

With petty cares to slightly understand

What awful brain compels His awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

 

 

 

 

 

A BLACK POET’S SONG – Vincent Golphin

 

 

 

The voice lifts a sepia song of praise,

captures life at angles our hue uniquely perceives,

and provokes insights many fear to raise

about a future birthed while Obama’s quest aggrieves.

Black bards croon constant, like birds in a cage

gilded, roomy and wondrous to eyes outside,

and like the feathered sirens, we expel outrage

in faith-born tales of struggle against racism’s tide.

God’s plan is not humankind’s, for that we give thanks,

and cling to Grace, Providence and Love to swell our ranks,

for the lilies in green valleys and sparrows still show

the force that carries us past trials others never know.

Yet do I marvel where I stand, and read my dreams out loud,

and look back centuries over a story that makes me proud.

 

NaPoWriMo — April 25

Today, a posting of two poems, for the pleasure of comparison (and to be sure to include all the poems shared by Just Poets in the remaining 6 days of April):   the first, the brilliant two-liner by Ezra Pound, offered by Donna Marbach; the second, by Edgar Allen Poe, offered by Jane Black.  

In a Station of the Metro

The  apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.   — by Ezra Pound

 

Why I like this poem:  This is a wonderfully concise poem (2 lines, 14 words), that is rich in imagery and filled with  poetic devices such as rhyme (Petals,wet ), alliteration (black, bough) and assonance (crowd, bough).  This little poem manages to give us a quick, bustling image of the Parision subway in the first line, then immediately turns it into a contrasting (and very peaceful) image of nature.  Wow!  It is an example of truly finding all the “best words in best order.” — Donna Marbach

**

ANNABEL LEE   by: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

T’was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;–

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

 

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love–

I and my Annabel Lee–

With a love that the wingèd seraphs in Heaven

Coveted her and me.

 

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wing blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her high-born kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

 

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me:–

Yes!–that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud, by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we–

Of many far wiser than we–

And neither the angels in Heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:–

 

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling,–my darling,–my life and my bride,

In the sepulcher there by the sea–

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 

**

“This is my favorite poem and also the first poem I memorized. It still sends a calming peace through my bones imagining Poe mourning his lost love as he follows her to the grave. I am in awe of the simplistic beauty found in Annabel Lee.” – Jane Black

NaPoWriMo – April 24

Today’s poem is offered by G. E. Schwartz:  THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM by Kathleen Raine…

 Gerry says the following about it :  ”John Montague, the Irish-American poet pointed me to Kathleen Raine’s poetry and for that I am forever in his debt. William Blake was her master, and she shared his belief that “one power alone makes a poet–imagination, the divine vision.” As WB Yeats, her other great exemplar, put it, “poetry and religion are the same thing”. To this vision Kathleen Raine committed not only her poetry and erudition, but the whole of her being. Her poetry, and especially THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM, stands as witness to spiritual values in a society that rejects them. Speaking of this poem in particular–and Raine and her work in general, we can use Blake’s words: “That in time of trouble I kept the divine vision. Better to be a sprat in that true ocean, than a big fish in a literary rockpool.” Amen.”

THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM

We know more than we know

Who see always the bewildering proliferating

Multiplicity of the common law.

 

There come to the artist’s hands

Such subtleties of form, of light,

Gardens, presences,

 

Faces so tenderly beautiful

We wonder with what untaught knowledge seen,

Beyond the commonplace hidden

 

Aspects of mystery, secrets

known only to the soul,

known only to love, immeasurable

 

Wisdom from our own hand’s work grown,

Expressions of a knowledge not our own

Which yet guides brush and pen, obedient

 

To an omniscience we, though ignorant, yet share

Whose hearts respond and answer

to Schubert’s music, and Mozart’s, they knowing no more

 

Than we of the celestial harmonies

They heard above the continual dissonance

The immediate imposes.

 

Yet unceasing

The music of the spheres, the magia of light,

Sprit’s self-knowledge in its flow

 

Imaging continually the all

Of which each moment is the presence

Telling itself to the listener, the seer in the heart

 

Contemplates in time’s river

The ever-changing never-changing face.

 

– Kathleen Raine

NaPoWriMo — April 23

Welcome April Snow!

Today’s poem by Todd Davis is offered by M.J. Iuppa.

 

A Memory of Heaven

Ice is talking; water dreaming.

Overhead darkness pinched by starlight.

Below, in the mud of the world, turtle sleeps:

everything fluid, formless without the light

of a lantern. I must remember snow

is enough to see by, and ice will tell us

where we should step. At the end

of the valley limestone swallows water,

moon turns the trees blue, and red

crossbills look for seed among hemlocks.

Beneath the fields, water is talking

in its sleep; ice quiets its dreams.

What I write is always what comes after.

Finding Our Place

(from The Least of These)

-

 By line by Kathleen Norris: 

“The pioneer environmentalist Wendell Berry once asked a question that proved controversial: why do nature calendar photographs so seldom have people in them, as if we are not a part of nature? In its quiet, poignant way this poem gives us our rightful place in the natural word, and reveals how much it has to tell us: snow can be enough to see by, and ice will show us where to step. The poet as observer stands apart, but is also called to the human task of storytelling. His offering of words comes only after the silence of ice, limestone, and moonlight have had their say. ” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Poetry%2FA+New+Way+of+Understanding%3A+A+Memory+of+Heaven+by+Todd+Davis.-a0206951855

 

UPCOMING EVENTS APRIL 23-30

MONDAY! APRIL 23

7 pm: The Harvest Café, 224 W. Main Street, Montour Falls, NY.  

Don’t miss Karla Merrifield, returning North who will be the featured reader, followed by a sharing of poems in the book Liberty’s Vigil she co-edited with Dwain Wilder.

 

WEDNESDAY ! APRIL 25

Anne Coon and Wynne McClure Poetry Reading  4 pm: 
Location: Shop One 2 (RIT’s art and gift shop) Global Village at Rochester Institute of Technology  (Parking lot S has designated parking for Global Village visitors)

Poets Wynne McClure and Anne Coon will be having a poetry reading at RIT’s Shop One 2 on the RIT campus.  Shop One 2 is a Fine Art and Craft Gallery representing RIT artists including faculty, alumni and students. 

 

FRIDAY  APRIL 27 (Note Thom Ward event cancelled.)

Fri., April 27^th: Open Mic Night at Seneca Falls Public Library, co-sponsored by The Literary Guild of the Finger Lakes; 7 pm, open to all; teens, adults; just show up; bring friends–read 5 min of original writing at a time; refreshments; come at 7 pm to sign up for your slot. 

SATURDAY: APRIL 28 — 2 events

1) Poetry, Pinot, Potluck at Writers & Books:  3-7  pm

2)  Activist poets,  Pure Kona Poets, Just Poets,Liberty’s Vigil Poets, ending with music,  Barside Stage:  4:30-9 pm at the Bug Jar, 219 Monroe Avenue, Rochester. 

NaPoWriMo – April 22

Today,  Earth Day, two poems by Szymborska, the first, offered by one of our newer Members, Alicia Hoffman, the second by  Deborah Cornaire who will be joining.

The Ball

As long as nothing can be known for sure

(no signals have been picked up yet),

as long as Earth is still unlike

the nearer and more distant planets,

as long as there’s neither hide nor hair

of other grasses graced by other winds,

of other treetops bearing other crowns,

other animals as well-grounded as our own,

as long as only the local echo

has been known to speak in syllables,

as long as we still haven’t heard word

of better or worse mozarts,

platos, edisons somewhere,

as long as our inhuman crimes

are still committed only between humans,

as long as our kindness

is still incomparable,

peerless even in its imperfection,

as long as our heads packed with illusions

still pass for the only heads so packed,

as long as the roofs of our mouths alone

still raise voices to high heavens–

let’s act like very special guests of honor

at the district-firemen’s ball

dance to the beat of the local oompah band,

and pretend that it’s the ball

to end all balls.

I can’t speak for others–

for me this is

misery and happiness enough:

just this sleepy backwater

where even the stars have time to burn

while winking at us

unintentionally.

~

–Wislawa Szymborska  (translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

“This poem, even in translation, does everything I love in a poem. I love its repetition and rhythm. It is simple, but contains such depth. Also, I agree whole-heartedly with its sentiment. “~Alicia Hoffman

**.

Under One Small Star

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.

Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.

May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.

My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.

I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.

Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,

your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,

forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.

My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.

Dignity, please be magnanimous.

Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.

Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.

My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.

My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.

I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,

since I myself stand in my own way.

Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

–  Wislawa Szymborska ((translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

“it is beautiful b/c all of our actions have both good and bad and she embraces this.”Deborah Cornaire:

NaPoWriMo — April 21

Today’s poem is offered from Elaine Olssen: 

“I chose this poem because of its strange and arresting images, phrases that fire my imagination and break my heart, and the idea that I am sharing a seat on this train with others “listening” and “seeing” in the dark.”

Station  by Li-Young Lee: 

 

Your attention please.

Train number 9, The Northern Zephr,

destined for River’s End, is now boarding.

All ticketed passengers

please proceed to the gate marked Evening.

 

Your attention please.  Train number 7,

Leaves Blown By, bound for The Color of Thinking

and Renovated Time, is now departing.

All ticketed passengers may board

behind my eyes.

 

Your attention please.  Train number 4, The Twentieth Century,

has joined The Wind Undisguised to become The Written Word.

 

Those who never heard their names

may inquire at the uneven margin of the story

or else consult the ivy

lying awake under our open window.

 

Your attention please.  The Music,

arriving out of hidden ground

and endlessly beginning, is now the flower,

now the fruit, now our cup and cheer

under branches more ancient

than our grandmother’s hair.

 

Passengers with memories of the sea

may board leisurely at any unmarked gate.

 

Fateful members of the foam may proceed to azalea.

 

Your attention please.

Under falling petals never think about home.

Seeing begins in the dark.

Listening stills us.

Yesterday has gone

ahead to meet you.

 

All the light-bearing tears may be exchanged

for the accomplished wine.

 

Your attention please.  Train number 66

Unbidden Song, soon to be

the full heart’s quiet, takes no passengers.

 

Please leave your baggage with the attendant

at the window marked Your Name Sprung from Hiding.

 

An intrepid perfume  is waging our rescue.

 

You may board at either end of Childhood.

 

 

NaPoWriMo — Favorite Poem — April 20

Patricia Roth Schwartz selects  the poem Kindness  by Naomi Shihab Nye. Her comment:  “My work in the prison has taught me how true this poem is.”

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

     purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.

6:30 pm: April 21, GeVa Poetry Jam: list of Poets

The Poetry Jam is free to the public  (suggested donation $3-5)

Biographies of the local poets reading poets mentioned in GeVa’s current play, Superior Donuts:

http://www.gevatheatre.org/events/poetryreading.php#localpoets

Reenah Golden (reading Maya Angelou)

Chandra McKenzie (reading Langston Hughes)

Arlette Miller Smith (reading Gwendolyn Brooks)

Vincent F.A. Golphin (reading Countee Cullen)

Tokeya C. Graham – (reading Ntozake Shange)

Grace Flores (reading Alice Walker)

Robert Ricks (reading Amiri Baraka)

Henry Ignacio Padrón-Morales (reading Nikki Giovanni)

Steve Huff (reading Lucille Clifton)

Ralph Black (reading Yusef Komunyakaa)

 

And more information about the event is here:

http://www.gevatheatre.org/events/poetryreading.php