We’ve come as far as this roadhouse. Time to stop for gas and maybe some lunch. In fact, let’s tarry in the book room, pour ourselves something warm and bracing, throw another log on the fire, and have a natter about where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and experienced so far. Let’s plan the next segment (we can ditch the itinerary for something completely different or we can reaffirm it), turn in, and get an early start in the morning.
Six months ago, when this seminar began, the original members of Wednesdays@One agreed on a set of goals:
To appreciate the elasticity of language
- To work with words as things (sounds, muscle-movements, rhythms) that can be shaped in different ways
- To be, simply, makers of poems rather than “poets” or even “writers”
- To experiment (with ideas, words and sentences, thoughts and feelings)
At the “six-month roadhouse” let’s stop for a while to ponder these goals anew.*
- Have we kept them in mind at all?
- Assuming that we have, at least part of the time,
- Have we accomplished any of these goals?
- If so, in what ways & what has been our individual and collective experience?
- Are we better today at writing poems than we were six months ago?
- Are we better readers?
- Do we talk with more confidence, more authoritatively, about poems and poetry?
- Has our conception of “good,” “bad,” “successful” changed in any way?
- If we were asked “What is a poem? What is poetry?” today, would our ensuing conversation be different now than six months ago?
- Where do we go from here?
The challenge: ponder anew the goals, and then think about some or all of the questions ahead of next week’s session. Then let’s devote that session to exploring where we’ve been, what we’ve gotten from the itinerary so far, and where we’d all like to go over the next six months.
In the meantime, just to give you something to kick-start your thinking, I attach two poems . . .
Waiting for Icarus
—Muriel Rukeyser (1973)
He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said that we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don’t cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
----
I Want to Be Stark [Like]
—Leah Umansky (The New York Times Magazine, April 8, 2018)
A man is only worth what people say he is,
and those Starks are good stock. They’ll knee-deep it.
They famish the craving they are fathered by.
Manning the forestry of life, they are steadfast and sturdy.
When pungent or cruel, they sauce the ache.
Light folds them in two.
What I want to say is, I would meet you upon this.
Let me, too, carry the token of the world.
Tell me the secret of what comes next,
and then take me
river river river
* A good idea since we’ve picked up a couple of hitchhikers along the way!
No comments:
Post a Comment