From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 1:31 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 1 Rilke // Lonely Aspirations

Lonely Aspirations

After reading Rainer Maria Rilke's, Letters to a Young Poet, I definitely felt a new twist of inspiration and guidance. As a reader, I was allowed to be the receiver of these letters, to be welcomed into Rilke's intimate, private life as a writer. I struggled as Franz Kappus did with his writing and valued the unique suggestions Rilke offered us.

I was particularly struck by the first letter Rilke wrote and how he developed a sense of what poetry is and how to go about writing it. As he says, "Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded" (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, p. 7). Wow! For a poet to exist in this world where words cannot capture expression leaves me both confused and marveled. In my experience, the poet sets out to grasp the unexplainable in minute, intricate details that leave the imagination to stretch into different forms much like play-doh. Rilke continues in the same letter to speak about the importance of knowing you love writing and cannot live without it: "Above all, in the most silent hour of the night, ask yourself this: Must I write?" (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, p. 9). Rilke catches the spirit of the obsession writing must be-fervent and passionate like a secret lover the writer must flee to at all expense in the depths of the night. I enjoyed the appeal of this image Rilke is concocting of how the poet is trapped in a place where words usually cannot or are not used properly to convey experience at the same time that the poet is desperately scrambling to capture those experiences with his/her own words.

Another aspect of Rilke that intrigued me was his sincere outlook on aloneness. He seems very sure that this is the only way one is able to write and that poets should devote their lives to themselves. At the end of his fourth letter, Rilke comments to Kappus, "It is good that you are settling into a career that will make you independent, and that you will be relying completely on yourself in every sense" (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, p. 42). In some ways, I disagree with Rilke here because I believe the writer is at the mercy of everyone else, relying on the world around him/her to provide the material for writing. However, it eventually boils down to the poet, who must look inward to develop his/her poetry and to experience life for his/her own self, which I think Rilke is getting at.

Here are additional phrases of Rilke included in Letters to a Young Poet that I found rather beautifully perplexing:

"Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread, and held and carried by a hundred others" (24).

"To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow" (26).

"Why don't you think of [God] as the coming one, who has been at hand since eternity, the future one, the final fruit of a tree, with us as its leaves?" (58).

"Since [society] is inclined to perceive love life as entertainment, it needs to display it as easily available, inexpensive, safe, and reliable, just like common public entertainment" (67).

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 2:06 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 26. Cavafy // Inescapable City

poem used: "The City" by C. P. Cavafy, Pinter, 30

It seems to me that often times people believe that they can escape their problems by leaving their location and going someplace new. I finally found a poem that sums up why I believe this will inevitably fail because lurking problems haunt us. "The City" by C. P. Cavafy describes how each person holds "the city" inside themselves, the same problems will continue to boil to the top no matter where we are.

The poem is divided into two stanzas, with the first being what "you" said about leaving and the second stanza almost a preaching tone of how "your" words and thoughts are destroying your life. In the first stanza, it says: "You said, 'I will go to another land, I will go to another sea. / Another city will be found, a better one than this" (30). The poem goes on to illustrate this person's "buried" sense of living--life is over in this city because "I see the black ruins of my life here, / where I spent so many years destroying and wasting" (30). How often we think this is the case! Yet the second stanza shows how this desperate person needs to learn how to heal and become revitalized by his/her surroundings: "The city will follow you. You will roam the same / streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods" (30). Everywhere this person goes, the past is going to follow them because they are refusing to face it and instead flee it so it follows. The poem goes on to say, "There is no ship for you, there is no road. / As you have destroyed your life here / in this little corner, you have ruined it in the entire world" (30). Wow! There is nothing to take you away from here, no path leading from here because maybe you have burned all the bridges around you and are stuck in this space...not a physical space but abstractly, perhaps in a mental, or grieving or bitter state. You have spoiled this little piece of the world and now that is your lens to see the rest of the world--you will find happiness nowhere.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Monday, May 01, 2000 9:32 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 24. Mary Oliver & Jane Hirshfield // Flying Nature

Poems discussed: "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver & "A Story" by Jane Hirshfield, A Book of Luminous Things

Both of these poems, "Wild Geese" and "A Story" utilize a bird as the focal point to teach humans something about themselves. With Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese," she insists that "You do not have to be good" but "You only have to let the soft animal of your body // love what it loves" (40). When humans accept that they are animals, they then can talk about despair ("Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.") but also have the understanding that there is life beyond them:

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers. (40)

Here is something greater than the despair, or at least the despair is a part of the chain of events going on in these lines. The wild geese are introduced to teach a specific lesson: "Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, // are heading home again" (40). Even the geese understand the concept of home and are returning there to "the family of things" (40). However, Oliver adds in the human aspect amongst the nature analogies:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. (40)

Wow! The world is your working tool, your workable equation of imagination! Oliver is exposing bits and pieces of her imagination to the reader and guiding them along the path to show them how they might go about using the world and nature to cultivate it.

Jane Hirshfield also includes a bird within her poem, except her bird is not like Oliver's swooping, glorious geese of the sky. Hirshfield hears a story of a "small wild bird" who appeared to be dead for three days on the windowsill (42). Suddenly, the woman's child discovers that the bird has movement and actually is not dead. The woman is faced to find the bird still quivering with life and she almost wishes to not face how the bird is somewhere between life and death with illness:

The emerald wing-feathers stirred, the throat

seemed to beat again with pulse.

Closer then, she saw how the true life lifted

under the wings. Turned her face

so her daughter would not see, though she would see. (42)

This family is attempting to avoid the unavoidable--illness and death. Unlike Oliver's poem where the birds symbolize the unity of family and how that links to nature, this bird shows how one can struggle alone and is avoided or at least the innocence of the child is the most important--the mother hopes that the child doesn't notice or remember this occurrence but the adult looks on to remember how the bird was stirring with a distant pulse of a heartbeat.

Both of these poems show how humans have a lot to learn from nature--from birds! Instead of a non-attachment outlook, these poems urge us to look to nature to learn about ourselves and how we are all connected, whether it be through illness and death or through family relations.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 1:01 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Final Paper

Here is my final paper. I will hand a hard copy in tomorrow. Thanks!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 12:30 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Cc: Walters, Anne M

Subject: 23. Walters // "Where is the Joy?"

Where is the Joy?

Where is the joy?

I've been here 7 hours?

What in the world is a tonal scale?

Alone.

Me and my circles of paint.

I can't do it. You must.

Hot tears try to burst through.

I am about to break.

Then my angel shuffles in.

"You are doing it wrong." (or "wrong, wrong, wrong")

Scruffy hair, wild eyes, kind eyes

"Wow, this is going to take you awhile."

"Have any advice?"

We talk and mix drops of paint.

My angel's passion is marijuana.

I've never tried marijuana. He's never tried talking to his parents.

We challenge each other.

I find a little joy.

My angel shuffles out.

One column done, 48 left.

Scraps of dotted paper around me and

I am lost in them.

"12:30 ma'am, time to lock up."

Perfection is tiring. I am not done.

Need to find the joy, need to find freedom.

The class chatters.

I am silent.

"It only took me 2 hours."

"This is my seventh."

The clock slides by.

A kind smile.

I find a hint of joy.

Last square filled.

I'm done.

Wow, Anne! I loved this poem when I first read it awhile back. I think if anything this describes a piece of the mixed artistic emotions of the frustrating challenge and then the final breakthrough of accomplishment. The title and first line are really appropriate, "Where is the Joy?" because the artist is sweating, spending long hours trying to find some meaning, some piece of art among "Me and my circles of paint" and going through such emotion: "Hot tears try to burst through. / I am about to break." There is a sense of desperation and almost giving up because the artist is on the edge of breaking.

The first stanza sets a few things up besides this bitter agony. First, Anne says how she is: "Alone. / Me and my circles of paint." Then in the next line the statement about aloneness is questioned because there seems to be another voice speaking: "I can't do it. You must." You?! Who is speaking here? Most people have experienced themselves saying, "I just can't do it...I have to do it." Sometimes though, there is this defense mechanism that brews up and becomes a different person outside oneself, ordering for the person to do what they need to do: "You do it!" Is this how it is here? Maybe, but the next stanza an angel (!!!) just happens to walk in, or, more precisely, "Then my angel shuffles in." It's not just any angel, it's my angel, my guardian angel who seems to always be with me but now is just making an small appearance. (I like the word shuffle here!) The angel speaks, "'You are doing it wrong.' (or 'wrong, wrong, wrong')," so now he/she is going to help and Anne seems to be implying that there is a higher power involved in the artistic process.

This angel isn't just any angel. Perhaps he/she isn't a religious angel or maybe so but--ahhh--one whose passion is marijuana! What?!?! Aren't angels passion usually God? Maybe marijuana is the way to God? =) Or maybe this angel is the angel of art and drugs free the mind from restraints of everyday angel life. This angel has a passion for marijuana...no, this angel's passion is marijuana. And now this angel seems to be human because "I've never tried marijuana. He's never tried talking to his parents. / We challenge each other." The artist is either hallucinating from the lack of marijuana or the poet is establishing a profound statement about religion or the poet is playing with the word "angel." Each way, the poem takes a twist of its own.

After the angel leaves, the artist is alone again until she is told she needs to leave: "Perfection is tiring. I am not done. / Need to find the joy, need to find freedom." There is a sense of defeat in these lines along with exhaustion--a very student feel to it! Where is the freedom and joy within deadlines for creativity? The artist is searching for an escape but also to finish her perfection. She finds it finally, in pieces, with "A kind smile." and then she "find[s] a hint of joy." until finally she can proclaim, "Last square filled. / I'm done." I really enjoyed how the poem took me along the journey of creation/frustration/hallucination so that I felt disheveled, disheartened, and overwhelmed with the artist and then I also got to experience the release and satisfaction at the end. Also, I enjoyed being able to look back when at the end of the poem and have to go back to the poem and question why that funny angel appeared to me, the new artist of the poem, and what marijuana and parents had to do with it all and how my last square looked, etc. Awesome job, Anne!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Monday, April 10, 2000 8:25 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Presentation -- Identity and Voice -- anyone interested?

Dear Fr. Mark,

I am interested in doing my presentation on the poems about identity and voice. I am open to working with whoever is also interested in this topic. Thanks!

-StephFrom: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 8:47 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Gonzalez, Angel // Living characteristics of the Dead

In "Diatribe Against the Dead," Gonzalez gives characteristics to the dead (i.e. "selfish") and speaks out against their state of being or lack of it because of how it effects the living. He describes them as "insensitive, distant, obstinate, cold" (Vintage, 21) when really they are inanimate objects at that point, or at least their bodies are. You might be disturbed by what may seem a lack of respect when talking about the dead, but that is exactly what Gonzalez is doing here--he is forcing us, the living, to look at how we view the dead. Usually they are revered and held at high esteem but "What a burden!" (21) as Gonzalez puts it. The dead "don't realize what they undo" (21). Because they cannot do anything, merely by their absence or "insolence" and "silence", they are undoing something. Are they undoing what they did in life? Gonzalez portrays them in the lines before as not caring what they do to those who care about them and so they don't realize how they are effecting these people. Gonzalez is crying out against "people" who cannot answer and at the end seems to depart from his angst and rant to get at the real issue--that he who is calling them selfish and the worst things really cares about those who are dead and wishes they still had emotions since he is prescribing fake characteristics onto them.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 7:51 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 20. Tim, Anne, Jen and Jeff // Nasrin presentation //

Wow! I was impressed by your presentation and how there was no dull moment during it. You used a variety of techniques to keep the audience's attention and did a good job with interaction. I too liked the "debate" because it allowed for a structured basis on which to start but thought it might have been too rigid to do with a poem (?). The questions on the handout were helpful also. I feel like although our time was limited, we had a really valuable discussion. Nasrin is a flavorful, awesome poet and I feel so fortunate to have been introduced to her--and in such a unique way! Your presentation helped bring forth the tensions that exist when a person is criticizing their own culture and whether or not a foreign audience is allowed to participate. Now the question exists whether Nasrin merely has become Westernized in her thinking and is abandoning her culture or if she is objecting her culture from within it. Anyway, good job! You're a hard act to follow!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Saturday, April 01, 2000 9:06 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 17. Ravikovitch, Dahlia // The World Watches as People Fall to Pieces

Here it is finally!!!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 10:10 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 19. Bishop // Lose the Art?

Lose the Art?

Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "One Art," is humorous while also sad. Its irony prevails throughout the entire poem about how to embrace losing because it's an inevitable art that one will face sooner than later. The last stanza is the most powerful for me both in irony and at her true meaning that rises out of the irony:

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

The first two lines about how the persona is going to lose you but it's a part of the art of losing and therefore the speaker will remember you and your voice and gesture but no longer will you be around. Aah, but such is life is what Bishop's line breathe. Now for the remaining lines, Bishop throws quite a twist in her poem! This funny "(Write it!)" is thrown in as if it's an interjection the line is supposed to know is there but it snuck its way in. However, then she included like on each side so we know that it's supposed to be there. So what is she saying? Although writing may look like disaster or it may look like losing...we may think that when writing we are working against losing but all-in-all it's disaster? Or maybe she's telling us that writing is the only way we can not lose things! In fact, she has mentioned things that you will lose in the poem so really they have not been entirely lost because they are written. That's a much brighter thought although she does seem to end with the feeling that no matter what, loss will occur.

Let's turn to Hirsch's interpretation of this part of the poem. Hirsch points out how Bishop is commanding herself to write it down so that she is not a victim to this horrible losing act and thus she is going through the act of recognition. Hirsch says, "By forcing herself to write it down she is forcing herself to admit and face it" (Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, 36). Hirsch looked at it much more psychological terms than I did, portraying Bishop as having to work through feelings and emotions (perhaps starting to tap into the Freudian subconscious) by writing things down. She is accepting and working against the universal loss which she proclaims happens.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 12:26 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 16. Sachs // Chorus of Screams

(Sorry, I'm attempting to catch up from before Spring Break...)

In Nelly Sachs' poem, "Landscape of Screams," I was overwhelmed at the startling images and profound religious background weaving throughout the poem. We went over this poem fairly thoroughly in class but I was instantly drawn to this poem for some reason. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I have read Sachs' poetry before. In "Chorus of the Rescued," she examines how the Jews were fragile, what they endured, and what they're going through as a people. The second half of the poem then looks at how they are supposed to go back to considering themselves human again and being treated that way again. Here is the ending to that poem:

We beg you:

Do not show us an angry dog, not yet--

It could be, it could be

That we will dissolve into dust--

Dissolve into dust before your eyes.

For what binds our fabric together? (Sachs, Nelly. "Chorus of the Rescued" One World of Literature, 551)

To imagine the brutality they were exposed to so much that it would cause them to dissolve into dust like at the camps from an angry animal. Sachs points out how this is what happened, that the Nazis dissolved them into dust and destroyed the fabric that binds us together. Or Sachs is curious how we are each connected and what is it that connects us if we slaughter one another. The power of her words gives us a glimpse into the extreme pain and suffering people endured. We are left to ponder how well words can capture meaning and feeling and if literature and poetry can justifiably portray the Holocaust...but if not them, then what or who?

Also, in both poems the titles focus on the sound. When I think of the Holocaust, I guess I think of it how John described watching the news reel--completely silent. That's how it was walking through the Holocaust Museum and Memorial. To have a picture, a "memory" of an event as silent almost in respect to the victims is not an accurate portrayal according to Sachs' poems since the experience was tainted by screams and mourning.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 10:24 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 16. Sachs // Info

Sachs, Nelly Leonie (1891-1970), German-Swedish poet, born into a Jewish family in Berlin. She began to write poetry at the age of 17. Her early romantic poems appeared in periodicals during the 1920s. In 1940 she left Nazi Germany to live in Sweden. Her later writing, profoundly Jewish in theme, drew lyrical inspiration from the tragedies of Jewish history. Her O the Chimneys (1946) includes the verse play Eli, written in 1943 and produced on the German radio in 1958. Sachs shared the 1966 Nobel Prize in literature with the Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=03306000

Nelly Sachs was born in Berlin into a well-to-do Jewish family. Her father, an industrialist and lover of music and literature, enhanced Nelly's childhood with an artistic home environment. She was lucky to have a long and private education and she started writing at the age of seventeen. Before WW II, Nelly focused on writing about German Romanticism, published many works, yet remained unknown. In 1939, because of her nationality, Nelly Sachs was ordered to appear at a German interrogation which caused the paralysis of her larynx. It left her unable to speak for several days (Lang-30). This experience is a central element in Sach's poetry, she attempts to "express the unexpressible" (Briefe-83). Nelly was lucky in having been saved from being sent to a concentration camp, when she and her mother emigrated to Sweden in 1940. Nelly dedicates her work to giving a voice to the victims, of the Holocaust, however, this is done without rage and anger about the mistreatment (Lang-34). Her work eventually won her many awards and prizes, the most well-known of these is the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature (Gregory-66). The most popular of Nelly's works include numerous lyrical poems, and her play called "Eli", which deals with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Nelly Sachs was such a giving and caring person that in her will, she left half of the Nobel Prize money, and all of the proceeds from her books to the care of homeless (Gregory-66).

http://www.iso.gmu.edu/~kkowalsk/nellylife.html

(long piece of information:)

NELLY SACHS

First Jewish Woman to Win a Nobel Prize.

Survivor of the Holocaust.

Born December 10, 1891 in Berlin, Germany; died May 12, 1970.

German poet, Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel prize for literature with S.Y. Agnon in 1966.

One of the major Jewish poets and a refugee who fled from Nazi Germany to Sweden in 1940.

She was the first Jewish woman to win a Nobel prize.

Her best known poetry deals with the Holocaust.

Nelly, (she was called Leone at birth) Sachs was the only child of a wealthy Berlin industrialist. The family lived in the Tiergartenviertel, one of Berlin's better neighbourhoods. Because of her family's wealth, Nelly was educated by private tutors. She studied music and dancing. Her early love of literature came from home.

By the age of seventeen, Nelly began writing poems in traditional, rhymed forms. She also wrote plays for puppets that had a fairy-tale flavour. Although some of her early work appeared in newspapers. She wrote mainly for her own enjoyment.

In 1921, Nelly Sachs published her first full-length work, a volume entitled Legenden und Erzaehlungen ( Legends and Stories). The stories in the book reflected the influence of Christian mysticism in both the world of German Romanticism and the Catholic Middle Ages. In the decade before Hitler came to power, Sachs had been renowned in Germany for her expressionist lyrics. With Hitler's rise, she rediscovered her Jewish heritage and began searching for mystical ideas in the Zohar (a mystical interpretation of the Torah written in Aramaic which she utilized in her poetry.)

Every member of her family, with the exception of her elderly mother was killed in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. She, too, might have met such a fate and indeed, in 1940 Nelly Sachs herself was ordered to a "work camp." Fortunately, a German friend of Sachs's, at great risk to herself, journeyed to Sweden and met with the great Swedish poet and 1909 Nobel-prize winner, Selma Lagerlof, then on her deathbed. Sachs and Lagerlof had corresponded with each other for many years. In one of Lagerlof's final acts, she made a special appeal on Sachs's behalf to Prince Eugene of the Swedish Royal House. Though virtually no Jews were permitted to leave Germany, Prince Eugene arranged a visa for Nelly Sachs and her mother so that they could travel to Sweden. Sadly, Selma Lagerlof died before Nelly's arrival in Stockholm.

Many of Nelly Sachs's works, among them the writings for the puppet theatre, were lost after her flight to Sweden. Her early work is therefore largely unknown. Her reputation has been based on her creative output since the start of World War II. During the war years, ]Nelly Sachs wrote some of her most impressive poetry. At the center of her poetry is the motif of flight and pursuit, the symbol of the hunter and his quarry. Her poetry has been described as ecstatic, mystical and visionary.

She wrote her best known play, Eli, A Mystery of the Sorrows of Israel, in 1943. It was published eight years later. The play is made up of seventeen loosely connected scenes, which tell the tragic story of an eight year old Polish shepherd boy. The boy poignantly raises his flute heavenward in anguish when his parents are taken away and then murdered by a German soldier. A cobbler named Michael traces the culprit to the next village. Filled with remorse, the soldier collapses at Michael's feet. The play is interwoven with the themes from the Jewish legend of the Lamed Vav Zaddikkim ("The 36 hidden Saints").

Nelly Sachs said she wrote Eli, later presented as a radio play and an opera, "Under the impression of the dreadful experience of the Hitler period while smoke was still commingled with fire."

Concentrating on the Holocaust, Nelly Sachs combined elements of Jewish mysticism with tradition of German Romanticism. She tried to convey the incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust, making constant use of two words:

tod and nacht, German for death and night, respectively.

Although her adult poems were largely composed in free verse, Nelly Sachs wrote with careful craftsmanship and utilized a German that was influenced by the language of the Psalms and was full of mystical imagery of Hasidic origin. "If I could not have written, I could not have survived", she wrote." "Death was my teacher....my metaphors are my sounds."

Nelly Sachs was almost fifty years old when she reached Sweden. She shared a two bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building with her mother. At the outset, living in exile in Sweden, Nelly Sachs made a modest living by translating Swedish poetry into German. She eventually published several successful volumes of her translations. Of her own poems, her best known one was die Schomsteine ("O the Chimneys") with its poignant lines:

O the chimneys, On the cleverly devised abodes of death,

As Israel's body drew, dissolved in smoke, Through the air,

As a chimney-sweep a star received it, Turning black,

Or was it a sunbeam?

In that poem, the body of Israel is in the smoke emitted by the chimneys of the Nazi concentration camps. In her book In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Habitations of Death), dedicated to "my dead brothers and sisters", Nelly Sachs included cycles entitled: "Prayers for the Dead Fiance,." "Epitaphs Written On Air," and "Choruses After Midnight."

Sternverdunkelung (1949) contains poetry that expressed an unyielding faith in the survivability of the people of Israel and the importance of its mission. Sachs recognized the existence of evil and accepted the tragedy that flows from that evil. But she did not believe in being vindictive or plotting retaliation against evildoers. When Sachs was awarded the peace prize from the German Book Publishers Association in October 1965, she said, "In spite of all the horrors of the past, I believe in you....Let us remember the victims and then let us walk together into the future to seek again a new beginning."

Her Spaete Gedichte ( Late Poems) (1965) contained the extended poetic sequence Gluehende Raestsel, (Glowing Riddles) (1964). Sharing the 1966 Nobel prize for literature with the Israeli novelist and short story writer S.Y. Agnon, Nelly Sachs noted "Agnon represents the state of Israel. I represent the tragedy of the Jewish People."

The Nobel prize citation declared: "With moving intensity of feeling she has given voice to the worldwide tragedy of the Jewish people, which she has expressed in lyrical laments of painful beauty and in dramatic legends. Her symbolic language body combines an inspired modern idiom with echoes of ancient biblical poetry. Identifying herself totally with the faith and ritual mysticism of her people, Miss Sachs has created a world of imagery, which does not shun the terrible truths of the extermination camps and corpse factories, but which at the same time rises above all hatred of the persecutors, merely revealing a genuine sorrow at man's debasement".

Explaining her writing, Nelly Sachs said: "I have constantly striven to raise the unutterable to a transcendental level, in order to make it tolerable, and in this night of nights, to give some idea of the holy darkness in which the quiver and the sorrow are hidden."

Nelly Sachs's later work examined the relationship of the dead and the living, the fate of innocence, and the state of suffering.

Nelly Sachs died in 1970 at the age of seventy eight.

http://www.interlog.com/~mighty/special/nelly.htm

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 9:56 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 15 April Bernard // Unassuming Reality

Unassuming Reality

When I attended April Bernard's poetry reading, I was struck by her ability to capture people's characteristics while also capturing their personalities. I think of #3 of her fourteen part poem called something like "They're real crazy." She described the "crazy" people in her neighborhood but showed how it boiled down to the fact that they were all humans and they didn't consider their strangeness dramatic anymore. In fact, nothing ever exciting happened there because it all had become "normal," or relatively normalized. I guess I really liked this part of her poem because it was rich in visual impact and it was a lot of fun besides.

Another poem which struck me was the bee poem. Although this man who went to get honey had been stung time and again, he kept searching for more honey while the bees kept buzzing all around, warning him of what they would do to protect their sweetness. Even after he went to the doctor and was advised to deviate from this rather bad habit, he still went out to get honey except this time with swaddled in gauze around his hands and a big brown suit to protect his body. The poem created him as a bear, a human who wouldn't listen to logic and went on his way as an animal, a big bear swatting away the bees so he could have some honey too. I should have taken notes during the reading but I believe that my memory serves me best here because I have remembered these important parts and the way April's voice sounded, it's still ringing in my ears. However, I would have been able to provide more details and probably more insight if I would have more references than solely my memory. So I leave you with my faded images and clips of the reading which still resonate within me.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 6:14 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Rachel, Kate, Steph // Poet Switch to Dahlia Ravikovitch

Dear Fr. Mark,

I hope it isn't a problem but Kate, Rachel and I decided to switch our poet to Dahlia Ravikovitch instead of Shu Ting.

Thank you,

Steph

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 2:02 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 14 Haki Madhubuti // Welcome to Life

Welcome to Life

"Men and Birth: The Unexplainable" by Haki Madhubuti

I'm going to pick up where Sersch left off and that's at the beginning of the poetry part right after the prose. I think the most astounding part of "Men and Birth: The Unexplainable" is the last half but I believe the second "stanza" is an important transition that leads in to the ending.

I love this poem for its sharp images and its wording that makes you feel like you're right there during the birth process and the beauty and ambiguity of it. Madhubuti welcomes "you" who "thought that baby delivering was others' work, / stranger's work" to "new seasons of wisdom" (Madhubuti, "Men and Birth: The Unexplainable," The Rag and Bone Shop). welcome to new seasons of wisdom is an invitation, no, more like a friendly greeting, taking the man by the hand into the unseen world where no longer "you" will think that "baby delivering" is "others'" or "stranger's work." Now you will know that baby delivering is not someone else's work because there is your "wife" giving you the wisdom, pushing life the two of you created out of the safety harbor into the world where you can experience this wisdom also.

"welcome to counting & breathing," (Madhubuti, "Men and Birth: The Unexplainable," The Rag and Bone Shop)

There is a rhythm and normalness to this strenuous birthing process in which the man needs to acquaint himself with. I imagine a man at the side of his wife's bed trying to help her along with the necessary breathing technique but more learning from her the pattern. =) Counting is something learned early on and breathing is a natural "habit" at birth. These two things. which seem so elementary, need to be relearned by the newcomer or at least learned in a new way to encourage this new life out of its comfort, warmed liquid home only so that you can teach this baby these steps later on in life.

"to pushing & contractions," (Madhubuti, "Men and Birth: The Unexplainable," The Rag and Bone Shop)

This is much more active and immediate--PUSH!!! You can hear the screams and chaos that is surrounding this baby's arrival into the world. These two actions, pushes and contractions, characterize labor and illustrate the mechanical steps behind urging the baby out. This is the middle of the stanza and seems so basic and introductory but I think Madhubuti is making it blatantly obvious so that all is clear to the newcomer.

"to urging life onward quietly & / magnificently" (Madhubuti, "Men and Birth: The Unexplainable," The Rag and Bone Shop)

I believe these two lines are the center, the driving force, in this poem. Amidst the loud screams and strained breathing, they are partaking in a gentleness with a delicate baby. Urge is a word that is mentioned a few times in the poem, implying the new life needs some coercing to convince it to join the rest of the world--to move onward. Like all of us, we cannot stay in our mother's womb or in one comfortable place our whole lives because there is more to life to experience and we need to exit those places to move onward with quietness and magnificence.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 1:32 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 13 Lee, Li-Young // Lifelong Lessons from Father Figure

Lifelong Lessons from Father Figure

"The Gift" by Li-Young Lee

Already have had hearing an interview with Li-Young Lee, I know how he truly respects his father to the utmost degree. Lee talked about how he feared his father while at the same time felt his tenderness and love. Both "The Gift" and "A Story" illustrate this. In "The Gift" Lee is the gracious son who has learned how tenderness and discipline can coexist and how these were gifts passed on to him by his father. Lee speaks of how his "father recited a story in a low voice" and how this meant so much to him because he watched his face while his father took out the splinter, only hearing the deep voice and sensing his hands. Later, in "A Story," he feels like he has failed his father and himself with his own son because he cannot fabricate a story to tell his anxious son, realizing that one day his son will turn away from him like he did to his father. The cycle of familial relationships that rises out of these poems is very intriguing!

I believe that one stanza really captures how Lee is telling us about the gift his father gave him. The third stanza draws the reader in and swings and hustles him/her amidst the words. "Had you entered that afternoon / you would have thought you saw a man" (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136) signifies to me if I would have eavesdropped on the situation although I already feel as if I am the son staring wide-eyed up at my father's deep, intoxicating voice, I would have thought or imagined or misunderstood my sight of a man who was "planting something in a boy's palm" (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). What an odd image that a father would be dropping a little something into the open wound in a boy's hand.

Earlier in the poem from "pull the metal splinter from my palm" and "he'd removed / the iron silver I thought I'd die from" plus more, there is a distinct reverence and almost image of how Jesus might have been comforted by his "father." Again, the word palm sneaks it way into the poem here and now the man is planting "a silver tear, a tiny flame" into the boy's palm (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). These are very different, yet somehow gentle images that seem to go together although they contrast each other. A silver tear leaves me puzzled--is this a reference to something I'm not understanding? Yet I think of a silver tear as a raindrop, perhaps fallen before from the father's face, giving the boy new energy and an understanding of emotions. The tiny flame is a beautiful image because it is small, like the boy, and in size it is only just beginning yet it is being planted within the boy's hand to stretch out to the rest of his body and become a blazing, uncontrollable passion toward life.

After this the reader is pondering what exactly was planted in the boy's hand, what that magical thing was the father seemed to have dropped inside his boy, and then is brought to the present moment, here: "Had you followed that boy / you would have arrived here" (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). Where is here? Where had the boy been to get to here? What would I have had to follow him through to get to here? Is he still a boy here? What if I hadn't followed the boy, where would I have arrived? So what is here?: "where I bend over my wife's right hand" (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). This is the first time in this stanza he addresses the young boy as being himself, now that he's older and using the same hand that his father implanted a sense of tenderness and respect to kiss his wife's hand in respect. In the next stanza he goes to take on the role of his father but instead interacting with his wife and filing her nails carefully to remove the splinter. This man's father did not give him a hard heart or make him see life as if a wrong turn equated death, no, this man learned great lessons about tenderness and respect by loving those around him.

There are distinct words floating about this poem which bring it to life. The sliver which causes pain and distress at first in contrast to the silver tear his father planted in his palm. The splinter embedded deep when the hand carefully eases it out as he does to his wife later. His father's hands, "two measures of tenderness" that he thinks of later as he holds his wife's hand (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). There are certain words and images that seem out of place or else I'm not sure where they fit in, such as: "the flames of discipline / he raised above my head" or "Metal that will bury me, / christen it Little Assassin, / Ore Going Deep for My Heart" (Lee, "The Gift," Rag and Bone Shop, 136). Why is that last line all in capitals? What does this mean, especially because he did not think this?

Overall, I was really struck at the refreshing intensity Lee provides the reader with about his awe for his father and how that has impacted his life. I also really enjoyed reading "The Gift" along with "A Story" because I think they exemplify the difficulty and complexity of relationships in a family.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 3:41 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Li-Young Lee // Persimmons

If you have Real Audio on your computer, you may want to listen to Li-Young Lee read his poem, "Persimmons" on the following website:

http://www.wwnorton.com/sounds/lbooth.htm

Here is the text of that poem:

Persimmons

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmon and precision.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew on the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down,

I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.

Naked: I've forgotten.

Ni, wo: you me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang. The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father would stay up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He's so happy that I've come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

from Li-Young Lee's collection entitled Rose: Poems (BOA Editions, 1986)

And here is info about the poem:

In the poem, persimmons are a symbol of several elements that have figured importantly in this Chinese narrator's life: they stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between "persimmon" and "precision" and makes a play on other words which sound similar and "that got [him] into trouble." He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he "watched the . . . faces" without participating. Persimmons remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna, a Caucasian woman, and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember.

The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father's life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him a sweet, ripe persimmon, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. Later yet again, the father and he "feel" a silk painting of persimmons, "painted blind / Some things never leave a person."

http://mchip00.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/lee196-des-.html

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 3:10 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Li-Young Lee info

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 they traveled in Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, until arriving in America.

Mr. Lee studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York, College at Brockport. He has taught at various universities, including Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. In 1990 Li-Young Lee traveled in China and Indonesia to do personal research for a book of autobiographical prose.

Li-Young Lee's several honors include grants from the Illinois Arts Council, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989 he was awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; in 1988 he was the recipient of a Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. In 1987 Mr. Lee received New York University's Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award for his first book, Rose, published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 1986; and The City in Which I Love You, Li-Young Lee's second book of poems, was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. He has also won the Lannan Literary Award.

http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/lee.html

http://www.dibbs.net/~vfowlkes/lee.html

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 1:33 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Cc: Lucas, Katherine M; Castor, Rachel A

Subject: Kate, Rachel, Steph // Shu Ting

Dear Fr. Mark,

Kate, Rachel and I are interested in the Chinese poet, Shu Ting. However, we are flexible in case another group is interested in the same poet.

Thanks,

Steph

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 1:45 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 12. McCarriston // Cursed Body

Cursed Body

Bill Moyers Interview with Linda McCarriston,

from "The Language of Life," Part Three: The Field of Time

To Judge Faylan,

dead long enough...

A Summons

Your Honor, when my mother stood before you

with her routine domestic plea

after weeks of waiting for speech to return to her body

with her homemade forties hairdo,

her face purple still under pancake

her jaw off just a little

her holy-of-holies healing

her breasts wrung

her heart the bursting heart of someone

snagged among rocks deep in a shark pool

No, not someone but a woman there,

snagged with her babies, by them

in one of hope's pedestrian brutal turns

When, in the tones of parlours overlooking the harbor,

you admonished that, for the sake of the family,

the wife must take the husband back to her bed.

What you willed not to see before you

was a woman risen clean to the surface.

A woman who, with one arm flailing,

held up with the other her actual burdens of flesh.

When you clapped to her leg

the chain of justice

you ferried us back down to

the law--

The black ice eye,

the ma,

the macko that circles the kitchen table nightly.

What did you make of the words she told you

not to have heard her,

not to have seen her there?

Almost forgivable ignorance,

you were not the fist, the boot or the blade

but the jaded corrective ear and eye

at the limits of her world.

Now I will you

to see her as she was,

to ride your own words back into light.

I call your spirit home again,

divest in you of robe and bench

the fine white hand and half-lit Irish eye.

Tonight put on a body

in the trailer down the road,

where your father,

when he can't get it up,

makes love to your mother with a rifle.

Let your name be Eva Mary,

let your hour of birth be dawn

let your life be long and common

and your flesh endure.

--Linda McCarriston

I found it very difficult to give a poem form, especially knowing it exists in the order the poet intended it to have somewhere out there. However, it was so helpful and rather a creative process to be able to hear the poet speak their work in their own voice and then take that and translate the open words onto the blank page (or screen).

Since we all know what this poem is about because Linda told us, I want to focus on a line that jumped out at me and probably wouldn't have if I hadn't heard it spoken aloud. The line is "Now I will you" because of the enriched power within that line. At first I thought she was saying, "Now will you?" as if taunting the judge to stick to his word even after seeing what he really sentenced them to after his judgment, after he sees her mother "as she was." McCarriston is not asking the judge to look at what's happened now but bringing him back to that crucial moment when her mother become a hero and risked her life to escape the wretched abusive life in which she was caged.

Another potent aspect about this line ("Now I will you") is the supreme bitterness, hurt and tiny sense of revenge (she is casting a curse on him, keep in mind) that lurk within these words. The depth these words took me to when Linda McCarriston read them outloud was simply startling--I wasn't sure whether I felt as the helpless judge who was simply trying to do his job, maintaining the tradition to praise good and dispraise evil and uphold the Catholic church or if I was the worn, defeated mother who saw myself in my hostile but persevering daughter who is shaking her fist at the stubborn old judge while a long-awaited smile creeps on my face.

Even the arrangement of the words is essential to this line. NOW brings the judge, who has been "dead long enough," to the present so that he can see what her mother was when she stood in front of him that meek, unfortunate day. "I" comes before "you," forcing the judge to forget about himself for a moment and take on what the daughter is challenging him to--it's a personal battle or struggle that the daughter is making obvious how much personal stake was in his decision for her. WILL is rich with meaning--here it is a propellant verb moving him, forcing him, to accept this double dog dare. YOU is the inevitable, the one who forced the daughter, mother and family back with the "fist, the boot [and] the blade." And although YOU is almost a forgivable offense, the daughter doesn't deem YOU worthy enough to be saved from this awful curse of being forced into awareness where your father "makes love to your mother with a rifle."

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:04 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: More Info on Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke

(1908-1963)

Theodore Roethke was born on May 23, 1908, in Saginaw, Michigan. His grandfather, once Bismarck's chief forester, had emigrated from Prussia in 1870 and then, with his sons, had started some greenhouses there. Roethke went to the University of Michigan and afterwards took some graduate courses at Harvard. Subsequently he taught at several colleges and universities, lending himself generously to his students and even, at one time, coaching tennis. He was a tormented man, frantic for fame, a prey to breakdowns and a victim of alcoholism. His longest and last poem was at the University of Washington, where his sporadic breakdowns were tolerated. He wrote little, but with great care. His collected poems, still a slender output, appeared under the title Words for the Wind in 1959. By 1963 he was dead.

Cuttings

Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam,

Their intricate stem-fur dries;

But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water;

The small cells bulge;

One nub of growth

Nudges a sand-crumb loose,

Pokes through a musty sheath

Its pale tendrilous horn.

Cuttings

(later)

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,

Cut stems struggling to put down feet,

What saint strained so much,

Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,

In my veins, in my bones I feel it,--

The small waters seeping upward,

The tight grains parting at last.

When sprouts break out,

Slippery as fish,

I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair, eds. Modern Poems, an Introduction to Poetry. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.: New York, 1973.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:04 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: More about Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje

...(b. 1943) was born in Sri Lanka and immigrated to Canada in 1962. A prolific short story writer and novelist, he has also won the Governor General's Award for Literature for two books: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1962-1978 (1979). The latter book, like his most recent novel, In the Skin of a Lion (1987), incorporates materials drawn from his Sri Lankan background. Ondaatje's work explores the character of relations and roles--such as father and son or male and female--that have lost their traditional meanings and ordered construction.

Spencer, Norman and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. One World of Literature. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1993.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:04 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 11. Roethke // Dad's Drunken Dance

Dad's Drunken Dance

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

Roethke's poem displays a form of twisted intimacy between father and son. The son seems to be "a small boy" (Roethke, Rag and Bone Shop, 130) overtaken by his father's drunken waltz. I don't know whether or not to take this poem as a literal interpretation and how this small boy was being led around by his drunken father around the room doing the waltz with his father leading him into the bedroom to continue the terrible waltz. Otherwise the poem to me seems to be about how the boy perceives being molested by his father. The reader learns that the father tends to be a drunk, "The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy" and that he was violent, "The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle" (Roethke, Rag and Bone Shop, 130). We also get the sense with the next line after this that for every time the father messes up, the son suffers the consequence: "At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle" (Roethke, Rag and Bone Shop, 130).

I was left with a deeply saddened sickness tumbling in my stomach after processing this poem. The son is looking back on the time with his use of past tense or at least he's removing himself from it. He seems to be bringing himself back to the experience that he has yet to resolve within himself. I also gathered that he might blame himself for part of it with the last line that he was "still clinging to your shirt" (Roethke, Rag and Bone Shop, 130). His father was waltzing him off to bed yet he was going along with the act. With the wording, the son seems to be remembering but in a detached sense and with a sense of guilt. Roethke is able to make the reader feel as if he/she is the young boy and is tense with what is to happen next and sits with tense fear as to what the next line is to bring.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:03 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 9. Ondaatje // A Son's Lost World in his Father's Letters

A Son's Lost World in his Father's Letters

"Letters & Other Worlds" by Michael Ondaatje

I found the Canadian poet, Michael Ondaatje, to express a phenomenal sense of expression in his poem, "Letters & Other Worlds." Although the poem seemed quite mysterious, I like the darkness the reader is allowed to lurk within with the father and his son throughout the poem. Ondaatje distinguishes between his father's body and his writing (letters). His father exists in two "worlds"--he expresses himself in his most ridiculous actions, such as:

He would rush into tunnels magnetized

by the white eyes of the train...

managed to stop a Perahara in Ceylon

--the whole procession of elephant dancers

local dignitaries--by falling

dead drunk onto the street. (Ondaatje, "Letters & Other Worlds, How to Read a Poem, 129).

Here the father "gains instant fame" by making a total fool of himself and embarrassing himself and his family by his alcoholism. Yet there is the other world existing within the father, the letter world, where he breaks free from this and can express his true emotions:

There speeches, head dreams, apologies,

the gentle letter, were composed.

With clarity of architects

he would write of the row of blue flowers

his new wife had planted... (Ondaatje, "Letters & Other Worlds, How to Read a Poem, 130).

The father was so consumed by alcohol that the only way he could connect with his sober self was through his personal letters.

I found it interesting that the death of the father occurs in the middle of the poem. I found this stanza to be saying that he died the way he lived--in isolation. He consumed alcohol while really alcohol consumed him.

He came to death with his mind drowning.

On the last day he enclosed himself

in a room with two bottles of gin, later

fell the length of his body

so that brain blood moved

to new compartments

that never knew the wash of fluid

and he died in minutes of a new equilibrium. (Ondaatje, "Letters & Other Worlds, How to Read a Poem, 128).

This poem represents supreme melancholy of a lost boy without the comfort of his father's wisdom and support. The son is regretful about his father's inability to express himself to others without alcohol and feels rather wishful that he could act like the person he represents in his letters.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:03 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 10. Peacock // Curve Ball

Curve Ball

Peacock's Chapter 10: Letters From Two Fathers

"Our lives are not only filled with predictable combinations, they are made of them--these combinations are the fabric of our daily communications" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem, 137). Peacock says this when talking about Komunyakaa's poem, "My Father's Loveletters," and in reference to the second to last line about the placement of "almost." I believe she sums up an aspect of poetry fairly well here. We are all on our predictable routines in some ways and like Peacock says, when we hear "green" we might expect "grass" to follow. The poet's job is to throw us a curve ball, to step away from cliches so that we are liberated from our embedded way of thinking, and we transgress to another level where green can be associated with something completely unexpected, like "Grandfather's old toenails." !!!

I thought the rest of Peacock's chapter was useful to show how you can interpret a poem and how you can find meaning from the simplest comma or placement of "and." However, most of us might have found it frustrating if we thought about it as her telling us the steps to reading a poem and how it should be read. For myself, I read the poetry and let it sit for awhile and then read on after I realized she was going to analyze the poem for us. Then I found Peacock's insight helpful in further understanding my interpretation and in some instances, enhancing.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 6:40 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 8 Clifton // Transgression

Transgression

Lucille Clifton b. 1936

there is a girl inside

she is randy as a wolf.

she will not walk away

and leave these bones

to an old woman.

she is a green tree

in a forest of kindling.

she is a green girl

in a used poet.

she has waited

patient as a nun

for the second coming,

when she can break through gray hairs

into blossom

and her lovers will harvest

honey and thyme

and the woods will be wild

with the damn wonder of it.

First of all, Lucille Clifton is one of my beginning to be favorite poets. I have only read two short books of her poetry so I don't know her too well but fairly. Lucille Clifton is known for her transgression of "regular" or societal thought. She takes what could be overused topics and twists and turns them into something extraordinary. Clifton addresses such things as aging, female body image, slavery, racism, traditional religion, etc. She takes issues from the past and weaves them into her poem so that a new understanding of the present evolves.

I think a little from most of these themes is present. The poem starts out with something we are not used to: "there is a girl inside / she is randy as a wolf." Since when do we associate females with "randiness"? Or even wolves and "randiness"?* Here we see a glimpse of wildness and something similar to Holm's poem, "Advice." The poem goes on to explain how there is a girl present within the midst of the bones of an "old woman." Clifton seems to tell us that old age doesn't necessarily kill our "inner child" or even an exuberance within us.

The third stanza sticks out to me as the catching point, especially with its relationship with the fourth stanza. Clifton describes this young girl living within an old woman waiting "patient as a nun" and I think we all can derive a sharp association with these words--or at least I can. She's waiting "patient as a nun / for the second coming" as if this is Christ's rebirth and these lines are very religious but then wait--she has waited for this second come so she could "break through gray hairs / into blossom"...she loses the sense of her age, and the weight of it and flourishes into "blossom" after she breaks out of the old age shell.

So we have this image of a girl who is "randy as a wolf" but also "patient as a nun." The next stanza, which is still a part of the sentence from the stanza before, goes on to say "and her lovers will harvest / honey and thyme." We have this young girl who is in touch with her sexuality in a wild sense, in a wolf way, who has these lovers who are gathering honey and thyme. But she is also like a nun and that phrase is stuck in between these rather sexual lines, leaving us with this sense of wildness and uncertainty. How are piety and sexuality intertwined or aren't they? Clifton seems to be making them interchangeable, leaving "the woods [to] be wild / with the damn wonder of it," it being this girl captured inside an old woman who has blossomed from the second coming. I see this poem as having a very religious undertone and a very sexual undertone and the two kind-of working together in an unexpected fashion that leaves our senses a bit bewildered.

*dictionary.com defines "randy" as:

1. a. Lascivious; lecherous.

b. Of or characterized by frank, uninhibited sexuality.

2. Scots. Ill-mannered.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 6:05 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Response to Jeff: 7 Rumi // Unworthy "Deservingness"

Unworthy "Deservingness"

I was really struck by what Jeff had to say about Rumi's "Four Quatrains," particularly because it was similar but also quite different than my own interpretation of the poem.

The first quatrain I was so overwhelmed by Rumi's powerful messages with the words "worthy" and "deserve"...I saw the first line, "Where is a foot worthy to walk a garden" to be very literal--think of how we crush the grass blades below us when we walk or we inhale the luscious floral scent that is buzzing around us (that reminds of the sign Erbert's and Gerbert's Sub Shop used to have up--"Free Smells"). I take these things for granted so much by my act of admiration for the beauty of the flowers! I forget that I'm walking on their home, their soil and my foot might not be worthy of that power! The same thing goes with the second line, "or any eye that deserves to look at trees?" Wow! You need to have a privilege even to look at something. Another thing I take for granted--my sense of sight. I know I will walk and ponder the beauty around me but never do I think of how I might be violating the tree's privacy by looking at it or abusing my sight because I do not deserve it! Jeff talked about how we as humans feel disconnected from the earth when it is right here in front of us. It seems to me that he gained a different insight from these lines...Rumi isn't telling us that we are unworthy of these things, merely that we are numb to them, thus trivializing these amazing aspects. I believe both Jeff and I come to the same conclusion and that is that Rumi is expressing how we need to appreciate and have the utmost respect and reverence for what surrounds us and to immerse ourselves in this world.

As far as the second quatrain goes, I was quite amused with Jeff's animated response--I feel as if he's speaking and laughing with me as we struggle to figure these lines out. From Jeff's questions and possible answers, something out of my mind grew from this. At first, I was confused by "In the shambles of love, they kill only the best," but then as I read on in the poem and Jeff's response, I thought this might be Rumi telling us to let go of our fear of loving/rejection. Embrace love ("Don't run away from this dying"--accept that you will be overcome and conquered by it) because the ruins of love "kill only the best." That is so powerful because those who are not killed/dead "for love [are] dead meat." What?! Dead meat? Initially I couldn't get beyond this point because it sounded too much like slang--dead meat. But then I thought about what dead meat is, it is without a soul or purpose and maybe you can bring in a little slang here from recent culture and think of how you'll be "dead meat" if you don't do "blah" (fill in the "blah"). So thank you, Jeff, for helping me understand those lines more fully! I hope this helped you, too!

I think I'm going to leave it at that for now and perhaps return to it later. I love this poem because I think it resonates a purely "tarnishable" message about humans and how they treat life and maybe how they should go about treating life.

*all quotes taken from: Rumi, "Four Quatrains," The Rag and Bone Shop, 9

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2000 9:29 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 7 Anacreontea//Drinking a Drunk Creation

Drinking a Drunk Creation

Drinking

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,

And drinks and gapes for drink again;

These two lines make me think of a time when I am so thirsty and grab for a full glass of ice water and gulp it down only to find that I'm just as thirsty as I was before I drank the water. This is how I imagine the earth, especially from the "drinks and gapes for drink again." I like how these lines make the earth alive, as a being reaching out and up for more rain, begging to be given more in order to quench its dying thirst.

The plants suck in the earth, and are

With constant drinking fresh and fair;

Now the earth, which was so thirsty in the previous lines, is being drunk up by the plants. The growing plants constantly rely on the earth, and through "fresh and fair" drinking, they absorb the earth in order to grow.

The sea itself (which one would think

Should have but little need of drink)

Drink ten thousand rivers up,

You would think that the last thing on the earth that would be thirsty would be the sea! But even the sea wants drink and I never thought of all of the rivers which dump into a big sea as the sea taking one big gulp of river!

So filled that they o'erflow the cup.

This line left me a bit confused. The rivers are being compared to being water in a cup and the cup is so full that it's overflowing. Perhaps I'm trying to read more into it but I don't know what the cup stands for, whether it's referring to the sea or its banks or what. Any ideas or insights?

The busy Sun (and one would guess

By's drunken fiery face no less)

What a different way of thinking about the sun--as busy. The "Sun" needs to rise and set each day and cover the entire earth when not covered itself so it remains busy from routine all the time. How reliant we are on its business. I'm not sure what the second line means: "By's drunken fiery face no less" because it doesn't "flow" in my mind but it creates a very clear picture in my mind.

Drinks up the sea, and when he's done,

The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun:

Anacreontea is capturing the natural cycle of the earth and the cosmos. The sun makes water/sea evaporate only for the sun to turn around (or sink down as on earth) and the moon and stars drink up its light so that there is a much different picture on earth. The thought of the moon and stars drinking the sun is a refreshing outlook on day and night.

They drink and dance by their own light,

They drink and revel all the night:

The moon and stars now have drank the sun's light and call the light their own--and they celebrate in this light. Yet they also continue to drink the sun's light all night long and celebrate in this also.

Nothing in Nature's sober found,

But an eternal health goes round.

So although all of nature is drunk off of each other, they are all healthy in their drunkeness. Imagine thinking about your breathing process as drinking the air and from your breathing you are no longer sober but in a healthy drunken stupor--healthy from being drunk off of swallowing nature! But soon Anacreontea distinguishes our acts from the rest of the world.

Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,

Fill all the glasses there, for why

Should every creature drink but I,

The speaker is now telling some person, commanding it of someone, to fill up his/her bowl or glass so that he/she can participate in this great drunken fest--to be an intrinsic part of the rest of what nature is involved in. Here is the first instance that we as readers are made aware that the speaker is separate from this shared drinking bond that the earth, plants, sea, rivers, Sun, Moon, Stars...Nature participates in. There is a strong desire in the command to be included in this, to clink glasses with the rest of creation in a toasting process and to become drunk off of another.

Why, man of morals, tell me why?

Here is the great dividing line, the separation point that distinguishes humans and everything else. "Man of morals"...this is definitely stating several things. First, morals are not necessarily desirable, or at least not the culturally established morals of the time (6th century b.c.) and the morals developed since then. These morals support that humans are above and better than the rest of creation and that man cannot be a part of the drinking process, or at least must have "his" own. It also incorporates that man is the deciding factor in this process, the one establishing morals, the one in control. Okay, so it was 6th century b.c., but it still was translated to be man and the speaker is specifically addressing men. I think this line is quite amusing because I think of a moralist who usually is very willing to explain his/her own views and why they might be right, and now the speaker is challenging this responsive nature--if you have all the answers, tell me why it is this way. I see a human falling from earth and its cycle. I think of the world surrounding the poem, the world within the white space around the poem, and am inclined to imagine humans taking rocks and soil to construct concrete--does concrete drink in anything? Concrete is definitely not a part of this breathtaking drinking and humans have built this. This poem leaves me with such a feeling of remorse for how humans act. Oh I love how we can write poetry, think, discuss, create but sometimes it makes me sad of how we take these as weapons against the rest of the world.

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 10:11 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: My Poem on Poetry//Bela

Dear Fr. Mark,

I'm not too sure how I feel about making my poetry public yet with the class. I really like this poem though, so maybe. Yet I'm still uncertain.

-Steph

Bela

He told me the world is

horrible and life is

beautiful in the same breath

the same breath that breathes

the stroke of a paintbrush.

He told me how Martha

Stewart would hate his work

because look-

oil next to

watercolor

dark portrait of late

beside recent boat of light

He told me he was to be

my favorite uncle, my eighth,

and I, his third daughter,

an hour had gone by.

He slouched comfortably

back in his chair with an inward

glee as he told me how

art

and

poetry

hug the mind like how

my composed tan bag

nestles with the orange

worn arms of the chair

pinned to the wall or to a page,

a comprehension no longer misplaced

now embedded beneath the waterlily or

inside the sharp pointed line in the mirror

letters pile up like colors in Monet's home

necessary to take small amounts at one time

and imagine each one without the other.

sgf

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 10:06 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 5 Hirsch, Chapter 1//Metaphorical Enhancement

Metaphorical Enhancement

The section in Chapter 1 of Hirsch's How to Read a Poem that I liked the most was Metaphor: A Poet is a Nightingale (13). I believe that a sound metaphor can make a poem, that a poem can grow into a beautiful flower from its metaphorical seeds. As Hirsch explains it, "Poetry evokes a language that moves beyond the literal and, consequently, a mode of thinking that moves beyond the literal" (Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, 13). When I began to explore poetry, moving beyond the literal was my greatest challenge. When first writing my own poetry, ironically, I wanted to live in the abstract world since that's what poetry is, right? ;-) I had professors tell me that I just needed to relax and let go of some of the logic in life. That's where my poetry began and metaphors helped me break away from logic into the irregular beat of the poet. I started writing bad poetry but I would have one good line--it would always be my metaphor. That's how my poetry developed. First a good word, if that, then a good metaphor, then maybe two or three, and then finally a poem! And what a feeling! I guess the reason I'm rambling about this is because Hirsch's description of metaphor sank deep within me to resonate in my bones and it withdrew my experience with poetry.

As he beautifully sums up poetry, Hirsch states, "[A poem] is a soul in action" (Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, 13). Poetry is so dependent on metaphors to stretch our imaginations and our logic! Never before had I thought of time as how Dylan Thomas described it in "The Confidantes," "Time let me play and be / Golden in the mercy of his means" (quote from my journal). A metaphor becomes a delectable treat for the mind or a small window into the mind of someone else's twist of mind. Soon you find yourself walking to class, noticing a dead leaf prancing and flirting with the crisp edge of snow in the wind. The world has been reborn and you can live in that childhood awe as before!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 9:31 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 6 Holm, Bill // Festering Boredom

Festering Boredom

I tried to find research on the poet, Bill Holm, on the internet but there wasn't any that appeared in my rather feeble attempt. However, I still would like to discuss his poem, "Advice" for what it offered without any biographical information.

I thought that "Advice" offered a new insight into what could be considered a cliche idea. I took "Advice" to be Holm suggesting that we all have a built-in clock, a regular routine that is somewhat conditioned and we all have the option to conform. This is the "Someone dancing inside us / [who] learned only a few steps: / the 'Do-Your-Work' in 4/4 time, / the 'What-Do-You-Expect' waltz" (Holm, "Advice," Rag and Bone Shop, 30). I know I have this programmed little voice inside of me that turns on when homework is daunting around the corner that coerces me to do my work in a rather systematic way. And there is also the little voice that is always around the corner to take on the role of your parents and ask What did you expect if you take a failed chance.

Yet Holm urges us beyond these to an unmapped area where the topography is irregular and its nomads wander in uncertain patterns. I really like the way he turns it into a game of seduction and you can almost see the situation at some swank bar, the mysterious woman in the corner: He hasn't noticed yet the woman

standing away from the lamp,

the one with the black eyes

who knows the rhumba,

and strange steps in jumpy rhythms

from the mountains in Bulgaria. (Holm, "Advice," Rad and Bone Shop, 30).

Ooh! This perks my interest and makes me want to urge the man away from his metronome life into the arms of the exotic, foreign woman. This way the "next world/ will [not] be a lot like this one" (Holm, "Advice," Rag and Bone Shop, 30) because the people in it are actually changing! I loved the driving momentum and creative way Holm destroys boredom!

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 10:31 AM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 3 Reply to John: Translation as a Thesaurus?

I found John's message about the value he derives from reading a poem in the language he understands very intriguing. John says, "Within the poem 'We Chant and Enchant' I found myself reading it over and again just enjoying the sound so much. It tested the limits of my vocabulary almost to the point of causing my fascination to be almost purely rythmic." I know I've really been much more aware of the translator's presence while reading than I was before after being exposed to different varieties of a translated poem. Really we are being presented a poem in a slightly different form than it orginally was. It could be like a cook who concocts this most tasteful soup and then the waiter, before serving it to you, slips some salt in, or maybe pepper, because he/she thinks it's too bland/spicy/etc. We do it when we read a poem! We don't necessarily get the poet's meaning when we read his/her poem but our reading because we translate it in our own ways. Think about one word, say "spice"...some of us might think about cinnamon, hot peppers, Spice Girls, variety, etc. We all bring our own translations to a poem and almost use a built-in thesaurus as we go along to associate certain words with other words. So, yes, I agree with John when he says that there is something quite stunning when reading a poem in its native language, but I also believe that we should be aware of how we act as translators. =)

-StephFrom: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 11:38 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 4 Buonarroti, Khlebnikov//Mesmerizing Chant of Poetic Passion

Mesmerizing Chant of Poetic Passion

(Sorry folks, this is one posting late but take it for what it's worth)

In Michelangelo Buonarroti's poem, "On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel," he creates a sensual, uncontrollable passion. I found it intriguing how he creatively depicted painting the ceiling as looking upward but also that he was arching upward toward the heavens. He captures the feel so well when he says,

my beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,

fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly

grows like a harp. (Buonarroti, "On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel," from 99 Poems, 76)

Wow! You can almost see how his chest is arching up, poising as a harp ready to strung by the angels. You can almost hear the heavenly music bursting through his heart out onto the giant canvas of the skies, onto his humble ceiling.

Yet he does not let his ego climb to the ceiling with him. He lives his passion, day in and day out, and I think we all can relate in a tiny way to the feeling of being taken over by some creative obsession and how it drives us. Most of us afterwards want to go and show the world the product in which we have produced after creativity has pushed us to hidden depths. However, he invites "Giovanni" to "try / to succour my dead pictures and my fame; since foul I fare and painting is my shame" (Buonarroti, "On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel," 99 Poems, 76). I'm not sure quite yet what his exact feelings are but he seems to be saying that although he is painting a part of heaven on the ceiling, he is still summarizing and feels belittled and shamed to do so.

As far as the other poems, I have to admit I was left stumped. I didn't have the advantage of discussion to help me work through these, so I'm letting them resonate within me for awhile. I was struck by Velimir Khlebnikov's poem, "We Chant and Enchant," because of the way it sounds outloud. I wondered if he was a poet like Poe who wasn't really concerned about the meaning of a poem but the way it sounds. This poem definitely captures sound!

Uncast it, uncant it,

Discast it, Discant it,

Descant: Decant! Recant!

He can't. She can't. (Khlebnikov, "We Chant and Enchant," 99 Poems, 56)

I thought it might be discussing "traditional" romantic love from the use of he and she, but I was left confused as to who "we" and "you" were. I thought that this might be an interesting poem to see the different translations because it could lose so much if different words were used.

Those are my thoughts for now...

-Stephanie

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 1:19 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: Internet Links (Akhmatova, Kenyon, Clifton)

Dear Fr. Mark,

Anna Akhmatova:

http://dybka.home.mindspring.com/jill/akhmatova/

lots of links

(and someone who translated Akhmatova...)

Jane Kenyon:

http://www.izaak.unh.edu/specoll/exhibits/reading.htm

memorial that provides brief biographical info along with links

Lucille Clifton:

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/LucilleClifton.html

"Voices From the Gaps: Women Writers of Color"

biography and related links

From: Frerich, Stephanie G

Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 11:16 PM

To: Thamert, Mark

Subject: 2 Peacock, Yeats, Traditional // Resonating Essence

Stephanie Frerich

Resonating Essence

Molly Peacock's book, How to Read a Poem...and Start a Poetry Circle, enticed me with its refreshing, rather simplistic ways of viewing poetry. Simply the way she took apart and explained her own history with poetry was intriguing although quite personal. She highlighted key parts in developing a passion for poetry, especially through schooling. So typically does poetry get shoved aside in grade school and even high school and many students are left with horror stories after college professors tried to teach them poetry that it is not surprising a great number of people are turned off by poetry. Academics does not promote creativity for the most part -- it serves to teach people to think logically and realistically, teaches them to turn things in on time and to be responsible, and to turn the childlike voice off inside of themselves. I thought Peacock's description of her college professor was quite unique as she said he "...had the sense to leave poems whole even as he investigated them. He was like a marvelous, magnetic, intense field biologist, capturing, examining -- but never interfering. With consummate kindness he left me on my own, smiling at whatever specimens I brought to him" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem, 9). To have that type of an effect on someone, or even to be a recipient of it, in my belief, is quite rare.

Another part of Peacock's writing that tickled me was her breakdown of poetry into three simple parts, and further, the relationship between the three. I especially enjoyed how through these three devices, she made poetry a sensual experience: "Even though a poem is made with words, it is only one-third a verbal act. It is equally an auditory and a visual art, which we take into our bodies as well as our minds" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem, 20). To me, this defines poetry quite accurately and captures the way human nature functions because there are always many things going on at once all around us and Peacock summarizes how poetry contains this spirit.

As a brief note, I thought that the following quote by Peacock described our last discussion about the struggle between "Id," "Ego," and "Superego": "If the line is a way a child apprehends, intuitively, and the sentence is the way an adult apprehends, intellectually, then the image functions as a two-way mirror between these states of understanding" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem, 21).

W. B. Yeats' poem, "Mad as the Mist and Snow," sat very well in my ears for it danced about my mouth and flashed before my eyes. He grabs hold of the language but stays very concrete and I love the image and sound of "Mad as the mist and snow." The best part of the poem, I believe, is the beginning when he arouses such visual significance: "Bolt and bar the shutter, / For the foul winds blow: / Our minds are at their best this night..." (Yeats, "Mad as the Mist and Snow" in Rag and Bone Shop, 27). Like I said, I like his ability to express abstractness so concretely.

Although I am not going to claim to fully understand "Amergin and Cessair," there is one stanza that struck me as poetically beautiful and like Yeats' poem, sticks to concrete images that grow and flourish in your eyes like wild flowers:

I am the flash of sun on water.

I am the clash of battle swords.

I am the teeth in the sea-shark's mouth.

I am the blood of wild beasts.

I am the fire in the witch's hearth.

I am the evening sky ablaze-

The red of serpents' tongues,

The black of deepest night.

I am a mare that knows no reins. (Traditional, "Amergin and Cessair" in Rag and Bone Shop, 172)

I leave you to enjoy that remarkable passage embodied in a feminine light.