Poetry Session, 26 February, 2024

Kuttippuram Bridge over the Bharatapuzha is in the Ponnani region of Malappuram in Kerala. It was inaugurated in 1953 and built at a cost of Rs 23 Lakhs.

When readers at KRG choose their poems they cast a wide net. On this occasion we had a Malayalam poet, Edasseri Govindan Nair, represented by a poem. Malayalam poems are usually sung or chanted as chollal, but here it was delivered as the English translation of a modern poem of hope and longing; hope for the future made possible by a new bridge to transform the countryside, and longing for the old days. Other Malayalam poets who have been recited at KRG are K. Satchidanandan, Balachandran Chullikad, O.N.V. Kurup, Sugatha Kumari, Balamani Amma (mother of the poet Kamala Das), Kumaran Asan, and Chemmanam Chacko.

When one of our readers, Kavita, chose the ever popular Maya Angelou, Joe raised the question of who has been the most recited poet at KRG – after William Shakespeare, of course. The answer is Keats (13), then Eliot (11) and numerous Romantic poets with 8 occurrences. But how is it that Rumi, the most widely published poet in modern times, scarcely finds mention in the pages of KRG’s blog? He wrote lines like this (translated by Farrukh Dhondy)

Tomorrow is a hope – the dreamer’s way

The Sufi lives the moment, rejoices in today!

Amal Ahmed Albaz, born 1994, Canadian performance poet of Egyptian descent

Benjamin Zephaniah was the first performance poet we heard recited at KRG, way back in 2011 by Amita Palat. The music and rhythm of speaking comes naturally to someone of Barbadian-Jamaican descent. Britain has had a bright new wave of performance poets, for example, Kae West. At the session we heard a Canadian poet of Egyptian origin lament the bombing of Gaza in rap rhythm. When she recited it in Dec 2023 the destruction had been going on for 3 months, killing close to 20,000 Palestinians (mostly women and children), reducing much of the enclave to rubble and making the people homeless, facing starvation.

T.S. Eliot portrait by Gerald Festus Kelly, 1962

T.S. Eliot, ever popular at KRG was represented by two short poems that did not require the usual annotation to lay bare obscure meanings. In the first poem the poet hears the noise of plates in a basement kitchen rattling somewhere as he gazes on the street from a window, and then

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

The second poem featured a fictional cousin of modern mores who smokes and dances all the fashionable dances. The poet holds up the censorious sight of Matthew and Waldo (that is, Matthew Arnold and Ralph Waldo Emerson) trained on Nancy Ellicott – not that she cares. The last line (‘The army of unalterable law.’) is taken from another poet, Meredith, but Eliot is contrasting his reference ironically with modern devil-may-care attitudes.

Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet whose rapturous odes to nature and animal life brought her critical acclaim

Mary Oliver was another outstanding presence at the session when Saras chose two of her poems. We know her poems from three earlier occasions when she has been presented. She is also the marvellous author of a handbook of poetry, that lays bare the mechanics of how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, being imbued with sound and sense. Mary Oliver employs wonderful examples, ancient and new, to illustrate her exposition. It will surprise no one that six of the ten poets chosen at this session were women.

Most prominent of these is The New Colossus, a Petrarchan sonnet (rhyming abba abba cdc dcd). The entire sonnet is engraved on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour and lines 10 and 11 are often quoted:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free


                                                                             

1903 bronze plaque engraved with ‘The New Colossus’ sonnet by Emma Lazarus is located in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty

These words are a tribute to the diversity of America, which has been under threat from the masses who seek to enter America from its southern border. The press of poor people entering from Mexico is no longer a welcome sight to Democrats or Republicans. The original Colossus of Rhodes was a towering statue of Helios the sun god, built in 280 BCE to commemorate the defence of Rhodes against the attack of Demetrius. The sonnet of Emma Lazarus contrasts this ancient colossus with the Statue of Liberty presented by France as a symbol of liberty illuminating the world (La Liberté éclairant le monde).

Arundhathy

Sara Teasdale is known as a lyric poet whose work was mainly concerned with beauty, love, and death. The early 20th-century poet was known to incorporate her own experiences into her poetry, from those of youth to those of depression. Much of her work preceded modern feminist poetry and the confessional poems of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Her career was one of great success, winning the Columbia Poetry Prize, the now Pulitzer Prize, in 1918 for her work Love Songs. Her personal life was not as flourishing, however, as with other confessional poets of the past, particularly Anne Sexton; Teasdale also had a life full of mental torment, which tragically led to her ending her own life in 1933. 

Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)

Sara Teasdale was born in 1884 in St.Louis, Missouri. As a child, she was frequently in poor health and had to be home school until she was nine years old. She grew up in a staunchly religious household and was privately educated, starting at the Mary Institute and then Hosmer Hall from where she graduated in 1903. In the early years of her career, she was a member of The Potters, a group of female artists; together, they published The Potter’s Wheel. She was also known to travel to Chicago, where she met Harriet Monroe, who had influence within the literary scene, particularly as she was the founder of the Poetry magazine. Teasdale’s first poem was published in a local newspaper, Reedy’s Mirror, in 1907, and in that same year, she published her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems. Her second collection, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published in 1911 and was received very well by readers and critics.

She worked throughout this period on her own poetry as well as editing two anthologies, The Answering Voice: One Hundred Love Lyrics by Women and Rainbow Gold for Children. Her third collection, Rivers to the Sea, was published in 1915. Her poems are noted for their emotional subject matter and lyrical language. She gained fame during her lifetime and won the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918. Teasdale was also awarded the Poetry Society of America Prize for Love Songs.

This classic poem is a literary masterpiece that taps into the human psyche and speaks to our deepest desires and fears. In The Fountain, Teasdale draws on her love of nature and her fascination with the human psyche to create a poem that is both beautiful and haunting. The poem was published in her 1915 collection, Rivers to the Sea, and it quickly became one of her most popular works. The poem taps into a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: our desire for transcendence. We all have a deep-seated need to experience something beyond the mundane world, to feel a sense of connection with something greater than ourselves.

The Fountain is a beautiful poem that captures the essence of human emotions and the cycle of life. The use of the fountain as a metaphor is particularly effective, as it allows the reader to visualise the themes of love, loss, and renewal. The poem is also notable for its use of imagery, which is both vivid and evocative.

Another powerful image in the poem is the description of the fountain's "rhythmic play."

The fountain is described as "a silver jet" that rises up "with a sound of singing" and then falls back down "into the marble basin." The speaker is captivated by the fountain's beauty and its promise of something more.The poem acknowledges the risks that come with the desire for transcendence, but it also celebrates the beauty and wonder of the transcendent experience. It is a testament to the power of poetry to capture the complexity of human emotion and to speak to the very heart of what it means to be alive.

This classic poem is a literary masterpiece that taps into the human psyche and speaks to our deepest desires and fears. In The Fountain, Teasdale draws on her love of nature and her fascination with the human psyche to create a poem that is both beautiful and haunting. The poem was published in her 1915 collection, Rivers to the Sea, and it quickly became one of her most popular works. The poem taps into a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: our desire for transcendence. We all have a deep-seated need to experience something beyond the mundane world, to feel a sense of connection with something greater than ourselves.

Devika

                                                                               

Edasseri Govindan Nair (1906 – 1974) 

Edasseri Govindan Nair was a famous Malayalam poet from Kuttipuram in Kerala. He was the recipient of the Sahitya Academy Award, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award and the Asan Smaraka Kavitha Puraskaram (which was awarded to him posthumously).  

Born into a family with poor financial means, he could not continue his education. He started working at the age of 15 when he had to move to Alleppey. He compensated his lack of formal education with voracious reading, learning Sanskrit and English on his own taking help from friends. Edasseri moved to Ponani in 1930. He married Janaki Amma in 1936, had 11 children out of which only 8 survived infancy.  

In the early days there was no bridge connecting various villages in the Malappuram District like Tirur, Tanur, Parappanangadi etc. People had to travel by boat to even get to a hospital which was the Ponani Taluk Hospital. During heavy monsoons when the Bharatapuzha was overflowing, the boats could not be taken out into the swelling river. This bridge eased life for people. Today there’s one more bridge in a place called the Chamravattom. This has reduced travel time between Kochi to Kozhikode by 38 kilometres.  

Edasseri Govindan Nair (1906 - 1974)

Edasseri, in this poem, reflects the bittersweet sadness for childhood memories linked with the river while also noting the changes that time brings. It highlights the bridge as a representation of development and connectedness while simultaneously emphasising the value of protecting the past and valuing the present. In the first few stanzas of the poem, the poet tells us the construction of the bridge, and the proud feeling he has upon the human achievement. Later, he expresses the fear he has about the riverbank that it may be washed away and, he reminiscences his childhood, of growing up in the riverbank, the playmate, i.e. the river. He worries that all that constituted the village life, the river, the kavu, the pipal tree, songs of the ploughman, everything will be destroyed by the advances of urbanisation. In the last few stanzas of the poem, the poet warns the results of urbanisation and how it is going to affect the life of the people.  

Kuttipuram Palam was the bridge that came up to get better connectivity between Ponani and various other places. Ponani as a place is very dear to Devika's heart thanks to her husband, Achu, who hails from here. She has heard endless stories about this village with its very interesting characters.  This is the village life that she never lived in, but there’s a beautiful picture in her mind. Having gone over this bridge many times she thought it was apt that to choose this poem for the poetry session.  

Trivia –  The ashes of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri were deposited in Kerala on the banks of the Bharatapuzha. 

The discussion post this session went on for quite a while, starting with the different names of the Bharatapuzha, to Durga temples, and finally environmental issues with trees being cut down to make way for national highways.    

Geetha

                                                                               

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child.

Dunbar wrote his first poem at the age of six and gave his first public recital at the age of nine. His mother assisted him in his schooling, having learned to read expressly for that reason.

Dunbar was the only African-American student during his years at Central High School in Dayton. At the age of 16 he published his first poems  in a Dayton newspaper.

Orville Wright, the pioneer plane maker, was a classmate and friend. Well-accepted, he was elected as president of the school's literary society, and became the editor of the school newspaper and a debate club member. In 1890 Dunbar wrote and edited The Tattler, Dayton's first weekly African-American newspaper. It was printed by the fledgling company of his high-school acquaintances, Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Laurence Dunbar, American poet and novelist (1872 - 1906) at age 18

Dunbar became one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. In addition to his poems, short stories, and novels, he also wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway in New York. The musical comedy successfully toured England and the United States over a period of four years and was one of the more successful theatrical productions of its time.

Much of Dunbar's more popular work in his lifetime was written in what was then called the “Negro dialect.” Dunbar also wrote in conventional English in other poetry and novels and is considered the first important African American sonnet writer.

Two brief examples of Dunbar's work, the first in standard English and the second in dialect, demonstrate the diversity of the poet's works:

(From Dreams)

What dreams we have and how they fly
Like rosy clouds across the sky;
Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,
Of love that comes to cheer and bless;
And how they wither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade —
The fame that for a moment gleams,
Then flies forever, — dreams, ah — dreams!

(From A Warm Day In Winter)

"Sunshine on de medders,
Greenness on de way;
Dat's de blessed reason
I sing all de day.
"Look hyeah! What you axing'?
What meks me so merry?
'Spect to see me sighin'
W'en hit's wa'm in Febawary?

His friend and writer James Weldon Johnson highly praised Dunbar, writing in The Book of American Negro Poetry:

“Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form.”

Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore, on March 6, 1898. She was a teacher and poet from New Orleans whom he had met three years earlier. Dunbar called her “the sweetest, smartest little girl I ever saw.” A graduate of Straight University (now Dillard University), a historically black college, Moore is best known for her short story collection, Violets. She and her husband also wrote books of poetry as companion pieces

In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, then often fatal, and his doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms. On the advice of his doctors, he moved to Colorado with his wife, as the cold, dry mountain air was considered salubrious for TB patients. Dunbar and his wife separated in 1902, after he nearly beat her to death, but they never divorced. Depression and declining health drove him to a dependence on alcohol, which further damaged his health.

Dunbar returned to Dayton in 1904 to be with his mother. He died of tuberculosis on February 9, 1906, at the age of 33. He was interred in the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton.
{Wikipedia}

Geetha selected this poem for its lyrical quality, its rhyme and rhythm and it's happy tone. His most famous poem, sadly is a cry of anguish, anger, and defiance:

We Wear The Mask. 

We Wear the Mask

BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

       We wear the mask!

Joe

                                                                         

Poet Bio
Amal Amal Ahmed Albaz is a journalist, poet and speaker. She believes that through her perspective as a Canadian, daughter to Egyptian parents who emigrated to Canada, she must use her passion for speaking to make the world a better place. She started out early as a spoken-word poet declaiming her words hip-hop style with the fresh passion of youth way back in 2011 at a TEDx event in December 2011 when she was a 17-year-old student at  White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville, Ont. Albaz won the TEDx 2011 student competition at that event.

She asked herself at that time:

”In the past 16 years alive did I take risk for a change, or was I trapped inside my hive? Did I neglect peace or did I strive for it – and I realised I did nothing absolutely nothing, but chilling with my friends and shopping at the mall, time being wasted checking my Facebook wall, texting my friends all day and night, although they just left my sight. All the Friday nights that were spent on the phone – thought time would last but it has surely flown, and then suddenly a storm of guilt flooded my past, afraid that I don't know how long I have to last, I mean we all know that there's no age for death, and that our first might actually be your last breath.”

She took a vow to use her talents and passions to change her community, and on a larger scale humanity. She had her first failure when she tried to set up an orphanage and realised after trying that it was task that was entwined with many laws and norms and she did not have to time and skills to navigate it. But she stuck to the famous saying that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. 

In 2019 her father was detained at the airport in Cairo and has been in lockup since without a trail. She has been urging the Canadian government to intervene and has written poems to bring him back. She has a BA in Liberal Arts from Ryerson University in Toronto (2012-14) and has worked with the Toronto Star as a reporter. She is a mother of several children. She longs for her father. As a devout Muslim woman she wears a hijab.

Joe recited a poem by Amal Ahmed Albaz. The poem Time is ticking by was written three months into the recent war on Gaza by Israel. The fact that Joe wore a Palestinian keffiyeh was a symbol of his sympathy for the cause of the Gazans who are being brutally attacked – to date over 30,000 civilians, the great majority of them being women and children, have been killed by bombs and shells dispatched by USA, the witting sponsor of this violence. Joe understands the Israeli government’s viewpoint; but it has exceeded the bounds of all humanity in reducing 60 percent of civilian structures in Gaza to rubble; attacking, hospitals, ambulances, and mosques; and preventing food from coming into Gaza to support a population now reduced to famine conditions.

“Who gets to decide, whose murder’s justified?” – the poet asks. 

Those interested in performance poetry and the rap beat of this poem, can listen to the poet herself reciting it on Youtube.

Pamela declared the poem was very moving. It is so beautiful, said Devika. Geetha asked what’s the G-word. Joe explained it stands for Genocide, the crime that South Africa accused Israel of committing when it took its case to the International Court of Justice on Dec 29, 2023. South Africa argued the acts by Israel are genocidal in character because they are designed to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group; furthermore, Genocidal intent is easy to prove from multiple statements of high officials of Israel, including its President. You can read the full PDF of the application instituting proceedings by South Africa here. 

During her performance of the poem at the end a piece of duct tape is pulled off Albaz’s mouth so she could utter the hitherto forbidden word – GENOCIDE. You may recall that when ex-President Carter used a milder word ‘apartheid’ in the title of a book he wrote, Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006); there was an uproar in America fomented by the pro-Israeli lobby. 

The South African lawyers arguing the present case before the ICJ said that the apartheid by whites in South Africa, at its worst, was not half as bad as the apartheid now being practised routinely in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians by Jewish Israelis.

Kavita

Maya Angelou in the poem Human family tells us that despite superficial differences in appearance, language, culture , education etc, all humans belong to the same race, namely, the human race. And we are more similar to one another than we are different.   

Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014) poet known for her autobiographies

In the poem Aging the poet tell us that in an elderly person, even though he may be old, his spirit of life is still there – he refuses to be overwhelmed by age and wants to be treated with respect.

Kumkum

Morning at the Window is a reflective and contemplative poem by T.S. Eliot, which invites readers to ponder the nature of reality and the significance of moments of quiet observation. The poem begins with a depiction of the morning scene outside the window, where the world is waking up to the dawn. This vivid imagery evokes a sense of the world coming alive, with the rattling of breakfast plates in basement kitchens. The theme of the poem is poverty. It depicts the fate of the poor maid-servants in some European cities. It presents a series of typical images showing poverty, misery, and anguish of the poor servants. They go cheerlessly about their morning chores. The air is filled with brown fog, probably smog, through which the speaker catches glimpses of sad faces, some with a brief smile, more like a grimace, which vanishes quickly.

It is a short poem by TS Eliot, first published in the poet's 1917 collection Prufrock and other Observations.

Cousin Nancy is a satirical poem by T.S. Eliot that critiques the superficiality and pretentiousness of certain social circles. Through the character of Cousin Nancy, Eliot presents a scathing commentary on the values and behaviour of the upper class New Englanders.

Young Cousin Nancy is just the opposite of the people who value tradition. The poem begins by introducing Cousin Nancy, who is depicted as a shallow and self-absorbed individual consumed by her obsession with social status and appearances. Nancy is described as "flippant," "trivial," and "boringly gay," suggesting a lack of depth and substance in her character. Despite her lack of genuine qualities, Nancy is admired and envied by those around her for her social connections and glamorous lifestyle. The poem shows the shallowness of the both sides. In front of the portraits of guardians of the traditions, Matthew Arnold (1822-88) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), Cousin Nancy dares to show off her modernity and her disdain for the things that are to be discarded as archaic.

Ultimately, the poem Cousin Nancy serves as a critique of the artificiality and emptiness of certain social circles, highlighting the absurdity of valuing superficial qualities over genuine character and integrity. Through its satirical portrayal of Cousin Nancy, the poem offers a biting commentary on the values and priorities of Eliot's contemporary society.

Pamela

                                                                                  

Pamela chose the poet Maggie Nelson because when she googled she found that this was the only woman among the five best poets of 2024. She was amazed at her variety of interests. The biography below is taken from poets.org

“Maggie Nelson was born in 1973 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received a BA from Wesleyan University in 1994 and a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2004.

She is the author of the poetry collections Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007), Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull Press, 2005), The Latest Winter (Hanging Loose Press, 2003), and Shiner (Hanging Loose Press, 2001).

Nelson has also published several works of lyrical prose, including The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), which received the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Bluets (Wave Books, 2009). Of Bluets, the poet Rob Schlegel writes, “The result not only defies easy categorization, but also leans toward Walter Benjamin’s famous declaration that all great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.”

Nelson has also received fellowships from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. She currently teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner, the artist Harry Dodge.”

Maggie Nelson, poet who has worked in many literary genres, was born in 1973

She has two children. How broad is her range of interest may be gauged from this sentence in her wiki entry: she works in “autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, queerness, sexual violence, the history of the avant-garde, aesthetic theory, philosophy, scholarship, and poetry.” You can read more about her in this Guardian interview.

She frequently describes her interest in Eileen Myles' idea of “vernacular scholarship.” Nelson says, “I need to talk back or talk with theorists and philosophers in ordinary language to dramatize how much their ideas matter to me in my everyday life.”

‘People for rum?’, a phrase in which the first poem, Thanksgiving, ends was incomprehensible to the listeners. The word bong means a pipe used to smoke cannabis. The children imagine other things beyond what the adult is trying to read and teach them.

Does Jane in the second poem mean any woman, or the grandmother. It is actually an aunt whom the poet never met, said Saras who looked up the collection from which it was taken, Jane: A Murder In Poems.

Saras                                                           

                                                                        

Saras read two poems by Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver is a poet who's been recited before a couple of times. I thought of doing something of hers because I saw a little clip in which Helena Bonham Carter reads Wild Geese, poem by Mary Oliver, a poem Zakia chose in 2018.

I picked a couple of other poems by her. Mary Oliver, she was born in 1935, and died on January 17, 2019. She was an American poet; she has also won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984 for her collection called American Primitive. She began writing at a very young age of 14, and though she studied at Ohio State University and at Vassar College in the 1950s, she didn't complete her degree.

Her first collection of poems called No Voyage and Other Poems, was published in 1963, when Ms. Oliver was 28. She's written a vast collection of poetry. She found all the inspiration for her poems in the natural world. Much of it is set in her childhood memories of rural Ohio and New England, which was her adopted home from the 1960s. She would go for walks daily when she would get her inspiration. Her poems are filled with the imagery from those walks. Once in an interview, she said for her, a successful walk was when she would come back and she would write a poem.

So, you know, after she finished her walk, she'd be inspired to write a poem.

She found that she wanted to jot down some ideas. She found sometimes she didn't have a pen or a pencil to write. After that, she started hiding pens and pencils in trees, all over, along her garden so that she'd never be without something to write with.

She was much influenced by Cheney and Walt Whitman, and identified herself as LGBT, a lesbian. She lived with her partner, Molly Malone Cook, who was a photographer, for over 40 years. She just saw her and fell in love. They were together till 2005, when Cook died.

She moved after that to Florida, which is where Mary Oliver was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, dying in 2019.

Th first poem Saras selected  is called Every Morning. The other is called Invitation.

The morning poem is from her collection of poems called The Dream Work, which was published in 1986. Saras read the poem.

The next one was called Invitation.

The first poem Every Morning is said to symbolise new beginnings and be full of positivity and optimism. But Saras didn't think it was anything about that, but about death and history, war and things like that. She missed the alleged positivity. Perhaps the sunlight is positive. And you're reading the newspaper in the morning. That's, that's about the only thing. But it's all about death and history and so on.

Pamela thought the way second poem has been shaped in the layout, the 4-line stanzas slanting like a staircase may be indicative of something – but what? Do you think the poet is trying to say something with that?

Pamela liked the second poem and thought the last stanza could mean something:

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:

You must change your life.

She's referring to Rainer Maria Rilke, who was an Austrian poet writing in German. He has a poem called Archaic Torso of Apollo, in which he's describing a statue of Apollo without a head. The short poem ends:

for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

Later Rachel Corbett, an American author and journalist, is the author of the book You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, published by W.W. Norton in 2016.

Rilke says that you must stop and you must change your life.

But Saras confessed she didn't understand what the connection between this poem Invitation and that line of Rilke’s was. Basically this poem encourages the reader appreciate all the little, little things around one.

Shoba                    

                                                                           

Peter Balakian ( born June 13 1951) is an Armenian-American poet, prose writer and scholar. Ozone Journal is his 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning book of poems and his memoir Black Dog of Fate won the PEN Albrand award in 1998. He teaches at Colgate University, where he is the Director of Creative Writing. He grew up in Tenafly, NJ. He was married to Helen Kababian by whom he has a son and daughter. 

Peter Balakian, American poet of Armenian extraction was born in 1951; he teaches Creative Writing at Colgate University

Balakian’s second book of poetry Sad Days of Light (1983) deals with the history, trauma and memory of the Armenian genocide and its impact across generations. 

“It is in its restrained but intimate tone, its faithfulness to the small human detail, that poetry reaches its broadest context.As we witness the destruction of a kitchen or the anguish of one old woman, we somehow come to understand the meaning of the holocaust.”( from a review) 

Little Richard poem 

The poem owes its title to an African American rock’n’roll star, who was already famous in the fifties, where the poem is set. The NJ Eisenhower highway was being built; music comes over radio and Little Richard and sister Rosetta were famous singers of that time. The market selling coriander and sumac points to their eastern heritage. 

Nafina Aroosian is the poet’s grandmother, who survived the Armenian genocide. The Ottoman Turkish government exterminated more than a million Armenians in 1915, during the first World War. She came to the US as a refugee, bringing her young daughters, who were the only ones who survived. Peter Balakian is the first born son of a new generation, a position of importance in the Armenian culture. He shared a close relationship with her. Later, when he learned about the trauma she had endured, he traveled to Armenia and Syria and wrote about the genocide in two of his books.  

Our discussion. 

Thommo and Joe remembered Armenians who had settled in Calcutta. Thomo mentioned Johannes Carapiet Galstaun, belonging to the Armenian community who rose to become one of the biggest real-estate owners and owner of race-horses in Calcutta. His prime property called Galstaun Mansions at the crossing of Park Street and Russel Street was later renamed Queen Mansions after Queen Elizabeth II visited Calcutta. Joe had a classmate, Apcar Minassian who sang the lead in the opera Aida by Verdi, staged at New Empire theatre in Calcutta. The 200-year-old Armenian College and Philanthropic Society on Free School Street (now Mirza Ghalib Street), was also built by them. 

The Armenians predate the British in arriving in Calcutta, as shown by the earliest graves in the Holy Nazareth Church in Burrabazar which date to 1630. It may be noted the Calcutta Armenian Community, barring a few, were all descendants of the Armenians of Julfa, now in Iran; they were not from Armenia directly. There is also an Armenian church and an Armenian Street in Georgetown, Chennai. Saras said in Penang too, there is an Armenian church and a street. Joe remarked that India has always had a tradition of openness and empathy towards refugees, and people of other lands and cultures. The Jews and Parsis, as well as Armenians have been welcomed here.  

Thomo

                                                                          

Thomo chose The New Colossus, a poem by Emma Lazarus about the Statue of Liberty on Staten Island in the New York harbour, dedicated in Oct 1886.

Emma who was born on July 22, 1849 was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish causes.  She hailed from a large Shephardic Jewish family and was  the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy Jewish merchant and sugar refiner. She was educated by tutors from an early age and studied American and British literature as well as several languages, including German , French and Italian. She was attracted to poetry and wrote her first lyrics when she was eleven years old.

The first stimulus for Emm's writing was offered by the American Civil War and a collection of her Poems and Translations, verses written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, appeared in 1867 and was commended by William Cullen Bryant, the American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.

Poems and Translations included translations from Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo. Admetus and Other Poems followed in 1871. The title poem was dedicated "To my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson", whose works and personality exercised an abiding influence upon the poet's intellectual growth. During the next decade, in which Phantasies and Epochs were written, her poems appeared chiefly in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine and Scribner's Monthly.

But she is best remembered for the sonnet The New Colossus, which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903, on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. 

Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887) was a poet and translator

Lazarus had been involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled  anti-semitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees by reference to the statue. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song The Lady of the Harbor written in 1985 as part of his song cycle Three Women.

The poem's title The New Colossus refers to the Colossus of Rhodes, a giant bronze statue of the sun god Helios that stood at the entrance of the harbour of the Greek island of Rhodes. That statue designed by Chares of Lindos was constructed in 280 BC to celebrate the successful defence of the city of Rhodes against a Macedonian attack – the Macedonians had besieged Rhodes for a year with a large army and navy. The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. It stood about 33 metres –  approximately the height of the modern Statue of Liberty in New York – making it the tallest statue in the ancient world. It stood for 54 years and collapsed during the earthquake of 226 BC. In accordance with the utterances of the Oracle of Delphi, the Rhodians did not rebuild it.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France and was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel and was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

The French raised the money for the statue but its pedestal had to be constructed.

Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to raise money for that. The campaign attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. Emma Lazarus was asked to contribute a poem. She was reminded of the Colossus of Rhodes and so called her poem The New Colossus, and it was sold for $1,500.

Emma Lazarus' words from this poem: 

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

were inscribed on a plaque affixed to the Statue of Liberty.

The New Colossus compares the Statue of Liberty to the Colossus of Rhodes. While the ancient statue was a monument to military might and served as a warning to potential enemies, the Statue of Liberty's name, torch, and position on the eastern shore of the United States all signal her status as a protector of exiles. It claims that America represents not war and conquest but freedom, enlightenment, and compassion.

The Colossus of Rhodes straddled the harbour and ships went under the Greek God Helios. The Statue of Liberty is on Ellis Island which lies between New York and New Jersey. You can get to Ellis Island only by ferry – the ferry is free.

Emma, who never married died on 19th November 1887.

Ellis Island is a federally owned island  in New York Harbour situated within the US states of New Jersey and New York. It was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there under federal law. Today, Ellis Island is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. 

POEMS

Arundhaty

Two poems by by Sara Teasdale

The Fountain

ALL through the deep blue night

The fountain sang alone;

It sang to the drowsy heart

Of a satyr carved in stone.

The fountain sang and sang

But the satyr never stirred—

Only the great white moon

In the empty heaven heard.

The fountain sang and sang

And on the marble rim

The milk-white peacocks slept,

Their dreams were strange and dim.

Bright dew was on the grass,

And on the ilex dew,

The dreamy milk-white birds

Were all a-glisten too.

The fountain sang and sang

The things one cannot tell,

The dreaming peacocks stirred

And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

The Kiss

I HOPED that he would love me,

And he has kissed my mouth,

But I am like a stricken bird

That cannot reach the south.

For though I know he loves me,

To-night my heart is sad;

His kiss was not so wonderful

As all the dreams I had.

Devika

Kuttipuram Bridge 

by Edasseri Govindan Nair

On the bridge newly constructed spending nearly twenty-three lakhs proudly

I stand gazing upon the dwindling river ‘Perar’ beneath. Haven’t I played

‘Poothaamkole’

on the river sands, many a time? Haven’t I dipped in the cool waves

to take ablutions before prayer?

Up above, where kingfisher, cuckoos and herons were flying, I stand

with pride, head high in the air

looking at the river beneath again, and again!

She raged through, during heavy rains,

bursting the banks; arrogant and boisterous! Without any ferry crossing over,

not even the ‘Garuda’ flying above.

Oh ‘Nila’, you will swell again and flow unbridled; Bursting the banks again;

arrogant and boisterous! I chuckle when I think of it; now you will,

‘crawl’ to flow below this bridge!

Yet, while standing firm on my feet

on the glory of victory of mankind,

an unknown feeling stream inside;

and haunts my conscience with agony. On the threshold to the new world

constructed brilliantly, such as this bridge I stood reminiscing about

the fading picture of my village life.

My bosom friend since childhood

sweet and wealthy damsel, my village; Maybe she is regressing farther and

farther, maybe she is bidding the final farewell.

Vast paddy fields, where green and yellow hues flutter in turn;

Houses flanked by resplendent groves full of bowing fruit-bearing trees.

The hill valleys, a kaleidoscope of colors displaying an assortment of bloomed

flowers. Temple festivities in the sacred groves sacrificial altar, banyan tree

and oil lamps. Farmer’s songs that fill the day;

Those chills, in the dead of night.

All these are slowly moving away, for

some other things to come to light.

Granite, coal, cement and steel start their reign over tender buds. Roaring and

surging ahead, are tyres and petrol, round-the-clock. Walls are rising

everywhere, they densely sprout, left and right. Shrill noises all day long,

shrill noises all through the night, Noises resonate everywhere, movements

quicken everywhere. Brawling erupts amongst strangers love thickens

amongst strangers strangers become neighbours

all familiar faces – alas! But outsiders.

‘Malloor’ depth, hearsay from now Lord Siva of Malloor - a street-deity! Even

the ‘Anthimahakaalan’ hill, standing high up and serene, would now spin like

a top, spun by an egotist machine child!

If the man, who with his usual playfulness, laughter and tears become

machine-like, will you too mother ‘Perar’, change

into a canal of grief carrying sewage?

Geetha

The Corn-Stalk Fiddle 

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

When the corn’s all cut and the bright stalks shine

Like the burnished spears of a field of gold;

When the field-mice rich on the nubbins dine,

And the frost comes white and the wind blows cold;

Then its heigho fellows and hi-diddle-diddle,

For the time is ripe for the corn-stalk fiddle.

And you take a stalk that is straight and long,

With an expert eye to its worthy points,

And you think of the bubbling strains of song

That are bound between its pithy joints—

Then you cut out strings, with a bridge in the middle,

With a corn-stalk bow for a corn-stalk fiddle.

Then the strains that grow as you draw the bow

O’er the yielding strings with a practiced hand!

And the music’s flow never loud but low

Is the concert note of a fairy band.

Oh, your dainty songs are a misty riddle

To the simple sweets of the corn-stalk fiddle.

When the eve comes on and our work is done

And the sun drops down with a tender glance,

With their hearts all prime for the harmless fun,

Come the neighbor girls for the evening’s dance,

And they wait for the well-known twist and twiddle,

More time than tune—from the corn-stalk fiddle.

Then brother Jabez takes the bow,

While Ned stands off with Susan Bland,

Then Henry stops by Milly Snow

And John takes Nellie Jones’s hand,

While I pair off with Mandy Biddle,

And scrape, scrape, scrape goes the corn-stalk fiddle.

“Salute your partners,” comes the call,

“All join hands and circle round,”

“Grand train back,” and “Balance all,”

Footsteps lightly spurn the ground,

“Take your lady and balance down the middle”

To the merry strains of the corn-stalk fiddle.

So the night goes on and the dance is o’er,

And the merry girls are homeward gone,

But I see it all in my sleep once more,

And I dream till the very break of dawn

Of an impish dance on a red-hot griddle

To the screech and scrape of a corn-stalk fiddle.

(Source: African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology

(University of Illinois Press, 1992))

Joe

Time is ticking 

by Amal Ahmed Albaz

Time is ticking by, the world is standing by, images getting worse, voices

getting hoarse,

children blown to bits, no one calling quits, humans burnt alive, no chance to

survive,

mothers scream in pain, exploded child brains, unborn in the womb, straight

to the tomb,

dreams killed, ambitions unfulfilled, shaking from the shock, death around

the clock,

still they insist, toddlers are terrorists, terror in children's eyes, bombs rain

from the skies,

calling for their mom who was crushed by a bomb, you say we terrorise, come

see our skies,

yes that is a dare, let's see how much you bear, no gluten for your bread, no

graves for our dead,

no power or water, just barbaric slaughter, body parts unclaimed, breathing

bodies maimed,

the rotten stench of death, no time to catch a breath, no time to mourn or

think,

more hits before we blink, hospitals under attack, trying to make us crack, but

little do they know,

even an embryo who's born on this land, is born to withstand, born to resist,

with the right to exist,

resilience is bread, it's our butter and bread, we will not leave our land, why

won't they understand?

Threatened by babies, children and ladies, from far the cowards kill, afraid the

truth will spill,

they can pay for their lies with their diplomatic ties, but the truth is free, with

the eyes you can see,

apocalyptic views, yet lies on the news, are stories for views, not to actually be

told,

the media's controlled, their news is mostly fake, AI photos that they make,

will rob the dignity,

cause we want the world to see, look and open your eyes, still, the world

denies, the truth is unveiled,

humanity has failed, give them hell, they tweet from their rich and comfy seat,

hearts hardened and blind,

brainwashed, confined, who gets to decide, whose murder's justified, who

gets to pick,

this all makes me sick, we went back a century, holocaust, slavery, white

superiority, animals are not so cruel,

they don't mock and ridicule, making TikToks of our pain, that's below

inhumane, but the people awaken,

outspoken, unshaken, go, shut our accounts, we know you know our counts,

that's why we're a threat,

we simply make you sweat, if the G word is banned, it means you

understand, there is blood on your hands,

go censor and delete, let history repeat, politicians, two-faced, our vote, what

a waste,

they're sly as a fox, with their self-righteous talks, there must be judgment

day, cause there is a price to pay,

I heard a child scream, I wish it was a dream, this is reality, shame on

humanity, time is ticking by,

the world is standing by, but decades from today, we can proudly say I felt a

fire in my chest,

and I passed this test, at least we say we tried, to end this geno-

side.

Kavita

Two poems boy Maya Angelou

Human Family 

I note the obvious differences

in the human family.

Some of us are serious,

some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived

as true profundity,

and others claim they really live

the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones

can confuse, bemuse, delight,

brown and pink and beige and purple,

tan and blue and white.

I've sailed upon the seven seas

and stopped in every land,

I've seen the wonders of the world

not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women

called Jane and Mary Jane,

but I've not seen any two

who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different

although their features jibe,

and lovers think quite different thoughts

while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,

we weep on England's moors,

and laugh and moan in Guinea,

and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,

are born and die in Maine.

In minor ways we differ,

in major we're the same.

I note the obvious differences

between each sort and type,

but we are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

On Aging

When you see me sitting quietly,

Like a sack left on the shelf,

Don’t think I need your chattering.

I’m listening to myself.

Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me!

Hold! Stop your sympathy!

Understanding if you got it,

Otherwise I’ll do without it!

When my bones are stiff and aching,

And my feet won’t climb the stair,

I will only ask one favor:

Don’t bring me no rocking chair.

When you see me walking, stumbling,

Don’t study and get it wrong.

‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy

And every goodbye ain’t gone.

I’m the same person I was back then,

A little less hair, a little less chin,

A lot less lungs and much less wind.

But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.

KumKum

Two poems by T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Morning at the Window

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

(From Prufrock, and other observations (The Egoist, Ltd, 1917))

Cousin Nancy

Miss Nancy Ellicott

Strode across the hills and broke them,

Rode across the hills and broke them ––

The barren New England hills ––

Riding to hounds

Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked

And danced all the modern dances;

And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,

But they knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch

Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,

The army of unalterable law.

(T. S. Eliot “Cousin Nancy” from Poetry 7, no. 1 (October 1915): 22.)

Pamela

Two Poems by Maggie Nelson

Thanksgiving

Can beauty save us? Yesterday

I looked at the river and a sliver

of moon and knew the answer;

today I fell asleep in a spot of sun

behind a Vermont barn, woke to

darkness, a thin whistle of wind

and the answer changed. Inside the barn

the boys build bongs out of

copper piping, electrical tape, and

jars. All of the children here have

leaky brown eyes, and a certain precision

of gesture. Even the maple syrup

tastes like liquor. After dinner

I sit the cutest little boy on my knee

and read him a book about the history of cod

absentmindedly explaining overfishing,

the slave trade. People for rum? he asks,

incredulously. Yes, I nod. People for rum.

Spirit

The spirit of Jane

lives on in you,

my mother says

trying to describe

who I am. I feel like the girl

in the late-night movie

who gazes up in horror

at the portrait of

her freaky ancestor

as she realizes

they wear the same

gaudy pendant

round their necks.

For as long as I can

remember, my grandfather

has made the same slip:

he sits in his kitchen,

his gelatinous blue eyes

fixed on me. Well Jane,

he says, I think I’ll have

another cup of coffee.

(From Jane: A Murder In Poems. Reprinted with permission of Soft Skull Press.)

Saras

Two Poems by Mary Oliver

Every Morning

I read the papers,

I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.

The way the red mortars, in photographs,

arc down into the neighborhoods

like stars, the way death

combs everything into a gray rubble before

the camera moves on. What

dark part of my soul

shivers: you don't want to know more

about this. And then: you don't know anything

unless you do. How the sleepers

wake and run to the cellars,

how the children scream, their tongues

trying to swim away— how the morning itself appears

like a slow white rose

while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,

move among the smashed cars, the streets

where the clanging ambulances won't stop all day-death and death, messy

death—

death as history, death as a habit—

how sometimes the camera pauses while a family

counts itself, and all of them are alive,

their mouths dry caves of wordlessness

in the smudged moons of their faces,

a craziness we have so far no name for—

all this I read in the papers,

in the sunlight,

I read with my cold, sharp eyes.

(Source: Poetry (March 1986))

Invitation

Oh do you have time

to linger

for just a little while

out of your busy

and very important day

for the goldfinches

that have gathered

in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,

to see who can sing

the highest note,

or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,

or the most tender?

Their strong, blunt beaks

drink the air

as they strive

melodiously

not for your sake

and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning

but for sheer delight and gratitude -

believe us, they say,

it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in this broken world.

I beg of you,

do not walk by

without pausing

to attend to this

rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:

You must change your life.

(from Red Bird, 2008)

Shoba

Little Richard 

by Peter Balakian (1951 – )

On a walk past bulldozers and trucks

pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway

my grandmother said to me as we turned

into a market with olive barrels, hanging

meat, piles of sumac and coriander—

“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,

and what did I know about starving

in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips

that lashed the bodies of Armenian

women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t

have believed that she saw

those things. The radio

was always on the sink in my grandmother’s

kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said—

whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase

stayed with me. I too felt his trance—

even then—as she pounded spices

with a brass mortar and pestle.

The air on fire under him

the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.

What did I know about Sufism

Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?

In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,

the berries turning gold and red.

The way memory deepens with light.

His shaking gospel voice. The heart

going up in flames. My grandmother

survived the worst that humans do.

(Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2022, by the Academy

of American Poets.)

Thomo 

The New Colossus 

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”