Global Centrum

Chicago

Conversations for Week 11 of Week 6 1975­76

Friday night

Spin: In high school I had to memorize poetry. I can still remember some of that poetry. Recite poem or poems.

What poetry did you have to memorize? Can you still remember it? Call for recitations.

What has been the effect of this poetry? Where can you remember yourself recalling it?

What features characteristic to poetry as an art form? How has it enabled you in the past?

What poetry would you memorize today ­ or assign a spirit colleague to memorize? (Emerging generation for instance)

Saturday morning

Spin: Poetry can be an existential address on our lives, address depth issues, in images that prose cannot.

Read one of following poems

What events or memories came to mind while the poem was being read?

Where in the poem did that happen?

What about the poem brought that to mind?

How did the poetry address that situation? ­

Close with reading another poem.

John Donne: Holy Sonnet #10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou thinkest thou canst overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men

And cost with poison, war and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell's" thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Milton: On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve there with my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide;

"Doth God exact day­labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God cloth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

Robert Frost: Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain­­and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwillinq to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good­by;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Saturday noon

Spin: Poetry addresses contemporary issues and calls attention to innocent suffering

Read one of following poems.

What lines do you remember?

What were the issues being addressed?

How did the poem shift your relation to the issue?

What mood did it create?

How did it illuminate the issue for you?

What new story did the poem create for you?

John Davidson: War Song

In anguish we uplift

A new unhallowed song;

The race is to the swift;

The battle to the strong.

Of old it was ordained

That we, in packs like curs,

Some thirty million trained

And licensed murderers,

In crime should live and act,

If cunning folk say sooth

Who flay the naked fact

And carve the heart of truth.

The rulers cry aloud,

"We cannot cancel war,

The end and bloody shroud

Of wrongs the worst abhor,

And order's swaddling band:

Know that relentless strife

Remains by sea and land

The holiest law of life.

From fear in every guise,

From sloth, from lust of pelf,

By war's great sacrifice

The world redeems itself.

War is the source, the theme

Of art; the goal, the bent

And brilliant academe

Of noble sentiment;

The augury, the dawn

Of golden times of grace;

The true catholicon

And blood­bath of the race."

We thirty million trained

And licensed murderers,

Like zanies rigged, and chained

By drill and scourge and curse

In shackles of despair

We know not how to break­

What do we victims care

For art, what interest take

In things unseen, unheart?

Some diplomat no doubt

Will launch a heedless word,

And lurking war leap out!


We spell­bound armies then,

Huge brutes in dumb distress,

Machines compact of men

Who once had consciences,

Must tample harvests down­

Vineyard, and corn and oil

Dismantle town by town

Hamlet and homestead spoil

On each appointed path,

Till lust of havoc light

A blood­red blaze of wrath

In every frenzied sight

In many a mountain pass,

Or meadow green and fresh,

Mass shall encounter mass

Of shuddering human flesh;

Opposing ordnance roar

Across the swaths of slain,

And blood in torrents pour

In vain­­ always in vain,

For war breeds war again

The shameful dream is past,

The subtle maze untrod:

We recognize at last

That war is not of God.

Wherefore we now uplift

Our new unhallowed song;

The race is to the swift,

The battle to the strong.














Robert Burns: To a Mouse on Turning her up in her Nest with the Plow

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastle,

O, what a panic's in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awae see hasty,

Wi' bickering brattle!

I wad be faith to rin an' chase thee,

Wi' murd'ring pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth­born companion,

An' fellow­mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastle, thou maun live!

A daimen icker in a thrave

'S a sma' request;

I'll get a blessin wi' the rave,

An' never miss't.

Thy wee bit housie, too in ruin!

It's stily wa's the winds are strewin!

An naething, now, to build a new ane,

O' foggage green!

An' bleak December's winds ensuin,

Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste

An' weary winter comin' fast,

An' cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell­

Till crash! the cruel courter past

Cut thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,

Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!

Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble

But house or hald,

To thole the winter's sleety dribble,

An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be in vain;

The best­laid schemes 0' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain

For promised joy!

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me,

The present only toucheth thee:

But och! I backward cast my e'e,

On prospects drear!

An' forward, tho' I cannot see,

I guess and fear!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Coney Island of the Mind

In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see

the people of the world

exactly at the nominate when

they first attained3 the title of

"suffering humanity"

They writhe upon the page

in a veritable rage

of adversity

Heaped up

groaning with babies and bayonets

under cement skies

in an abstract landscape of blasted trees

bent statues bats wings and beaks

slippery giblets

cadavers and carnivorous cocks

and all the final hollering monsters

of the

`imagination of disaster'

they are so bloody real

it is as if they really sti1l existed

And they do

Only the landscape is changed

They still are ranged along the roads

plagued by legionnaires

false windmills and demented roosters

They are the same people

only further from home

on freeways fifty lanes wide

on a concrete continent

spaced with bland billboards

illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness

The scene shows fewer tumbrils

but more maimed citizens

in painted cars

and they have strange license plates

and engines that

devour America

Eve Merriam THE NUB OF THE NATION From The Inner City Mother Goose,

This is the nub of the nation:

In that nation is a city,

In that city is a ghetto,

In that ghetto is a street,

On that street there is a house,

In that house there is a stair,

On that stair there is a door,

Through that door there waits a room,

In that room there is a chair,

On that chair there is a person

Sitting staring there.

Sitting staring there

On the broken chair,

Chair in the cockroach room,

Room on the worn­ out stair,

Stair in the no­care house,

House on the drop­dead street,

Street in the ghetto rot,

Ghetto rooted in the city,

City spreading everywhere:

And this is the nub of the nation;

Saturday night

Spin Poetry can, be a lot of fun ­ not always grim and serious

­Read series of poems ­

Have several people read one poem in different ways

What reflections do these poems evoke?

We've come at poetry in several ways so far ­ what are your reflections on the use of poetry?

Edward Lear: Ten Limericks (a selection)

There was an Old Man of Hong Kong

Who never did anything wrong;

He lay on his back,

With his head in a sack,

That innocuous Old Man of Hong Kong

There was an Old Man of Thermopylae,

Who never did anything properly;

But they said "If you choose

To boil Eggs in your Shoes

You shall never remain in Thermopylae."

There was an Old Man of Dumbree,

Who taught little Owls to drink Tea;

For he said "To eat mice,

Is not proper or nice."

That amiable Man of Dumbree

John Donne: Woman's Constancy

Now thou hast loved me one whole day,

Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?

Wilt thou then antedate some new­made vow?

Or say that now

We are not just those persons which we were?

Or, that oaths made in reverential fear

Of love, and kits wrath, any may forswear?

Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,

So lovers' contracts, images of those,

Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?

Or, your own end to justify,

For having purposed change and falsehood, you

Can have no way but falsehood to be true?

Vain lunatic, against these scapes I could

Dispute and conquer, if I would;

Which I abstain to do,

For by tomorrow. I may think so too.

Lawrence Ferlinghetft: A Cony Island of the Mind

See

it was like this when

we waltz into this place

a couple of Papish cats

is doing an Aztec two­step

And I says

Dad let's cut

but then this dame

comes up behind me see

and says:

You and me could really exist

Wow I says

Only the next day

She has bad teeth

and really hates

poetry

Sunday morning

Spin: Poetry is the Being before the Doing

What are the themes of poetry in our time?

What style would you use in contemporary poetry?

What is the role of poetry in our common life?

What new role has poetry assumed?

Close with reading of Poem

William Wordsworth: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

W ten all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never­ending line

Along the margin of a bay;

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them dance, but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee­

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company.

I gazed­­and gazed ­but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude:

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.