Parisian Literary Salon

Living
By Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass
So green it seems
Each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
Shivering in the sun,
Each day the last day.

A red salamander
So cold and so
Easy to catch, dreamily

Moves his delicate feet
And long tail. I hold
My hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

So the Salon has moved to North London and a month after the move I am still struggling to put words to the idea of dislocation. As always, when I am struggling to name a tidal wave of feeling, I shuffle through my poetry books, looking for an echo, a line a pithy summary of all that is ineffable in the spectrum of human emotion. I was drawn to this poem by Levertov because of the sense of the fragility of the moment- and accompanying the understanding of that fragility is the gift of wonder at the moment. There is grief here- as we recognize the wonder, the moment is passing- the salamander slips away. This echoes my feeling at the moment of change; leaving Paris, leaving the incredible (superlative, indescribable) community of the Alesian Literary Salon and finding myself in London- casting about, muddled: then knowing, in that absolute way of knowing that the Salon is not finished- in that way of dynamic things it is changed and reborn.

Change requires recognition. To honor the incredible work and participants of the Alesian Literary Salon, the London-based Salon will be known as the Parisian Literary Salon. It rhymes as well as confuses. I am also working on a Salon intensive weekend back in Paris for September- stay tuned. In the meantime…

Parisian Literary Salon Events in London
JUNE 9- 7-8:30 PM Poetry Evening at the Highgate-Newton Centre
We will be studying

• Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina
• Leanne O’Sullivan, The Cord
• Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

Some themes that may ensue include adolescence …Abandonment … Mythology… Hope… Sin… Poetic form… Narrative perspective…Boundaries between the living & the Dead- should be quite a night. For those interested in joining, please register by emailing me using the Contact form.

I am also lining up two more poetry evenings at the Hampstead School for later in June…stay tuned for details.

In preparation-
I am hopeful you will at least be able to read through each poem a few times- even on the tube as you come- and jot down your thoughts, questions, responses- even if this looks like a list of question marks in the margins. Of course we will start- after brief introductions- with hearing the poem read aloud.

Robert Frost is often characterized as a regional writer. He certainly draws upon the landscape and culture of New England for much of his work and therefore is frequently seen as a ‘folksy’ writer. “Acquainted with the Night” is atypical in the body of his work- but I think more clearly reveals the gritty tensions that permeate even his nature poems.

I found this reflection interesting:

Whatever theme is encountered in a poem by Frost, a reader is likely to agree with him that “the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know.” To achieve that fresh sense of discovery, Frost allowed himself to follow his instincts; his poetry inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

This description from Frost’s essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes”, may sound as if his poetry is formless and merely “lucky” but his poems tend to be more conventional than experimental: “The artist in me, as he put the matter in one of his poems, “cries out for design.”

-From Poetry by Michael Meyer

Frost’s use of DESIGN (he has a poem with that title that I might just have to send out to you) gets at one of poetry’s primary aspects: how the construction of the thing weaves into its meaning.

Okay- I better stop there- I will hold myself back until June 9. Start time is 7 PM, end time 8:30 PM.

For those on the other side of the Channel, I am in negotiation for a September weekend Salon- I will post those dates as soon as I have them. Also please send me your notes on current reads and I will post them here next week- keep the conversation going!
Toby

A Parting, by Toby Brothers

One parts the hair, we are made of parts
Partings like pairings involve chipping away, finding the core.
Papers, photos nostalgic flotsam are thrown away without mercy
In preparation. We are cleaning.
Nothing though- no all night act of purging
Can clean from my soul all the aches and tears of leaving…
We’ll always have Paris
But Paris shimmies away forgetting us as we move and change address, change visas change countries, jobs, schools friends- as though this were in our control.
I leave a community of thinkers and fellow travelers in the world of words and images
I mourn the lost discoveries, the tumbling Tuesdays of laughter and recognition.
I wander alone in my apartment up here in the Paris sky
Getting things done or acting the part
Wondering how long it will be before I know where I am again
How long until biking the streets at night feels like my own old waltz.