Parisian Salon Notes for Poetry Evenings
POETRY EVENINGS: June 19 & June 25
Hampstead School, Westbere Road 7-8:30 PM
…Poetry arrived
In search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
It came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when… —Pablo Neruda
This is the first London newsletter for the Salon. The Salon is experiencing all of the struggles and triumphs of the new-born- some wonderful discoveries and connections along with misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Will it swim? We shall see….the good news is that the Salon will be presenting two one night poetry studies this week and next; please contact me for copies of the poems. If you are interested, I have compiled some notes on the Demeter/Persephone myth which I think is resonant with the O’Sullivan poem- and it is rarely wasted time to brush up on your mythology!
The three poems I have chosen for this week do not have a clear thematic tie. I chose them as much for their variety- variety in tone, structure, narrative perspective, historical position- as for their individual interest. Although we will start the evening by reading aloud each poem before we discuss it, I encourage you to read the poems over in the next few days and bring them into yourself. Write down notes in the margins- ask questions of the poem, notice when your attention is drawn to a word or a collection of words. Consider how the form of the poem guides or influences your interaction with the words and the ideas presented.
As I was doing some research on The Cord- the most modern of the three- I came across a paper that analyzed the connection in O’Sullivan’s work between the female body, its distorted (particular in the realm of eating disorders) image and the inheritance of the beliefs of Catholic Church. Although I don’t think the poem we will consider has these themes at work as much as others in her oeuvre, the following quote struck me:
Trying to pull things out of affliction into the light of day and let them have their own space. Recovering things from your own past, or from a collective past, is to achieve freedom by the act of recovery.
Paula Meehan
I am interested in how poetry might be an act of bringing afflictions to the surface and therefore ‘achieve freedom by the act of recovery’.
The other author we will be studying, Elizabeth Bishop, had a very different view on the poets’ responsibility in the expression of suffering:
“…Bishop, while her own life was filled with suffering and loss, felt that the poet needed to do more than represent the particularities of such experience. (As she wrote to Robert) Lowell in 1948: “sometimes I wish I could have a more sensible conversation about this suffering business, anyway. I imagine we actually agree fairly well. It is just that I think it is so inevitable there’s no use talking about it, that in itself it has no value…” More to the point, she felt it was the poet’s responsibility not to exploit suffering, to use language with an awareness of its power to inflict as well as to expose pain.” (from Re-Reading Confessional Poetry…by S. Rosenbaum)
When we discuss poetry, we start with a close consideration of the words and how they are used. This may lead us to the larger question of what the poem does: does a poem, as some have suggested, work to capture human experience at so sharp and close an exposure that in reading a good poem we learn a bit more about the process of being human? Do these three poems act in this way? How does this differ from other media forms we encounter? Why should we do the work poetry requires?
Oh dear…I better hold back a bit.
The biggest challenge for the Salon is getting a critical mass. I hope you are able come this Thursday to the first Salon and play in the world of words and ideas. The Hampstead School Community Learning program was unable to offer the advertising they had proposed for this gathering- so if you are coming- spread the word! Bring a friend!! Bring several…The Ham & High Express is offering a feature article on the Salon this Thursday- hopefully that help get the word out. And for those of you ready to go- bravo- you will enjoy the journey.
See you Thursday…
Toby Brothers
Director, Parisian Literary Salon