21st Century Literature discussion
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Different Hours
2013 Book Discussions
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Different Hours - General Discussion (April 2013)
How interesting. Thank you. Looking forward to reading this book any day soon. Still waiting for my copy to arrive...
I'll try to link the ones from this collection available online as I find them.
Click on the link provided to read Stephen Dunn's "The Death of God", the fifth poem in his collection Different Hourshttp://willowglenpoetry.posterous.com...
And here it is!The Death of God
When the news filtered to the angels
they were overwhelmed by their sudden aloneness.
Long into the night they waited for instructions;
the night was quieter than any night they’d known.
I don’t have a thought in my head, one angel lamented.
Others worried, Is there such a thing as an angel now?
New to questioning, dashed by the dry light
of reason, some fell into despair. Many disappeared.
A few wandered naturally toward power, were hired
by dictators who needed something like an angel
to represent them to the world.
These angels spoke the pure secular word.
They murdered sweetly and extolled the greater good.
The Dark Angel himself was simply amused.
The void grew and was fabulously filled.
Vast stadiums and elaborate malls—
the new cathedrals—were built
where people cheered and consumed.
At the nostalgia shops angel trinkets
and plastic crucifixes lined the shelves.
The old churches were homes for the poor.
And yet before meals and at bedtime
and in the iconographies of dreams,
God took his invisible place in the kingdom of need.
Disaffected minstrels made and sang His songs.
The angels were given breath and brain.
This all went on while He was dead to the world.
The Dark Angel observed it, waiting as ever.
On these things his entire existence depended.
http://willowglenpoetry.posterous.com...
What did you make of it?
I started reading Dunn's poems in order and searching for an appropriate link. This was the first one I could find - an odd thing to post on this Easter Monday.I found it uncomfortably accurate.
Maybe very appropriate... I was very impressed with these linesI don’t have a thought in my head, one angel lamented.
Others worried, Is there such a thing as an angel now?
New to questioning, dashed by the dry light
of reason, some fell into despair.
And also intrigued by the Dark Angel's reflections; because - when all's said done - God still takes "his invisible place in the kingdom of need", such that the "angels [are] given breath and brain."
Yes, I noticed that. So, the poem isn't really about God's death, rather the death of our faith in Him.
I read an essay many years back about malls as a secular place of worship, comparing the trappings of commerce with a typical church. Some analogies were a bit stretched—like comparing the ubiquitous water fountain to a baptismal font—but other points were a bit stronger: the food court as the breaking of communion bread, or the cloistered design of a mall with the Big Box "Holy of Holies" consuming your view from the length of the mall. In any case, the author made a fairly strong case for commerce as a new religion with the mall as its house of worship. That echoed strongly in my mind with these lines:Vast stadiums and elaborate malls—
the new cathedrals—were built
where people cheered and consumed.
I know what you're saying, Daniel. This is a clever poem, but I think there are stronger/better poems in this collection.
Yes, Thing Two. I think this says more about our faith in God than it does about God's faith in us... Although the Devil seems to think we can't live without Him (!)
Sophia wrote: "I know what you're saying, Daniel. This is a clever poem, but I think there are stronger/better poems in this collection."I'll keep looking for links.
And I'll do the same. Meantime I think we can quote a couple of lines to illustrate a point without running into trouble.
What Goes On After the affair and the moving out,
after the destructive revivifying passion,
we watched her life quiet
into a new one, her lover more and more
on its periphery. She spent many nights
alone, happy for the narcosis
of the television. When she got cancer
she kept it to herself until she couldn't
keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated
and saved her, and one day
her husband asked her to come back —
his wife, who after all had only fallen
in love as anyone might
who hadn't been in love in a while —
and he held her, so different now,
so thin, her hair just partially
grown back. He held her like a new woman
and what she felt
felt almost as good as love had,
and each of them called it love
because precision didn't matter anymore.
And we who'd been part of it,
often rejoicing with one
and consoling the other,
we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,
offer a little toast to what goes on.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...
OptimismMy friend the pessimist thinks I’m optimistic
because I seem to believe in the next good thing.
But I see rueful shadows almost everywhere.
When the sun rises I think of collisions and AK-47s.
It’s my mother’s fault, who praised and loved me,
sent me into the dreadful world as if
it would tell me a story I’d understand. The fact is
optimism is the enemy of happiness.
I’ve learned to live for the next good thing
because lifelong friends write good-bye letters,
because regret follows every timidity.
I’m glad I know that all great romances are fleshed
with failure. I’ll take a day of bitterness and rain
to placate the gods, to get it over with.
My mother told me I could be a great pianist
because I had long fingers. My fingers are small.
It’s my mother’s fault, every undeserved sweetness.
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/200...
'What Goes On' is quite a poem. I marvel at Dunn's ability to pick up on events and stories and turn them into pithy verse. These lines and each of them called it love/because precision didn't matter anymore are spot on.
Sophia wrote: "'What Goes On' is quite a poem. I marvel at Dunn's ability to pick up on events and stories and turn them into pithy verse. These lines and each of them called it love/because precision didn't ma..."This part killed me!
we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,
Oh, yes. Because this is what we all must do - all the time.
ZERO HOURIt was the hour of simply nothing,
not a single desire in my western heart,
and no ancient system
of breathing and postures,
no big idea justifying what I felt.
There was even an absence of despair.
“Anything goes,” I said to myself.
All the clocks were high. Above them,
hundreds of stars flickering if, if, if.
Everywhere in the universe, it seemed,
some next thing was gathering itself.
I started to feel something,
but it was nothing more than a moment
passing into another, or was it less
eloquent than that, purely muscular,
some meaningless twitch?
I’d let someone else make it rhyme.
http://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com...
Thanks for sharing these poems of Dunn's. I have never been much of a poetry reader, but after this taste, I promptly went to my library website and requested the book! Dunn's poem, "What Goes On" tugged at my heart.
Jane from BC wrote: "Thanks for sharing these poems of Dunn's. I have never been much of a poetry reader, but after this taste, I promptly went to my library website and requested the book! Dunn's poem, "What Goes On..."I'm glad you are enjoying them. Yes, that poem tugged on mine, too.
The "destructive reviving passion" of someone who "had only fallen in love as anyone might who hadn't been in love in a while — " ... So precise.
Before the Sky DarkensSunsets, incipient storms, the tableaus
of melancholy-maybe these are
the Saturday night-events
to take your best girl to. At least then
there might be moments of vanishing beauty
before the sky darkens,
and the expectation of happiness
would hardly exist
and therefore might be possible.
More and more you learn to live
with the unacceptable.
You sense the ever-hidden God
retreating even farther,
terrified or embarrassed.
You might as well be a clown,
big silly clothes, no evidence of desire.
That’s how you feel, say, on a Tuesday.
Then out of the daily wreckage comes an invitation
with your name on it. Or more likely;
that best girl of yours offers you,
once again, a small local kindness.
You open your windows to good air
blowing in from who knows where,
which you gulp and deeply inhale
as if you have a death sentence. You have.
All your life, it seems, you’ve been appealing it
Night sweats and useless stratagem. Reprieves.
http://stillgreen.tumblr.com/post/926...
This is probably one of my favourite poems in this book.He takes an image and works it up, such that it becomes a reflective poem.
I felt he was less successful in 'Optimism'. I suspect that the image of long fingers came first and the rest followed. I hanker after a poem that hinges on those fingers, rather than the muddle that we are presented with. This feels like a poem that could do with a lot more work. Just my opinion!
Jane from BC wrote: "I have never been much of a poetry reader, but after this taste, I promptly went to my library website and requested the book!"Oh, that's great!
The Last HoursThere's some innocence left,
and these are the last hours of an empty afternoon
at the office, and there's the clock
on the wall, and my friend Frank
in the adjacent cubicle selling himself
on the phone.
I'm twenty-five, on the shaky
ladder up, my father's son, corporate,
clean-shaven, and I know only what I don't want,
which is almost everything I have.
A meeting ends.
Men in serious suits, intelligent men
who've been thinking hard about marketing snacks,
move back now to their window offices, worried
or proud. The big boss, Horace,
had called them in to approve this, reject that--
the big boss, a first-name, how's-your-family
kind of assassin, who likes me.
It's 1964.
The sixties haven't begun yet. Cuba is a larger name
than Vietnam. The Soviets are behind
everything that could be wrong. Where I sit
it's exactly nineteen minutes to five. My phone rings.
Horace would like me to stop in
before I leave. Stop in. Code words,
leisurely words, that mean now.
Would I be willing
to take on this? Would X's office, who by the way
is no longer with us, be satisfactory?
About money, will this be enough?
I smile, I say yes and yes and yes,
but--I don't know from what calm place
this comes--I'm translating
his beneficence into a lifetime, a life
of selling snacks, talking snack strategy,
thinking snack thoughts.
On the elevator down
it's a small knot, I'd like to say, of joy.
That's how I tell it now, here in the future,
the fear long gone.
By the time I reach the subway it's grown,
it's outsized, an attitude finally come round,
and I say it quietly to myself, I quit,
and keep saying it, knowing I will say it, sure
of nothing else but.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org...
Sophia wrote: "This is probably one of my favourite poems in this book.He takes an image and works it up, such that it becomes a reflective poem.
I felt he was less successful in 'Optimism'. I suspect that ..."
Hmmm. I like them both for different reasons. I understand the forlornness of an optimistic outlook; it is a never ending. I relish the all-day long rainy days here in Florida for the same reason; they are a rarity. I get sunshine overload.
Thing Two wrote: "I relish the all-day long rainy days here in Florida for the same reason; they are a rarity. I get sunshine overload. "And we get rain overload. Never satisfied, are we? Being English makes one a pessimist!
Thanks for posting the poems here. I've been delighted by them - so much so that I purchased the book.
That is just BRILLIANT!
SixtyBecause in my family the heart goes first
and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties,
I think I’ll stay up late with a few bandits
of my choice and resist good advice.
I’ll invent a secret scroll lost by Egyptians
and reveal its contents: the directions
to your house, recipes for forgiveness.
History says that my ventricles are stone alleys,
my heart itself a city with a terrorist
holed up in the mayor’s office.
I’m in the mood to punctuate
only with that maker of promises, the colon:
next, next, next, it says, God bless it.
As Garcia Lorca may have written: some people
forget to live as if a great arsenic lobster
could fall on their heads at any moment.
My sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.
Come, play poker with me,
I want to be taken to the cleaners.
I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent. As for me, I’ll share
my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch.
It’s time to give up search for the invisible.
On the best of days there’s little more
than the faintest intimations. The millenium,
my dear, is sure to disappoint us.
I think I’ll keep on describing things
to ensure that they really happened.
http://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.co...
"I think I’ll keep on describing thingsto ensure that they really happened"
Don't these lines sum up a poet's life?
Sophia wrote: "being English makes one a pessimist ..."Perhaps that's why "Optimism" didn't ring true for you.
DonnaR wrote: "Thanks for posting the poems here. I've been delighted by them - so much so that I purchased the book."I love to hear that! I bet the Stephen Dunn does, too. :)
EvanescenceThe silhouette of a mountain. Above it
a dark halo of rain. Dusk’s light
fading, holding on. He thinks he’s seen
some visible trace of some absent thing.
Knows he won’t talk about it, can’t.
He arrives home to the small winter pleasures
of a clothing tree, a hatrack,
his heroine in a housedress saying hello.
He could be anyone aware of an almost,
not necessarily sad. He could be a brute
suddenly chastened by the physical world.
They talk about the storm in the mountains
destined for the valley, the béarnaise sauce
and the fine cut of beef it improves.
The commonplace and its contingencies,
his half-filled cup, the monstrous
domesticated by the six o’clock news—
these are his endurances,
in fact his privileges, if he has any sense.
Later while they make love, he thinks of
Mantle’s long home run in the ’57 Series.
He falls to sleep searching for a word.
http://fandom-poetry.livejournal.com/...
What I really like about this poem is the way the metaphor is developed throughout the poem to open and finish with "some visible trace of some absent thing [until]... He falls to sleep searching for a word."
Sophia wrote: "What I really like about this poem is the way the metaphor is developed throughout the poem to open and finish with "some visible trace of some absent thing [until]... He falls to sleep searching f..."I am really enjoying Stephen Dunn. I usually read poetry - and then turn away to write something myself. His is so intricate, I can only read, and read, and read some more. I am in awe.
I just read his "After" about Jack and Jill after the fall. Hilarious! And yet, sad. If I can find a link, I'll share.
I agree. It's very clever poem, indeed.
Thank you all. I seldom read poetry (unless you consider the classic epics poetry, which they are, of course), but I read elsewhere how good this month's discussion was and decided to take a peak. Am glad I did.
Lily wrote: "Thank you all. I seldom read poetry (unless you consider the classic epics poetry, which they are, of course), but I read elsewhere how good this month's discussion was and decided to take a peak...."Great! I'm glad you found it. Sophia and I decided to try to revive this section since we both read and enjoy poetry. We hoped there might be more people like us somewhere ... ;)
It looks like there are!
AfterJack and Jill at home together after their fall,
the bucket spilled, her knees badly scraped,
and Jack with not even an aspirin for what's broken.
We can see the arduous evenings ahead of them.
And the need now to pay a boy to fetch the water.
Our mistake was trying to do something together,
Jill sighs. Jack says, If you'd have let go for once
you wouldn't have come tumbling after.
He's in a wheelchair, but she's still an item––
for the rest of their existence confined
to a little, rhyming story. We tell it to our children,
who laugh, already accustomed to disaster.
We'd like to teach them the secrets
of knowing how to go too far,
but Jack is banging with his soup spoon,
Jill is pulling out her hair. Out of decency
we turn away, as if it were possible to escape
the drift of our lives, the fundamental business
of making do with what's been left us.
http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.co....
“The irony that exists in this poem is created by the distance between what the reader expects—a cute ending for a nursery rhyme couple—and what actually happens: namely, a long, grim relationship. The tone of this poem is surprisingly serious. You might expect a poem about nursery rhyme characters to be silly or funny, but Dunn details their real and serious problems. Dunn may have chosen this tone in order to bring home the fact that the world is a dark and dangerous place even for fictional characters, and that there are always facts missing from our understanding.”
www.mhconnectenglishresources.com/ins...
Sophia wrote: "“The irony that exists in this poem is created by the distance between what the reader expects—a cute ending for a nursery rhyme couple—and what actually happens: namely, a long, grim relationship...."I couldn't work the link, so I just ordered a used copy of the book from Amazon. I'm such a nerd! LOL!
John & Mary John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met.
—from a freshman's short story
They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, running in opposite directions
from different lions. They were like postal clerks
in different zip codes, with different vacation time,
their bosses adamant and clock-driven.
How could they get together?
They were like two people who couldn't get together.
John was a Sufi with a love of the dervish,
Mary of course a Christian with a curfew.
They were like two dolphins in the immensity
of the Atlantic, one playful,
the other stuck in a tuna net—
two absolutely different childhoods!
There was simply no hope for them.
They would never speak in person.
When they ran across that windswept field
toward each other, they were like two freight trains.
one having left Seattle at 6:36 p.m.
at an unknown speed, the other delayed
in Topeka for repairs.
The math indicated that they'd embrace
in another world, if at all, like parallel lines.
Or merely appear kindred and close, like stars.
http://buoy.antville.org/stories/182353/
Thing Two wrote: "John & Mary John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met.
—from a freshman's short story
They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, runnin..."
I wish I'd written this!
He takes the common, the ordinary, and makes it beautiful! A child's poem, a line in a story. I just read his poem "Rubbing" - a painting, a shiny pebble, cars - brilliant. I want to take a poetry class with him! Totally in awe (have I already said that?)
I know what you mean... (sigh)
I'm so glad to read these poems-now I have to get the book! They're so beautiful. As people have said, he takes small moments and cracks open the meaning and ordinary words and makes them resonate. I read these words and realize how hard it is for me to write about poetry-after such greatness my words sound pitiful.I guess I really wanted to say thank you for sharing them. They're so wonderful they almost hurt to read.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/s...