Recap of One Page Poetry Circle May Meeting—Poetry and Longing

The One Page Poetry Circle met on May 7th to discuss Poetry and Longing.

We were delighted that so many attended this final spring session, and laughed at the number of poems from the nineteenth century, an era known for the attitude of melancholy indicative of longing.

Abigail opened the circle with verses from William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” with its seeking after a remembered connection, “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?/Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

Roger read “The Day Is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wherein the narrator recommends poetry to recover from the day, which is the goal of the One Page Poetry Circle itself. “Then read from the treasured volume/The poem of thy choice,/And lend to the rhyme of the poet/The beauty of thy voice.”

Hazel read Lord Byron’s “When We Two Parted” concerning a secret and mysterious liaison, “They know not I knew thee,/Who knew thee too well:—/Long, long shall I rue thee,/Too deeply to tell.”

Cate read Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Indian Serenade” another beautiful love poem from the Romantic era, “My cheek is cold and white, alas!/My heart beats loud and fast;—/Oh! press it to thine own again,/Where it will break at last.”

Gail read “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats with its desire for forgetfulness, “Darkling I listen; and, for many a time/I have been half in love with easeful Death,/Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,/To take into the air my quiet breath.”

Terry read W. W. Story’s “Longing,” in which the poet craves the ability to express deep feelings through art and words, “What is the worth of human art,/If the weak tongue can never speak/That which lives heavy on the heart,/Even though the heavy heart should break.”

Susan read Emily Dickinson’s “Success is counted sweetest” that reveals the poet’s compassion and empathy, “Success is counted sweetest/By those who ne’er succeed./To comprehend a nectar/Requires sorest need.”

David read “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, which ends with the famous ambiguous words, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Lenny read from Dan Fogelberg’s song, “Same Old Lang Syne,” which tells the story of old lovers meeting in a grocery store, with the chorus: “We drank a toast to innocence/We drank a toast to now/We tried to reach beyond the emptiness,/but neither one knew how.”

Jennifer read John Berryman’s “The Ball Poem,” describing a boy who has lost his ball, “In a world of possessions. People will take balls,/Balls will be lost always, little boy,/And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.”

Daria read Emily Dickinson poem which begins, “Longing is like the Seed/That wrestles in the Ground,/Believing if it intercede/It shall at length be found.”

Carol read Kahlil Gibran’s prose poem, “The Great Longing,” “Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.”

Mei translated two short poems by Li Bai (701-762 AD) from the Chinese. Here is “Misery of the Passion,”

The beauty behind the rolled pearl blinds
Sat alone with eyelids locked tight
But saw her wet tears dripping
Not sure whom to hate the most

AnnaLee read Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do,” an elegy to her brother who died of Aids, “We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want/whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.”

Kai sent us Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas,” which comments on the constancy of longing—“All the new thinking is about loss./In this it resembles all the old thinking,” and blackberries—a staple of fall.

Have a wonderful summer and we will see you in the fall. In the meantime, blog with us at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com. Don’t be shy.

Fall 2019 Schedule (all Tuesdays)
Sept. 10, Poetry and Epistles or Letters
Oct. 1, Poetry and Odd Titles
Nov. 12, Poetry and Optimism or Pessimism
Dec, 10, Poetry and Confession

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

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Next One Page Poetry Circle—Poetry and Longing, May 7, 2019

We all know the feeling of longing, whether it is desire or melancholy or yearning. We long for what was, what will be, what might have been, and what never can be.

James Russell Lowell begins his poem “Longing,” “Of all the myriad moods of mind/That through the soul come thronging,/Which one was e’er so dear, so kind,/So beautiful as Longing?” T. S. Eliot starts “The Waste Land” with a sadder aspect of longing: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.” In Marie Ponsot’s “Among Women,” the poet gives voice to the longings of women that are best kept secret:

What women wander?
Not many. All. A few.
Most would, now & then,
& no wonder.
Some, and I’m one,
Wander sitting still. 
My small grandmother
Bought from every peddler
Less for the ribbons and lace
Than for their scent
Of sleep where you will,
Walk out when you want, choose
Your bread and your company.

She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.”

She looked fragile but had
High blood, runner’s ankles,
Could endure, endure.
She loved her rooted garden, her
Grand children, her once
Wild once young man.
Women wander
As best they can.

We look forward to you blogging with us. Feel free to comment on the poems you find here, or post a poem by a known author and, if you want, say why you like it. You can do so by clicking the little speech balloon beneath the subject lines in the left margin at the top of this blog.

Upcoming One Page Poetry Circle, Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 5:30 – 6:30 pm, St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Avenue (near 81st Street), 3rd Floor

~Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Recap of April 2, 2019, One Page Poetry Circle

The One Page Poetry Circle met on April 2nd to discuss Poetry and Mystery.

Abigail opened the circle with the last stanzas of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King describing the mystery of the end of King Arthur: “He passes to be King among the dead,/And after healing of his grievous wound/He comes again; but—if he come no more—…”

Roger read from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, a writer who specialized in mystery, “‘Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—/Tell me what they lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’/Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”

Hazel read “The Tyger” by William Blake in which the poet wonders about the mystery of duality in nature, “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,/In the forests of the night,/What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Gail broke the nineteenth century mood with Raymond Carver’s Another Mystery”: “That time I tagged along with my dad to the dry cleaners—/What’d I know then about Death? Dad comes out carrying a black suit in a/plastic bag. Hangs it up behind the back seat of the old coupe/and says, ‘This is the suit your grandpa is going to leave/the world in.’ What on earth could he be talking about? I wondered.”

Alice read “To Paula in Late Spring” by W. S. Merwin, expressive of his longing: “Let me imagine that we will come again/when we want to and it will be spring/we will be no older than we ever were.”

Mei read poetry by Sing Chigi (1140-1207) that she had translated from the Chinese. One was reminiscent of New Year celebrations: “Ladies wear fancy shining jewelries,/Pass by with laughs giggling and perfume./Among crowd looking for her thousand times,/Suddenly look backwards,/Such soul,/At dim light far away shadows.”

Howard read Robert Frost’s two-line poem, “The Secret Sits”: We dance round in a ring and suppose,/But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

Cate read Ru Freeman’s “The Heart Shows No Signs” with its mysterious images that run through the poem, “The heart, the surgeon says, does not reveal/the small rifts, the hairline cracks which/split the hairline cracks they conceal cops/and robbers in a stretch of skin.”

It rarely happens in the circle that two people bring the same poem, but both Daria and AnnaLee brought Paul Laurence Dunbar’s powerful poem, “The Mystery,” which provides no answer to the eternal mysteries, “I question of th’ eternal bending skies/That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;/But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes/On me, as I one day shall do on them,/And tell me not the secret that I ask.”

Kai couldn’t be there, but thought of “Dream Song 29” by John Berryman with the ominous lines, “But never did Henry, as he thought he did,/end anyone and hacks her body up/and hide the pieces, where they may be found.”

We’re looking forward to seeing you at the May 7th One Page Poetry Circle for Poetry and Longing. Whether a poem expresses longing or you just long to bring it, choose a poem that has meaning to you. And if you can, come with copies for others to share. Can’t locate a poem you want to bring? Browse the poetry section at the library or check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

In the meantime, please blog with us at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2019 Season
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

The One Page Poetry Circle will be back in the fall. Look for the upcoming schedule of dates and themes.

~Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

 

 

Next One Page Poetry Circle, April 2—Poetry and Mystery

Our program for April will explore Poetry and Mystery. In the New York Times Opinion Pages, the poet David Biespiel wrote, “Poetic utterance shapes our perspective of the mysteries of the present moment and helps us imagine the next one.” Indeed, every poem is a mystery to be solved, the meaning to be unlocked and revealed.

Some poems are designed as puzzles. Riddles were popular since the earliest English poetry, like this translation from the Anglo-Saxon:

A moth ate words. It seemed to me
a strange occasion, when I inquired about that wonder,
that the worm swallowed the riddle of certain men,
a thief in the darkness, the glorious pronouncement
and its strong foundation. The stealing guest was not
one whit the wiser, for all those words he swallowed.

The answer is a bookworm, both an actual worm and a person who reads without understanding.

Mark Strand takes on what cannot be known in his prose poem “Mystery and Solitude in Topeka”:

Afternoon darkens into evening. A man falls deeper and deeper into the slow spiral of sleep, into the drift of it, the length of it, through what feels like mist, and comes at last to an open door through which he passes without knowing why, then again without knowing why goes to a room where he sits and waits while the room seems to close around him and the dark is darker than any he has known, and he feels something forming within him without being sure what it is, its hold on him growing, as if a story were about to unfold, in which two characters, Pleasure and Pain, commit the same crime, the one that is his, that he will confess to again and again, until it means nothing.

Please comment here on these poems or post a link to a poem that you like on the subject of mystery. Or, choose another poem and tell us what you like about it.  onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2019 Season at
St. Agnes Branch Library, 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
444 Amsterdam Ave., NYC

Tuesday, April 2, Poetry and Mystery
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Recap of March 2019 Meeting, One Page Poetry Circle

The One Page Poetry Circle met on March 5th to feast on poetry and food.

Abigail opened the circle with “The Feed” by the Native American poet M. L. Smoker who describes the preparation for a feast, “Aunties carry the full pots and pans to the/picnic table, an uncle prays over our food in Assiniboine. We all want to/forget that we don’t understand this language, we spend lots of time/trying to forget in different ways.”

AnnaLee read Toi Derricotte’s “My dad & sardines” wherein the discovery of a tin of sardines brings back an ambiguous memory of a father who topped a saltine with mustard, a sardine, and an onion, “then he’d look up from his soiled/fingers with one eyebrow/raised, a rakish/grin that said–all/for me!–as if he was/getting away/with murder.”

Mae read a poem she had written about the short month of February that included the delights of Valentine’s Day and the Chinese New Year.

Carol read Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Tomatoes” which shows the tomato as the “star of earth” that “displays/its convolutions,/its canals,/its remarkable amplitude/and abundance,/no pit,/no husk,/no leaves or thorns,/the tomato offers/its gift/of fiery color/and cool completeness.”

Daria read “This Is Just to Say” William Carlos Williams’s apology to his wife for eating the plums she was saving for breakfast, “Forgive me/they were delicious/so sweet/and so cold.”

Cate read “Eating Together,” a poem with an unexpected turn, by Li-Young Lee, given here in its entirety:

In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two springs of green onion, and sesame oil
shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

Susan read another William Carlos Williams poem about plums, “To a Poor Old Woman,” “Comforted/a solace of ripe plums/seeming to fill the air/They taste good to her.”

Christiana read Galway Kinnell’s serious and humorous account of eating “Oatmeal” with John Keats, “Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:/due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,/and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone./He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat/it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had/enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.”

Gail read a selection from “The Eve of St. Agnes” by John Keats where the hero is given a feast “Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;/With jellies soother than the creamy curd,/And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;/Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d /From Fez.”

Michelle read a poem about gluttony, a sin we all have been guilty of, that starts, “Where it all began was to eat too much.”

Hazel read “The Owl,” another poem with a change of mood, by Edward Thomas in which the narrator while feeling comfortable and sated, hears an owl’s cry, “Speaking for all who lay under the stars,/Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.”

Roger read Emily Dickinson’s Poem 53, which begins, “GOD gave a loaf to every bird,/But just a crumb to me” and ends, “I deem that I with but a crumb/Am sovereign of them all.

Kai couldn’t be with us, but thought of “Ode to an Artichoke” by Pablo Neruda, a whimsical tale of the vegetable from earth to plate where “we undress/this delight/we munch/the peaceful paste/of its green heart.”

We’re looking forward to seeing you at the April 2nd One Page Poetry Circle. Whether a poem concerns a mystery, solves a mystery, or is a mystery, choose a poem that has meaning to you. And if you can, come with copies for others to share. Can’t locate a poem you want to bring? Browse the poetry section at the library or check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

In the meantime, please blog with us here at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2019 Season
Tuesday, April 2, Poetry and Mystery
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Next One Page Poetry Circle—March 5, 2019, Poetry about Food

Welcome to the blog for the One Page Poetry Circle at St. Agnes Branch Library! At our upcoming March 5 meeting we will read and discuss Poetry about Food. Food is a necessity of life, one of its greatest pleasures, and connected to many different emotions. 

In “September Tomatoes” Karina Borowicz describes pulling up the tomato plants with yellow flowers still on them:

It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

In “A Display of Mackerel” Mark Doty was inspired to ponder the nature of individuality and collectivity after observing a dazzling counter of fish on ice at his local supermarket. The poem begins:

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity 

and ends:

the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,
or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming

Abigail was struck by the sadness in both of these poems—the end of the growing season and the killing of the possibilities of birth and the dead fish, beautiful but dead, and not “happy” at all. Perhaps the memory of the season of tomatoes and the pleasure of eating fresh fish remains.

What about you? Tell us what you think of these poems, or post another poem of your choice on the subject of Food or something else. Make a comment. Don’t be shy!

Poetry about Food, March 5,  5:30 – 6:30 pm, St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Avenue (81^st St.), 3^rd Fl.

Abigail Burnham Bloom and
AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Recap of One Page Poetry Circle—February meeting

The One Page Poetry Circle at St. Agnes Branch Library! met February 12th to discuss Poetry and You. We were delighted so many braved the storm to join us.

Abigail opened the circle with “Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes’s response to an assignment of writing about yourself that brings up the problem of what makes you “you.” The author writes about the racial difference between himself and the instructor, but stresses what links them, “You are white—/yet a part of me, as I am a part of you./That’s American.”

Roger read Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” with its stirring optimism, “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,/I am the dream and the hope of the slave./I rise/I rise/I rise.”

Gail read “It Is Later Than You Think” by Robert W. Service in which the narrator humorously reminds us of a sad truth, “Ah! the clock is always slow;/It is later than you think;/Sadly later than you think;/Far, far later than you think.”

Elizabeth read Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” wherein the narrator tells us that no matter how sad we are, we can find beauty in the world around us, “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again./Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination.”

Christiana read Alessandra Lynch’s “Funeral: For Us His Gold,” an ecstatic poem about a couple discovering a dead insect, “Yellow had alerted us to him, and we took care/with leaf and clover to make his bed./The insect’s gold our togetherness, its death from which we fed.”

Daria read Shanel Marion’s “Be You,” which reminds us that we are all unique, “No One can change You/not one or two/people can change You.”

Lenny thought of “Church Going” by Philip Larkin which questions the attraction of religious institutions, “A serious house on serious earth it is,/In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,/Are recognized, and robed as destinies./And that much never can be obsolete.”

Cate read Philip Levine’s “The Search for Lorca’s Shadow” an examination of the site of Federico Lorca’s assassination and its meaning for the narrator, “First forgive the ants/or we’ll get nowhere in this useless search/for the darkness he was and the darkness/he became.”

AnnaLee closed the circle with Pablo Neruda’s beloved poem “Your Laughter”: “deny me bread, air,/light, spring,/but never your laughter/for I would die.”

Jane could not be there but blogged about “Standing Up” a three-line poem by Erica Funkhouser:

Like a tree that has been chosen
for the owl’s home
I stand up differently today

We’re looking forward to seeing you at the March 5th One Page Poetry Circle. Whether a poem reminds you of food, or starvation, or cooking, choose a poem that has meaning to you. And if you can, come with copies for others to share. Can’t locate a poem you want to bring? Browse the poetry section at the library or check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

In the meantime, please blog with us about poetry, here at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2019 Season

Tuesday, March 5, Poetry about Food
Tuesday, April 2, Poetry and Mystery
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

Abigail Burnham Bloom and
AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Next One Page Poetry Circle—Poetry & You, Feb. 12, 2019

Welcome back for the eleventh spring season of the One Page Poetry Circle at St. Agnes Branch Library where people gather to examine the works of established poets. You is the theme for February’s circle. The poet is always reaching out from himself to his audience, “you.” Abigail is reminded by this topic of a poem by John Keats, whose last word in the poem is “you.” Throughout his short career Keats faced his own mortality and reached his hand out to his love, Fanny Brawne. The poem shows both the need for connection to another person and almost a grizzly sense of self. Found among his papers after his death, and titled “This Living Hand” for its first three words, this is the poem in its entirety:

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

The idea of addressing a poem to one’s love, brought AnnaLee to the poet Donald Justice and his poem, “Poem.” In these seven stanzas the word “you” seems to address multiple faces: the creator, the receiver, the iterative process, the mystery, and ultimately the poem itself, which is trapped in the prison of its words.

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you. 

Who else might the Donald Justice be addressing in “Poem?” We invite you to blog with us here at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com. Comment on the topic of Poetry and You, the poems you read here, or on poetry in general.

Spring 2019 Season:
Tuesday, February 12, Poetry and You, February 12, 2019, 5:30 – 6:30 pm, St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Ave., NY, NY
Tuesday, March 5, Poetry and Food
Tuesday, April 2, Poetry and Mystery
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Recap of December 2018 One Page Poetry Circle

We concluded our fall season on December 11, with a full house, and an exploration of Poetry and Wine.

Abigail opened the circle with “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats in which the speaker chooses to soar, as we did, “not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,/But on the viewless wings of Poesy.”

Roger read “Easter Week” by Joyce Kilmer, a remembrance of the 1916 Easter Uprising, “Romantic Ireland is not old./For years untold her youth shall shine./Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread,/The blood of martyrs is her wine.”

Hazel read “A Consecration” by John Masefield in which the narrator vows to write about the poor, “Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,/the portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;–/Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!”

Gail read “The Wine” by Michael Metivier which tells a modern tale of an ancient figure, “When the townspeople/gave the teenaged Buddha/a glass of wine/so delicious he grew/to an unthinkable size.”

Ann read Tony Hoagland’s “When Dean Young Talks about Wine,” which addresses the new generation of poets, “But where is the Cabernet of rent checks and asthma medication?/Where is the Burgundy of orthopedic shoes?”

Madge read Zbigniew Herbert’s “Mr. Cogito Reflects on Suffering,” in which the wise and wry narrator cautions us to “drink an extract of bitter herbs/but not to the dregs/be careful to leave/a few gulps for the future.”

Phil read “The Wine-Drinkers” by Tennessee Williams with its sad depiction of men who dream but do not act, “The wine-drinkers sit on the porte cochère in the sun./Their lack of success in love has made them torpid.”

Kat read “A Drinking Song” by William Butler Yeats about love and yearning, “Wine comes in at the mouth/And love comes in at the eye;/That’s all we shall know for truth/Before we grow old and die.”

Cate brought “Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard” by Larry Levis in which the narrator reflects on harvesting grapes with migrant workers, “And close my eyes to hear them laugh at me again,/And then, hearing nothing, no one,/Carry the grapes up to the solemn house,/Where I was born.”

Terry read the traditional and wonderful “Song: to Celia” by Ben Johnson, which got us singing, “Drink to me only with thine eyes,/And I will pledge with mine.”

Carol read Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Wine,” with its opposing hues of “Day-colored wine,/night-colored wine,/wine with purple feet/or wine with topaz blood,/wine/starry child/of earth.”

Christiana read “Drinking Wine” by Wislawa Szymborska, in which the speaker is “imaginary” in contrast to wine, “A table is a table,/wine is wine in a glass/that is just a glass and stands/standing on a table.”

AnnaLee read “Wine Tasting” by Kim Addonizio, with its nod to the poet Li Po, “like the moon slung away from the earth./When Li Po drank wine, the moon dove/in the river, and he staggered after.” The reference to an 8^th century Chinese poet led her to read his “Drinking Alone with the Moon.”

Daria contributed “Harlem Wine,” which honors the richness of Harlem’s culture, “This is a wine that must flow on/Not caring how or where/So it has ways to flow upon/Where song is in the air.” Its author, Countee Cullen, has a branch of the New York Public Library named after him.

Enjoy the holidays! We look forward to seeing you in 2019.

Please blog with us here at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

Spring 2019 Schedule
Tuesday, February 12, Poetry and You
Tuesday, March 5, Poetry and Food
Tuesday, April 2, Poetry and Mystery
Tuesday, May 7, Poetry and Longing

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.

Next One Page Poetry Circle—Dec. 11, Poetry and Wine

Wine and Poetry go back a long time together: the festival of Dionysus, in Greek mythology, and Bacchus, in Roman, celebrated wine and poetry. Wine has been a muse to poets, and all too often a curse, in all cultures.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s fragment, “The Vine-Shroud,” combines the “flourishing” growth of the grape with the ruin below in Italy:

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

Writing about the start of vineyards in California, Robert Louis Stevenson stated in Silverado Squatters that “Wine is bottled poetry.”

In 2016 the word “wine” was banished from books published in Iran. It wasn’t always so. Once there was a strong tradition of wine-themed poetry. In the opening lines of “Pass Around the Cup Fair Maiden,” the 11^th century poet and Sufi Master, Hafiz (born in Shiraz!) wrote: 

Pass around the cup fair maiden,
Because Love seemed easy at first,
But now I see how difficult it is.

Post your thoughts on the subject of Poetry and Wine. Blog with us here at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com. To make a comment click the little orange speech balloon under the headline of this post. 

One Page Poetry Circle Meeting Information:
Theme: Poetry and Wine
When: Tuesday, December 11, 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Where: St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Ave. 3^rd Floor, NYC

Abigail Burnham Bloom and AnnaLee Wilson

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.