Jean Lets the Texture of Saba's Poem Speak to Her

Here is my friend jean wall penland's ( www.penlandia.com) response to Saba's A Winter Noon. Jean always brings an artist's voice to her work. She was in a poetry workshop I led many years ago and every week astonished me with her offerings. This is no exception. Jean is on facebook, so you can visit her there.

starting with your lines (my lines):

today as i was limping to the mailbox, a grumpy man was complaining about a teenager

last week i wandered into a fabric shop where a mother was buying material for her daughter's wedding

fogiveness from . . . GOD god?

for happiness for happiness?

reduced nearly to tears damn god! heavy crap! dark -- happiness not dark!

a certain lovely creature sweet

you'll surely say NO

who smiled at you in passing pleasant and yellow-green-pale or condescention dark grey

but no oops, i flunked

a blue meandering balloon air-light blue -- floating fun

against an azure sky bright now

my native sky where is this native sky

never so clear ah, glass

and cold clear cold icicle -- dripping? noontime?

as then noon?

that dazzling winter day ah, clear AND bright

a few small clouds peaceful airy blue (and white) again

and upper windows flaming in the sun i am CAPTURED! -- in love -- happiness is here!

and faint smoke from the chimney, or two hmmm are we moving away from happiness? inner place

and over everything oh oh, ominous over everything

every divine thing uh oh again, i am already mad at god about the happiness thing

that globe the noon sun?

that had escaped a boy's incautious fingers hmm, maybe not the sun?

surely he was out there broadcasting through the crowded square his grief WHAM! i love the 'broadcasting' - and

the grief, has he lost something?

his immense grief oh, surely he must have! something of his heart

between the great facade of the Stock Exchange and the cafe large city

where i, behind a window hiding, resting, spying , being protected but not flaming now?

watched with shining eyes crying for his grief? yours? not smiling-shining surely

the rise and fall breathing, pulsating ?

of what he once posessed not a simple loss, a death?

not really what you asked for, just what happened with me -- and the reader, i suppose, brings along his own stuff just as in viewing paintings -- well, i sha'n't forget this poem soon jn -- lv

Waking Up in the Middle of the Night, or Texture in Poetry

I often wake up in the middle of the night, the demons scratching away in my mind---all the things I have to do, all the regrets, the fears, the memories. But two nights ago, I woke up after a dream in which I was teaching a poetry workshop again, trying to engage to the young students about "texture" in language. I remembered giving them a simple sentence, something like, "Today I walked to the post office and talked to Margie behind the counter about her teenage son."

What's the texture of that sentence, I asked. And then, how can you change the texture? Make it nubby or silky or tangled. What about each line of a poem? Or the whole poem?

What do you do with a snag? Is it a productive snag, one that stops the reader for a good reason and adds to the texture of the poem? Or one that stops the reader for good, confuses the reader and causes the poem to lose its flow?

And color? What color is this sentence I just gave you? Sort of beige? How can you change the color? How does syntax enable you to play with color and texture?

I was having a grand time, even wishing that I had a set of those little hot pad weaving toys that I loved as a child, with a lot of yarn on the table. Making it all tactile, as well as visual.

I woke up feeling excited about language, about poetry, and I remembered the Saba poem I posted just a day ago on this blog.

What, I wondered, would a reader have to say about the texture in this poem? Line by line? as an entirety? And color?

Give it a try, those of you who visit my blog. Look below this post at A Winter Noon. Leave a comment to tell me how you "feel" this poem. What is the syntax doing to weave its texture? The imagery?

Happiness? Well, I can say that waking up at 3 in the morning and feeling jazzed over a dream about poetry and the fabric of language comes pretty close, especially after the other dreams lately have been about endless searches for lost passports, letters, recipes, working an eternity to try to get a meal on the table, pack a suitcase, decide which poem to read, what clothes to wear, and finding none of what I need close by, nothing ever resolved, my heart pounding when I wake up. After waking up from this dream, I kept teaching the class in my head, thinking of ways to make poetry come alive. Who cares that it took me at least an hour to fall back asleep? I was having a blast.

So, let me continue the workshop. Tell me how A Winter Noon runs through your fingers like wool or silk or broadcloth, where the stitchery changes, becomes nubbier, or smoother. The cut of it as it falls to closure. How it hangs on the clothesline!

I will use your comments in a later post.