Conference quark::mennotes-v1

Well, so do I, but this conference doesn't have so many notes that two
poetry notes will cause a problem.  A third note for comments seems
reasonable as well.

					Steve

    RE: .1 
    
    I meant "by us" to mean by men or women.  I needed to spell that out?
                               ------------
    I think it is one thing to read and enjoy poetry and another
    thing to write it.  I wanted poets among us (men or women) to
    be able to put their own poems in one topic and to enter the
    poems of others (Yeats, Rilke, Olds, etc) in another topic.
    
    I put some of my poems in, I don't think they compare to poems
    of great poets, but that doesn't stop me from writing and enjoying
    my own stuff, or the poems of friends who are rank amateurs like me.
    
    Bill

    I'm no poet, but I did write one last year.  It's a love poem to my
    wife.  But, since it's not about men, (but is about one man's feelings
    about a woman) it's probably not suitable???
    
    tony

    RE: .4
    
    "one man's feelings about a woman" sure sounds like it is on
    the topic of being a man to me!
                 -----------                     bill

    RE 521.4,  second half of SELF and SOUL by Yeats
    
    Thanks, Paul.  I keep hearing that poem at men's conferences and
    never seem to get the title down, so I never seem to find it in
    my copy of Yeats.
    
    Bill

   I've been reading and re-reading the poems in 520.  I like them all,
   but if I had to choose - totally subjectively - I pick 520.3, 520.1 and
   520.5.   I have to emphasize that these are totally subjective and personal
   judgements.   

   I try to read a lot of poetry.  Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's 
   uninspiring and boring, but a trudge on, often.   Guess it takes work.
   But occasionally a line jumps out at me and strikes a resonance.   That's
   what happened in the case of 520.3, Caged Lion.   The last line is really
   a zinger: "Smoldering eyes greet the gray dawn."   To me, that seems to say
   it all.  I can identify.   Night is the time when the black thoughts come,
   when often I rage and pace.   ...and then comes the dawn.

   How about 520.1?  This I had to read over and over.   Think I get the 
   meaning now: we wait on dry porches, with that rain out there, that storm
   waiting to happen.   Again, this may not have been what Bill meant, but I
   feel it this way.   The images are pretty powerful in that poem.

   The love poem, 520.5 is really beautiful, very rhythmatic, and honest.  It
   really captures that feeling.  A wonderful statement and expression.

   The others are good too, but the above hit me most strongly, as I already
   said I guess.   But too 520.2 was very good..     Click.           Click...

   Mardy (short for Marden, I'm a male person)

    It's a pitty I can't include English translations from some of my
    favourite poetry books.
    I'd like to append some of H.Hesse's, Goethe's, Novalis', Quevedo's,
    Mach�n's, Espronceda's etcetcetc to note 521.
    It's always interesting to see what I read and write depending on the
    situation or mood I am in.
    When I'm happy I tend to read and write classical poems with rhythm,
    rhymes and classical formats (my separated wife has a collection of
    sonnets I wrote MANY years back and I simply can't afford to reread
    now..), but when I'm down, the music and harmony is gone from the
    poetry I read and write.
    ...Paul

    RE: 520.5 Tony's love poem to his wife
        520.6 Paul's irony
        520.7 Jody's view of being a man
    
    I really like these poems.
    
    Tony, I haven't been in a mood lately to appreciate a love poem.
    Love poems made me too bitter.  Things have been changing rapidly,
    though, so I've printed out 520.5.  Maybe it will inspire me to
    write something myself, since my love-life is definitely improving...
    
    Paul, I like your image.  That's the way I've felt about a number of
    things.  I got told, "I wish you would not do x..."  Then I change, 
    and I heard, "You never do x anymore."  Or worse, my effort to do
    something goes unrecognized for a long time, so I finally give it up
    and then get criticized for not doing it.  Makes me realize better 
    for whom I do things.  
    
    Jody, I really like your poem, and I like that you put it here.
    I like those descriptions of the "fine line" that men seem to
    have to walk, and then even when you want to help you realize that 
    the line has to be walked alone.  Wow!  For me, that is truly
    appreciating the man.  I am more and more aware of the caretaking
    that women love to do, and the temptation to hand over pieces of
    myself for caretaking, and how debilitating that is.  I keep 
    hearing about men trying to connect with their fathers and 
    never being able to get around mom who is always there, always
    hovering nearby or stepping in the way, because mom is always
    caretaking the old man.  How did that old man hand over so
    much of his life to his wife?  (I'm not *blaming* the wife here,
    btw, just wondering how it happened that a man who was probably
    pretty strong and vigorous in his younger years seems so unable
    to act on his own in his late years.  And, for that matter, how 
    did the son buy into the idea that the only way to dad is through
    mom?)  Well, this isn't in your poem, but you can see where the poem
    leads me.
    
    Bill

    RE: 520.9, Mardy Seavey's reaction to 521.17
    
    Hi Mardy,
    
    I didn't even think of Bill Holm's poem (dancing the
    rhumba with the dark woman from the mountains of Bulgaria)
    as a reference to the "inner woman", the anima.  I saw
    it as having two other contexts:
    
      1. ONE real, flesh and blood woman, who is "spirited,"
         and the fear and excitement of the dance with her.
    
      2. ALL women, in an almost abstract sense, who carry
         a "spirited" sense, and the struggle to find the 
         matching spirited rhythms in myself so that I can 
         dance with them.
    
    Of course, my contexts require that I first find "her"
    inside myself and do the inner dance.  And that inner
    work never gets done on the conscious level.  That is,
    finding and naming her in a poem as my "anima" raises
    the dust of the conscious into my eyes, so I keep losing 
    her.  I get distracted by the dust of the conscious,
    by the sense of a chase.  The poem, or the dance, or 
    the "something that happens" takes place entirely in 
    the unconscious.  That's why it's in Bulgaria!
    (For the Bulgarians it is in Massachusetts!)
    
    Seems more like sitting and waiting is the way to find
    myself in Bulgaria and the woman beside me.  An elusive
    chase won't do it -- too much dust.
    
    "Thinking about the woman" takes place on the conscious
    level.  "Expectant waiting, inner dancing to inner rhythms"
    takes place on the unconscious level.   It's hard to have
    faith that it will happen when the dust is swirling around.
    
    Bill

    I really liked reading that.  
    
    I was in the woods with you, watching, listening... feeling the world
    around.
    
    A delightful feeling.
    
    
    thank you
    
    tony

   re: 522.10  -< conscious dust >-

   Hi Bill,

   I just tuned in here again after a lapse, and discovered your reaction to
   my reaction.    Very interesting.   I've been reading over a few times to
   see if I comprehend.    You are wanting waiting this to happen but not in
   any overt sense, only as a visit from the unconscious.   I can see that the
   Bulgarian woman represents something entirely foreign, but she is new and 
   full of spirit, and maybe gives her spirit to you, especially if you have
   prepared yourself for it.   This must be like a breakthrough, a visitation,
   Grace even, if I may use that word.   The preparation must be crucial 
   though, or the Bulgarian woman would never be recognized suddenly there in 
   the dark.

   I'm not sure what suddenly made me write that poem:-).  I guess it was just 
   the idea of having this dark mysterious woman to dance with, of having her
   presented to me.   And I relished it.   This was my liberation.   At last
   I was able to cut lose, loose myself in this joy, forget the razor blade.
   (Sorry for that gross image, but I was trying to be silly sardonic I guess)
   But of course it could not last.   That's the sad thing.   My epiphany, my
   dream, had to end, and I had to awaken to the dust of consciousness, no
   longer in touch with the vision.   She came and she went.   Instead of 
   "anima", I could have used another word, maybe "joie de vivre"?  

   Well, my poem is crazy, I'll admit!   It seems silly to me now, maybe even
   when I wrote it.   But something made me do it.    Probably no one thing
   though.   I've over-analyzed it above, and may be totally off base (which
   in fact might be good:-).
   
   Mardy

    RE: .12
    
    >    ... But something made me do it. ...
    
    Robert Bly says all poems come out of the Great Mother... ;-)
    
    Bill
    

    RE: 521.24
    
    Seems to me that the poem about me and my dog and the
    swiping of the hated frog is a poem about being a boy.
                                                      ---
    Who wrote it?       
    
    Wil                                              

    i wrote it.........
    
    Katrina

    interesting changes in "somewhere" between April of 88
    (POETRY) and the time in 1990 when you put it into
    MENNOTES.
    
    Perhaps closer to my wishes than I know
    ...
    Knowing I narrow the tightrope all the time...
    
    
    then in 1990:
    
    I forget the exact wording but the sense that
    you the woman can only watch because he has to
    walk this tightrope on his own.
    
    Wil
    

    My poems grow as I do, and change.  I keep all the originals though...
    
    I went from fearing I was making his challenges more difficult, to
    knowing I could not fight his battles entirely for him, to letting go
    of him and letting him battle them on his own (which still hurts).  
    
    -Jody