 OK, this is an enormous topic that I am broaching today, and would not just be the subject of a 14 week course, but a lifetime of reading in this particular aspect of poetry. We offer spiritual writing. I've done three workshops here. But I think this is the first one where I or someone else here addresses this topic. Though it might have seemed sort of an obvious choice to pick a certain, shall I say, church focus given our setting here, I've been reading all these people for a long time. And I will tell you straight up that I was born Jewish and I'm a practicing Buddhist. That makes me a Jew, boo, as they say these days in the United States. So as I say, these people have spoken to me. Today I could live for a long preamble. But I think why these people are crucial to me, above and beyond the specific spiritual background each of them has, is that each of them speaks very strongly to the value of that amorphous, but very crucial term, inner life. At this point in time on my bad days, I feel that that world, the inner world, is threatened on many, many fronts. But these people seem to me to be, how to say, avatars of the inner life. So we're talking today about spirit. So we're not talking about organized religion per se. One thing I want us to consider today is the fact that these are poems that we're going to be looking at. These aren't liturgical pieces, they're poems. OK, so what I have up on the board here are some doors that I want us to approach these poems through to focus our discussion today, because this is very much a discussion, not a lecture. So they are style, approach, and function, by which I mean what kind of a poem are we looking at here? These poems are not just, how to say, self-expression. Not what they're doing. They are involved in engaging different paths, modes, ways into the spirit world. Vocabulary, obviously a big one. Obviously there is an enormous vocabulary in every spiritual tradition. Transfiguration and memory, how the changes occur in the work, how the changes are noted in the world around the poet. Mystery and sacred, for me maybe the biggest one. I think poetry is, I don't know how to put it exactly, sort of the elaboration of mystery. So that's a contradiction in terms, but a good contradiction, a contradiction that wants to be there. And sacredness, I've been reading a lot lately of Ted Hughes as my workshop nurse, and known to the world as Sylvia Plath's first husband and only husband. And Ted Hughes is his poetry and his writing is a sort of a long protest against what he calls the desacralization of the world. And if anything's going to kill us, that's what's going to kill us, that we don't feel the world is sacred. So that's part of involved in that margin of mystery. Another way of saying the mystery part is the human mind is not the measure of really anything. So when we reduce everything to the human mind, we're in trouble. And spiritual writing pushes back at that. OK, then the poet, the role of the poet in the poem. And then what I call poem hood, how is this a poem? What makes this a poem? OK. So let's dive in, because we have a lot of poems to look at. And there's always a limited amount of time. So I'm going to do this kind of round robin. I'm going to do one by each of the four different poets. And then we'll do another round by each of the four different poets. And I hope we have time to cover them. So let's start in with A Night in Ireland by Ann Porter. Ann Porter died a few years ago at the good old age of 99. She's really a marvelous poet. A Night in Ireland by Ann Porter. Our steamship docked at night in Cove. And I received toward a small one in those days, not an inn, not a tavern was open. And we had to wait till morning for the train to Firmoy. But in the wooded hills up above the town, nightingales were awake. All the dark thickets were rich with their songs. It was on that night, and in those woods, I dreamed that I found the door of all doors the most hidden and most renowned. Overgrown with nettles rustic and low, built as if for children or as a gate for sheep and some back country pasture. And through a chink in the door, I saw the marvelous light that's purest of all lights, neither sun nor moon, nor any star I know of could give such light. And I saw crowds of the blessed from the greatest to the smallest, the smallest were running and laughing. And Christ the Lord was with them and also Mary. But before I could knock at the door, someone spoke to me. I think it was an angel. He said, you've come too soon. Go back into the towns. Live there as love's apprentice and God will give you his kingdom. I woke up just before sunrise. When the nightingales ended their songs, dew gathered on the ferns, and the cool woods gave off a scent of earth in the early morning. I was hungry and cold. And I started back to the town at the first signs of day. Already a sunlit smoke was rising from the chimneys and mist from the water. I heard a rooster crowing. And then I heard the whistle of the train to Furmoy. Okay. What do we have here to you? What kind of poem do we have here? To me, what she's presenting. And I think that's why in a sense I wanted to begin with this one because I think it's really crucial to the tradition that we're looking at today is this is a vision. Okay, this is a vision. You tell me, what does that word mean to you if I say it's a vision? What do we have here? How could you speak to that word that this is a kind of vision that's being presented to us? I think it's a vision in a couple of senses really, but I wanna hear if you have any thoughts about that in terms of what is, what's going on here? What is she doing here? Yeah, Bethany. Shouldn't you think of something like how we're getting directions to do something? Mm-hmm, yeah. Okay, that's a great word, revelation, okay? And we know that word, but let's think about it. What, that's a great word, what's revealed here, okay? That's what's in the word revelation, right? What is revealed? In a vision, something is revealed, right? In the Native American tradition, someone goes out on a vision quest and then a spirit of an animal or whatever speaks to the person and there is a kind of revelation. There's a vision, something is manifested, right? So what's happening here? What's manifested? What's revealed here? Yes? It's a new life's purpose. Okay, yeah, yeah. Renewed life's purpose, okay? That's a huge one, okay? That's a huge one, right? The beginning of the, you know, divine comedy, the commedia, right? Lost in a dark wood, you know, which is where we all are, okay? Okay, tell me more about it in terms of how it presents a kind of vision, what kind of vision do we get? Well, we get the vision right of what? We get the vision of whatever you wanna call it, the other world, okay, right? She thinks it was an angel that spoke to her, okay? So that's a crucial vision that spiritual writing for thousands of years has offered to human beings. The vision of the spirit world, okay? What other vision is offered in here, though? It seems to me, there's another vision. What happens after she talks to the, here's what the angel has to tell her. What happens after that in the latter part of the poem? Where does it go? What happens? Does she just say, oh, and that was that? And you know, no, she doesn't. Okay, where does she go, yeah? Sure, Caroline. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what do you feel from those last stazes? All I'm looking is for feeling, Harold. Yes, Wendy. Yeah, yeah, that's a good word. Hopeful, in a real sense, okay? Hopeful because of what she is, as Caroline's saying, she is experiencing what? Whatever you want it, the grace, beauty, joy, miracle, that this is here, okay? Which is considerable. So, and yet, she's there too. I was hungry and cold, okay? So the poet, remember I have that up there, the poet is in there, okay? Already a sunlit smoke was rising from the chimneys and mist from the water. I heard a rooster crowing and then I heard the whistle of the train from, okay? No adjectives, all nouns, why? Why all nouns? I've got a room full of writers, you should be able to tell me that one. Why all nouns, do you think? Why no adjectives there? All feelings are attached to nouns. That's right. The noun holds an entity, okay? Right? Every noun is in its fashion a miracle of its sort and that it's achieved some form of, you know, one form or another, which is, right? A noun is. And so, merely to evoke those nouns is to, you know, give voice to this vision of the world, which is that she returns to, that is not a dream, it's there. Okay, what else strikes you about this poem? I'm just opening it up. What else? Yeah, Marianne? You know, I hear that everyone's open and then the Christ child's running. And for that to end, you have the rooster crowing, which is attached to the train, which is a trail. So, but it's, you know, like a much longer course. Yeah, yeah. But for the thing to do that. Yeah, yeah, you're obviously in, obviously the Christian tradition you're, there's a lot of barnacles, so to speak, that have accreted to it. And you're, it's probably not the best word. But there are a lot of connotations, let's say. Okay, that's a better word. That have accreted to the tradition and some of those echoes are inevitable. Anything about the words I have up here that strike you or just any thoughts you have about what she's doing here in terms of vision. Yeah, Caroline? It seems like she makes a vision to happen. Mm-hmm. And it's bookended by two ladies for the second? That's right. Third? Right, yeah. So that it can be a place in the palm to be surrendered. Yeah, yeah. And so like, that's really hard to do. That is hard to do. Absolutely. Absolutely, it's a Caroline's point about how it's bookended. I mean, where does the poem begin, okay? It begins in the world of daily human purpose, okay? What is one of the greatest crushers of spirit in this world? Daily human purpose, okay? Gotta do this, gotta do that, don't have time for this, sorry. And you know, that all gets pushed out the door there. So she begins very lightly. She's got a light touch, but it's there. It's there. She's got a purpose, okay? But then she goes elsewhere, as it were, to the world of the vision. And again, Caroline's point, part of the task the poet has faced, particularly in the 20th century, the desacralizing century, is how does the poet situate him or herself so that the poet can present a vision, okay? It wasn't like William Blake was just shooting it right out there, so to speak. Because he still lived in a society in which the base note, so to speak, was still there. We don't, we don't. So what Caroline brought up about how you situate yourself, very important. Okay, any more thoughts about this one? Yeah, let's go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a knocking on the door. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's huge, obviously, that knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door. Okay. Any more? The father struck by the, and says, gave off a scent of earth in the early morning. She was hungry, and she's immortal. Yeah. The smoke from the chimney. Yeah. The whistle of the train. Yeah, yeah, all these just very human, very mortal. But you know, again, this is so beautifully low-key how she renders this, this whole, you know, she's one of those poets I think she's, her work will become more and more and more known. She's a keeper. Okay, let's turn now to, let's move past her next poem and let's look at the Day Profundus by Vassar, Vassar Miller. Vassar Miller is, I could talk a long time about her, she lived in Texas. I have a friend who knew her. He claimed that Vassar used to go to, go to two different churches on Sunday morning. I really like that. She had a hard life. She had multiple sclerosis. Her family sort of, how to say, cast her out. But she was, how to say, a person of indomitable spirit. And let's look at this one, Day Profundus. And you know that's from Psalm 130. Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. So that phrase is out of the depths. Oh Lord, defend me when I go through the dark in daylight. Be with me when I smile peaceably. Though tigers tear at my guts. Stay with me who talk to my friends as an earless monster winks at me. Comfort me starved and black-tongued though I eat at dainty tables. Stand by when snow falls of words melt in deserts of my deafness. Sustain me through morning after morning. I take life from you like death. Accept me though I give myself like a cast-off garment to a tramp or like an idiot's bouquet of onions and roses. Okay, what do we have here? Again, every one of these, I want you to consider what I have up here in terms of approach and function. What do you see here in terms of approach and function? What is she doing here? What kind of poem do we have here? We have a very particular kind of poem that- It's prayer. Pardon? A prayer. Prayer, yeah. It is definitely a prayer, okay? It is what I would call a supplication, okay? Where it's this asking, okay? Okay, so beyond that, let's go to vocabulary in this one, okay? What can you tell me about vocabulary in here? I mean, again, these are poems, okay? No one has founded the first church of Vassar Miller yet, okay? These are poems by a poet. So what do you see here? What do you experience here? What is she making available to you as a poet here? Why read poetry, okay? What is she making available to you? Yeah, Wendy? I was very lovely. Yeah, yeah. They clash. They clash, yeah. They clash. Very good, yeah? Yeah, her inner suffering, okay? Very good, both of you, very, very good. So what kind of prayer do we have here, would you say? What kind of supplication do we have here? What, another way of saying this is why do this? Why do this? What does this offer to us as human beings, both to read it and to write it? Got a room full of writers, you could write this. You could do this, you could write a supplication. What's opened up here by taking this course, okay? I mean, this is a big one. This is where a lot trembles, so to speak, on the top of this particular dew drop. What do you say about that? What does this open up to us as human beings, as creatures, to be able to do this? Look at the title, right? Look at the title, what is the title? Right, out of the depths, what is that? Despair, absolutely, you know? This, to me, this is one answer to despair. One answer to despair, okay? Out of the depths, okay? That what, that we aren't silent, that we can articulate our distress, the collisions, the crises, the torment inside us, we could give voice to that. And that's really important that we can do that, that we could, for ourselves and for others. Okay, more about this. That just strikes you more about this in terms of any of the terms up there, or just anything that strikes you in terms of what she's doing here. I mean, Wendy put her figure on the kind of two axes here in terms of her vocabulary here, which is fairly common in spiritual writing, really. That which is exalted, that which is less than exalted. Any thoughts? Yeah, Laura. See with me, stay with me, stand by me, accept me. And she's asking God to do these things, to be with her and accept her, to love her, even though she's admitting, you know, I smile peaceably and the tiger's carrying my guts. And I talk with my friends, that I'm a New Year's monster. And so, you know, love me anyway. And I admit that I'm not what maybe I seem to be, or is it the peace on the outside, it's not on the inside, so it's not just help me, it's love me and accept me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Yes, Marianne. I like the owl, so it's very human. Yeah. Love is like my humanity. Yeah. I'm not. Right. I'm not in my job anymore. She's very much in touch with the physical world, the sensory world. Do you have something, Laura? Interesting is, it almost exactly mirrors line-to-line the 23rd Psalm, which would be pretty well-known in that religion. And it's just interesting to me, the words she's choosing, it's almost like she's taking this biblical, archaic song and humanizing it. She's owning her death and her life in it, in a way that's not about an animal or something archaic, it's something that's palpable to her. What would you point to in terms of the language in here? I mean, what struck you about that? Peaceful, that song would be, but it's so similar in the content. I mean, there's some of the same words, but the words that she's put around them make the connotation of something even different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, real good. Any more, any more about, yeah, sure, Peter. Certainly wasn't the opposite of that, but it's reminding me of the character Gabriel from the play Vences by August Wilson. I don't know if anyone's seen that. He goes around and he goes, the character Rose, he brings her roses. Uh-huh. And he's been injured in a war, so he's not in full senses. Uh-huh, interesting. Interesting echo, yeah, Elizabeth? It's pretty dramatic the way she describes her situation, our situation in the morning, after morning I take life from you like death, like she is death, we are death. Yeah, death and life, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's right, she's, how to say, honest, she's not playing around. I mean, you know, there's something at stake here. I talked last night a bit in the Q and A about consequentiality, okay? And there's this sense of consequence that she needs this sustenance, right? And that all these pleas for sustenance, you know? And indeed, for each of us to go it alone, so to speak, is pretty hard. Also, I think, and I want you to think about this in the course of looking at these pumps, she is in what position, okay? In many ways, she is in a position of dependency, right? She's asking, she's asking, okay? And again, that goes so much against the temper of recent times, right? Where so much it's about control, right? We all live in this world of switches and knobs and all day long we're manipulating things, you know? We're not asking, we're controlling, that's very different. So she's, she's in a different position. I would argue that's a crucial human position because if we aren't in that position, then aspects of life to begin with such as humility and gratitude, thanksgiving, they just elude us. We don't know what they are, really. We don't know what they are necessarily. Okay, any more about this poem? Yup, sure. I'm just wondering what she meant with, stay with me who talked to my friends. Here she is talking to her friends as an earless monster weeps with me. What is that earless monster looking at her? What does that mean? Okay, gang, what do you think that earless monster? Yes, Carly. I could agree. I love everything in the poem, something that she thinks she talks about, some of it is temptation or things around her that are, that are drawing her off of what she considers a path or, you know, so like the earless monster could be in or out of her, but it's something that, you know, it's something that causes her to be deaf because deafness comes up after that, right? Deserts of my deafness. So I mean, she's there talking, but she's also being winked at by something that could take her away from... And what is a wink? Like, what is the wink that she thinks she talks about? Like, makes you think she's funna or like... Yeah, I'd say, yeah, I'd say it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know who you really are. Pardon? I know who you really are. Yeah, yeah, that kind of wink, yeah, yeah, wink. Yeah, yeah, right. As I like this. Yes, Rah. About her literally being maybe an earless monster, someone who's not really paying attention and the earless monster being someone who was maybe the temptation or something who knows exactly what she is or who she really is underneath or what she's really doing. So it's kind of, I almost see it as an opportunity to see it more than one way. Right, as I like to say, some of you have heard me say it, poetry is both and mine, not either or mined. So you're right, it's all there. Okay, more, any more? Yup, Eileen. Reminding me of the word scenes because it doesn't because it has a reason, but because it has a song. Like, she's praying there's like something bigger than belief, that's intellectual. Because everything that she's describing would suggest there isn't a reason to. So, I just thought about that. That reminds me, I was thinking as bad as the image is are, she's having tremendous amount of fun. So I think it's a language. Yeah. And so that's the singing she's doing. Yeah. And it's supposed to be fun to me but I just tear it like that. Yeah. Like, so she's singing on that level. Yeah, that's. She's wonderful on that level. Yeah. Yeah, she, that's a wonderful thing about her poetry is it just always has this temper in terms of language and you just can feel in her kind of always just scrabbling and kicking and jumping up and down on the playground in certain ways as a human being. That's, I love that about her. Okay, any more about this one? Okay, in our movement here now. We are moving to a Psalm by Thomas Merton. A Psalm by Thomas Merton. When Psalms surprise me with their music and Antiphons turn to rum, the spirit sings. The bottom drops out of my soul and from the center of my cellar. Love louder than thunder opens a heaven of naked air. New eyes awaken. I send love's name into the world with wings and songs grow up around me like a jungle. Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes your spirit played in Eden. Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise shine on the face of the abyss and I am drunk with the great wilderness of the sixth day of Genesis. But sound is never half so fair as when that music turns to air and the universe dies of excellence. Sun, moon and stars fall from their heavenly towers. Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore. The fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf. All fear another wind, another thunder. Then one more voice snuffs all their flares in one gust and I go forth with no more wine and no more stars and no more buds and no more Eden and no more animals and no more sea while God sings by himself in acres of night and walls fall down that guarded paradise. Wow. Okay, again, let's start at the place of what kind of poem do we have? Well, he tells us what kind of poem we have, doesn't he? He's writing a Psalm. Okay, he's writing a Psalm. So, you've encountered Psalms, so back when I was a boy, we recited them every morning in public school. So what can you say about this as a Psalm? What strikes you here? What is he doing? What kind of journey or path is being enacted here in this Psalm, often in a Psalm there is some, there's a plea, an invocation, a supplication, but many times there is some journey that is occurring within the Psalm. What is happening in here? What do you see occurring in here? Again, you're gonna start to see how these poems are put together, which is part of their poem hood in terms of what they specifically offer to us as poems rather than what's in the Bible or what's in other spiritual traditions, sutras or whatever. So what do you think here? Do you have any thoughts about this in terms of, yeah, Wendy? It seems like until there's climax and everything evaporates and the pause is where there's no sound and that's what. Yeah, no, this is hard stuff to articulate, yeah. Did you all hear? Yeah, okay. Builds, builds, is that? Yeah, yeah. What, Laura? And the universe dies of excellence. Everything vanishes, is that where you were thinking? Yeah, the end is sort of the pause of the whole piece that it climaxes through, right? Uh-huh. And everything sort of is taken away. Right. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. This is hard stuff to put into words, thank you, yeah. I don't know. Walls come tumbling down, mm-hmm. That's a connotation, that's valid. Let's talk vision. What is the vision of, say, the first part of the poem that Wendy's talking about, where it's building, it's building, it's building? What kind of vision do we have here? New eyes awake and I said love's name, zebras, antelopes, music turns to air, okay? What, where are we in that first part? Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes. Where are we there? Can you say where we are there in terms of the first part of the poem? Any takers on that in terms of what he's evoking there? Pardon? It's a kind of choir, for me, what he's, what? Well, yeah, in a sense, yeah. That which becomes the creation, basically. It is the creation, okay? Which is, you know, miraculous and joyful and remarkable and all the wonderful words you ought to use about it. Okay, and that, you know, we should strive each day to be alive too. But, but there's a but. The universe dies of excellence. There's this fall that Caroline commented. We have a though. All fear another wind, another thunder. Then one more voice snuffs all their flares in one gust. And then the poet is in here too. And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars and no more buds and no more Eden and no more animals and no more sea. Wonderful passage. And then that colon, while God sings by himself in acres of night and walls fall down that guarded paradise, okay? All I'm looking for here is what does that make you feel? Okay, we don't have to go into what this quote means, okay? Cause, I always think when I'm at this place, I used to, I worked a lot in schools and I would encounter teachers who would say, what did Shakespeare mean to say here? And, you know, he said it. He didn't mean to say it, he said it. So we can let that one go. Well, I'm concerned with what do you experience here? What do you feel here at the end? What, what's occurring? Yeah, Bethany. Uh-huh, right, I really like that reality check. Reality check, I like that phrase a lot, a lot. Yeah, that, I don't know if there's a Sunday morning show yet called reality check, but there's probably should be, yeah, Laura. It looks like the speaker makes contact with God. Mm-hmm, yes. Paralyzed the pills of dates that have been guarded, paralyzed all day long. Right, yes, yes, makes contact, okay? And I think of the word that Elaine just used, bigger, okay? Something bigger is at work here, okay? Something bigger than we know in the Bible, there's, they're always encountering something bigger than their little ways and notions, you know? And that bigger voice sometimes speak to them and sometimes it's thunder and sometimes it's what? It's very frightening, chastising and many other things that they're not particularly keen on hearing, right? So it's, and this is why this poem has astonished me for a long time, that he's able to go to this place. I mean, for me, in terms of just, I don't know how other to put it, spiritual depth, this poem is really, I find it to be fairly extraordinary. Any more about the end that you, yeah, Caroline? So it's so sad because of the way the comma works. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, well, again, it's, yeah, I think it's that both and mind, we have it and we don't have it, you know? Back it and go on. Right, yeah. Which is, you know, that feels like wisdom to me, yep. I'd agree. I'd agree, and again, thinking of, you know, why go write poems, what you just raised, that point. It's a pretty big one, pretty big one, yeah. Any more about this? Any more about Merton's poem? Okay, moving on. It's good I'm doing this, I'm probably not gonna even get through eight of them. So this is Denise Levertov, okay? I brought with me the collected poems of Denise Levertov. Yeah. What? Something like, yeah, she also won a poetry contest at what, the age of, I don't know, 11 and the judge was T.S. Eliot. That's not the usual judge for a poetry contest in a newspaper, right? Oh, kid, you won a poetry contest. He wrote her a letter and said, essentially, you're the real thing, you're gonna be a poet. So, a guy knew something. Okay, let's look at this one. To live in the mercy of God by Denise Levertov. To lie back under the tallest, oldest trees. How far the stems rise, rise before ribs of your century, oh, or ah, uninterrupted voice. Many stranded to breathe, spray the smooth. Moke of it, arcs of steel white foam. Glissades of fugitive jade, barely perceptible. Such passion, rage or joy. Thus not mild, not temperate God's love for the world. Vast flood of mercy, flung on resistance. Starting to notice, they all keep talking about the same thing, which is kind of inevitable, right? There's human beings, there's natural world, there's that spirit world, and what happens among three. Okay, it's a pretty extraordinary poem to live in the mercy of God. So what do we have here as an approach? And I'm open to takers in terms of how you would kind of classify this in terms of what she's doing here. To me, this is a poem of personal attentiveness that quality, without which really why are we here and what are we doing if we don't manifest that quality in our lives. Again though, as we've seen, there's a degree of what? There's a degree of conflict in here. And again, I mean that infinitive to live in the mercy of God, that is actually to do that, that is also possibly a supplication to, I wish to live in the mercy of God. And of course, vocabulary, right? That's a pretty big word, isn't it, the word mercy. Okay, it's not a word we hear too much nowadays. Okay, anything from the words up here, anything that's striking you in terms? I mean, this is so fascinating, because Levertov is a poet, she's born in England, she comes to the States, she meets William Carlos William, she has this whole transfiguration as a poet, she becomes very involved in the world of emerging post-World War II, free verse poetry in the United States, it's a huge force in that, she writes about it. And Levertov's poetry has been likened by many because she wrote about this herself to dance, okay? Don't you feel as you hear and read this a sense of movement that she's moving through space and time here? So there's that active sense of step by step, okay? She doesn't know where she's going, she's alive in the moment, okay? Which in the spiritual world is what? That sort of radical freedom and radical dependency at the same time that's going on in her work. And so it's really manifested for you there on the page, right, when you look at it, right? Why doesn't she just stay on the left margin like a good girl, you know? Because that's, she's not a good girl. She wants to use the page as part of this experiencing this moment by moment, I don't know how to put it in words exactly, movement, dance, I don't know how to say it. Yeah, that's great, yeah. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that's a great word, Carly, improvisational, okay? Which is what, making it up, okay? So there are all these traditions and there's this big word, God, but each of us is in, each of our own ways, making it up, okay, in terms of our sense of being here, okay, so she is enacting that, okay? And also moment by moment going through what? Her perceptions, right? Which what, they just, do they all fall on one side? No, of course not, they don't, okay? What about those perceptions? I need to hear from you more. What about the quality of, just tell me any line in the poem that strikes you here in terms of the, you know, the perceptions that she's offering you, what would you say? Okay, yeah? It's clenched fists of rock. That's referring to how we are resistant, as she said at the very end, resistant to this mercy of God. We're resistant to all that God wants to hold on us and we hear clenched fists of rock and won't receive it. Yeah, very, very good. This hardness, okay? So that's definitely part of the dialogue in here is the hardness, very good, Peter. I like the paradox in the enjament of to breathe, spray the smoke of it, which is breathing smoke. Yeah. When you're looking at the waterfall. Yeah, so there's that physical enactment. Yeah, there you go. I thought you think that the experience is always so beautiful. Yeah, I love that, that, she can say a lot in a few words, can't she? I mean, at the basis of poetry is what? That's the one reason to be writing poems is to just manifest your awe. But the comfort I think of in Paris during the events of May in 1968, one of the student slogans was, this is so classic French, is your comfort will kill you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't you say that she's putting hair in there? On the page, she's putting the sentences over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it's just, I don't get the flow of, so I'm gonna type it up and put it online. Right. Yeah, this is, what this has been likened to, Elizabeth, is an open field, okay? And if you're, if the poem is an open field, then you want to experience the openness of the field. You don't just want to go through it like that. You want to go here and go there, okay? So that's, it's an ample, it's an ample, it's an ample, it's an ample, it's an ample, it's an ample, it's an ample, so that it's an amplitude and openness that she's evoking there, which could have a lot of connotations for the spiritual life, okay? So, good point. It's like the closest you can come to floating off the page. I mean, you can't do that. That's right. No, you can't exactly float off the page. Yup. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very good. Space, right. Doesn't happen quickly. It's not in some lockstep, march kind of thing, which the margin can make you feel when you go down that left margin. Okay, any more? Yeah, what do you, mm-hmm. It's like the words floating, you know? I do know. So it correlates with what she's... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we always talk about form and content and how they're supposed to go together. Here it is, okay? The words are enacting, so to speak, okay? For the phrase that I'll think, you know, when I was reading this, was the piece that passes all on her shoulders. It felt to me like she was taking those very abstract phrases and making them concrete with all this floating on salt water and, you know, the rids of silver open and then the blind boxes and, you know, she was trying to express those things. Yeah, I mean, that's very good, Laura, because again, asking the why do this question is, I think what you're saying is that doing the writing and also to read it offers each of us the chance to actualize, okay? To actualize these, as you say, abstractions, okay? Mercy is an abstraction, okay? Technically. But after you read this poem, I dare say you might not feel it's quite so abstract, okay? In terms of embodiment, okay? Or, you know, that's the word I always use for poetry. I always say poetry is not about description. It's about embodiment. You take on a body, okay? And in that sense, to use a very connotative word, it's incarnational, okay? It takes on a body. Good. Bill. That's not so easy to do. She's kind of done it. She's kind of done it. She reads them with a waterfall. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty nice. It is pretty amazing to articulate transcendence. Again, big abstract word, you know? But to... Of course, the point of spirituality. Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in that sense, I guess, since I'm not gonna get through them all, I wanna go to Levertov's second poem here. I knew Levertov's husband pretty well in rural Maine, a man named Mitchell Goodman. So I have, you know, certain whatever. Feelings and notions about them. Have a good friend who studied with her. Okay, so this is, for instance, by Denise Levertov. You got this one? For instance? Okay. For instance, often, it's nowhere special. Maybe a train rattling not fast or slow from Melbourne to Sydney. And the lights fading. We've passed that wide river remembered from a tale about boyhood and fatal love written in vodka prose, clear and burning. The lights fading. And then beside the tracks, this particular straggle of eucalyptus, an inconsequential bit of a wood, a corpus looks your way, not at you through you, through the train, over it, gazes with branches and rags of bark, to something beyond your passing. It's not this shred of sing. More beautiful than a million others, less so than many. You have no past here, no memories, and you'll never set foot among these shadowy, tentative presences. Perhaps when you've left this continent, you'll never return, but it stays with you years later. Whenever its blurry image flicks on in your head, it wrenches from you the old cry, oh earth, beloved earth. Like many another faint constellation of landscape does, or fragment of lichen stone, or some old shed where you took refuge once from pelting rain in Essex, leaning on wheel or shafts of a dusty cart, and came out when you heard a blackbird return to song, though the rain was not quite over. And as you thought there'd be, there was in the dark quarter where frowning clouds were still clustered a hesitant trace of rain, though. And across from that, the expected gleam of East Anglian afternoon light and leaves dripping and shining puddles, and the roadside weeds washed of their dust. Earth, that inward cry again, Erde du Libbe, which is German earth, you love. Oh, poems that always moves me basically to tears. Incredible. Okay, about this one. In terms of the kind of poem this is, well, let me throw it out to you. What do you think? What kind of poem do we have here in terms of kind of poem? Yeah, I think it's a praise poem. I think it's an evocation. Again, it's this power that we're given through language of actualization, and trying to, again, embody, take on. But it also has an element to me of what I call God talk, trying to talk to the creation. Maybe I should say creation talk. To have, so to speak, I don't know how to say, a dialogue, a conversation with it that's very important to us as human beings so that it'd be meaningful for us in terms of this incredible gift that each of us inherits when he or she comes into this world. Okay, let me just open this up to you in terms of what I have up here. Style, approach, function, vocabulary, transfiguration, memory, mystery, sacred, poet, poemhood. Anything up here strike you in terms of what she is doing here in this poem. What, to pick one, what about memory? How does memory figure in this? Would you say memory? Any thought? I mean, it's right in there, right? What is memory? So she had read to the red. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's good. I mean, there is, in English, we don't have that word that the Germans have, which is geist, you know, and that is mind-spirit. That how you see that word? Mind-spirit? Geist. Is that fair? Yeah, both sides. And so it's, what you're saying, Kelly, it's at that place, okay? Because we think of memory as a mind place. Oh, I remember when Uncle Henry, you know. But it's a spirit place too, okay? It's very much a spirit place. It's a, I don't know how to put it. It's an inhabited place, you know? All these things that come into us inhabit us. And once had a student who was in you and she lived way up Point Barrow, Alaska. That's pretty far north. And she said, I used to talk to her about the spirit world and said, what, you know, what is the crux of it to you? What are the dilemmas we face as human creatures living in the, also living in the spirit world? And she said, well, a big one is, she was kind of humoring me, but not humoring me. She said a big one, Baron, is that every time we eat, we take in spirit. Oh, okay, okay. So all those supplications to the creatures that, you know, so-called primitive tribes do, obviously about that. But this all goes to the place and the poem of what? At the end, earth that inward cry again. Okay? What's she doing there? When she writes, well, how does she come to that place as her ending of this poem? This poem kind of rambles around, you know, there's this, there's that. She's in Australia, you know, then she's back at her childhood home. And then she ends with this. What? Blowing it up. Okay, yeah, there's something very powerful and emotional that she's going toward here. I haven't talked probably enough about just sheer feeling in these poems and how emotion is driving these poems as an engine. I want to stay with this, okay, in terms of the ending. Again, one way is how do you feel with this ending? What does it do to you? What happens at this ending? I mean, this is a different kind of ending, really. This is not the way every poem ends by any stretch of the imagination. So what does it make you feel here? What's occurring? Is it Bill? It feels to me like she's trying to get at what Joyce meant by epiphany. That moment where the finite means the infinite. Yeah. And she gives us two instances from her life where she had those very mysterious, sacred moments in the secular world. So that's what struck me, yes. Yet another word I left off the blackboard, epiphany. Okay. And as Bill's talking about Joyce's, James Joyce's stories and the Dubliners and perhaps most famously the dead, which is about death and life. But I agree. I think she's at this crux of, I don't know how to say, where she's trying to say the unsayable. And it is a prayer, a supplication at the end. She's at that place. I mean, how the poem ends with what? It ends with what? How does the poem end with ellipses? What is that? What is she doing there? What? That's a no. That's a no. Oh, well. School is out, I guess, Laura, for her. So, okay. Let's say it's a yes, yes. Okay. So what is going on there? What does that make happen? Is it like an expression of affection towards the earth? Yeah. What did you just say? Final sigh? Yeah. That's a beautiful phrase. Final sigh. Okay. Those ellipses. What do they push out into? Okay. What does that, what do they push out into? What's the difference between if she ended it with a period or an exclamation mark rather than the ellipses? What's the difference, you know, in terms of the ending of this? What, what, can you articulate anything? Okay. Okay. You advance to the next round, Marianne. That's... Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, that's part of what is probably beyond the ellipses, so to speak, you know. But Levitov was a very, how to say, earth-grounded poet. So whatever arises, so to speak, you can see in these poems, comes from vision in and of and with the earth. So, yeah. So for her to get to that other place, you know, up as it were, first here. Any more about this one? Any more that's striking you about, for instance, I will stop asking questions, it's five o'clock, but I have one more I want to ask you, which is, what's with the title? Yeah. So you shake your head there, Tim, like, yeah, what's with the poets? What's with their titles, right? Novelists, they just do one, and they've got the job done, right? Poets. She's having a hard time explaining what this moment, this epiphany is, and in order to explain it, she gives this description of, for instance, and she can't explain the word that she's trying to, she must explain it in a sentence, so it's a for instance. And this is just a small part of everything that it could be. Exactly. There's also the tentative nature of it, and there's a heartbreaking nostalgia about this poem. The fiction is alive on the earth, experiencing these sort of magical moments of ordinary that will go on forever, and have a whole list of ideas. For instance, you get a couple of them later. Right, that's beautifully said, Bill. Beautifully said. That's perfectly realistic. Right. Yeah, yeah. Except for the waterfall and the trees from the earlier poem. Yeah. It's all about this same transcendence. Right. It's all together. Yeah. Yeah, it is. That's a good note to end on, I think. That's a good note to end on. Thank you very much.