Richard Wilbur

Tonight we had four people at our event at the Barnes & Noble bookseller on Tittabawassee Road in Saginaw, Michigan. Phyllis and her husband Bob were there, as was Tim and myself. We read several poems by Richard Wilbur. Phyllis and Bob brought six anthologies with them. At one point or another, Phyllis has taught from each of these anthologies at Saginaw Valley State University. We found several anthologies for sale that include poems by Richard Wilbur.

I noticed in Harold Bloom's anthology The Best Poems of the English Language, there are no Richard Wilbur poems. But in Wilbur's Collected Poems 1943 - 2004, Bloom is quoted in a blurb: "It is a consolation to read through sixty years of Richard Wilbur's poetry. He should be read in the company of . . . Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens." Interesting!

The general consensus among the four of us tonight was that the group was too small to have a group picture. We signed a birthday card to send to Richard Wilbur. I looked at the website http://www.poets.org/ to see if I could find his mailing address. There I learned that Mr. Wilbur lives in Cummington, MA. I Googled Cummington, MA and found the website http://www.cummington-ma.gov/ which has Cummington's White Pages, among other things. He and his wife Charlee are listed there. I'll put our card to him in the mail tomorrow morning on my way to work. With the card we included the Barnes & Noble store flier which has in it an announcement for our Richard Wilbur event at the store.

Life is beautiful and so can you!

-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."

River Junction Poets Mission Statement

The Art of Reading Poetry

Recommended reading:

The Art of Reading Poetry
By Harold Bloom
Price: $9.95
On Sale: 3/1/2005
Formats: Trade PB Hardcover Trade PB

From the publisher: A notable feature of Harold Bloom's poetry anthology The Best Poems English Language is his lengthy introductory essay, here reprinted as a separate book. For the first time Bloom gives his readers an elegant guide to reading poetry––a master critic's distillation of a lifetime of teaching and criticism. He tackles such subjects as poetic voice, the nature of metaphor and allusion, and the nature of poetic value itself. Bloom writes "the work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists of ourselves." Includes a recommended reading list of poems.

Hear Harold Bloom reading closely "Parts of a World" by Wallace Stevens. Bloom's lecture was recorded at Yale and is available via podcast. Go now.

An article from the September 25, 1994 issue of The New York Times serves nicely as an introduction to Harold Bloom and his work as a literary critic. Go now.

If you're wondering "Who is Harold Bloom and why is this blog all about him?" please take a moment and enjoy reading the Wikipedia entry regarding Harold Bloom. Go now. The world will never be the same again.



-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued." River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Better Readers Make Better Writers

In 1993, Karen Daniel, a grad student in English at UC Riverside, completed her thesis. An abstract of that thesis can be found at http://wac.colostate.edu/theses/record.cfm?thesisID=19. Directions for ordering a copy of the complete thesis can also be found at that site.

For her thesis, Ms. Daniel looked at writing by 775 high school students over a three years. She looked at 46 variables associated with the English/Language Arts curriculum at that high school. What she found is that reading ability is the strongest indicator of writing ability.

That's where I got the idea that better readers make better writers.




-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."
River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Richard Wilbur

What
A poetical celebration of Richard Wilbur’s birth, life and poetry. If you missed our last event, don't miss another one! Join us if you love poetry or are interested in learning more about this fine art. Join in discussion with people whose hearts and minds are more open than closed. If you learn from us or we learn from you a thing or two about our featured poet or poetry well then we're having an exceptionally memorable occasion. Note: Richard Wilbur will not be at the Barnes & Noble for this event.

When
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 7:00 PM

Where
Barnes & Noble Bookseller
3311 Tittabawassee Rd.
Saginaw , MI 48603
phone 989.790.9214

Who should come
Join us if you love poetry or are curious as to what poetry is all about. Join us if you'd like to talk to people whose hearts and minds are more open than closed. Join us if you can agree or disagree with someone's opinion respectfully. Bring a book if you can. It’s OK if it’s from your library.

Why
Find out what poems sound like out loud. Listen in on the group and then find a place where you can jump in and read something yourself. Read poetry out loud and have great fun with the whole family as we talk about life, poetry and the pursuit of happiness. If you have specialized knowledge regarding our poet, do not hesitate to regale us with your story. Don't expect to leave our event with a definitive understanding of the poet or the poems but please do seek to experience and communicate the joys of poetry with others. Join in our informal discussion of poems we know and love and poems we are only just discovering. Better readers make better writers. Visit with our group where everyone's poetry is valued if not appreciated. If you have a smile to share be sure to bring it; otherwise be prepared to leave with one on your face and in your heart. If you're too far away to join us, create your own Birthdays of Poets Reader’s Workshop. Speak up now and forever share your peace.

How to find us
We are in the Poetry section, near the window. The staff at Barnes & Noble will put up a sign that says 'This space reserved for The River Junction Poets at 7 p.m.' We'll be getting a few folding chairs to add around the table there.

Details
Richard Wilbur was born on March 1, 1921 in New York City. He studied at Amherst College before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He later attended Harvard University.
Excerpted from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/202 accessed 3/2/08.
In the postwar years, when poets born between 1920 and 1935 often underwent dramatic changes in their writing styles, Wilbur remained someone who mastered a style early and continued to work within it. It is a style in a direct line of descent from Wallace Stevens: unabashedly rich in its diction, urbane in its metrical sophistication, and remarkably light-hearted and playful. His first and second books, The Beautiful Changes (1947) and Ceremony (1950), were influential volumes, and Wilbur was widely regarded in the 1950s as a poet no less important than Robert Lowell.
Excerpted from http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/wilbur/bio.htm accessed 3/2/08.

A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
by Richard Wilbur
for Dore and Adja

Under the bronze crown
Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet
A serpent has begun to eat,
Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

Past spattered mosses, breaks
On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills
The massive third below. It spills
In threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

A scrim or summery tent
For a faun-m�nage and their familiar goose.
Happy in all that ragged, loose
Collapse of water, its effortless descent

And flatteries of spray,
The stocky god upholds the shell with ease,
Watching, about his shaggy knees,
The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

His fauness all the while
Leans forward, slightly, into a clambering mesh
Of water-lights, her sparkling flesh
In a saecular ecstasy, her blinded smile

Bent on the sand floor
Of the trefoil pool, where ripple-shadows come
And go in swift reticulum,
More addling to the eye than wine, and more

Interminable to thought
Than pleasure’s calculus. Yet since this all
Is pleasure, flash, and waterfall,
Must it not be too simple? Are we not

More intricately expressed
In the plain fountains that Maderna set
Before St. Peter’s—the main jet
Struggling aloft until it seems at rest

In the act of rising, until
The very wish of water is reversed,
That heaviness borne up to burst
In a clear, high, cavorting head, to fill

With blaze, and then in gauze
Delays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fine
Illumined version of itself, decline,
And patter on the stones its own applause?

If that is what men are
Or should be, if those water-saints display
The pattern of our aret�,
What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

Spangled, and plunging house?
They are at rest in fulness of desire
For what is given, they do not tire
Of the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

And riddled pool below,
Reproving our disgust and our ennui
With humble insatiety.
Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

Before the wealthy gate
Freezing and praising, might have seen in this
No trifle, but a shade of bliss—
That land of tolerable flowers, that state

As near and far as grass
Where eyes become the sunlight, and the hand
Is worthy of water: the dreamt land
Toward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.

from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171796 accessed 3/2/08.


Parting Thoughts
Are you not aware? You are a cultural event, and so is everyone else. Celebrate your humanity at Saginaw’s Birthdays of Poets Reader’s Workshop. If you have a smile to share be sure to bring it. If you don't, be sure to join us so you'll have one afterward! Thank you and may God continue to bless us mightily one and all. Be sure to thank a veteran for his/her service. Remember: only you can improve the audience for poetry. Please read, discuss and share responsibly. And vote.

All best and see you Wednesday,
Andy Christ


-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued." River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Philip & the Poet

This is the picture that served as the starting point for the cover of my chapbook collection of poems Philip & the Poet. The picture was posted at http://www.sxc.hu/ for anyone to use free of charge.







This is an early version of the cover.




This is closer to what the cover actually looks like.











You can order a copy of Philip & the Poet directly from the publisher, Mayapple Press. The publisher's website is www.mayapplepress.com.

Garrison Keillor Performs in Saginaw

A SIGH FROM SAGINAW

By Garrison Keillor

Tribune Media Services

I have rather low self-esteem, which is a handicap for a man in this line of work whom you, dear reader, expect to give you 750 words in the strike zone about the economic stimulus package and all those little government checks going out to 130 million of you in hopes you'll go buy candles to light against the darkness and maybe a rod and reel so you can teach a man to fish, but I can't and it's too late to rebuild self-confidence.

I write these words in a Ramada Inn in Saginaw, Michigan, hometown of the poet Theodore Roethke, who wrote a poem that began, "I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them." I came here to give a speech and afterward a man said, "Thanks for coming. It's so hard to get first-rate speakers to come to Saginaw." Which was sort of crushing to me.

Evidently they'd tried to get Alan Greenspan to come and read tea leaves for them and, failing that, had to settle for me. Oh well. Probably if Roethke himself had come to Saginaw, they'd have said, "Nice of you to come, Ted. We tried to get Louis Jenkins but he was asking too much money and demanded a first-class hotel."

My speech is entitled "Aging: The Opportunity of a Lifetime" and at twenty-five minutes it's a little long. The audience was rather subdued, and who can blame them? Saginaw is sagging, along with the rest of Michigan, and you see guys sliding into the bars at 9 a.m. and you see the For Sale signs and feel in your gut the pain of people whose houses are their IRAs and you want to pull into their driveway and give them a hug, but nobody wants a tall guy with glasses and low self-esteem to throw his arms around them unless he is a buyer with his checkbook out and a ballpoint pen.

I almost said, "I suffer from low self-esteem," but I've met people with high self-esteem and that is a real affliction - the big honkers barreling through airports hollering into their cell phones, who have less self-doubt than the average caribou, galloping around and making a big impression - guys who used to attend my sales seminar, "Why Not Be the Best, Earn Buckets of Money, and Retire Before You're Fifty to a Beach House on Barbados?" I remember them well. They paid $1,000 apiece to hear a whole string of clichés revarnished and covered with cat fur and afterward they said, "Thanks for your ideas. It's so hard to find inspirational speakers who really inspire you."

I'll tell you one thing. I wish I'd written "when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them" - such a fine thought, and what did Alan Greenspan ever say in ten words that moves you so much as those, assuming you have known a gentle woman with lovely bones who is so attuned to the world that she can hear the sighing of birds - and I admire Saginaw for producing Roethke and for celebrating his centennial in May and preserving his boyhood home at 1805 Gratiot Avenue.

It will be a reminder to Saginaw that out of suffering come gifts of great beauty. Roethke suffered from bipolar disorder, was alcoholic, came back to Gratiot Avenue several times to recuperate from breakdowns, and died at fifty-five. But he was a brilliant teacher. And he wrote "My Papa's Waltz" and exquisite poems about his father's greenhouses in Saginaw and the poem about the woman who sighed at birds.

You can sit in the Saginaw airport, as I did, waiting for persons unknown to you to ask you to carry something aboard the aircraft, worrying what they might do if you report them to the nearest authorities, and think of that woman lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them, and your mind is carried to thoughts of various women whose bone structure you have known and whose sighs, which you had imagined were about you and your finesse as a lover, were actually meant for nuthatches and chickadees, and that is an interesting idea to carry with you to Lincoln, Nebraska, the next stop on the tour. My new lecture is entitled "Discover Yourself Through Vegetable Gardening" and I am generally available for booking all through March, April and May. Rates are negotiable.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

(c) 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.

Skip Renker's Birthday February 14, 2008

This was us on Valentine's Day, 2008. Front row, L to R: Michelle, Bev, Wilma and her husband David, Julia, Maureen, James, Susan. Back row, L to R: Jack, Andy, Skip, Laurene. We met on Skip's birthday at the Barnes & Noble Bookseller in Saginaw, Michigan, to read a few of his poems out loud together. We enjoyed singing "Happy Birthdays To You" to Skip but I'm not sure he enjoyed that. I read his poem "Fierce Talisman," and he read a few himself. Because we knew Skip was a teacher at Delta College (a community college primarily serving Midland, Bay City and Saginaw residents), we were not surprised but pleased when he announced that he had a few notes prepared regarding what he'd like to talk about. He brought copies of The Lord's Prayer to share with everyone, and he pointed out some of the rich internal rhymes in that prayer. Skip also made some general remarks about the King James Bible, citing it as an influence on him and on his writing. Then he told us that Richard Wilbur is another influence on him, and he shared with us his close reading of "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World."

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”

from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171793

accessed 2/24/08

I was glad to meet Skip's friend Laurene who is a nun. I also enjoyed meeting Julia's sister Susan. Skip and Julia are husband and wife; Julia still teaches English at Delta College. Jack and Maureen are cousins. These are intelligent, well-educated, and articulate people. Michelle, for instance, has a master's degree in English. Wilma and David are both retired English teachers, as is Bev. After about an hour and a half, we broke from our "official" purpose and began mingling. Pictures by Anonymous.

"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued." River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Here you have a few River Junction Poets, met on the occasion of Yeats' birthday, 2005. We were at the Barnes & Noble bookseller on Tittabawassee Road in Saginaw, Michigan. Pictured are, from L to R: Andy Christ, Karen Choate, Marion Tincknell, Betty van Ochten, Sue Nearing, Colleen van Connett, Pat McNair, Robert Schade and Pat Bourdow. Thanks to Janet Marineau for taking the picture. At the time this picture was taken, all the people in the picture were members of the River Junction Poets for at least two years. Roughly nine months after this picture was taken, we lost our dear friend and fellow poet Robert Schade to an infection shortly after his surgery. May he rest in peace. Not only did he write his own witty verse, he translated poems from German into English and shared them with the group. We remember him as a gentle man, lover of life, a fellow poet...one sorrowfully missed.

A Postcard from New Hampshire

In June (2006), when seven of us met at the Barnes & Noble in Saginaw (Michigan) to read poems by

Maxine Kumin on the occasion of her birthday, we decided to send a birthday card to Ms. Kumin. We all signed it, and Pat sent it to Norton (her publisher) on behalf of all of the River Junction Poets. Apparently the card was forwarded because Pat received a response from Ms. Kumin late in July. On a post card, Ms. Kumin wrote:

Dear Patricia,
Norton just forwarded the delightful birthday card you and the other RJ poets signed. My warm thanks to all of you. It was a happy surprise to be so closely read in Saginaw.
Best, Maxine, 7-18-06

A few days before our meeting, I read a few essays by Ms. Kumin. Pat, our Newsletter editor, had recommended them to me. I was able to share with our group that night at Barnes & Noble some of that information.

We are encouraged, and you should be too!

What is poetry? Fresh bread! We want some more! We want some more!

"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued." River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Mr. Wendell Berry Has Friends in Michigan

Mr. Wendell Berry Has Friends in Michigan

A few of the River Junction Poets met with a few non-River Junction Poets in August of 2006 to read a few of Mr. Berry's poems, to learn a thing or two about Mr. Berry and to see what connections we could make between ourselves and the poet and the poetry. We had nine people altogether. As usual, we met at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Saginaw, Michigan at 7 p.m. We met on the occasion of Mr. Berry's birthday - ostensibly. His birthday is on the 5th, and we met instead on the 7th. Our group has an unwritten rule: we never meet on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The 5th this year was a Saturday, so we decided to move our event to the following Monday.

While we were there, we bought and signed a birthday card for Mr. Berry. I put it in the mail the next day. We do this now for all the poets we meet for, provided the poet is still alive. Mr. Berry took a few moments from his day to write a note to my River Junction Poets friends and me. We are so enthused! His note is dated August 14th, and I received it on the 23rd. It is short and to the point:


Dear Mr. Christ: I am grateful to you and your friends for your kindness, and I send my good wishes to you all. Sincerely, (signed) Wendell Berry


I was particularly enthused for this event and remain grateful for it because I was not aware of Mr. Berry's writing until Karen Choate, one of the River Junction Poets, recommended him to us. Reading his poems with a group of people and hearing the remarks others made about him, his essays, novel and poetry gave me a lot to think about in just an hour and a half. I learned from others in the group about the revolution Berry has been interested in for so many years.
The night of the event, while we were enjoying Berry's poetry, an artist among us asked whether Berry mentions in any of his poems the struggles of the small farmer. I thought the question was a particluarly good one, and we decided that Berry has chosen to exclude from his poetry that particular strain of thought. Mr. Berry has written about the struggles of the family farm in several essays over a decades-long span. I enjoyed it when Karen pointed out and read some of Mr. Berry's better-known poems. Any time he wants to visit Saginaw, I'm sure Mr. Berry will receive a warm welcome from the River Junction Poets.






"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued." River Junction Poets Mission Statement