One Page Poetry Circle Archive

Welcome to the One Page Poetry Circle!

Date: November 19, 2024
Theme: Poetry and Choices
Time: 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Place: St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Ave, 3rd fl. Or by email email (see addresses below)

Find a poem! Show up! Or, send a poem by email!

We're back for the seventeenth fall season of the One Page Poetry Circle where people examine the works of established poets. While there is no instructor and this is not a workshop for personal writing, once a month OPPC gives everyone a place to become teachers and learners to explore the form, content, language and meaning of poetry. Since the circle began, participants have selected and discussed 1641 poems and have read countless others in pursuit of poetry that speaks to them.

GOOD NEWS:
The One Page Poetry Circle has returned to the St. Agnes Library. (Thanks! everyone who turned out for our Oct. 15th program.) In addition, for those who are unable to attend the Nov. 19th program, you will still be able to participate by email.

If you can make the November 19th meeting, we ask that you bring a poem with you on the theme of Poetry and Choices, with copies for others if you can.

If you're unable to attend, send us the poem you've selected with a comment on why you chose it. We'll share the poems with you in person, by email, and through our blog.

What makes us human is our ability to make choices. We make choices every day like what to eat and what to wear, but other choices can change our lives forever. John Greenleaf Whittier describes such a choice in "Maud Muller," as a young man and women meet and separate. The poet expresses a famous quote on the subject of regretted choices:

• For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
• The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
• Ah, well! For us all some sweet hope lies
• Deeply buried from human eyes;
• And, in the hereafter, angels may
• Roll the stone from its grave away!

Aphra Behn, a seventeenth-century dramatist, author, poet, and the first Englishwoman to earn her living by writing, relates the dilemmas of a love triangle in "On Her Loving Two Equally":

We met in person and through email for the October 15th program on Poetry and Mathematics.

AnnaLee opened the circle with "Pi," in which the Nobel Prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska celebrates three point one four one and beyond, the mysterious ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. "The caravan of digits that is pi/does not stop at the edge of the page,/but runs off the table and into the air,/over the wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, the clouds straight into the sky,/through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.

June sent "A Word on Statistics," also by Wislawa Szymborska. June said she discovered the poem when a friend used it as a meditation in her weekly zoom group and commented that she didn't know what part to focus on "since the effect depends on reading it all. I find it heartbreaking." The poem begins, "Out of every hundred people/those who always know better:/fifty-two."

Abigail enjoyed "I Meant To" by Michael Lally: "I meant to stay twenty-/nine or forty-nine, not/be seventy-nine turn-/ing eighty in May this." Lally describes many of the mistakes we have all made (like hitting CC rather than BCC) and allowing our years and lives to be numbered, but somehow he remains "grateful for all/that I've been and am."

Phil brought the first two verses of "In Praise of Fractals" by Emily Grosholz. Known for her math poetry, the poet lauds the beauty of Nature's patterns that are best described by twentieth-century fractals rather than nineteenth-century Euclidean geometry:

• Euclid's geometry cannot describe,
• nor Apollonius', the shape of mountains,
• puddles, clouds, peninsulas or trees.
• Clouds are never spheres,
• Nor mountains cones nor Ponderosa pines;

Roger thought back to one of the earliest poems he memorized, one that uses poetry to help children remember their numbers: "One, two, buckle my shoe;/Three, four, knock at the door;/Five, six, pick up sticks;/Seven, eight, lay them straight."

Ellen brought Lee Slonimsky's "The Study of Flight" from his book Pythagoras in Love. The non-traditional sonnet with its innovative breaks of six stepped lines gives the poem an airy soaring feeling like the flight pattern of a hawk. It was noted that the poem had a preponderance of the letter S. "How intricate,/hawk theorems for ellipses, scythe-eyed soar/a geometric text."

Kai wrote, "Haiku is the most innately mathematical form of poetry since each haiku is a three-line minimalist study in precision following a prescribed syllabic structure. I found several websites dedicated to math haiku, and they are delightfully clever. Here is one of my favorites by Christina Carroll":

• There's not enough room
• in seventeen syllables
• to contain infin—

Cate discovered "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School" in which the poet Jane Kenyon shows how a student's innocent struggle with math leads to cruel punishment and unintended consequences. The poem begins in medias res:

• The others bent their heads and started in.
• Confused, I asked my neighbor
• to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl
• who brought raw milk to school from her family's
• herd of Holsteins.

Larry noted that Emily Dickinson was influenced by math (link to an article on the subject) and frequently used mathematical symbols in her poetry as in "'Tis One by One—the Father" which suggests the gradual process of acquiring knowledge: "'Tis One by One—the Father counts/And then a Tract between/Set cypherless—to teach the Eye/The Value of its Ten—"

Daria brought two poems entitled "Me & Math." In the first, the teacher Phillip Howard shows his love for math in order to cajole his students into uncovering its secrets. As a response, his student Teresa wrote about her love hate relationship with math: "Love you now, hate you later/What's next, so that we can continue this relationship."

Sam sent Sharon Olds' "Mathematical Love Poem, with a Proof," from Poetry, April 2023. "I choose this poem because I really like the way the author tries to show how mathematical principles do not apply to complex relationships." Though the rigor of mathematics and love don't seem to go together, the author uses a calculated approach to find proof of love.

• I am on the plane, in the air, before I
• see what just happened—I fell in love
• with him, again, in the car to the airport.
• It happened sentence
• by sentence, slowly,

Carol found "Simple Arithmetic" by Billy Collins wherein the narrator would look out at a lake from his dock, "and divide the scene into what was here/five hundred years ago and what was not./Then I subtract all that was not here/and multiply everything that was by ten." Collins reminds us to "keep perspective, see the Big Picture/the long game ... we are only specks, dust in the wind."

Gail completed the circle with "Mathematics" by Lionel Wiggam published in Poetry, June 1935. Employing a basic AA/BB rhyme scheme, the poet urges a child to look around and observe their surroundings to reveal the geometry of the natural world: "Child, behold the lovely pattern/Mars and Venus draw with Saturn./Pause upon a hill and see/Celestial geometry."

Whether a poem mentions a choice or offers one, choose a poem that is meaningful to you. Then email it to one of us by November 19th, with a brief comment on why you chose it. Can't locate a poem you want to send? Check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

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

Fall Schedule
Tuesday, November 19: Poetry and Choices
Tuesday, December 17: Poetry and Lists

Abigail Burnham Bloom, abigailburnhambloom(at)gmail(dot)com
AnnaLee Wilson, annalee(at)kaeserwilson(dot)com

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.