Tuesday, September 7

Writing 12

It was wonderful to meet you all today. Tonight begin reading the two magazines you chose. For Thursday morning, bring one poem from either magazine that you really like. Be prepared to read it aloud to a small group of four. Present what you like about the poem. The goal here is to teach the group some wonderful aspect of poetry writing. Feel free to bring poems that puzzle you, too. That kind of poem often generates good discussion. Here's a favourite poem of mine:

Try To Praise The Mutilated World (published in the New Yorker magazine the week after the 9/11 tragedy) translated from the Polish


by Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the grey feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

Translated by Renata Gorczynski

I love the rhythms--try to praise the mutilated world (even the soft sounds of the repeated phrase soften me as a reader because I don't want to praise the mutilated world, why would I ever want to do a thing like that??? but of course, we must, we live in the dual world: good/bad. We have great capacity for love and an equal capacity for hate. Remember that juxtaposition in grade 10? Romeo and Juliet.

Look forward to hearing your poems.
Ms. S.