Elizabeth Bishop – July 19, Iyengar III

A last villanelle, this one is definitely famous! Several people sent it to me plus it is in my poetry textbook as a prime example. Unfortunately, I received it from a very beloved student, on the day Buster died (she didn’t know). It did me in. Definitely “a disaster”. But I can’t do justice to my little villanelle obsession without sharing it.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

faces, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

thought it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Wendy Cope – July 18, Fun with Chairs

Another villanelle, remember what I said about this form having the ability to zing? Or sting?!

Reading Scheme

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

Jane has a big doll. Peter has a ball.

Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here is Mummy. She has baked a bun.

Here is the milkman. He has come to call.

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

Go Peter! Go Jane! Come, milkman, come!

The milkman likes Mummy. She likes them all.

Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here are the curtains. They shut out the sun.

Let us peep! On tiptoe Jane! You are small!

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

I hear a car, Jane. The milkman looks glum.

Here is Daddy in his car. Daddy is tall.

Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Daddy looks very cross. Has he a gun?

Up milkman! Up milkman! Over the wall?

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run?

John Hollander – July 15, Iyengar II & I

Another Villanelle, by a poet who among many other things, was a technical wizard! Lots of lovely, round, sound and imagery for a day of backbends.

By the Sound

Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound

And gulls shrieked violently just out of sight.

That was when I was living by the sound.

The silent water heard the light resound

From all its wriggling mirrors, as the bright

Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

Each morning had a riddle to expound;

The wrong winds would blow leftward to the right,

In those days I was living by the sound:

The dinghies sank, the large craft ran aground,

Desire leapt overboard, perhaps in fright.

Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

But seldom, in the morning's lost-and-found

Would something turn up that was free of blight.

In those days I was living by the sound

The sky contrived, whose water lay around

The place I was dreaming by the light

(Dawn rolled up slowly) what the night unwound

In those days. I was living by the sound.

Theodore Roethke – July 13, Iyengar I

Studying Villanelles in my poetry class. They have such nice drumbeat rhythm, makes them fun to read. Don’t let the beat fool you though, the famous examples of this form are often zingers…

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep; and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

A.R. Ammons – July 12, Iyengar III

In this class we talk a lot about our physical limitations , and the appropriate limits to our egos, as we tackle more demanding asanas. I like this take on limits, which can often but shouldn’t necessarily, feel negative. The more I read this poem, the more I think I want it as my internal “theme song”!

Limits

Since the

unknown’s

truer

than the

known

and since

mystery

can

make a well-known weed

unreal

and since

bent we

break on

time that lets

everything endure

changed

why not take

liberties

and love

what is not

storm the intangible

for the lore

song’s lost in

A.R. Ammons - July11, Sunday Fun

From a poet with a gargantuan 20th century output, an elegant & beautiful message.

Salute

May happiness

pursue you,

catch you

often, and,

should it

lose you,

be waiting

ahead, making

a clearing

for you.

Kim Shuck - July 8, Iyengar II & I

From Joy Harjo’s Anthology of Native Nation’s poetry created during her tenure as US Poet Laureate. Ms. Shuck belongs to the Northern California Cherokee diaspora. As we all get excited about summer rain, I started to think about how my sense of this place (Santa Fe, NM) is shaped by my relationship to water. I loved this poet’s take on water and relationship.

WATER AS A SENSE OF PLACE

1.

The water I used to drink spent time Inside a pitched basket

It adopted the internal shape

Took on the taste of pine

And changed me forever.

I remember

Carrying that basket from the pump,

The slow swell of the damp roots,

Sway of a walk

That made carrying it easier.

Sometimes I imagine Step’s Ford,

Both in and out of flood,

Tar Creek,

Spring River

In and out of baskets.

Gram's hands

Long, smooth fingers powerful and exact

Pull and twist

Sorting spokes and splitting weavers

Constructing my idea of water.

…

Mary Cornish-July 6, Iyengar II & I

From Billy Collins’ Anthology of Contemporary Poems, created during his tenure as US Poet Laureate. A playful-sounding piece, (this poet started out as an illustrator of children’s books) with some zingers. I loved “Even subtraction is never loss,”.

NUMBERS

I like the generosity of numbers.

The way, for example,

they are willing to count

anything or anyone:

two pickles, one door to the room,

eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—

add two cups of milk and stir—

the sense of plenty: six plums

on the ground, three more

falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school

of fish times fish,

whose silver bodies breed

beneath the shadow

of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,

just addition somewhere else:

five sparrows take away two,

the two in someone else’s

garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,

as it opens Chinese take-out

box by paper box,

inside every folded cookie

a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised

by the gift of an odd remainder,

footloose at the end: forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,

with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers call,

two Italians off to the sea,

one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

N. Scott Momaday - July 5, Iyengar III

After seeing a coyote, then a deer and finally a lizard on my morning dog run, I found this poem. They two larger creatures (like some asanas) might seem like they warrant more of our attention, but I found the more often-seen (often practiced asanas) just as interesting; a little bit of dinosaur magic.

A Century of Impressions # 60.

the lowly lizard

crouching on the sandy path

claims the right-of-way

N. Scott Momaday - July 4, Iyengar Sunday Fun & Chair Class

A long-time friend gave this newest collection by Momady, The Death of Sitting Bear. I thought this beautifully described why, at least some of us, cling to the dream. At the same time acknowledging how complicated the reality of America has always been. How it leaves many out, at best, destroys at worst, and yet I don’t believe we are done yet. I am grateful for neighbors with a beautiful mind.

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored days and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.

From HOUSE MADE OF DAWN

Shirley Jock-lin Lim - July 1, Iyengar II & I

As the 4th of July approaches, nice to hear different voices about the “American Dream”. Ms Lim is Chinese American, raised partially in Malayasia, who has lived for many years in California.

Learning to love America

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline

because the water of the ocean is cold

and because land is better than ocean

because I say we rather than they

because I live in California

I have eaten fresh artichokes

and jacaranda bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body

my breath with the air it swallows

my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast

because he is a strong American boy

because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is

because he answers I don’t know

because to have a son is to have a country

because my son will bury me here

because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind

because it is time.

Matsuo Basho - June 29, Iyengar II & I

Thinking about my giant-hearted, tiny warrior Buster, who passed June 22, 2021. About the length I though I could read with out losing it in a very unprofessional manner. At least we still have summer grasses…and memories.

summer grasses—

all that remains

of warriors' dreams

Ted Kooser - June 17, Iyengar II & I

From The Wheeling Year, a selection of observations and other snippets, arranged to match the calendar. All are excerpts from the workbooks he’s kept for sixty years; delightful, insightful. I loved this about the jigsaw puzzles, something I started during Covid. Kind of reminds of tackling an unfamiliar of challenging Yoga pose - from the corners. From the familiar to the unfamiliar, kind of sums Yoga practice for me.

June

…

In a stack by the back door of the locked-up Goodwill store, a dozen jigsaw puzzles wait to be carried in, each box with a landscape on its lid, the top one with a snowy peak reflected in a lake, each one assembled once and then left among the bags of shoes and shirts, the heavy chair with cofFee-stained upholstery where someone sat to piece something together, starting in from the corners, one piece at a time.

…

Rumi - June 15, Iyengar II & I

Billy Collins to Rumi, does that seem like an odd jump? The are both so skilled at uncovering the way to be human.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING OUT

If a tree could fly off, it would not suffer the saw.

The sun hurries all night to be back for morning.

Salty water rises in the air,

so the garden will be drenched with fresh rain.

A drop leaves home,

enters a certain shell, and becomes a pearl.

Joseph turns from his weeping father, toward Egypt.

Remember how that turned out.

Journeys bring power and love back into you.

If you cannot go somewhere,

move in the passageways of the self.

They are like shafts of light, always changing,

and you change when you explore them.

Billy Collins - June 13, Iyengar III

Funny, and true. Evolving is not for the faint-hearted.

The Present

Much has been said about being in the present.

It's the place to be, according to the gurus,

like the latest club on the downtown scene,

but no one, it seems, is able to give you directions.

It doesn’t seem desirable or even possible

to wake up every morning and begin

leaping from one second into the next

until you fall exhausted back into bed.

Plus, there'd be no past

with so many scenes to savor and regret,

and no future, the place you will die

but not before flying around with a jet-pack

The trouble with the present is

that it’s always in a state of vanishing.

Take the second it takes to end

this sentence with a period—already gone.

What about the moment that exists

between banging your thumb

with a hammer and realizing

you are in a whole lot of pain?

What about the one that occurs

after you hear the punch line

but before you get the joke?

Is that where the wise men want us to live

in that intervening tick, the tiny slot

that occurs after you have spent hours

searching downtown for that new club

and just before you give up and head back home?

Billy Collins - June 10, Iyenagr II & I

Feeling like something “lighter” after several days of Rilke, Billy Collins always delivers. And so perfect, today there was a partial solar eclipse, we were unable to see here. We have to imagine instead, and maybe call in wonder and gratitude.

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse

I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble

becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing

a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke - June 7th, Iyengar II & I

Still on a Rilke kick. This piece struck me not only because “Who doesn’t want a Bowl of Roses?”, but the eyelid imagery. BKS Iyengar used to say we should become self-observant enough, sensitive enough, that “every pore of the skin becomes and eye.”

P.S. The Yoga pants I wore today matched this poem - big red rose print.

The Bowl of Roses (II)

Soundless existence ever opening,

filling space while taking it from no one,

diminishing nothing, defined by nothing outside itself,

all coming from within, clothed in softness

and radiant in its own light, even to its outermost edge.

When have we known a thing like this,

like the tender and delicate way

that rose petal touches rose petal?

Or like this: that each petal is an eyelid,

and under it lie other eyelids

closed, as if letting all vision be cradled

in deepening sleep.

Rainer Maria Rilke - June 6th, Iyengar III

Read Apple Orchard (II) before I saw Apple Orchard (I). Oh well, (I) was more suited to an evening class.

The Apple Orchard (I)

Come now as the sun goes down.

See how evening greens the grass.

Is it not as though we had already gathered it

and saved it up inside us,

so that now, from feelings and memories,

from new hope and old pleasures,

all mixed with inner darkness,

we fling it before us under the trees.

Rainer Maria Rilke - June 6, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

I keep track of what I read to classes and when I read what I’ve chosen. My books are filled with sticky notes that include dates and class names, often with observations about why I’ve chosen what I’ve chosen. Yesterday I pulled out a favorite Rilke collection and noticed, I almost never read Rilke in the Spring and Summer. Maybe he feels dark, and Catholic, and good for the ending of the year. Not sure. But I found this lovely poem, and it felt just right for a Spring/Summer day after planting an apple tree in my garden.

The Apple Orchard (II)

The trees, like those of Dürer,

bear the weight of a hundred days of labor

in their heavy, ripening fruit.

They serve with endless patience to teach

how even that which exceeds all measure

must be taken up and given away,

as we, through long years,

quietly grow toward the one thing we can be.

Myra Klockenbrink - June 3, Iyengar II & I

An Ever Joyful Yoga supporter/fellow Iyenegar Yoga Teacher wrote this beauty, excerpted from a longer piece. My favorite “translation” of the mantra AUM (generally acknowledged to be untranslatable), is “the sound of the universe, present in all things”. Personally, I love the sound of garbage trucks but I know not everyone does. Made me think - what is “sound”, “song”, “noise”, in the ear of the listener?

NOISE

Before it is morning

when the sun is still

rolling over the Atlantic Ocean

and it is midnight in Japan

it is very quiet

very easy to sit in silence

We are still

halfway between dreams

and daytime dramas

we can listen carefully

to the clear ring of no sound

Until as the light turns

and begins to take on color

the garbage truck rolls up the street

chuffing and braking

the men's voices as they call

to one another a clarion

of the brightening light

The birds pitch in

each pressing their own key

repeat repeat repeat

the garbage truck leads the parade

cars line up behind it

some old metal cabinet

now being fitted into its maw

Still the silence rings

holding the truck, the humming cars,

the repeating birds

and the scratch of the pen across the paper

For a time no-sound sounds

and there is nothing

only this breath

…