Lovely post, Lucia. I'm always so pathetically heartened to hear any recounting of poem-sharing as a natural human behavior, just easy and organic. Which sounds like I'm talking about swiss chard; but I mean organic in the straightforward, non-fancy sense of: "Hey, I liked this; you wanna read it too?" An unforced/unenforced/unreinforced giving, requiring no government agency or non-profit program to sponsor it (though the free copies of Poetry obviously made this particular moment possible). And I agree that, often, discovering our fellow humans to be simply normal is such a bizarre relief.

That your friend's group clustered around that particular poem would, I think, delight Mr. Gander as well, whose translation work is deeply populist while his own writing has been accused of that pesky hermeticism (though I do not find it so).

In my former hometown, there's a marvelous Japanese spa where the women's tub used to cost only $6 on Thursday evenings. And I would go to soak my bones in the hothotHOT water, and revel in the many sizes and proportions of so many variously shaped bodies—bodies with caesarian scars, tattoos, piercings, mastectomies, assorted ravages of injury and consumption and genetics and time. They were all so beautiful and I invariably left feeling better about inevitably growing older.

Perhaps as independent bookstores continue to fold (such as Olsson's in DC—a real tragedy) we could replace them with poetry-swapping bathhouses? Kay Ryan, are you listening?

Lucia,

Thanks for this lovely post! With no success, I’ve been searching for an equally lovely poem I vaguely remember about swimming. Searching our archive, though, turned up these reasons other than agoraphobia to avoid swimming:

Thomas Lux writes about a place where every evening tarantulas fall into pools:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178152

Jack Spicer explains why it’s difficult to get out once you get in:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181724

Mark Bibbins invites a lover to go swimming by the electrical plant:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177706

And of course, the children’s poet Kenn Nesbitt reminds us why many people avoid public swimming pools:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=176549

Of course your swimming pals are way beyond Nesbitt’s poetry as entertainment if they’re interested in Forrest G.’s translation of Coral Bracho’s poem "Firefly Under the Tongue ."

Emily

I was surprised the group gravitated to "Fireflies", which, after several readings (thanks to the miracles of technology) I still find difficult--and this is the one Bracho chooses for the title of her selected.

Poets are guilty of paradoxical impulses--the desire to have a readership and a slight distate for a popular readership--hence the charges of accessibility levelled at...well, not Gander or Bracho. I've heard writers express disdain for reading groups, and I wonder if this has anything to do that they're generally women's enclaves.

And, Un. Narrator, I haven't forgotton about Duncan/Levertov. Her posthumous New Directions Selected poems contains surprisingly little of the war poetry (though I don't know if the book had any editorial input from Levertov.) I also remembered that her famous Organic Form essay was derived from Duncan, who'd delineated, in an essay, seven categories of form. But I don't know the chronology of their schism--when the essays were written in relation to when they parted ways.

Hi Lucia,
I finally found this blog.....and was most interested to read of bodies (which is what I paint, mostly) and while I am not scholarly in my appreciation of poetry, I enjoyed reading the discussion of Levertov (long a favorite of mine) vs Duncan....a poet I have enjoyed reading, as well...See you at the pool......