After six years of writing, editing, re-writing, more editing—the book is here. I can hold it in my hand.

The hardcover will not be available on Amazon, even though it is posted.

A box arrived a few days ago containing the advance copy paperbacks to promote Fatima’s Touch. Shabda was leaving for Istanbul the next day, so he took a dozen to give out at the Universal Sufi Conference. He just sent me these three pictures of  friends from Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, each holding Fatima’s Touch.

Esin Chelebi, Konya

Esin Chelebi is the 22nd generation granddaughter of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi. She works to promote his teachings.

Fakhira Najib, Pakistan

Fakira Najib started “Broad Class” an organization bringing education, clothing, books and food to thousands of poor marginalized students and parents in Pakistan.

Ni’mah Nawwab, Saudi Arabia

A few years ago, I bought Ni’mah’s elegant poetry book: Canvas of the Soul: Mystic Poems from the Heartland of Arabia. She is “a voice for Arab women and youth,” and a beautiful bridge between East and West.

What a wonderful moment. Today, on the other side of the globe, these three women, are holding the book! May Fatima’s story be shared in America the way it is known in the Middle East, North Africa, and South East Asia. May she be appreciated and valued for her wisdom.

I will be reading in Cambridge, Mass. at Cambridge Friends Meeting House, at 7:30 pm September 7th,  as part of an evening with the Dances of Universal Peace. Info: 617-876-5272. I will be reading from Fatima’s Touch in Seattle the first week in December.

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My granddaughter, Oona keeps drawing mountains. In the spirit of repetition, I say yes. yes! YES! and want to write poems and introduce her to Shibori.

Shibori: is the Japanese word for  ways of embellishing textiles by shaping cloth and securing it before dyeing, using a variety of techniques in different shapes to make different patterns. I was watching a small video and thinking how I would show it to Oona,  to inspire an art project we could do. Patterns.    http://skl.sh/video-shibori

video: at source click bottom (free entry) then go to line 11 “3 simple Shibori Styles”

“The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free… The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit!”  Igor Stravinsky.

“Meter, in the most basic physical way, releases illogical energy and brings it in coaction with the rational part of the mind, creating a synergy that might seem badly needed today—a balance between the unconscious power that perhaps composes what we sense as sanity.”  and “Repetition pulls the reader down… into the preliterate, the childlike… appeals to the right-brained qualities of space, being, and unindividuated consciousness…”   Annie Finch

Let It Be Forgotten   ~   poem by Sara Teasdale

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever…

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long forgotten snow.

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Oona has been drawing mountains for awhile. As I write this she is up in the Sierras. The repetition brings her  closer to what she is drawn to. Mountains, mountains, mountains……………………………………..

The Patterns in art and words made visible.

A repetition poem from Marilyn Hacker works both ends of the line with a repeated word at the beginning (anaphora) and rhymes for the final word. It gives a kind of hypnotic progression which goes on for six more stanzas than are shown here:

Casting Out Rhymes
Yes, dictionaries opening again
Yes, scorched across her forehead like a stain
Yes, less to say than cognate words contain
Yes, caffeine and butalbital for pain
Yes, ruptured synapses hobble the brain.

No, watched grey water circle down the drain
No, looking out the window of the train
No, not the melody, just the refrain
No, not temerity, no, not distain
No, stroked across the scar against the grain….

                                                                                                                              
from William Blake ~The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright…
…What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp…

Closing with a humorous moment, having found the mountain with the Starbucks on the top. Oona’s dad, Ammon, VP of Product Design at the new company Takt, on brief vacation in the Sierras, is due for a coffee stop near the top. Yes!

The next post will announce the arrival of my new book: Fatima’s Touch, Poems and Stories of the Prophet’s Daughter, Ruhaniat Press, September, 2016.