Category Archives: Poetry

POET Gjertrude Schnackenberg

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in book awards, Poetry, precision, word-dancing

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You don’t have to be brilliant to read Gjertrude Schnackenberg’s poetry – but you do need to surrender to her word music! Her new book, Heavenly Questions, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2011 (paperback), is a set of six linked long poems written in iambic pentameter –  a pulsing drumbeat of syllables – blank verse enriched by occasional rhyme. She comments: “…poetry is an effort to communicate meaning. It’s doing it through feeling and emotion rather than through the ideas it presents.”*

 “It is perhaps the most powerful elegy written in English by any poet in recent memory, and it is a triumphant consummation of Schnackenberg’s own work.” Carl Kirchway 
 

The emphasis in the Web reviews is her stunning elegy for her husband. For me the real beauty is in her confident stride even more than the content; it is the way she travels with words– entrancing the reader by means of iambic pentameter, that     –/  –/   –/  –/  –/ rhythm, which does to the mind what riding a camel or a horse does to the body.  Schnackenberg’s poems avoid both the archaic as well as distortion in the natural order of words, which – in less skilled hands – leads to the feeling of ‘manufactured’ lines.

…Reading this book is like reading the ocean, its swells and furrows, its secrets fleetingly revealed and then blown away in gusts of foam and spray or folded back into nothing but water. Heavenly Questions demands that we come face to face with matters of mortal importance, and it does so in a wildly original music that is passionate, transporting, and heart-rending... Judges Citation, Griffin Poetry Prize.

She carries an invisible inherited poetry: the blank verse vehicle of Shakespeare’s plays, of  Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” I’ve been in the light rain of meter and occasional rhyme most of this year now, and all but  well-written free verse strikes my ear as dry or un-musical. What happened to that ancestral rhythm and rhyme that rocks us? Musicians and Spoken Word artists have picked it up in this dominant  culture of un-formal poetry, but now with Schnackenberg and AE Stallings too, here is poetry in form, a read that’s fresh, yet carries the ancestral link forward. Here is a taste of the nearly 6 page poem “Fusiturricula Lullaby,” from Heavenly Questions. (Fusiturricula is pronounced few-see-tur-IK-ula – a sea snail).

 A shell appears––Fusiturricula––
And uses its inherited clairvoyance
To plot a logarithmic spiral round
An axis of rotation evermore
And evermore forevermore unseen….
 

This triple repetition coils the reader through the shell. She often uses repetition  as a climactic devise in her long poems. She says: “Repetition can be hypnotic.”* Trance-like. In the poem of her husband’s death, “Venus Velvet No. 2,”  six pages into the poem  she begins the negation –no one, nothing,  never, never again, and not, not; then the negative goes further with unscrolling, unwheeling, historyless, and nothing less. You can see her life with her husband unwinding to its conclusion, without the least bit of sentimentality. The result is paradoxically beautiful and haunting. Blank verse serves the longer poems well. •  If you are a poetry lover, read Heavenly Questions. It’s elevated enchantment. <>

*AUDIO INTERVIEW – [This one is great!] from the series: New Letters on the Air (30 minutes): <http://www.prx.org/pieces/60701-poet-gjertrud-schnackenberg&gt;

VIDEO FILM CLIP: < http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2011-shortlist/gjertrud-schnackenberg&gt;

The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.)

Lama Foundation, and some good reading

25 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in Kazim Ali, Lama Foundation, Poetry, Robert Bly, Sufi

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View over the Rio Grande looking West from the Dome at Lama

I’m back from nine thousand feet up in the Sangre de Christo Mountains above the Rio Grand River. My body feels strong and balanced.  It seemed a bit survival-like up there at cloud level. My brain seemed quiet and  breath labored as I climbed the trail to the grave site of Murshid Sam Lewis, to pay my respects.I’ve been doing this since 1975.  This year there was time for long meditations in the DOME, where I sat on an old-board floor with adobe walls crafted in eight facets. The room wrapped me in an earth blanket of calm and certainty. The dome arched above with its glass star at the top. This architectural jewel is over 40 years old and survived a fire that took most of that mountain some fifteen years ago. It feels like home.

Back in California, I pick up Kazim Ali’s wonderful book Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. Today I read the chapter: Twenty-Second Day.

I have always loved that a “day” in the Islamic calendar begins with the setting of the sun and continues through to the following sunset…. The body is like a day: it begins with the darkness of evening, ends with the ebbing of light.

Mmmmm. This kind of discovery tastes better than the fresh tomatoes in the garden.

The Dances of Universal Peace

Arabic writing goes from right to left, and its history is defined by a line of ancestors beginning with Grandmother Eve down to those who live on earth today, so the past streams out in front of us and the future flows behind us. Now there is the pattern of a day beginning at sunset and my brain is playfully awake with possibilities. I could work this into a poem and feel the patterns of the ancient desert people as they seem draw close, while I tap into this view of the day and night seen through this new lens.

Lama Foundation

While on Lama mountain I read a wonderful new book of poems by Robert Bly. I savored it. I gave it away and am now waiting for the next copy to arrive so I can’t check the poem I offer here for accuracy – the title poem from this beautiful and masterful collection:

 
                                                                                                  
 
 TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY  by Robert Bly
 
I have been talking into the ear of a donkey.
I have so much to say! And the donkey can’t wait
To feel my breath stirring the immense oats
Of his ears. “What has happened to the spring,”
I cry, “and our legs that were so joyful
in the bobblings of April?” “Oh never mind
About all that,” the donkey
Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you
Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”

 

(From Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, W.W. Norton, ©2011

view of Lama from Ghost Ranch, across the desert

Gertrude Stein’s Art and words from a Prose Poem

12 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by in Gertrude Stein, Poetry

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Gertrude Stein keeps showing up. There’s the film where Kathy Bates is G.S., cast by Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris.” Her walls are covered with paintings.I wanted to see it a second time to look at what they had chosen for the movie set. Today I found myself among those same paintings… at the Museum of Modern Art in SF. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. It was not planned. I was just there. Yasmin was visiting, and we wanted to see Katy, who manages the Blue Bottle Rooftop Coffee Bar at the MOMA. Katy got us tickets, coffee and took us through the large exhibit.

GS by Picasso

Rooms and rooms of the Steins’ collection. Picasso and Matisse paintings I’ve never seen in any art book.  I snapped some photos when the guards turned away. I was caught, and had to erase a photo. But somehow my camera took two of that set of 6 Picassos. Here is the one that was erased ~  ~

Today was like that. Yasmin kept finding dimes. And I had just copied several of G.S’s writings out of Great American Prose Poems, Edited by David Lehman.  The piece is called “22 Objects” from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein.

A Box:   Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin, and it is disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

She is writing through colors –– red, white, green. Picture the artists around her, changing how faces, hands, and landscapes are painted, moving away from realistic renderings  and traditional hues and tints.  Here is another one.

Nothing Elegant:   A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

A Long Dress:  What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current. What is the wind what is it.  Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

I feel as though I’m in the middle of a conversation with Stein and the Post Impressionists, the Fauves, the artists pushing the Parisian Art World to the edge of what would be tolerated, the giddiness of those moments, the magnetism, the brilliance and creativity…

The wall in her Parisian Apartment

West Chester University Poetry Conference, 2011

19 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in Events, Poetry, precision, Toni Blackman, West Chester Poetry Conference

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When you google the WCUPC, it’s not easy to find. Even spelling it out, you might come across phrases like, “Traditional Poetic Craft.” TPC is a password for the door, if there was a door, that reads: Enter to Study with the Formalists.  Once inside the workshop, you’ll discover the metrical music and the rhythms of poetry are squeezed into technical vocabulary  –– tetrameter, scansion, numbers of feet per line. Cut a line and you have a hemstitch.  Enjambment is to be used with care, so as not to take away the impact of the pentameter in a sonnet. Iambic pentameter carries the load of centuries of poetry with it, and is perfect for shouting  from a stage, as in Shakespearian theater. (Thanks, Andrew!)

Kim Addonizio reading

Here you can stock up on implements for the tool kit that aids precision in writing. The intricate formal dance of poetics is not for the timid writer. Timothy Steele, word-master and workshop leader, writes: Knowledge of meter will promote a surer ear for rhythm and will alert one to useful arrangements of sound and speech. This view begins to color how I perceive the music and organization of the poetic phrase. I feel as though I’ve been drawn into the Tango dance world by an expert dancer, and now all I hear and see is Tango… Here are some champions of the art worth dancing with.

Robert Frost. A favorite  of mine is Acquainted with the Night – in flawless terza rima pentameter.

Richard Wilber is a wonderful poet, and was celebrated at the conference for his ninetieth birthday. The Ride, takes the reader on a ride with the short three and four foot lines: …I rode with magic ease/ At a quick, unstumbling trot,/ Through shattering vacancies/ On into what was not….

A.E. Stallings (Alicia) is a young and esteemed poet. Her poems are terrific; she balances a relaxed flow with traditional elements, as in this from  Lullaby near the Railroad Tracks: Go back to sleep. The hour is small./ A freight train between stations/ shook you out of sleep with all/  it’s lonely ululations…            [see interview link below.]

Kim Bridgford*, Conference Director, is attentive, friendly, and was a constant presence. I enjoyed seeing her take in each event with grace and openness. It turns out Kim was in The class I took at WCU in 2004 with Fred Chappell. In my notes, I came across this poem she workshopped, then included in her book: Instead of Maps.                     

From her sonnet: Robert Frost: You seemed to know the most about the dark,/ But softened it so we would listen, still/ As leaves before they show they’re vulnerable/ To wind. You seemed to know the grief of work,/ And also joy depending on the weather…

I want to commend Kim for bringing together the Hip-hop / Rap community and the conference poets. Russel Goings, author and crusader for black empowerment, said in the panel, Anthology of Rap– “Do we have a marriage here?”(of genres). He was answered by the commentator, Farai Chideya (multimedia journalist on TV and radio), “I think it’s a first date.” The “rhythm and words folks” from New York City, especially the amazing Freestyle Queen, Toni Blackman – Musical Ambassador, performer and writer – brought fresh, delicious word music. From her website: “She’s all heart, all rhythm, all song, all power, a one-woman revolution of poetry and microphone. An award-winning artist, her steadfast work and commitment to hip-hop led the U.S. Department of State to select her to work as the first ever hip-hop artist to work as an American Cultural Specialist.” May Toni be back next year, teaching and sharing the difference, for example, between RAP and SPOKEN WORD.

The Hip Hop / Rap folks including Toni Blackman (L), Andrew DuBois, Russel Goings (blue shirt), and Farai Chideya with Kim Bridgeford

I’m going to be following the direction of the conference with interest. And, it’s time to get Patricia Smith on faculty! Thumbs up for WCUPC.
<>  <>

*Kim Bridgford, is the editor of the online magazine Mezzo Cammin (www.mezzocammin.com), and the founder of the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, launched last year at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington; it will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Undone, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps, nominated for the Poets’ Prize, and others.
 

More on these people: Youtube Toni Blackman: “Hip-hop is tagging your heart, not walls….”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0M67j2oA0&feature=related

Interview with AE Stallings: < http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/19/stallings19.html&gt;

<>

Saved by Beauty: a new book about Iran

03 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by in Iran, Poetry, Shams-i-Tabriz, Sufi, Travel

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On a Thursday  a couple weeks ago, Roger Housden launched his new book at the Marin bookstore  Book Passage. He shared the stage with Peter Coyote who asked him good questions. About 100 people turned out. Roger told the audience: “When I went to Iran I wanted to meet the creative people. Iran is 3,000 years old! Human rights, Sufi traditions of love and wisdom. I wanted to see how these were carried on in present day Iran.”

Roger Housden

Roger Housden has written a fine book.

Saved by Beauty, Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran is an elegant bridge between cultures. I read this slowly, tasting the literary flavors – not my habit, since I read quickly – even with poetry. I’m not into sappy “romantic” stuff. But this book is fresh and compelling. Unexpected. He is detained by Iranian Security. I mean really detained and questioned over and over. Scary.

There are gardens. “Paradise derives from the old Persian word for “garden,” pardis,” Roger writes. “So important was the garden in old Persia that when a new city was planned, the gardens would be planted before any foundations were laid.” You will want to read this chapter. He sketches the garden of Naranjastan in Shiraz with words that seem to be colored with artist’s pastels. Back in the hotel he checks in with the poet Rumi, whose book he carries on his journey. He opens to these words: Remember the proverb, Eat the grapes. /Do not keep talking about the garden./ Eat the grapes.

Some chapters are spicy. He is welcomed by Toufan, highly placed in the sophisticated Iranian film world. She is a woman who lived in L.A. for years, then moved back to Iran after her thirteen-year-old daughter suggested it. When Roger said he’d like to meet a Sufi Sheikh, she told him, “Sufism is all the rage here now… it has become fashionable with the upper classes the way Kabbalah has in the West because of Madonna.”
A friend in America gave Roger a jar of marmalade to take to her as an introduction. Toufan began the chain of connections that would bring him to the door of many creative and interesting Iranians.

She introduces Roger to the artist Haleh, who says: “Women in Iran today are breaking the hijab of expression, both politically and artistically. Women are expressing themselves now in every art form in a culture where they have been taught not to reveal themselves… And you know what gave them permission? The Revolution. The Revolution created a new form of language for foreign relations that was unapologetic, angry, and direct. That had never been known in Iran before…”

He travels around the country by himself and discovers Iranian Judaism, the Zoroastrians, and the Sufis. He savors the visual elixir of the heart of Isfahan – the Royal Mosque. He writes, “Isfahan is the Florence of the Orient, without the tourists.”

People, places, and a stunning experience that is life changing. He takes us along through the police interrogation. He emerges a changed man. “And yet, the very absence of my well-worn identity felt like a sudden breath of freedom: like taking off a tight fitting suit I had not even realized I was wearing.”

Saved by Beauty by Roger Housden, Broadway Books, Crown Publishing, 2011.

PRECISION –––

16 Monday May 2011

Posted by in DJ AM, Jacques d'Ambois, Poetry, precision

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Light show on City Hall,San Francisco 2010

I’ve re-done this blog post dozens of times. Precision takes practice……..

This visual was made by 4 very expensive projectors from Obscura Digital  tec company during the Black and White Ball last spring. My son, Ammon, works for Obscura. Their technology is mind boggling. Here is the equipment, worth around 2oo grand. Their reputation with light and color is built on edgy modern precision.Obscura's projectors

The book, I was a Dancer, by Jacques d’Amboise is my current favorite read. He tells this story about precision that I love. The set up: he’s teaching 100 kids.  “All one hundred of you have exactly 30 seconds to get out of your chairs and move to the stage. But when you arrive, spread out and hold still. But – no noise, like ghosts.” It doesn’t happen. “They run, yelling and giggling… You failed the test. There was noise and most of you got there too soon… They usually get it the second time.” He congratulates them. “Once the children see that we are having a class of precision, order, and respect, they are relieved. It’s the beginning of dance. Precision and exactness are steps toward  truth.”p. 366.

Precision. In the arts, in life.



an inlayed tile from the Taj Mahal


The Precision of Pain      by Yehuda Amichai/ trans. Chana Bloch
The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I'm thinking 

how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor's office.

Even those who haven't learned to read and write are precise:

"This one's a throbbing pain, that one's a wrenching pain,

this one gnaws, that one burns, this is a sharp pain

and that––a dull one. Right here. Precisely here,

yes, yes." Joy blurs everything. I've heard people say

after nights of love and feasting, "It was great,

I was in seventh heaven." Even the spaceman who floated

in outer space, tethered to a spaceship, could say only, "Great,

wonderful, I have no words."

The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain — 

I want to describe, with a sharp pain's precision, happiness


and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.


~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~










Zuleikha


W.S. Merwin had it about right when he spoke of the insufferable need for precision. He said, “Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you’ve lost the whole thing.”


Gustave Flaubert had a different way of saying the same thing: “Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.” Conrad Geller


“What (Emily) Dickenson sought to achieve in poetry was, a mathematical accuracy applied to human “ardor and grief.” “All of Dickenson’s poetry,” comments Helen Vendler, “is an attempt to fix precision… on a maelstrom of emotion.”  Because I could not stop for death –– /He kindly stopped for me––/ The carriage held but just ourselves––/ And immortality… [Emily Dickenson, poem #712].


the late, great DJ AM


I am planning to attend the WCU formalist poetry conference in Pennsylvania the beginning of June. I’m going to study meter with Timothy Steele. Sonnets and Iambic Pentameter. Hard stuff for a poet not in school. <>


Masters of Precision:


DJ AM comes to mind here. Precisely.  He took rhythm and music into another dimension…


In the world of drum rhythm there is the Indian-born Tabla Master, who lives in Marin County, California, Zakir Hussain and the American trap drummer who grew up in Marin, Terry Bozzio.


The wonderful Zakir Hussain is the best in the world at what he does. Here is what some reviewers have said of him: tabla drum master with intricate, continually nuanced rhythms, virtuoso, intuitive player, uses swift, precise, rhythmic articulation... These words are far from the experience. Poetry serves better.


Zakir Hussain


Terry Bozzio is a favorite drummer. I like this description of Terry Bozzio’s drumming by Ryan Baker. <www.precisiondrumming.com> (commentary on the drum solo in the song, “I will Protect you.”) It’s like the split second lift at the crest of a roller coaster, or the feeling you get just as your parachute catches. The fury is the heart of the solo… Toward the end, when the rhythm simply can’t go any faster, he again creates an illusion that it does by the rate of movement between different instruments, particularly between the snare and those tiny splashes in front of his face.


Terry Bozzio


And I might add, that I have had similar experience listening to Zakir, but you gotta hear it and feel it in your body! Words can only take you so far. But precision can take you further than most anything.


PRECISION. Pay attention to where it shows up in your life. <>  <>  <>

					


	





	

								
Poetry Night at Lincoln High~
										

			09
			Saturday
			Apr 2011
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Events, Poetry, Untold		

		

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Poetry Night at the Black Box Theater 


Last night Rachel and I drove to San Jose. I’d been invited to read six minutes of Spoken Word poems at the Black Box Theater at Lincoln High School. Jael and Anthony invited me back in January, when I read at Willow Glen Library. I said YES! without hesitation.


Tamam and Jael Cruz, the host


Some of the SJ Poetry Center folks were reading there: Pushpa, Dennis, and a couple others. The rest of the poets were students from Lincoln. This may have been the inaugural Poetry Night – benefiting the center for the arts. I donated 11 CDs with poetry and spoken word to be sold for $5. with proceeds going to Lincoln High Arts!


The Black Box Theater is a well designed space and I guess there were more than 60 students there, Gimo was the MC, and the event began a short while after the “sound check” and earlier than the announced time. There was a camera crew, and we signed release forms, but there was no mic. Didn’t need one.


I was lucky to go early in the evening, after 4 or 5 students, and announced as the first “special guest.” I told them “I like history and I do spoken word, so I’m putting them together tonight. About your own history –– once it may have been heartache and pain. Later it became something to talk about!” I introduced “Uncle Waraka”  and shouted it out, talking about Muhammad as “the Propheci’d Man.” Next came “Aisha and the Battle of the Camel.” This poem begins : “Hey Euphrates, I’m your tigress! I don’t digress but I risk speaking of the year 656….”


The audience was asked to click their fingers instead of clapping, so the recording people didn’t have to deal with  bursts of sound.  Pushpa read some good poems. One line of hers was: “I’d rather have poetry than oatmeal for breakfast.”


I felt it was an honor to read there. I hope this becomes a regular event. Thanks Jael and Anthony. Lets hear it for Lincoln High poets!<>


CDs for sale, "The Women with Muhammad"

					


	





	

								
instructions for Jahiliyya
										

			29
			Tuesday
			Mar 2011
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in bookstores, Poetry, Sufi, Untold		

		

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I gave a book reading – introducing my book, UNTOLD,  in Portland on Thursday March 17th at the New Renaissance Bookshop, a wonderful counter-culture bookstore very different from the famous Powells City of Books, downtown.  Shabda offered a Sufi retreat over the weekend and invited me to give a presentation Sunday Morning. I kept it to 20 minutes and offer it here as an audio file.       <> TamamTalk3-30-11<>




As for the crocodiles, they seem to appear in all their reptilian glory when I say the magic word – JAHILIYYA, an Arabic term for a time that had an attitude. The time before Muhammad brought the antidote of al-halama — mild gentleness, nurturing love. One you might recognize in its own form today in some political moments. Here’s the poem:


instructions for Jahiliyya


…the jahil, a wild, violent and impetuous character who follows

the inspiration of unbridled passion and is cruel by following his 

animal instincts; in one word, a barbarian. Ignaz Goldziher


Know you are right.

Think fist and knife-edge.

Do not appear

foolish, no matter what.


Control your woman

and your guests; keep them

a little afraid, and thankful

for your protection.


Guard your clan’s

honor. Carve a notch

on your weapon of choice

for each successful pay-back.


If someone calls you animal,

smile and answer — lion,

hyena, crocodile, fighting cock—

the meek are the pack animals of the ferocious.[i]


from Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad by Tamam Kahn, Monkfish Books 2010.






[i] Jahiliyya is an important term, usually mistranslated as “the time of ignorance”, instead, Ignaz Goldziher argues, He sees it as barbarism, not ignorance, citing halim (mild), not ‘ilm (knowing) as the opposite term. He quotes an old Arab proverb: The meek is the pack animal of the ferocious (al-halim matiyyat al-jahul.) He devotes an entire chapter of his cited book to this subject. ~~~


There is always the lion, hyena, and fighting cock and that juicy word “ferocious.” Keeps me on my toes.  <>









					


	





	

								
Thoughts and a poem on the Middle East
										

			27
			Sunday
			Mar 2011
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in Poetry, Sally Magdy Zahran, Syria		

		

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Coptic Christians protect Muslims as they pray in Cairo


This photo was originally posted on January 25 by Nevine Zaki, and went viral. Here it has been cropped and the circle of protection is photoshopped. It is a moment to dwell on. Cairo, where the factions joined  with the intention of a pro-Democracy outcome. Coptic Christians and Muslims have been part of the same family since Mariya-the-Copt gave birth to a son, Ibrahim on January 24, 632. His father was Prophet Muhammad. Ibrahim lived for almost 2 years, joining the two families.


It is moments like this that give hope as the old order in the Middle East feels increasing pressure from the youth and unemployed.


The Cork ~ by Tamam Kahn


The Arab world is


a fist on the cork


of the bottle.


The young twist, yank at the cork


make small popping sounds


anticipating the foamy spillage


– like Egypt and Tunisia –


dangerous and heady,


street blood and libation


mixed,


pro-government crowd in Syria


while each regime


grips


the neck,


towel


over cork


hold-


ing


on for dear life,


looking


with dread


at TV mobs


as each country’s unemployed


shake the bottle. Shake and shake.


Youth on facebook, in the square;


they press thumbs against


the small cylinder


as voices rise.


Everyone knows – God knows –


drinking bubbly is forbidden


in Arab countries.  <>   <>


 


<> May the people of Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan,  and other places of unrest be safe! <>

					


	





	

								
Untold & the Book Awards
										

			03
			Thursday
			Mar 2011
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Announcements, book awards, Events, Poetry, Untold		

		

			≈ 2 Comments
		

	

						

	


			

					


		

			
 


the author on a camel in the Moroccan Sahara


I am curious to find an award category for my book: Untold. Never mind actually winning, I’m just looking for a match.  In the words of the late Ogden Nash, the book is a churkendoose – chicken, turkey, duck and goose. It is poetry, but it’s not a poetry book. It is biography and academic history, and yes, women’s studies. The alchemy is powerful and forges it into a what? Non-fiction  women’s historical biography.


The words “Prophet Muhammad” are in the title. That makes it  a bit edgy like Black History, only Martin Luther King is more PC with many Americans.


I love this book because it moves toward easing tension between the Islamic world and the USA. Is there a slot for that important job in the arena of awards? Then there is the chapter on the Jewish wives. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone acknowledged that Prophet Muhammad had two Jewish wives? Israel, for instance? You can  see how this book may be sitting alone somewhere.


California first lady Maria Shriver introduces Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet Mary Oliver (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)


There’s always big American prizes for literature and poetry, with Mary Oliver hugging Maria Shriver on the right. Here are some less well known acknowledgements:


 FAB Book Award (Burntwood Secondary school award – winner chosen by the students). I love the name of the award and wish I could talk to them.


Brass Crescent Award (this promotes the best writing of the Muslim Webblogs). That’s good, but then there’s The Frederick J. Streng Book Award,  limited to Buddhist – Christian books.


The esteemed Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize…”understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures…” But I’ll bet you need to be a person of color to even be considered for that.


Here’s one that I’m sure has never been won by a woman: The Sheik Zayed Book Award,  “one of the most prestigious and well-funded prizes in the Arab world,” named after the deceased ruler of Abu Dhabi. Last year’s literature winner was  Dr. Ibrahim al-Kawni, Libyan author of The Call of What Was Far.


The Humbolt Research Award is for an academic. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA from University of Arizona) listed more than thirty books on topics that seemed similar to Untold, but every single book had a University Press behind the title, like the poetry prizes awarded only to MFA graduates. Forget it.


For The Arab American Book Award you need to be an Arab – it’s not books on Arab themes in America.


The only possible thing I found was IBA International Book Awards, “Honoring Knowledge, Creativity, Wisdom  & Global Cooperation through the Written Word.”  That sounds good. The deadline is April 30, 2011.


Sometimes it feels good to dare to dream.  <>