Category Archives: Poetry

dedicated to four little girls

21 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by in 1963, 4 little girls, Events, Poetry

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This morning I snapped pictures of a sculptural installation in the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The sculpture is composed of strangely beautiful pieces of burned wood hanging on colorless string. The window light and the spotlights increase the magnetism. Each photo taken with my small phone-camera was strangely evocative, of what? Some sadness I’ve been carrying lately, perhaps.

for Denise McNair

A tall, African American guard in a dark suit came up to me briskly, but his face was open, vulnerable even. It used to be against the rules to photograph in museums, but now that is a useless effort, especially with discrete cell-phone pics. He asked if I knew what these hanging fragments were. I said I did not. Maybe it was my dreadlocks that drew him into my artistic reverie with the sculpture.

He began. “It is the church, the Baptist Church in Birmingham Mississippi that was bombed in sixty-three.”  Spike Lee’s images flooded my head. I felt a jolt of rawness I’ve come to know in the vulnerable moments since my husband was in the hospital a couple weeks ago.  I looked at him. “Four  young girls died that day.

Spike Lee's film

Is this the remains of the building? God.” He nodded. Spike Lee’s documentary 4 Little Girls released in 1997 hurt my heart. I could hardly watch it after the moment of the bomb.

The press carried words something like this: On a quiet Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, four little black girls prepared their Sunday School lessons in the basement of the church. In the same basement sat a bomb placed by segregationists, designed to kill and maim in protest of the forced integration of Birmingham’s public schools….

for Addie McCollins

 

These photos are dedicated to Denise McNair (11), Addie McCollins (14), Carole Robinson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14), the four young girls whose death marked a turning point for Civil Rights in America.  Never forgotten.

From: Birmingham Sunday by Langston Hughes

Four little girls

Who went to Sunday School that day

And never came back home at all—

for Carole Robinson

… Four little girls

Might be awakened someday soon

By songs upon the breeze

As yet unfelt among

Magnolia trees.

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dedicated to Cynthia Wesley

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Sally Magdy Zahran ~ 1988-2011

10 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by in Announcements, Events, Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry, Sally Magdy Zahran, Uncategorized

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Sally Magdy Zahran

…I would smooth your life in my hands,

Pull you back. Had I stayed in your land,

I might have been dead too

For something simple like staring

Or shouting what was true….

Words from  a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye “For the Five-Hundredth Dead Palestinean, Ibtisam Bozieh”

It’s one thing to see videos of the square in Cairo, but another to put a face to the violence which flashes like a lightning storm here and there, taking precious human life.

There is just one letter in Arabic that separates the words “witness” and “martyr.” Let’s imagine Egypt as a country of witness for democratic change instead one whose streets splash red with the blood of martyrs!  ~May it be so.

I stared at the vibrant photo – the face of Sally Zahran, age 23, smashed on the back of the head with a baseball bat in Egypt on Friday evening, January 28th by political thugs. That would be Friday morning California time, during the time I drove to the hospital to visit my husband who was recovering from surgery. Or maybe I’d arrived and bent down to kiss my living, breathing beloved (who grows stronger every day.)  My attention was not in Egypt.

Sally grew up in Cairo and was working as a translator there. During the unrest she had traveled far south to Sohag, where her father is a university professor. The small city on the west side of the Nile gets 3,804 hours of sunshine a year according to Wikipedia.

She was never an activist, and had not taken part in political protest. Sohag has both Coptic Christians and Muslims. Magdy may be a Coptic name, connecting Sally to this tradition which links to Prophet Muhammad  by means of his beloved Mariya, the Copt, mother of his son, Ibraham.

“She felt it would be safe to join the protests. So many others were going out on Friday,” said her friend Aly Sobhy.  “She was loved by all who knew her.”

some who have died in Egypt

See “Egypt Remembers” page on line:  <http://1000memories.com/egypt> shows photos and a word or 2 about the dead – nearly all under the age of 30, now martyrs to the cause of democratic change in Egypt.

May this terrible situation be resolved soon.

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Joe Milford Poetry Show – Tamam Kahn guest poet!

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

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

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Saturday afternoon I was lucky to be the guest poet on a podcast of The Joe Milford Poetry Show. I am honored to be listed in the show archive with poets I admire: Forrest Gander, CD Wright, Tony Hoagland, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, Jo McDougall, Franz Wright and others.

Joe has an easy-going manner that makes it feel like the two of us were having a cup of something at a southern coffeehouse with comfortable chairs. Actually, I was in my office in California and he was in Georgia. The podcast is available to download, but since it is long –– an hour and a half –– I’ll share some highlights here.

I mentioned that I had spent the last year speaking about the wives of Prophet Muhammad and the misconceptions about Islam held by many Americans. Now I had a chance to read from the 70 poems in my book, Untold, and talk about poetry.

I spoke of the “prosimetrum,” a mysterious word very few people know. This word was a gift from Fred Chappell, when I needed a format for my book: a narrative with lyric poems dropped into the prose. Joe mentioned the Japanese version. I brought up author, Boethius.

I was glad to mention that the hadith (incidents and anecdotes of Arabic history about Prophet Muhammad and his companions) is full of what poets call “prompts,” vivid keys that open the container which holds back the flow of words in many of us. I started this part with a poem I’ve never read publicly. The prompt is: “I have no urge for husbands, but I want Allah to raise me up as your wife on the Day of Rising.” These are the words of Sawda. Here’s the poem:

up until the Day Of Rising

Sawda dreamed Muhammad

stepped on her neck; his instep

soft, the pressure firm

and it meant yes, this seal, this stamp

of God’s Prophet. They say

that his grief that year ran deep

his need, a woman who could

keep his house and school his girls —

the widow Sawda?

Oh Lord, she thought, am I to marry such as he!

Dawn does not come twice

to wake any woman

but once she woke, Sawda came

to rule his hearth,

the big, unmigratory wife

with the sloshy walk. She left a wake.

Her footprints pressed down

deep into the soil when she walked out.

She’d puff her cheeks with effort,

find a doorframe she could lean on.

Her nights-with-Muhammad

lessened, moved to storage,

and were abandoned to ‘A’isha

as she lagged behind.

The word divorce swam                                  

in her brain; she feared

a life apart from him.

As for her faith, she held it,

made ablution from a pail,

drew her wet hands over her hair,

but bowing down? Well then,

her knees might fail her

or a nosebleed start. She trembled,

sucked on dates and rolled her eyes:

I have no urge for husbands, but I want Allah

to raise me up as your wife on the Day of Rising.

Muhammad laughed. He saw

she was on her laborious way up,

and who would wish to stop her?        <>     <>     <>

I spoke of my good friend, poet Wendy Taylor Carlisle, who read every word of my book and offered many suggestions – which made the writing much better. I read a poem she is fond of – owner’s manual: the howdah: <https://completeword.wordpress.com/poems/>.

I think Joe and I did an good poetry show, especially under the circumstances. He admitted to a sore throat and a migraine, and I had just left my husband recovering from surgery, at a hospital in San Francisco. Thankfully he is home now and healing well. My thanks to Joe for making this happen.  Here’s the link : <http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com/&gt;

Mentioned by Marcia Z. Nelson

06 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Marcia Z. Nelson, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Something would not let me celebrate until I saw the words in print, the list. I’m a person who trusts my eyes more than my ears. For over 24 hours I thought I was an author on the top 10 list of religion books of 2010 from Publisher’s Weekly! I did mention it to my husband, Shabda, who announced it to 60 or more people. They cheered. But it didn’t feel right. Today I found page 5 with the real list. Untold is not listed. I’m reminded of my friend, song-writer Robbie Long, who had a song picked up by Whitney Houston in the day when she was nearly as popular as Lady Gaga. He could buy a house and go on vacation with the money that came with this kind of exposure. At the very last moment a decision was made to cut the song from the album, the song Whitney Houston had already lent her voice to…

The title of the radio show: A year in Books: What’s Hot (December 30, 2010.)

Here’s what happened. My friend, author Lea Terhune, heard a program called “Interfaith Voices” out of Washington DC. She wrote me that Untold was mentioned so I found the podcast.

Host, Maureen Fiedler, was interviewing Marcia Z. Nelson, Religious Review Editor of Publisher’s Weekly. “How do you decide on the top 10?” She is asked. “Twenty-five reviewers offer a review of merit, a starred review of the best from 250 or so books reviewed by PW over the last year.” The book must be “distinctive, well-written, and surprising.” Nelson goes on to mention three or four of the chosen books. This is followed by Fiedler’s questions about trends, then books on Islam. Without the list to refer to, I wrongly assumed we were still on the subject of top ten books. The next question was: “How about books on Islam?” Deepak Chopra’s Muhammad “was an interesting pairing of subject and author.” “Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad –– what was remarkable about it was how the writer incorporated poetry as part of her narrative. The book was really very distinctive.”     I’d call that an honorable mention, especially those words from Marcia Z. Nelson.

As for this… dream on!

The Publisher’s Weekly Top Religious Books of the Year 2010

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion ~ Gregory Boyle

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India ~ William Dalrymple

Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest ~ Adam Elenbaas

The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam ~ Eliza Griswold

Hannah’s Child ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years ~ Diarmaid McCulloch

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us ~ Robert Putnam and David Campbell

Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith ~ Stephanie Saldaña

Hillel: If Not Now, When? ~ Joseph Telushkin

Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference ~Desmond M. Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu

Poet Sarah Lindsay

21 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by in eating poetry, Poetry, Sarah Lindsay

≈ 1 Comment

Twigs and Knucklebones has not arrived yet. I was supposed to pick up Sarah’s poetry book after my reading at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, but I forgot, so they are sending it. I want to offer a couple of Sarah Lindsay’s wonderful poems and promote her yet-unread book because I love the writing. She is a very modest individual. When I asked what she did to celebrate winning the Lannan Poetry Award in 2009 (which came with a sizable honorarium) and she told me she and her husband went out for Chinese food and she took one work day off a week. We met at my Barnes and Noble book reading in Greensboro the beginning of November. She sat in the audience and smiled at me. I didn’t know who this woman was, but my friend, Fred Chappell had brought her to the reading to meet me. We had tea afterward. Here is a poem.

In Angangueo

She was in Mexico for some paper chain of reasons,

same way she landed anywhere in her days of plenty—

so many languages to pick up, countries to travel through,

mouths to consider kissing, and she could

walk all day, eat anything, add hot sauce,

ask for money from home without reckoning,                    

wake at noon and stretch without pain.

Then after one ridiculously cold night—

“It’s never like this,” the guide said—

she stood knee-deep in monarch butterflies

and shivered, once. Not from cold; maybe

from acres of crepe wings stiff in a low breeze,

antennae against her shins.

Little boys in drifts of dulling orange were trying

to pack balls of wings to throw at each other;

she thought perhaps she wouldn’t have children.

Or guides, like this one who soothingly repeated,

“The monarchs are sleeping.”

Sarah talks about her writing time in an audio “From the Fishhouse.” “I write on weekend afternoons. Before I write, I wash dishes… something regulated and low key that… keeps my body busy so that the mind can settle into hearing only the poem. I get all of the notes together that I’ve accumulated over a week or two, then I start washing dishes, going over what I’ve got in my head and more lines start coming. …I have to dry my hands and make slightly damp notes on the paper and by the time all of the dishes are done I go to the desk and there is no question of confronting a blank piece of paper…”

Small Moth

She’s slicing ripe white peaches

into the Tony the Tiger bowl

and dropping slivers for the dog

poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall

when she spots it, camouflaged,

a glimmer and then full on—

happiness, plashing blunt soft wings

inside her as if it wants

to escape again.

Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1958, the poet Sarah Lindsay works as a copy editor and proofreader in Greensboro, North Carolina. She is the author of Primate Behavior (Grove Press Poetry Series, 1997) which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Mount Clutter (Grove Press Poetry Series, 2002); and Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). She plays the cello with friends in a quartet that is sometimes a trio or quintet, and lives with her husband and small dog among toppling piles of books. <>

Brenda Hillman and Bob Haas @ Toby’s Feed Barn

02 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Brenda Hillman + Bob Haas, Events, Poetry, Untold, word-dancing

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Way back in September, Brenda Hillman and her husband, one time Poet Laureate of the USA, Robert Haas, read at a favorite local venue – Toby’s Feed Barn. Bob and Brenda are two of my favorite poets. It was a spirited occasion celebrating and fundraising for the local bookstore, Point Reyes Books. Add a hundred or so poetry lovers, plenty of chairs, books for sale, an old milk can or two, and bales and bales of straw – and you have it. I bought tickets ahead of time and brought my husband, Shabda, and friend, Kyra, with me. The Barn was cozy and smelled sweet and dry. I gave a copy of my new book, Untold, to Brenda, with the message that I didn’t need anything from her, just wanted her to have it. I’m a fan and have several of her wonderful books of poetry. Practical Water is her newest. You can catch something of the subtlety and originality of her thinking and poetry here.

From Practical Water

What does it mean to live a moral life

It is nearly impossible to think about this

We went down to the creek

the sides were filled

with tiny watery activities…                                                 

An ethics occurs at the edge

of what we know

The creek goes underground about here

The spirits offer us a world of origins

Owl takes its call from the drawer of the sky…

It’s hard to be water

to fall from faucets with fangs

to lie under trawlers as horizons

but you must

Your species can’t say it

you have to do spells & tag them

uncomfortable & act like you mean it

Go to the world

Where is it

Go there  ~

Bob read “Poem for Brenda,” with the line  “..kissing, our eyes squinched up like bats…” and told the story of how he un-invited poet Robert Pinsky and his wife (after planning to dine with them) when Brenda spontaneously agreed to come over for their first date – years back. I came home with Bob’s 2007 book Now and Then, The Poet’s Choice Columns 1997-2000, Counterpoint Press, Berkeley. For those of us that love poetry, this is a great read. It consists of columns he wrote as Poet Laureate, and I have a marker at every 3 or so of more than 100 small essays for the Washington Post as a column called, “Post’s Book World.” It was syndicated all over and went continued four years. Here’s a sample:

July 19 “Postmodern –experimental poetry– has been for the last fifteen years or so trying to figure out how to wriggle out from the sort of direct, personal poetry that the generation of Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich made… it was time to do something else.” (The new poetry he describes as…) “an effort to subvert narrative, undermine the first person singular, and foreground the textures and surprises in language rather than the drama of content.” His example is Susan Wheeler. Haas writes, “Sometimes it seems that Wheeler is trying to marry The Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense to Victorian nonsense verse.” From “Shanked on the Red Bed,” The perch was on the roof, and the puck was in the air./ The diffident were driving, and the daunted didn’t care. <>

[I’m glad to be back writing this blog again, with hopes that those looking for information on my book Untold can find the right buttons above.]

UNTOLD: Author Interview

13 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, bookstores, Marrakech, Morocco, Poetry, Sufi, Untold, Updates

≈ 8 Comments

Recent news about UNTOLD:

~ UNTOLD won an International Book Award for 2011.

~ UNTOLD was translated into Indonesian and may be in bookstores there as “Untold Stories,” Kaysa Publishers, and is being considered by Garnet Press, UK.

Monkfish Publishing House interviews Tamam Kahn (2010 interview):

Q: What prompted you to write about the wives of Muhammad?

Tamam Kahn: As I traveled in North Africa and the Middle East, I felt authority and earthy power from the women who recited sacred words and sang poetry about Muhammad and his family. I wanted to discover if Muhammad’s wives had that same fierce, elegant energy. I began to read about them. I found that – according to traditional history – they did.

Q: Why do you feel this information is valuable or necessary at this time? What does it have to teach us?

Tamam Kahn: This book is meant to balance History and Her-story.  My wish is that the women in these pages may emerge as vivid individuals vocalizing the first years of what came to be Islam; that they will replace the stiff and submissive stereotypes the media often displays. In this book, we see that Muhammad was married to women born into Jewish, Christian and pagan faiths. “Untold” may inspire us to be curious and keep a flexible attitude, and if we do, we may discover all people have the same hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments.

Q: Do you consider yourself a Muslim?

Tamam Kahn: I would call myself a spiritual seeker who regards Islam as the path of peaceful surrender to the One. For me, a Muslim is a person who walks that path. This was the “Islam” embraced by the women I write about. I am a follower of the Message of Divine Unity as exemplified by the great Sufis such as Rumi, Hafiz, and Rabi‘a of Basra. They carry a sacred outlook not limited to the form, the time, or the place.

Q: How have Muslims responded to your research and publication?

Tamam Kahn: A California Muslim woman hosting a local radio show wrote me that Untold brought these women to life in a way that no standard biography did. Through the poetry, she now imagined them as real flesh and blood women who were courageous, jealous, and fierce – in a very human way. For those who question my right to write about the Prophet’s wives, I would say I have great respect for each woman and admiration for the life they shared. That respect has opened doors that made this book possible.

Q: Does your book have a message for Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: As-salaam ‘alaykum. This book greets you on the path of peace. Come and enjoy the stories of your Prophet and his family.

Q: Does your book have significance for non-Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: This book is about a forgotten piece of history that needs to be brought out and honored. But for me it is not about Muslim and non-Muslim. It’s about our human family and the strength of women. This book may bring ease to a mother whose children attend school with Muslim children, the shopper served by a grocery checker in a scarf, the office worker whose boss has a Muslim name. CNN tells us that nearly one in four people in the world today is a Muslim, although Fox Network said it was one in five.

Q: How has the process of researching, writing, and publishing Untold changed your life?

Tamam Kahn: I’ve spent my life changing my life, so this is just another chapter.  There is a big difference between holding a manuscript and reading from your own book. This book seems to have “a life of its own.” I feel like I’m just tagging along. The directive that these women need to be known is an important one. From the opening poem: “I am here with a message: conversation with these women will never end.”

Q: Can you tell us about the research for Untold?

Tamam Kahn: I was hooked as soon as I began to read contemporary authors, Karen Armstrong and Martin Lings. From there I went to the oldest sources such as Ibn Ishaq. I traveled to Syria and received my own library card from the Al-Azar National Library in Damascus. When I’d researched and written a few chapters, I met with Islamic Scholar Arthur Buehler back in America, and he was moved by what I was doing and offered to help, not only by correcting the Arabic, but also suggesting early scholarly material that was respected in the genre of what is called “the hadith literature.” In that way I had the advantage of an academic checkpoint.

Q: Talk about the form you use in this book – narrative prose interspersed with poetry.

Tamam Kahn: At one point I had seventy poems and notebooks of research on the wives and daughters of Prophet Muhammad. I thought I’d find someone to write the back-story. I asked the wonderful master writer and Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Fred Chappell, what he would do if he were in my place. He suggested a “prosimetrum.” No one I knew was familiar with that term. It was used by Boethius in the fifth century – in his Latin Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius placed poems – each like a tiny well – in the prose narrative thread. The Consolation influenced Western Medieval thought, Dante and Chaucer. The form is generally not in use today, but it served my purpose beautifully!

Q: Who should read this book?

Tamam Kahn: This book is for anyone who wants to transcend stereotypes about Islam. Untold paints this early history with a bold, broad stroke, including Prophet Muhammad’s close and colorful contact with Pagan, Jewish, and Christian women who became his wives. Like Reading Lolita in Tehran, Untold depicts Muslim women in a new light, with focus on their intelligence and creative outlook. Book clubs will find this is an optimistic book that empowers women –– the ones who are in it and the ones reading from it! After studying Untold in an Islamic Studies class, one student was inspired to write a term paper about the first wife, Khadija. I leave a trail of research markers, so the book can be enjoyed as simple biography or questioned and investigated further. Untold is for people who discover that they want to know –– who are these women?

For more information or to arrange an interview with Tamam Kahn, please contact: <tamam@completeword.com> 


The LEGO and the written word

12 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by in Legos, Poetry, WS Merwin

≈ 2 Comments

“The Sheila Variations” has more Biblical legos

It is LEGO time again. I need to blog this subject once a year, so here it is, poetry and pictures. What got me going was the lego jewelry on the cover of Datebook, SF Chronicle today. What? lego jewelry? Lets see. some nice pieces.

Emiko Oye: Peppermint bracelet

bracelet made of heads…

Blues Brothers?

But now it is important to bring in the written word and honor the LEGO with another creative angle. I’ll start with an astounding piece which the Poetry Foundation recognized on its web site, move on to William Merwin in his strange union with LEGO, and end with the poetry of two young people whose poems were on the web.  Lego minestrone!

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This is it. The classic lego visual and written piece from the Poetry Foundation. It is a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the LEGO patent.

The Great Order of the Universe: a poem by CHRISTIAN BÖK

TheGreatOrderOfTheUniverse

NOTES: “Using a conceptual strategy reminiscent of Sol LeWitt, the image enumerates every possible way of combining two LEGO bricks, each with eight pegs. The caption consists of two texts: the first, a translated paragraph from a volume by Democritus; the second, a transcribed paragraph from the patent by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. The two paragraphs are perfect anagrams of each other. (a word, phrase, or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters: silent is an anagram of listen).   Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).Poetry Foundation Archive

<>    <>

WS Merwin, who is now the poet laureate of the United States has written a poem for The Lego Poem.

This is a repeat from my earlier post: The Lego Poem and Merwin (June 9, 2009),

Merwin’s poem is called “To the Book” contained in a pop-up book called The Lego Poem with inkjet lego designs by Kyung Min Lee. The work seeks to examine “how the interpretation of a language can change the cultural aspect of the poem.” I want to look inside, but I can’t. The book is Cloth bound with cut-out windows on front cover. Signed by the artist. Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, 2007, Chicago Il. Then I searched the internet and found the poem:

to the book     by W.S. Merwin
Go on then
in your own time
this is as far
as I will take you
I am leaving your words with you
as though they had been yours
all the time
of course you are not finished
how can you be finished
when the morning begins again
or the moon rises
even the words are not finished
though they may claim to be
never mind
I will not be
listening when they say
how you should be
different in some way
you will be able to tell them
that the fault was all mine
whoever I was
when I made you up

<>    <>    <>

Legos   By Adam K., Kailua, HI
Red blue yellow
Jonny Depp movie poster
colors of the rainbow
in geometric shapes
merging into perfect structures
colossal constructions
little men encased in cold plastic
tiny heads with blank features
stiff and blocky with robotic movements

square and small

Glen Stoner + his lego hat

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“My Legos”   by Andre

In a cabinet
in my room
many different LEGOS
I have blue, green, red, white, pink, yellow, orange, brown and gray Legos.
Sometimes my Dad buys them
and sometimes my grandmother.

The End.

Bookstores and Radio Interview

04 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by in Events, Monkfish Books, Poetry, Untold, Updates

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The month of August is here. That means UNTOLD, the new paperback publication from Monkfish Books, is on its way to bookstores. Publisher’s Weekly releases a good review on Monday August 9. From the review: The unorthodox devise [the prosimetrum – narrative with poems] becomes, as only poetry can, an illustrative window into early Islam and everyday Arabian life 1,400 years ago. Kahn points out that many of Muhammad’s reforms were unique for their time and benefited women…

Caroline Casey will interview me on KPFA radio August 19 at 2 pm. I begin what my publisher calls, “the Bookstore Tour.” It would be wonderful to see familiar faces and meet my friends from cyberspace.

Book Passage in Corte Madera starts things off on Sunday, August 22 at 4pm.

Copperfields in Sebastapol is hosting me Tuesday, September 9 at 7pm.

Later on, October brings an evening at Books Inc. on Fourth Street in Berkeley on Tuesday, 7pm October 19; and Fields Bookstore on Polk Street in San Francisco 8pm on October 21. I’ll be in Seattle September 16-21, Denver on October 28, and North Carolina in November (see tab above that says: BOOKSTORE TOUR): New York and Portland in the spring. Info on those bookstores will follow. Thank you for your good will and hope to see you in book-book land.

Thanks for bearing with the blog billboard. I’ll return to articles of interest soon. ~

Words and Redwoods

27 Tuesday Jul 2010

Posted by in Poetry, Sufi, word-dancing

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I just returned from teaching a poetry class for a week in the woods of Mendocino. It felt wonderful to be among words and redwoods, opening to both. Here are some thoughts from Dorianne Laux, a wonderful poet. Years ago at Flight of the Mind, [a woman’s writing retreat in Oregon] I studied with her:

Dorianne Laux  Why do I write?

…I work to find my subject, something I can sink my teeth into. I live for that flaring up of language, when the words actually carry me, envelope me, grip me. And all the above is why I read poetry, to hear the truth, spoken harshly or whispered into my ear, to see more clearly the world’s beauty and sadness, to be lifted up and torn down, to be remade, by language, to become larger, swollen with life.

I write to add my voice to the sum of voices, to be part of the choir. I write to be one sequin among the shimmering others, hanging by a thread from the evening gown of the world. I write to remember. I write to forget myself, to be so completely immersed in the will of the poem that when I look up from the page I can still smell the smoke from the house burning in my brain. I write to destroy the blank page, unravel the ink, use up what I’ve been given and give it away. I write to make the trees shiver at the sliver of sun slipping down the axe blade’s silver lip. I write to hurt myself again, to dip my fingertip into the encrusted pool of the wound. I write to become someone else, that better, smarter self that lives inside my dumbstruck twin. I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.

<>

…When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking            

outward, to the mountains so solidly there

in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea

Mevlevi Sema

that was also there,

beautiful as a thumb

curved and touching the finger, tenderly,

little love-ring,

as he whirled,

oh jug of breath,

in the garden of dust?

<>  <> excerpt from

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does it End ~ by Mary Oliver

-from Why I Wake Early (2004)  <>