“The world isn’t fair, Calvin.””I know Dad, but why isn’t it ever unfair in my favor?”― Bill Watterson, The Essential Calvin and Hobbs

“Maybe yes, maybe no, fairness isn’t always so…” These words I stuck on my fridge from my friend Hayat Rubardt started this.

Unfair: not based on or behaving according to the principles of equality and justice: unjust · inequitable · prejudiced · biased · discriminatory · one-sided · unequal · uneven · unbalanced · partisan · partial · skewed · undeserved · unmerited · uncalled for · unreasonable · unjustified  (Dictionary.com)

Frequently parents hear the voices of their children age four and up saying, “That’s NOT FAIR!” My granddaughter, Oona, cries big tears when she says the word, UNFAIR, followed by a sound that explodes like an explanation mark that hurts her mouth. There can be a kick or something thrown. Fairy tales in children’s books, often begin with unfairness and triumph at the end, like Cinderella restoring fairness as her foot slides into the glass slipper. A poem should show, not tell, as in this beautiful section by Naomi Shihab Nye from So There:

Because I would not let one four-year-old-son

Eat frosted mini-wheat cereal

Fifteen minutes before dinner

He wrote a giant note

And held it up

While I talked on the phone

LOVE HAS FAILED

Then he wrote the word LOVE

On a paper

Stapled it twenty times

And said

I STAPLE YOU OUT…

∇  ∇  ∇  ∇  ∇    ∇  ∇  ∇

My father was a lawyer and his father was too. I remember he gave a good deal of attention to the word “fairness,” attentive to how it felt to my sister and to me. So did my son Solomon. When I told him it was too stormy for him to drive the car (he was 15 and had a permit) He countered with how it was more than unfair, unreasonable even, followed by words for the defense, “Don’t you want me to be able to drive in all weather conditions?” My logic rarely stood up to his, so I said, “It doesn’t FEEL right to me.”

“You could say to the universe: this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn’t it? Sorry.” ― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Time

The Dictionary “Fair” moves from “free from bias” to “likely” to “bright and sunny” to (#22) “Archaic: A beautiful or beloved woman.” Fair meaning “beautiful” is an old German word of origin: fagar.  “Mirror, mirror on the wall,/ who is fairest of them all?” The answer was enough to drive one woman to poison another. FAIR can mean light in color, especially blond: fair hair. It means light complexion: fair skin. Not so good in an era of equality for women. Unfair, in fact. Although Audrey Hepburn was a brunette…..

I spent hours recently going through scores of poetry books, looking for poems using FAIR or UNFAIR. Here’s one. Gerald Stern in his poem The Dove’s Neck has “Fair or not fair” on the top line of the second page in an uncorrected proof of his book, LAST BLUE. I was lucky to find them, although to take a piece of a Gerald Stern poem is like extracting a tooth. It works so well with the other words and ideas it seems wrong to mess with the over-all structure.

…I lay in a field of daisies and clover… practically

sleeping, a short drive east of Ohio, near the abandoned

coal mines, half a century

after the grass had hidden

the disgusting earth including,

fair or not fair, the anger

for all I knew, underneath that

field which seemed to tilt

in such a way that stretching

my arms and legs the flowers were

always there and the wind

was always blowing, one of

my bitter personal heavens.

 ∇   ∇   ∇   ∇ ∇ ∇   ∇ ∇ ∇

Although I know it’s unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.      Steven Dunn.

I’ll end with a poem from a favorite moment in my life. I was at San Miguel Poetry Week years ago, in small Q & A with W.S. Merwin. I had never met him before, or heard him read, although I read his poems for years. I raised my hand and asked how we can tell what needs to be told. He looked right at me and recited this sonnet by William Shakespeare:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I’ve “finished” my poetry book on Fatima, daughter of Prophet Muhammad. There still remains the fine edits and that page (paragraph? sentence?) where you mention all the poems in this collection have been published. All the awards, etc.

Now there’s that reading I’ve been wanting to do, the tidy pile of books by my bed-table… outside exercise such as strolling the trails on Mt. Tam with my friends, the ones I’ve been saying for five years — can’t, working on a new poem…. The movies I’ve been wanting to see, but put haven’t. Poetry came first.

What about my prayers to let me just finish this book before death or a major health concern interrupts my concentration? Do other writers do that?

At this point I’m still alive and just can’t concentrate to make those minute, squirrel-y corrections. I can’t see either the forest or the trees. Or smell the roses—which aren’t in the forest, anyway.

Oh, yes, I remember this territory from my first book. The Valley of the Shadow of What-Did-I-Waste-the-Last-Ten-Years-Doing? This time it was five years.

Then there was my husband’s cousin’s wife, who mentioned her book to me. The one that took a week to write back in the 70’s, translated into dozens of languages, sold over a million copies, and has supported her for years. She told me this at our kitchen table. That small, self-help book. No endnotes or bibliography. Simple. A great success!

I spent a jittery weekend compiling possible open submissions posted on the internet. The names are changed— well, you understand.

Collision Press: The winning manuscript will receive a cash prize of $1000, publication in the next summer, and a complimentary copy of the winning book. The judge reserves the right to declare no winner. Must be postmarked by September 30. Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Non-refundable reading fee of $25.Unspoken message: due to the heavy volume of submissions, and the enormous slush-pile, the chance of our Judge even seeing your manuscript is very slim.

Cataplexy Press (I looked up the word: Pathology. a condition characterized by sudden, brief attacks of muscle weakness sometimes causing the body to fall helplessly, that is usually triggered by strong emotion) Our Submissions process is under the guidance of an international team put together by the former editor of a prominent Israeli publication. At this time, it is best not to mention the journal name or hers. She has promised to be fair and unbiased.

Fat City Press does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Submissions. Send a Book Proposal only. After 6 months if we are interested, we will notify you to send the book manuscript. (Spoken message) You should keep in mind we have a long line of books already scheduled for publication.

Grannie and Gramps Press. Finally, a publisher who appreciates you as an older writer. We welcome your submissions, but ask that you contact us only if you are in good enough physical shape to attend readings, and publicity events should we publish your book. Must be postmarked by August 30. Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Non-refundable reading fee of $20.

If you are about to write your first book, don’t let this discourage you. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, even though it may just be an LED. Keep the Faith (KTF).

I had a vivid, delicious dream about POET, Robert Bly. I have taken classes from him and met him briefly. In the dream we were friends. We were in the car, Shabda, Robert and I, and I was crying with delight and saying, why did it take us so long to connect? He and Shabda had just sang a little, harmonizing some beautiful piece of music and it opened my heart, and woke me up, so I could remember the dream and write it down. We had been at a conference, somewhat boring, and Robert wasn’t surrounded with eager people — he and Shabda were just laughing over spiritual jokes.

The clock said four AM. I went back to sleep and dreamed Robert into my suddenly expanded writing room… He was just smiling, as if we had all the time in the world, sitting there in a big comfortable chair that holds him in his vastness – not large size, I mean his energy body, though he is taller than I am. I remember him bending slightly as we walked together at the Dodge Poetry Fest years ago, and I asked him, “Tell me something I need to know about writing ghazals.” “Exagerate,” he replied. “Don’t say 100 birds, say a thousand or a million.”

 I had my back to him, struggling to find my favorite poetry books— the ones I felt we both liked. In the dream my books were scrambled, not where I keep them in sections. I kept mentioning authors—

Mahmoud Darwish If I Were Another, with the beautiful translation by Fady Joudah: Like a Hand Tattoo

 

…He said: We’ll walk even to the last fraction

Of life, even if the paths let us down.

We’ll fly, as a Sufi does in the words… to anywhere.

I mentioned Bly’s Ghalib translations: Lightning should Have Fallen on Ghalib. “Why would you smile so mischievously in my dream?”—Ghalib. The lightning struck ME— Tamam! I am telling him how I found a beautiful quote from Ghalib and posted it with pictures of his shrine I had just visited in India. In my haste, I forgot to mention the translator’s name. I wrote an introductory note to Michael Sells that week. He replied that he loved my translation of Ghalib…. I wrote him back excusing my oversight and knew I never heard from him again. <>   Bly looked at me and said nothing.

Where were those books? Anything by Shahid Ali. From Kazim Ali:

 

Dear Rumi

…Dear Shams-e-Tabriz, I do not mourn

You spindle me, sun-thorn to the sky.

 

Adonis: An Introduction to Arab Poetics. I put that in his hand.

Oh, Robert, soon to be 88 years on this planet, I love your words! Everyone over 60 should read Talking into the Ear of a Donkey. Words of a poem from that collection:

Frogs After Dark:

…We’ve heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,

And the singer urging the low notes to come.

We’ve heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

 

There is some slowness in life that is right for us.

But we love to remember the way the soul leaps

Over and over into the lonely heavens.

 

 

Here’s the great thing about dreams— you pull at a corner of the dream sometimes, and it opens. Writing it down gives you the sound, taste, smell of the dream— just a whiff, but in this case, that’s enough. Thank you, Robert Bly.

<><  <><    <>   ><>   ><>

Among contemporary poets, I appreciate those who are willing to be vulnerable with the spiritual power of their poetry, who are clearly writing in the service of a larger goal.       Annie Finch

Phone cord, zip-line, hairlines, nylon, flip-flops fly off, mannequins, your tits — and these are from poems in two well-respected poetry journals. My eyes glaze over after the first sips of cleverness. When there is substance, I need to say the words out loud to get the music, rather than the smart style: “pork-pie hat,” “scatter-shot,” “fleshy wrecking ball.” I can’t live inside this writing — even for a short time. Not one of the poems that used these words give me that moment of an exhaled “…oh!” like this does:

 The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers…

                                    (Saint Francis and the Sow, Galway Kinnell)

 

Although this was written over 30 years ago, before the speed and short attention span of the Age of the Internet, it is timeless and open to the reader’s reflection. With his recent death, we have lost a poet who will be well-remembered. <>

 From another poet writing today:

 …You built a tower to god out of bricks and mud      

when you should have built it with breath

 

Wings will not carry you skyward

Your own body is the only mosque you need

 

The tongue in your mouth the only rock

From which you could launch yourself into heaven

                                    (Promisekeeper, Kazim Ali)

 

Kazim is a widely published contemporary American poet and associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College. I appreciate his beautiful, musical writing. <>

…May language’s language, the silence that lies

under each word, move you over and over,

turning you, wondering, back to surprise.

                        (Blessing on the Poets, Annie Finch)

 

 

 Annie has had a strong influence on my work lately. I have been in dialog with her as  I dig deeper into form in poetry. As I write poems that call up the life-rhythms of 7^th century Arabia, I am pulled toward metrics. Drumming reinforces rhythmic language. Poets like Annie Finch, A.E. Stallings, and Marilyn Hacker are my green oasis in formal writing, as they have made metrical poetry not only “new,” and brilliantly hidden in its craft, but as bright and alive as sunrise in desert sand dunes.

 More from Annie: When I experience good free verse I feel as if I am a spirit larger than the poem, contemplating it; when I experience good formal verse, I feel that I am a body smaller than the poem, inhabiting it. It’s more of a rhapsodic, physical experience. I am really enjoying reveling in the complex and variegated landscape of the physical aspects of poetry these days. And in general, more and more, I consider poetic form as a powerful spiritual tool; to write in a truly difficult form provides a priceless education in humility, patience, flexibility, self-discipline, faith, and non-attachment! 1

 This from an interview with Marilyn: I like the tension that comes from the diction of ordinary speech playing against a form. When there is an internal or external form to be worked with and worked against, unexpected and illuminating things can happen in the piece of writing.2

Sometimes I feel isolated as I practice accented and unaccented syllabics, like piano scales, focused that fluency will appear. But then last spring I won honorable mention in a literary competition in the sonnet category. A journal or two is taking my formal poems. This one was in the Women and Food issue of Adana. [It is re-edited here.] The pattern is in eleven beats: Long short, long short short, long short, long short, long short = /u /uu /u /u /u (Hendecasyllabics). No substitutions.

Fibs of vision, no food— no water. Children

cried, while little ones nursed, not even drinking.

 

Blurred it, blotted it out— reflection, logic.

Nothing worked, due to raw-edged hunger, famine…

 

…Daylight rubbed all those onion eyes for water.

Twilight pushed on a shovel, served the resting place.

            (Planned Famine, Mecca around the year 617 )

 <>   <>   <>

For more on Formal Poetry see A Poet’s Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form, Annie Finch U. of Michigan, 2013.

1.  southeastreview.org/interview-annie-finch/ (also the first quote)
2.  Interview Marilyn Hacker— Interview with Karla Hammond Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 5, #3, Autumn 1980.

I am heartbroken about the abduction in the middle of the night of Jason Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh, a month ago Tuesday. It seems he is a pawn in a larger political game in Iran. They were arrested, with no public statement of the charges. Where they are is anyone’s guess. Jason’s mother, Mary, has spoken to the media, asking for his release and saying he is on high blood pressure meds.      Naomi Shihab Nye writes in a poem:

How long can we stand it if it goes on and on?

It’s too long already…

No one hears the soldiers come at night

To pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.

 

Ripping up roots. This is not a headline

In your country or mine…

Jason was part of my son Solomon’s circle of friends from Marin Academy. They graduated in the mid-nineties. Solomon became an excellent professional DJ, Jason, a successful reporter for the Washington Post. Their close friend, Nikolai Kinski became a German movie star. Not long ago Jason’s Facebook page was filled with photos of his marriage and travels with the lovely reporter, Yeganeh, his Iranian wife. Jason held dual citizenship.

This is from a letter Jason wrote me half a year ago:

Tamam: So great to hear from you and sorry for the slow reply. I’ve been on the road quite a lot the past month and am just settling back into life in Tehran. 

It was good to see Nikolai and introduce him to my wife, Yeganeh. We figured out we hadn’t seen each other since 2005 so it was nice to just check in about everything. With my MA friends, more than anyone else, it seems that it doesn’t matter how much time passes between encounters, we’re always on the same page. 

 I was in the states for a couple of months earlier this month and stayed with Robbie (Stauder) for a few days. Do you realize he and I have been friends since we were 6 years old? 

 Those friendships have always helped give me comfort and some direction. I think about Solomon much and laugh about experiences we had together, and always appreciate how he brought folks together. 

 I’m happy about your projects, too. I think the time may be drawing near that you could visit Iran and see Fatima’s shrine in Qum, as well as other special places of pilgrimage. Let me know when you want to start exploring that… I’m sure it would be a transformative experience. 

 Yeganeh and I are starting to plan out our next moves. We hope to have her green card by early in 2014, which means we will come spend some months, probably in Marin, probably in summer. I look forward to catching up then.

 Please give Shabda a big hug from me and one for you, too.      Jason

The media is sluggish in their reporting. I post to facebook, requesting friends to keep Jason’s abduction from vanishing , as his facebook page has. Here is recent media from the New Yorker, August 15, 2014

Why is Iran detaining Jason Rezaian? By Laura Secor

 …He had reported with whimsy, insight, and deft nuance throughout the Islamic Republic’s most restrictive years for press freedom, and, in 2012, the Post hired him as its Tehran correspondent. I was happy for him, and happy for American readers, but also worried. Dual nationals—Iranian-Americans like Jason—are extremely vulnerable in Iran. They are subject to Iranian law, which is hard enough on local journalists, and, worse, their link to the United States makes them targets of suspicion in a state preoccupied with the spectre of foreign conspiracy. The Post would raise Jason’s profile….

Together with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who writes for the Dubai-based paper the National, Jason was arrested, in his Tehran home, on July 22, 2014. They have been held for three weeks now at an undisclosed location. The sequence of events is both chilling and depressingly familiar to anyone who follows Iranian affairs. The couple has not yet been charged with any crime. On August 5th, a report in a newspaper close to the security establishment limned the likely case against them. It is both patently absurd and entirely run-of-the-mill for Iran: the paper alleges that Jason and Yeganeh are American spies feeding sensitive information to Washington, and, furthermore, that they are to blame for the viral distribution of a video of Iranians dancing on a rooftop to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy.” The young people who participated in that video were arrested and forced to recant their happiness back in May. (Jason covered the dust-up for the Post, though only after the people in the video had already been released.) A televised, coerced confession from the couple seems likely to come soon.

Be FREE, JASON and YEGANEH!!  You are in our prayers.