Category Archives: Untold

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;

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

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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> 


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. ~

Caroline Casey’s Trickster Training Tea Party

21 Monday Jun 2010

Posted by in Announcements, Events, Untold, Updates

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...on the way to Point Reyes Station, Sunday afternoon

Today I got a computer message from Caroline Casey, my favorite visionary activist, inviting me to her Trickster Training Tea Party at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. She writes in her invitation (white on purple):

Calling all Compassionate Tricksters 
to convene in pre-Solstice back-stage Council at this cataclysmic time, to be guided by the sky story of now, that our grief may fuel our deeper dedication to a culture of reverent

Caroline Casey

ingenuity.
 The word “culture” primarily means what we grow or cultivate in the soil and, by analogy—in our souls.
 So—let all natural facts be social strategy metaphors. Let’s slow down to speed up. The more we slow water down,
 the faster it infiltrates. We gather in just that manner. So bring natural facts, and we will tease them into trickster strategy….

She shared the afternoon with David L Grimes who describes himself as Alaskan bard, musician, songwriter, storyteller, mariner, environmental activist, wilderness guide, former commercial fisherman and wandering fool. “I have howled with wolves, run from bears and co-habitated with killer whales…” You get the picture – a “Mr. Natural” trickster. David had experienced the Exon oil spill firsthand and had calming wisdom to share concerning the terrible BP disaster which it seems all of us carry these nearly 60 days, oily blotches of sorrow. He mentions that the Exon spill stopped deforestation of parts of Alaska by the timber agency, by means of Exon’s clean-up funds. He sang us a beautiful ancient-sounding ballad. He told us  to look from the earth’s perspective with long vision.

Caroline spoke. Ah, the s-l-o-w water. The slower it goes, the cleaner it gets before it reaches the ocean. We need to borrow from the intelligence of nature and slow down our lives… find a sacred cow and milk it. Let Bagwans be Bagwans.

Solstice. All solstices have traditionally been weddings, Ms. Casey tells us. This one concerns “…all that has been falsely estranged coming back together” for healing and uniting, environmentally, politically, and in ourselves as well.  [This paraphrasing from my notes is so stiff, compared to the stunningly brilliant, fluid and funny words that Caroline speaks, how she names our cultural angst, then brings in the positive, or has someone sing a song to get us away from thought, into our positive feeling places.] The audience just looks lit up, and that’s fun because when you listen to her on the car radio on the Thursday Afternoon Visionary Activist show you can’t see the faces of the other people listening. Yes, the radio show! I was there because she wrote me that she wants me to do a show with her on my book, Untold, and talk about the Prophet’s wives. We decided that August before my Bay Area Bookstore readings would be best. Stay tuned. I drove awaythinking about this: “Suck the G out of “kingdom” and blow it back out, what have you got? KIN-DOM. That’s what we want… We are all kin.

As I drove through upper Nicasio I did a bold thing. Caroline had awakened the anything-is-possible state of mind. I drove up the Nicasio driveway where I lived in a tent in 1968 in Bob and Diane Emory’s yard, just up from Lucas Valley road in the redwoods. I snapped a picture of the place where my tent was, felt that place on the earth where, years ago

tent spot, 1968

I had lived. Felt it. Then carefully turned around at the top of the steep dirt road and drove down, remembering driving down the driveway on those nights where the destination was the Avalon Ballroom, or Winterland, or the Fillmore. I heard that music all the way home.

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Untold, wordled in a cloud of words

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Poetry, Travel, Untold, word-dancing, wordle

≈ 3 Comments

I’ve discovered wordle.net! To do this, go there and paste in some text. I dropped in my promotional material and the pattern above was chosen, with the most used words appearing larger. I decided to put in selections from the chapter on ‘A’isha, with “The Battle of the Camel”  featured, and here is what appeared:

‘A'isha and The Battle of the Camel

Here is some of the text from Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad:

“Beware the barking dogs of Hawa’ab” is a phrase from the legend of ‘A’isha’s journey to Basra. In this tale, there were dogs in the town barking or howling. This caused ‘A’isha to remember Muhammad’s warning. Alarmed, she wished to turn back. But her generals, men invested in war, tricked her into going forward. Was this a story concocted by ‘Ali’s followers to discredit her? Whatever the truth, she continued, riding first to Basra, then to a place near the Tigris River where the armies faced each other and the leaders began to negotiate a resolution to the conflict. During the night fighting broke out and the truce ended ended quickly — with war. Untold, p. 44.  [This is followed by a poem]

<><> owner’s manual: the howdah

The father of this howdah is dawn with no birds. Its mother is a lost prayer. This is the story of ‘A’isha, the ride to Basra, the sidewise motion of war. It is equal parts the camel’s wobbly stride and a woman’s keen eye.

The howdah is a covered platform strapped to a camel’s back. Some facts about the howdah:

ONE.              It’s arrow proof.

TWO.             One can peer out through the slits.

THREE.         Dismounting requires that the camel kneel or fall.

‘A’isha travels inside a howdah.

When her army comes to Hawa’ab, the local dogs

set up a ceaseless howl.

Beware the barking dogs of Hawa’ab She hears him say,

“Turn back and do it now!” Were those the Prophet’s words?

‘A’isha’s generals bark and bark around her. She wishes they’d shut up. She rides on.

More things to know about the howdah:

ONE.              It’s a fairly safe observation post in a battle

TWO.            Above the battle, it’s a rallying point for the troops.

THREE.        It’s a Pandora’s Box.

A war begins and ends in hemorrhage.

Ten thousand dead and dying men surround Aisha’s tall, red camel.

What happens to a howdah during a battle:

ONE.            In a fierce battle it can become a target.

TWO.            If the camel falls, the howdah crashes from a great height.

THREE.       al Hawdaj, al Haddun! The other side claims victory.

The daughter of this story is a crushed bird. Its son is a desire for peace

folded in to that unspeakable war. This is the story of ‘A’isha

as Shahada. The story over and over, between one breath

and the next, anywhere else than this.    Any other outcome. <><>

endnotes:~ This is a phrase that may have been yelled in battle as a great animal with a howdah fell heavily al-hawdaj,– the howdah, al-Haddun! – the heavy, tumbling, fall.~ “Beware the barking dogs…” was, according to some accounts, something Muhammad had prophetically told ‘A’isha years before (hadith). ~ Shahada means witness.

pages from Untold about Zaynab b. Jahsh

One morning Zaynab opened the door to greet Muhammad and something happened between them. Some say she was wearing only a single garment, and that he closed his eyes and said, “Praised be God the Great, praised be God who turns hearts!”…. Untold, p. 49.

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The Abode, Omega, and Monkfish Books

03 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in Monkfish Books, Omega Institute, Poetry, Untold, Updates

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The Ram Dass Library at Omega Institute

First we sat on the runway as the storm broke around us, closing Dulles Airport for an hour. Finally, around 10:30 pm, we rose into cumulous towers, as lightning lit every window. Soon we viewed the storm along side the right wing – a lightshow inside a gargantuan cloud, it’s black edges swollen with rain. For a good ten minutes we flew next to this vision. The full moon rode the wing.        The next morning I opened an E-mail sent on our travel day:

…the evolutionary reset begins today 9:44 pm (East Coast time), illuminated and amplified by the Full Moon. Uranus, (lightning bolt of awakening), is activating a new evolutionary cycle as it completes its 84 year journey from Aries through Pisces- and begins again, at this moment. Big celestial event…. Uranus into Aries: spontaneous innovation, unprecedented originality, adventurous experimentation!

Shabda on the road up the mountain behind The Abode of the Message

Seven Pillars:  We traveled to Albany, New York on that energy, then drove to New Lebanon and arrived around 2:00 AM. We had come to participate in a Guiding Voices Conference of The Seven Pillars House of Wisdom. I kept turning over in my thoughts what wisdom might be. I felt it as rooted to the feminine and nature.

http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org  <> Seven Pillars exists to support the advancement of wisdom in the global culture.  By wisdom is meant knowledge that is rooted in the experience of the heart.  This is knowledge that recognizes the universe as the living expression of a sacred unity…

I took pages of notes on the two days of meetings, but I have misplaced them. Here are some highlights: Shabda and I hiked up the mountain behind the Abode, which is in the Berkshires near the Massachusetts border. We went to the place Pir Vilayat used for retreat when he was alive – The Pod. The woods were beautiful and full of delicious sounding streams and songbirds.

Here are some highlights from the conference: I connected with Paul Devereux’s talk on cosmology, and the notion of one’s place in the physical world. Dot and surrounding.

Conference of the Guiding Voices

I read from Untold, participated in a high energy evening of dance and Zikr, lead by Shabda; engaged in moments of personal sharing with members of the group; and finally was ceremonially handed a pomegranate by Janet Piedilato.

<>  Omega Institute. We met our old friend, Stephan and his lovely wife, Annette, had lunch and a golf cart tour of Omega Institute on Memorial Day.

The award-winningOmega Center for Sustainable Living

That evening I gave a reading from Untold at the Ram Dass Library at Omega with my Publisher, Publicist, and book designer present! I met Elizabeth Cunningham, Monkfish author of The Passion of Mary Magdalen.

Paul Cohen and Shabda at Monkfish

<> Monkfish Books! I met my publisher! We stayed next door to the Monkfish Books headquarters, on a beautiful property in Rhinebeck. A good time with excellent food and company!

Georgia's office at Monkfish Books

<> Our friend Wen drove us from the Abode to Rhinebeck then to the airport on Tuesday. We stopped at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and delivered Untold to the Dean of the College. I had not been there since I graduated years ago.

Tamam and Sarah Lawrence in Westlands

Through the window next to this painting I could see the New Dorms where I lived freshman year, and on the other side, the dorm at the library… where I shared  a suite of rooms with Karen Magid, next door to Bessie Huang and Nancy Houseman… where Tibor used to call up to me from the road, when he arrived on his Norton motorcycle.   In the place where I am standing in the photo below, I walked in my cap and gown decades ago…

Here I received my college diploma

Fred Chappell~ Shadow Box

16 Sunday May 2010

Posted by in Poetry, Untold, word-dancing

≈ 1 Comment

I hesitate to write about this poetry book, because I am intimated by its brilliance and inventiveness. But then I want to stand on a soapbox and shout out –Shadow Box! Yes! It’s that good. It’s also rich, deep and chewy as a California coastal mountain Cabernet, so you need to sip and savor it. Admire the color and complexity.  Fred Chappell has written embedded poems – a poem within a poem – and made it seem effortless.

Fred Chappell is the author of a dozen other books of verse, including Backsass and Spring Garden; two story collections; and eight novels. A native of Canton in the mountains of western North Carolina, he taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1964 to 2004. He is the winner of, among other awards, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, Aiken Taylor Award, T. S. Eliot Prize, and Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry eight times over.

The Foreseeing~

If he could love her less, he might succeed in seeming unaware

of those fleet changes in her she herself would never recognize,

not seeing how her shadow that had bleached until it was

a bare half-shadow, until it was the color of morning rain, seeing nowhere

signal that it will now begin to overfill (the way that sighs

overfill breathing) its edgeless contours with a serene and depthless power,

a resistless immaculate azure-like sky-shine: and though he tries,

deception fails because she is in love again, and mist-cold

fear he can no longer flee or put from him the well-intentioned lies

comes on like April’s heartless frost to wither him once more.

Now just imagine Fred reading this with his wife Susan. He reads the non-italic phrases  and she reads the inside poem. [as in this photo.]

Here is a  review from the back of the book: “In this sharply innovative collection, renowned poet Fred Chappell layers words and images to create a new and dramatic poetic form—the poem-within-a-poem. Like the shadow box in the volume’s title, each piece consists of an inner world contained, framed, supported by an outer—the two interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary. For example, the grim but gorgeous “The Caretakers” is a landscape that reveals another image inside it. Chappell also introduces sonnets in which the sestet nests within the octet. Play serves as an important component, but the poems do not depend upon gamesmanship or verbal strategems. Instead, they delicately or wittily trace human feelings, respond somberly to the news of the world, and rejoice in humankind’s plentiful variety of attitudes and beliefs. Just as an x-ray can show the inner structure of a physical object, so the techniques in Shadow Box display the internal energies of the separate works.

With this new form—the “enclosed” or “embedded” or “inlaid” poem—Chappell broadens the expressive possibilities of formal poetry, intrigues the imagination in an entirely new way, and offers surprise and revelation in sudden flashes. At once revolutionary and traditional, Shadow Box contains an Aladdin’s trove of surprises.”

<>  I met Fred in 2002 at a small workshop at UMD in Duluth Minnesota. I listened carefully to what he said. I laughed. I learned important basics about writing. I discovered trusted him more than nearly anyone with whom I had studied poetry. Then he taught at the WCU Formalist Poetry Conference in 2004. I went there just to see him. I told him I had dozens of poems about Prophet Muhammad’s Wives but no one knew their stories so I couldn’t just make a book of the poems. He wisely suggested “the prosimetrum.” I’d never heard the word but for me it was magic. I set the poems in a narrative, as Boethius did in the fifth century. I devoted several years to this. This November I will visit North Carolina on my book tour and offer thanks to my friend and  “Godfather” of Untold – Fred Chappell.

More word dancing from Mirage:

1   Somewhere sidewise lies the untitled time of earth/

before the mind becomes a work of art…

————————————————–

also recommended ~

Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You by Fred Chappell, New York, Picador Press (a novel).

Understanding Fred Chappell, by John Lang. Columbia: USC Press, 2000.

The new Untold Trailer

09 Sunday May 2010

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

≈ 2 Comments

I had this idea to create a book trailer after Diane Lockward posted one on the WOMPO poetry listserve. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would help put a face to a book, the way movie trailers give a thumbnail of the film. I talked about it to all my close tec people and gathered pix and video clips, then finally we were ready and Shabda put the ideas together on imovie. Here it is –– 4 minutes with a soundtrack mostly by Hamza El Din and even some spoken word. I think this will be useful as the Publisher and publicist get ready to send UNTOLD out into the world of bookstores, etc….

Untold: A History of… three months later

21 Sunday Mar 2010

Posted by in Naropa, Poetry, Sufi, Untold

≈ 2 Comments

Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad will be released Fall 2010 as a Monkfish Books  in paperback, available in bookstores and on Amazon at that time. ”Untold” is a biographical narrative based on actual historical material with 70 poems embedded in the prose.      <>   <>    <>   <>

from the opening poem:  who do you think you are:

…I am a pilgrim, a pen with child’s heart,

following the foremothers through

doors shut on centuries of stolen words, across

floors now hushed in Saudi cement, down

steps to the cellar filled with the Hijaz story-jars.

Unsealed, the jars open their mouths,

speak to me. I listen…..

Note from the author: Untold has been out in Limited Edition Hardcover for almost three months. I am starting to get used to having a book in my life. There are readings, most recently in Colorado: Denver, Fort Collins, and Boulder. I presented at Patrick D’Silva’s Islamic Studies class at Naropa University in Boulder, and the “Allen Ginsberg Library” there ordered the book.  That was a great delight for me, as I feel this book belongs in libraries, where curious students can investigate the nearly 20 pages of end notes and learn about these brave women, nearly unknown except in Muslim communitites.  I read in Cambridge for 70 people last weekend, and prepare to go to Arcata, California in a couple weeks. Before that, a by-invitation reading in Petaluma. The “galleys” are here, and look like my book on a diet, slim and marked with black letters, as in the photo. I begin to contact bookstores for fall and winter readings. I am working up enthusiasm for “the business of books.” Remembering that “author” has to do with “authentic.”

These untranslated women, who stood in the first light of Islam, have buried stories. Here are several: Khadija is a wealthy businesswoman who hires young Muhammad; Hafsa is saved from divorce by Angel Gabriel, Zaynab, a married first cousin, experiences a moment of passion with Muhammad, Umm Salama saves a vital peace treaty and Aisha tells of death of the Prophet. These are stories known in the Arab-speaking world but not in the West. I am fortunate to have good resources: rudimentary Qu’ranic Arabic study; scholarly guidance, travel in the Middle East, and three decades as a seeker on the path of American Sufism.

Reading in Petluma <> hurkalaya@aol.com

Comments from Distinguished Readers:

“Your book fills a great need, and does so with beauty.” Pir Zia Inayat Khan

<>”Untold is a riveting hen-house of delight, a book based on subjects our society finds endlessly confusing — marriage, matriarchy, and Muhammad. Finally, we get to meet the first women of Islam. Tamam, thank you for doing this brave book.” ~ Coleman Barks, author, The Essential Rumi.

<>”This book is a movement to remind us that the prophetic experience and revolution are inner as well as outer, and beyond time or place. The women on these pages have as much to tell us now as they did then. Tamam has created a new genre of Islamic literature. Through her poetry she draws us to the Mothers of Islam by illustrating, exemplifying, and embodying actual human beings. Her vibrant words provide a doorway to the Wives of the Prophet.” ~ Arthur F. Buehler (A.M., Ph.D. Harvard) Senior Lecturer, Islamic Studies, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand (2004–present),

<>”Untold takes us on Taman Kahn’s moving, personal journey of discovery, to unveil the hidden history of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad. The book frees the authentic voice of these women, who came from many different backgrounds and who played an essential role in the origins of Islam.  Ms Kahn steers a middle course between Western religious prejudice and uncritical hagiography by finding the poetry hidden between the lines of reported history, itself written mostly by men. As such, this book is part of a larger movement that seeks to reclaim the voices of women prophets and saints of all traditions.” ~ Saadi, Dr Neil Douglas-Klotz, author of The Sufi Book of Life and co-author of The Tent of Abraham.

<>”Swimming amid “the names of God,” Tamam Kahn has written a brilliant and illuminating book, equally awesome in the depth of its research, the grace of its prose, and the beauty of its poetic voices.  Untold should be read with joy by any reader who hopes to transcend current stereotypes about Islam.  It is a bridge between worlds.” ~ Alicia Ostriker, poet and critic, author of The Volcano Sequence, and of Feminist Revision and the Bible, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions and Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University.

“In a sustained act of spirited research and imagination, Tamam Kahn brings Muhammad’s wives and daughters out of the shadows and into the light.  The women of ‘Untold’ have at last found their perfect teller, in voices so gemlike and clear that one wants to chant them aloud, dance to them, celebrate with them.” ~ Lesley Hazleton, author, After the Prophet: The epic Story of the Shia Sunni Split in Islam.

Notes from generous readers!

“When I read the book, it made me so happy, because what you did was so brave – I’m sure I could never have done it.  But seeing you read from this book gives me a dose of courage that I now have under my belt – for later  …It opened a door onto my imagination about the women around the Prophet (saws) which brought them to life in a way that no standard biographical information had.  With your poetry, I realized that I too, could simply imagine them as flesh and blood women, with feelings of jealousy and grief and courage and fierceness and impatience.  …I thank you for opening that door for me.”  Salama Wendy McLaughlin, Host, KWMR Sufi Radio

“The prose was like sipping a sweet mint tea; delicious – then a poem would drop in like an ice cube, bringing crystal clarity and emotion, changing the experience but not the taste.” ~ Dechen

“I am amazed at your scholarship and courage to put this information out to the world.  Saadi used the adjective “brave” and I agree.  The poetry is lovely and helps me see what it was like  to be the wife of a controversial figure.  Thank you for helping me SEE. ~ Fadhilla

“I received Tamam’s beautiful book, Untold, yesterday. It is a real gem! What a treasure.” ~ Arlene

“Your wonderful UNTOLD is now in the woods of Maine. I will spread your words.” ~Henry

“The personal entwined with the historical narrative to hold the poems is so wonderful.  I didn’t know how starving I was for this until you let me taste!” ~ Basira