Gino's Ghazal Blog

Industrial Pastoral

I'm (re)reading William Carlos Williams' long poem, epic poem, Paterson. Williams' poem has many dimensions, many voices, many perspectives, many types of content. It is, among other things, an homage to Paterson, New Jersey, to the Passaic Falls, to the location, its history and its people. There are historical documents, contemporary letters, transcripts of conversations, narrative interludes, and lyric reflections. I've loved this poem for fifty years, although I haven't read it for awhile. Rereading shows me how delightful, how challenging, how rewarding it is.

Williams' original design divided the poem into four books, with a kind of consistent pattern, flow, to them, following the Passaic River, following the life of Noah Faitoute Paterson, his alter ego and voice in the poem. Williams shows profound concern for poor and working people, narrating in Book II, an "Sunday in the Park," complete with young lovers and an evangelist.

On the first page of the Preface to Paterson, Williams defines his method:

To make a start,
out of particulars
and make them general,
rolling up the sum by defective means —

Williams' best-known definition of his method is also early in Paterson:

— Say it, no ideas but in things —

Williams' poetry is empirical, a "return to the thing itself." This is not to say that his poetry lacks ideas or abstractions, just to say that he expresses the general through the particular, always a good plan for a poet. If you've not read Williams' work, I strongly recommend that you do. If you have read him, I recommend a return to his pages. Even if your first contact with Williams' writing wasn't satisfactory, further acquaintance may well open new vistas to you.

Fish and Snake Poetry Anthology

A contributor to The Ghazal Page, Azam Abidov, has just released an international anthology of poetry, Fish and Snake poetry anthology, published in 2009 by Muharrir nashriyoti, in Toshkent (more familiar in English as Tashkent), Uzbekistan. The ISBN for the book is 978-9943-354-50-0. It has nicely designed hard covers in gray, silver, and white. Each page is decorated with borders depicting fish. The size is approximately 5" x 7" (13 cm x 17.5 cm), with a total of 127 pages including front and back matter.

Each poem in the anthology relates to fish or snake in some way. In "A Short Notice on the Project," Azam explains the traditional symbolism of the theme: the snake symbolizes wisdom, and the fish symbolizes transparency. The poets' national origins range from Uzbekistan to the US to Egypt to India. Each poem is presented in English and Uzbek. The anthology is part of Azam's goal of bridging "Uzbek literature and World Literature." As such, Fish and Snake poetry anthology makes a strong contribution.

As a contributor to the anthology, I won't go further with a review except to recommend it if you can get a copy.I don't have more information about ordering it. I will also quote a poem by Bahrom Ruzimuhammed, an important Uzbek poet, born in 1961.

A striped snake
passes through the dream
something whispers in the distance

it seems the devil giggles
right in the center of an open palm
a dark yellow grass
grows greedily as it springs to skies

Passes through the dream
the dream messes until it passes to the end
the color of the snake turns pale

The Best of Urdu Poetry

I've been reading two books recommended to me by Norman Darlington, whose ghazals appear in The Ghazal Page. I've already mentioned one, The Oxford India Ghalib and will comment on it again soon. The other book is also of interest to poets and to people interested in the ghazal. It is Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry, selected by Khushwant Singh and Kamna Prasad, and translated and introduced by Khushwant Singh. It is a Viking Penguin Book, published in India in 2007. It has a handsomely decorated hard cover. My copy is from the second printing, which is encouraging for the book's potential to attract an audience.

The book has a brief but informative introduction by Khushwant Singh. The poems are arranged chronologically, from Mohammed Rafi Sauda (1706-1781) to Zehra Nigah, a contemporary whose birth-date is not given. Each selection is presented with the original on the left page and the English translation on the right. The original appears in Devanagari script and transliterated into the roman alphabet. A paragraph introduces each poet.

By way of examples, here is a couplet from Ghalib's "Lament of Old Age,"

Where has the headiness of youth's evening drink gone?
It's time to get up and go, gone are the sweet dreams of dawn,

and a quatrain, "Silent Truth," by Hakim Momin Khan Momin,

There are some who remain silent
But are sunk in deep surmise,
Yes, they will speak the truth,
But when the price of truth is on the rise.

Khushwant Singh published an article about the contemporary significance of Urdu and Urdu poetry that you may find interesting in connection with this book.

Telling Stories

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick has three volumes in The Library of America, an outstanding achievement for any writer, and amazing for a "genre" writer. This post makes a brief connection between Dick's fiction and work in a different genre, The Lord of the Rings.

At the beginning of A Maze of Death, one of Dick's best novels, a character (Ben Tallchief) is travelling through space. To dispel boredom and anxiety, Tallchief watches a "visrecord" on the turntable of his "portable phonograph." The story is projected in 3-D on one wall of his spaceship. Tallchief picks the recording at random. As it happens, it plays the scene from The Lord of the Rings in which Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli encounter Gandalf the White in Fangorn forest.

Science fiction and fantasy are closely related genres, of course. My concern is the retelling of a story from one medium (written fiction) in a different medium (film) and the way these genres and media interact with our daily lives. Or my daily life, at least. Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings makes some significant changes in character, setting, and plot detail from the book, but, in my judgment, is faithful t the main themes of the novel and to its atmosphere.

C. S. Lewis says that a myth is a story that doesn't depend on being told well to be effective. A myth, in Lewis' view, may be told briefly, told at length, be told eloquently or be told poorly. So long as its essence remains, the myth will have its effect. I propose that Jackson's films retell the myth that is the core of Tolkien's novel faithfully and effectively.

I've been home alone this week, watching Jackson's films piecemeal as I eat, rather like Ben Tallchief in his space-ship playing the "visrecord." There are not many novels I could read as often as I have LOTR or many films I could watch as often as I have Jackson's version of the myth. This time around suggested a theme for a ghazal to me; below is a draft of the matla:

My eyes are not immune to the power of story.
My ears are close in tune with the power of story.

Return to Roswell

As a science fiction reader, I'm used to people assuming that I believe in, or at least am fascinated by UFOs and tales of alien encounters. If these tropes are used well in fiction (or film), of course I am. Poetry also deals with science fictional themes, of course, and The Roswell Poems, by Rane Arroyo, deals with the 1947 "crash" and its aftermath in moving and precise poems.

Recently, I wrote a brief post about this book. I've now had a chance to read it carefully: it is one of the best books of narratively interlinked poems I've read. I'm not familiar with Arroyo's other work, but on the strength of this collection, I intend to read more.

As a sequence of relatively short poems, independent structurally but united thematically, The Roswell Poems explore the effects of the crash in the New Mexican desert, following its effects on various people involved, especially Mac Brazel, the cowboy who found the wreckage and Major Jesse Marcel, a military officer involved in the investigation. The poems deal with the Roswell event's connections with other elements of American culture — conspiracy theories, Halloween, television, . . . .

Arroyo's use of language in these poems is both precisely objective and effectively expressive. Many phrases use sound devices to heighten the effect. Here's a couplet from the first poem ("Before the Hoopla: 1946") to illustrate some of the qualities of The Roswell Poems.

A week's sweat work is rewarded
with illuminated beers in dull bars.

Rather than cluttering this post with some kind of phonemic notation, I'll suggest that you read these lines aloud slowly, noting the many shifts and repetitions of sounds. "week" . . . "work" . . . "rewarded" seems especially effective to my ear.

The Roswell Poems begin before the crash and end with "A Movie Trailer for The Roswell Poems." Arroyo uses a variety of forms: couplets, an unrhymed sonnet, stanzaic forms. The poems are rich with allusions to culture both pop and "high." These illusions interweave the mythology of the "flying saucer" crash with the rest of our concerns for meaningful imagery. I recommend The Roswell Poems highly.

Haiku & Ghazals?

What do haiku have to do with ghazals? One connection is that some poets write in both forms. Joshua Gage is one of the poets who succeeds in both forms. In the past, Josh has contributed excellent ghazals to The Ghazal Page, along with some useful prose about ghazals. Now, Josh has published an impressive collection of haiku.

The collection is Breaths, published by vanZeno Press in its Professional Reading Series. Published in 2008, Breaths is a trade-sized paperback of 50+ pages, perfect-bound with a full-color cover: a professional publication in other words.

The haiku form is often misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Just consult some of the major handbooks of poetic form, for instance. If you'd like an overview of the haiku as an English form, I recommend the definition posted by the Haiku Society of America.

I highly recommend this collection whether you like haiku or not. Consider that your attitude toward haiku may be distorted by the misunderstanding so common in this country. Here are a few exemplary haiku from Breaths:

Cinco de Mayo
the moon wears
a shroud of clouds

blackout
I sit and listen
to her breathe

grey morning
a dead fish floats
on the waves of the lake

In reading these examples, please remember that haiku are intended to stimulate a train of reflections in the reader, to, in a sense, be completed as they are read. Also, it's important to recognize that haiku come from the poet's perceptions, not from sheer imagination. An experience lies behind each poem. The haiku in Breaths convey tender moments and also moments of life in an industrial city (Cleveland, Ohio) in the 21st century.

The ABC of Reading

Early in my exploration of poetry. I discovered Ezra Pound and the Imagists. Pound's poetry, translations, and criticism were a major influence on twentieth century poetry. He was, and remains, controversial for his politics, especially his radio broadcasts from Italy during World War II. His economic and political ideas, which lead him to favorably compare Benito Mussolini and Thomas Jefferson have hardly had the influence of his literary and cultural ideas or his poetry.

Here, I want to recommend strongly his 1934 book, The ABC of Reading. (My copy is the eighth printing of the New Directions paperback, published in 1960; the image is the cover of that edition.)In line with other early Modernists, Pound speaks of poetry as a "scientific" endeavor. Be that as it may, he focuses very precisely on some important elements of poetry, along with stating one-sentence apothegms, such as, ""Literature is news that STAYS news." (Yes, EP is found of using capitalization; I suspect he'd be an annoying email correspondent.)

The ABC of Reading has many provocative insights and much good advice; like all advice, Pound's should not be taken as the final word.

Pound thought of this book as a textbook, so he addresses the reader as teacher to student. I've used it as a textbook; it's a difficult sell because of Pound's dogmatism, but his precision of statement and his passion about literature carry it. About half of the book consists of "exhibits": poems by writers ranging from Chaucer to Robert Browning to Whitman. (His comments on Whitman are notoriously cranky — and entertaining.

I learned a lot from Pound. You may also.

A New Collection of Ghazals in English

A frequent contributor to The Ghazal Page, Sukhdarsahn Dhaliwal, has published a collection of his ghazals. The collection, Ghazals at Twilight: Poetry from the Heart, contains about 50 well-honed ghazals in the Persian/Urdu form. These ghazals are traditional in theme and attitude as well as in form. As such, they are an excellent example of what can be done with the form in English; they are also poems worth reading in their own right. Readers with a Romantic sensibility will find them especially appealing.

To order a copy, visit Sukhdarshan's Web page. You may also read poems from the collection there.

Since I wrote the Foreword for this collection, it wouldn't be proper for me to review it also. If someone wants to write a longer review of Ghazals at Twilight, please contact me.

On the Electronic Road: 50 Years of Kerouac

My idea is to post here at least once a week, but it's been two weeks. I plead business, but then that's not a very good excuse, really, for not doing an hour's work. (Not work: these entries are a privilege and a pleasure, not a task, not a chore.) I was having some trouble coming up with a topic, all I could think of were things I couldn't yet write about. And then . . .

. . . then I picked up the new Library of America volume of Jack Kerouac's "road" novels. This fall, as you may well know, is the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. The volume, Road Novels 19757-1960 includes On the Road, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Tristessa, Lonesome Traveler, and selections from Kerouac's journals, 1949-1954. The first three of these books I read when they were first published, and read, and read, and reread. Talked about, fantasized around, and shared with friends.

Kerouac despised the commercial trivialization of the beats, the term "beatnik," and the simple-minded criticism he received. He refused to be the spokesman for a generation of hoodlums (paraphrased from my leaky memory). Yet his writing had an enormous effect on many people, including me. I was in high school when On the Road was published. I doubt I did anything subsequently that I wouldn't have done without Kerouac's book, but I did it in a different context, with a different attitude. His writing encouraged my developing interest in Buddhism, jazz, and poetry.

A grove of locust trees in November in east-central Kansas. (Honey locust trees, with long sharp thorns but a good firm bed of leaves under them. A moonlight night, a night filled with stars. The boy under the trees, stiffly cross-legged, can recognize Orion, the dippers. He's come here fresh from reading Dharma Bums, ready to meditate. Enlightenment escapes him, as it has ever after. On returning to the lit and warm house, he does, however, scribble some verses. Kerouac has focused for him an excitement that is coded somewhere in his constitution. A pattern, a direction otherwise unavailable in rural Kansas.

I found Dharma Bums in a wonderful bookstore in Topeka, the state capitol. I don't remember the name of the store, but it was of a kind that hardly exists any more. Not a chain, not large, but crowded with books, fiction by Borges, issues of The Evergreen Review. My journeys on the road were to the closest cities of any size — Topeka, Manhattan, Emporia — seeking literary and aesthetic stimulation that the small towns ("pop. 600") just didn't have.

Well, I've wandered, and been unfair to those small small towns. In those days, I bought Plato, Thoreau, and Bertrand Russell from revolving racks in drugstores where they were displayed with romances, cowboy stories, and detective novels. Something for another entry, I guess.

I'm slowly reading On the Road. Kerouac's enthusiasm for America is delightful, his descriptions blaze with colors just like the roman candles he so famously mentioned. This novel is very well-written.

Louis Menand wrote a fine piece on Kerouac, "Drive, He Wrote," in the October 1, 2007 issue of The New Yorker. (Yes, his title riffs on Robert Creeley's best-known poem.) I recommend this piece.