Poets Wha Hae

Rabbie Burns looking dandy and Scots

Poets don't stand much of a chance in the 21st century. The art of poetry has been supplanted by other mediums, and poetry itself is relegated to either ancient history or teens scrawling in margins. Sadly... because poetry is a living art, and should stay alive. Poetry is the spirit of language, and language is a fundamentally human endeavor.  In fact, I would argue that poetry is the logic of the heart. 

Let me explain!

In the days of my friend Robert Burns, poetry was living language. He communicated politics, love, national sentiment, revolutionary fervor, and much more in poems. Poetry was alive in a way that seems quaint to us but was very much a continuation of what words had been for millenia. From ancient sagas to pamphlets, poetry moved through human existence, informing and enlightening. Somewhere along the line, sometime during the 20th century, poetry ossified. The logic of the Word, the power of Logos itself, ceased. We needed to rely on a colder, more precise logic to communicate. We became newspaper men and trivia experts, and moved away from the truth of the poem. 

Logic as a formal discipline is important, don't get me wrong. Understanding mathematical logic is a great task, and I enjoy a good discourse on deductive, abductive and inductive logics as much as the next person. But poetry is a logic of words. 

We exist as creatures of narrative reality. Our stories, our words, inform the world as much as anything else we consider objective and infallible. Ideas like integrity, honor and chivalry are communicated through poetic logics, the Logos. The ability, through words and speech, to make what was unclear clear. We are stories, as much as we are anything. Humanity exists in that realm, and tells stories to frame what we are for the present and the future people. If we lose poetry as an art, or diminish it to some academic and linguistic ghetto, we diminish ourselves. 

Burns died at 37, like so many fascinating figures of history have. At 37 now myself, I think of what I can communicate and leave to my children, my students, my peers. Certainly not a Burnsian body of work, or a linguistic and cultural revival on his level. But a few words. A step in the direction of humanity, of real logos as a meaningful discourse in the world. A verse of the narrative that moves and defines us, humble though it is. 

The Blogpost of Albion Moonlight

There are so many writers and painters and musicians and artists of every stripe that have profoundly and irrevocably affected me. It would be impossible to even imagine a me that isn't shaped by art. I suppose I can see hints in my family past of what I could be without the billions of words... but they're subtle and fleeting glimpses. Not really me at all. I've been tied to words and paintings since I was conscious, and that's just a fact of my being. I like to imagine that it's been thoughtfully and reasonably, and it isn't just indulgence in cliche. Flaubert lamented that mass media would replace thought, and we would become parrots of ideas regardless of content. I hope I've avoided the worst of that, but I guess I can't exactly know. I'm a prisoner of my "received ideas," as he would possibly put it. And even in quoting him perhaps I fulfill that dangerous prophecy.

Nonetheless. The art and artists are a part of me, and I accept it even while acknowledging I'm largely powerless to change it. Especially as I near 40.

And no artist has affected me as profoundly as Kenneth Patchen.

That is not to say he's the greatest, or the most important. He's not. He's not even, like Robert Duncan or Ronald Johnson, one of the poets who altered my perception of how poetry is understood. But he's the poet who most resonated with my own idea of a life lived in art. He, like me, was inexorably linked to his one lifelong love. He was largely unrecognized during his life, but continued to create and communicate in his work. Unlike me he lived in pain and relative isolation. But even that has served as a lesson for me. I resisted the temptation, strong at times, towards misanthropy that many artists succumb to. I also had children, which provide a perspective and a joy that helps a person to find some solace in human company.

After all is said and done, I'm still more Kenneth Patchen than anyone else. I'd prefer to be a Peter O'Leary or Ezra Pound as a poet. But I'm KP.

Enjoy Lawrence Ferlinghetti's amazing elegy to him below. Hopefully someone as awesome as Ferlinghetti will someday see fit to honor me with such amazing words. But I'd take a sincere thumbs up if you're offering. Even a manly nod of approval!

An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Patchen

A poet is born
A poet dies
And all that lies between
is us
and the world

And the world lies about it
making as if it had got his message
even though it is poetry
but most of the world wishing
it could just forget about him
and his awful strange prophecies


Along with all the other strange things
he said about the world
which were all too true
and which made them fear him
more than they loved him
though he spoke much of love

Along with all the alarms he sounded
which turned out to be false
if only for the moment
all of which made them fear his tongue
more than they loved him
Though he spoke much of love
and never lived by ‘silence exile & cunning’
and was a loud conscientious objector to
the deaths we daily give each other
though we speak much of love


And when such a one dies
even the agents of Death should take note
and shake the shit from their wings
in Air Force One
But they do not
And the shit still flies
And the poet now is disconnected
and won’t call back
though he spoke much of love

And still we hear him say
‘Do I not deal with angels
when her lips I touch’
And still we hear him say
‘0 my darling troubles heaven
with her loveliness’
And still we hear him say
‘As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate ‘sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak
of childhood lies’

And still we hear him saying
‘Therefore the constant powers do not lessen
Nor is the property of the spirit scattered
on the cold hills of these events’
And still we hear him asking
‘Do the dead know what time it is?’

He is gone under
He is scattered
undersea
and knows what time
but won’t be back to tell it
He would be too proud to call back anyway
And too full of strange laughter
to speak to us anymore anyway

And the weight of human experience
lies upon the world
like the chains of the ‘sea
in which he sings
And he swings in the tides of the sea
And his ashes are washed
in the ides of the sea
And ‘an astonished eye looks out of the air’
to see the poet singing there

And dusk falls down a coast somewhere

where a white horse without a rider
turns its head
to the sea 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Scholar's Art and Manliness

"Poetry is the scholar's art."

I'm not a big fan of Wallace Stevens. But I can admit he perfectly expressed poetry with the above quote. Poetry is the art of the scholar. That doesn't mean necessarily that poetry is for academics. I'd argue the opposite, in fact. Poetry is the classic art, for scholars who wander the world with ink under fingernails and madness in their hearts. But it's the art for people who look and listen and learn from the past. It's only accessible through study. The great poets can speak eloquently about their poetics. They've read extensively, they've broken apart and dissected every aspect of words. They don't care about philology- but they've read the sections of Ulysses that speak to it. Poetry is for thinkers and scholars.

Emily Dickinson is a perfect example of this, in a sad and circumspect way. In her newly released book The Gorgeous Nothings, we see the brilliance of the poet in a way that was never possible in earlier decades. The book collects pieces of poetry and philosophy scattered across envelopes and scraps of letters sent by her to various friends and colleagues. They are written in sly interstitial spaces, and they're brilliant.

I like Dickinson's poetry. I always have. But her poems are restrained and limited. The poems we see from her are half-poems, poems from a scholar who was thwarted by the perceptions and attitudes of the nineteenth century about her gender. The most amazing work she ever did was in the margins, quite literally. Poets today have to contend with institutional issues of sexism and general ignorance, of course. But poets like Susan Howe are free to express themselves in a way poets like Dickinson never were. And seeing the amazing words written on the margins of the pages in The Gorgeous Nothings... it's a reprehensible wrong that it ever occurred.

Perched on Fire Escapes under Lights

I've written before about my affection for and occasional ambivalence about cities. Ironically, I'm currently

in the most rural place I've lived in my adult life. But more than my love of cities, I have a love of change. And a love of finding fun and interesting places to work. So perhaps it's less ironic than I think.

The funny thing is that despite my love of cities, I don't know how to really live in them. Cities are intoxicating to me. But like a lot of things that are intoxicating, I can't partake in moderation. I go broke in cities, I go insane with different restaurants, foods, people, places. I run and run and end up in serious trouble and desperately late for work. 

Here, I don't. I'm less enthralled with my surroundings (As Frank O'Hara said I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy...though I'd say coffee shop.) I hate places without sidewalks. I love nature but I don't like spending too much time surrounded in it. I'm always worried it will get on me. I like it like city people do- I hike and climb, explore... then head to a nice bistro for lunch.

One problem is that I'm really enthralled by a city that never really existed. I love old stone buildings and rattling fire escapes of some television studio past. It's the city of a person who grew up in a bland exurban town. And though I've lived in many real cities since then, and visited hundreds across the world, I've never totally left behind that image. It's false, but like the imagined cities, intoxicating.

I wonder where I'll find myself in the future. I imagine I'll have to settle down and cease wandering at some point. Will that mean a city or a town? A rural village? I'd be lying if I even pretended to have an answer. I don't imagine a Tardis will whisk me away to any of my preferred sites, 1920 London, 1947 NYC, 1930 Paris... Since it won't I'll take a page from O'Hara and "wait for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful" and point me in a direction.

Stages, Steps, Shifts...Something With an "S"

"AND study the classic books,
the straight history
all of it candid."
-E. Pound

Contrary to Pound's excellent advice, I've never been one for sustained scholarship. In fact, I've been quite critical of it, disappointed in some of the menial places it leads writing and thinking. I'm often wrong about that, and miss some great writing and thinking. I can't help but keep up the criticism, however: I think it's a general trend towards movement in my personality.

Wait, I can explain that vague comment.

I was always driven to move, to expand. I have always had a hard time staying in one place, one program... even one country. I see everything in my life as stages towards the next event. This is due to some good reasons (desire to explore, intellectual curiosity, passion for various subjects and geographies) and some bad ones (need for stimuli, tendency towards boredom, an at times critical nature). I didn't, to continue the literary metaphor that Pound used, always desire the candid and historical nature of what I was experiencing. I needed to move on, expand, see the next horizon.

Jaime and I are fond of the mental exercise where you imagine that you've won the lottery. Say you have millions of dollars. What would you do? There are several ways to play this, but Jaime and I focus on two aspects. One: Imagine you have millions, and want to use that millions to live. Two: Imagine that you have millions to live on, and you think of what you would do with your free time.

I like the second one, because it is a better exercise for planning what to do with your life. What would you spend your time doing? This works well for Jaime and I, since we're people who like to work. I guess if my goal was to lay around all day, the exercise would be a failure. But I really want to work, to do something. So, what would I do?

I would teach. I would write poetry. But most of all, I'd travel. I'd spend time going all over the world. I'd find a school in India that let me teach, a school in Japan, Brazil... I'd move. I'm not driven by money. I care nothing for money. But it'd be nice to have the freedom to move around.

So, this week I am working on applying for jobs, finding some places to teach. Maybe here, maybe somewhere else. I don't really care where. Because what I want to do is teach, write my poems, and move around. Staying in one place for years is torturous tome, for all of those good and bad reasons.

Poetry Makes You Crazy

Since 1997, I have been working on a poem. Some years I work on it for hours each day, week after week. Some years I do not touch it. It's a long, rambling, epic poem. It is my life, written down. In two important ways it is accurate.

One, it is rambling and incoherent yet contains flashes of insight and occasional nice phrasing. You have to wade through a lot of nonsense to find the gems, but they're there.

Two, it is tangential to reality while assuming it knows what is going on.

In both of these ways I resemble my two literary heroes. One is Ezra Pound, and the other is Kenneth Patchen. Now, the funny thing about this is that as people they couldn't be more opposite. Pound is a notorious figure, a right wing nut in many ways. He famously broadcast messages in support of fascist Italy during WWII, and even late in life showed flashes of anger and hatred. He repented the worst of his sins, but he remained an unpleasant man on a personal level. He was a horrible husband, an absent father. Patchen was the opposite. He was a conscientious objector during WWII, very leftist and anti-authoritarian. He was devoted to his wife, a dark and sad man but by all accounts a nice one.

What they had in common was intensity and talent. They both worked through difficult conditions, always writing and making amazing poetry. Most poetry, then and now, is worthless. Not just bad-- but a horrible affront to language. It's painful to even be near it. Good poetry is something transcendent. Good poetry is divine. I don't know if my poem is good. I think it has flashes of good. I hope they carry the poem into something wonderful. I'd hate to add to the volumes of mockery that exist as poetry now.

I'm nearing the end of this poem. (I say- though I've said it before. Maybe I'll never stop. But it feels more done than ever.)

It's long, though not impossibly so. I have 120 pages right now, and may even edit it down a little. I don't want it to be unwieldy, but at the same time I am skeptical of editing. Poetry just comes out. The me who wrote the first lines at 21 is certainly not the 34 year old me typing this today. But any editing freezes another moment. Why just make a poem for today? Certainly trimming needs to happen, and good phrases saved. But overall I think it just needs to stand. It is what it is.

Here is an excerpt. It captures the general feel of the poem, though the style tends to wander over the decades. Like me!



“I don’t like dictionaries,
they says
things like
don’t care.”

“Transition—
for instance.”





Start:

(Hi there)
in pen,
one red
doesn’t work
if it tries
black.
strangeleyl,


Go,
to end in
freedom, i
hate that
sound.
I really do,
sure so I


I that, you see eno—
to do
loss, might be
planning
there are
two doors,
and a
handle.


For ten hours,
hands pulled
inward
like
Skying.

no one gets the distinction
between everything and
nothing, no

matter how often you
teach it.

Poetry, Pain, and Lesson Plans

I'm starting the school year working with a 1st grade class. I'm extremely excited to be there, and I think I'll have a great year. It's going to be strange to work with kids this age. It's exactly the age I want, and I think I'll do well. It won't be easy; it's a tough time in a lot of ways. My philosophy of elementary school involves placing kids in situations to appreciate the world, and learn from it. My lesson plans pull from many things, but you can see my primary focus: math and poetry.

Not that I'm a math genius or anything. Quite the contrary, I am mediocre at best at advanced math. But I like it. Oddly enough. I enjoy it. I think it's important. I think math and poetry are important things for human beings to understand and appreciate. There is a difference for my classroom though: I'm good at poetry. And I hate bad poetry.

I mean I have a seething, intense rage at bad poetry. Unreasonably so. To get a better understanding of what I mean, here is what I consider good poetry. Whitman, Creeley, Rumi are all good poets. There is no particular time or region that defines good poetry. There is just an aesthetic sense, a value of the poems themselves. I don't know if I can even explain why Ryokan and Zukofsky are both good poets. I don't know if anyone can.

Bad poets, on the other hand, are plentiful. Sometimes, like Nimoy, they are people who are good at other things and think they can try poetry. (Jewel, *cough*) Sometimes, education is the problem. They are MFAs in poetry and then write. It never works out for the best.

And here is my problem. I want to introduce, to teach them to appreciate. But education and poetry have historically created monsters. I think I can say without hyperbole that most poetry journals publish horror that is ten billion times worse than the next worse thing anyone can ever imagine in the history of the universe. I'm pretty sure I'm safe in stating that.

So, I will probably be careful. I will have the kids write poems. If they produce anything as bad as most poets, I will quit. I promise. There is always math. That can't hurt anyone, right?

Ode To American Palates: The Taco

As yon penguin here does show us
the lowly taco is more 'et
When shining vegan yummies are
easier for mine mitts to get

A stew is fine, or sushi good
a delicate salad suffice
Though when hearts yearn for olden time
vegan white trash food digests nice

Some snobbish compadres may balk
at soy meat or faux sour cream tub
I maintain the joys of my youth
In pretend fowl or fake deli sub

O! To glorious day beneath
rusty bleachers in squalid hole
Devouring what my mère sent
imagined grub of Mexico.

Sufi Poems: Eight

I haven't done a post about Sufi poetry for a while. I haven't had anything especially interesting to say, perhaps, or maybe I just got a little tired and lost writing about myself. I'm inspired today to write about a couple of Hafez verses, however, in a large part because of recent late night discussions with Jaime.

I don't know what other couples with kids do; it's tough to make time to just hang out together the way you do before you have children. Jaime and I usually take a few hours after the kids go to sleep, sneak into their play room on the other end of the house, and talk. The past few weeks these discussions have become especially fruitful and exciting. I always know how brilliant and wonderful Jaime is, and how lucky I am to have her. But these recent discussions have reminded me forcefully of how necessary she is to my life.

Which brings me to the poems. A lot of our talks lately have been about religion and spirituality. We are attempting to discover the best way of introducing spiritual ideas into the lives of our kids. We've never been comfortable with mainstream ideas of spiritual things, and our own paths are strange and difficult, as true spiritual paths often are. Working in a daycare, I hear little kid conversations about God and the universe that make me deeply concerned about what my son will learn about his own spiritual path through his peers. (If you're wondering, to most kids, God is Santa/mean dad, and he randomly turns people into birds.)

As always when I am disturbed and challenged by ideas Jaime lobs at me, I look to the poems of the masters. Not surprisingly, Hafez faced a pretty awful establishment that had warped spiritual beliefs into a mockery of Truth for money and power*. He'd recognize our frustration and sadness at the current state of churches and states all too well. He wrote some amazing poems about the shackles people attempt to put on the Beloved, and how they can be overcome.

The small man build cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful rowdy
prisoners

...

Someone put You on a slave block
and the unreal bought You.
Now I keep coming to Your owner saying,
'This one is mine.'
You often overhear us talking
and this can make your heart leap with
excitement.

Don't worry. I will not let sadness possess you.
I will gladly borrow all the gold I need
to get you back.

So, we wait for some way to provide the kids with wisdom, and muddle through as best we can. They have their own paths, and I don't presume to have a perfect answer for their journey. I wish I had a small glimmer of where they need to place their feet. I suppose in trying to find some place for them to live and grow safely and honestly I am finding that first place. I need to be a big enough person and a good enough father to trust that they'll take the step.

*Amazing how often that happens. To be clear, I don't intend this to criticize people who are involved in organized religion. There are great and beautiful people there, I'm sure. And one good person doing good work is to be lauded. But I can't get past the problems. I can't ignore that genuine spiritual people are persecuted while greed and corruption pollute the religion. I certainly don't mean these poems as a judgement, and I doubt Hafez did either. He meant them as a call to insanity, as Love can be crazy.

Sufi Poems: Seven

Today's poem is another by Rumi. I think I mentioned several times that I wanted to include other poets. I'm not really succeeding. But why succeed when failure means Rumi? I'm only looking at a few lines of the overall poem, since it is a big one to unpack. I'm not comfortable looking at the entire poem just now; but I want to highlight a few lines that strike me.

This poem is often titled "Sublime Generosity," and it's one of the poems that really showed me that Sufism is the path for me. Like most of Rumi's poems, it's about self awareness and letting go of ego. Rumi is encouraging the reader to look at the subtle aspects of reality for enlightenment. The beauty of the world is all around, but we get so caught up in our own minds that we don't see it. We live in our imagination, instead of letting our imagination be in service to our true selves.

He said, "You already have wings.
I cannot give you wings."

But I wanted his wings

This is one of my favorite lines of poetry ever written. I love the longing in the line, the desire for real knowledge. Sufis often say that profound longing is God's answer to our prayers, because the longing leads to submission to reality. This verse contains both the pain of longing and the joy of realization. The speaker already has the truth, but he desires the truth of the master. He understands intellectually that they are the same truth, of course. But the longing remains until he is truly enlightened. He could lie to himself, and pretend to be realized, like many do. He isn't, however, going to lie. He is going to seek. It's a lovely, simple way to put a powerful expression of spiritual growth. This is what Rumi does best.

"Don't move. A sublime generosity is
coming toward you."

And old love said, "Stay with me."

I said, "I will."

This section of the poem epitomizes the sweet and sincere nature of Rumi. He expresses his devotion in a statement of intent. For a darvish, the remembrance of God is constant. Rumi was always saying his zekr, or personal remembrance. I imagine the power of the phrase 'I will' as a comment on his zekr. Rumi is reminding us to live in the remembrance. The use of the words sublime generosity is intriguing as well. The Sublime is one of the ninety nine names of God in Sufism, and it is often referenced in Sufi poems. This has multiple reasons, but one is the reminder that the truth of the universe is beyond the ordinary intellect. Rumi dealt with narrow minded people and fundamentalists of his age, and I imagine he wanted to remind them, and perhaps his students, that devotion to the real means everything that is real, not what is simple or culturally acceptable to the rulers of the time.

Reading the poetry of Rumi never ceases to amaze me. The insights and beauty of his words, even translated into another language, is transcendent. It is not hard at all to see how he gathered disciples of all faiths during his lifetime. As frustrating as the pervasiveness of Rumi's work is on some levels, the fact that he is readily available in the West is a huge advantage for our generation. I hope more people devote themselves to a serious study of his work, and that he has the impact on more people he has had on me.

Sufi Poems: Six

No greater wings are there
than Love.
And all of my beauty comes
from a mirror you always
hold before me.

Hafez differs from Rumi in many ways, but for me the biggest contrast comes from his approach to the subject of the Divine. Rumi speaks in parables, stories to inform. Hafez goes straight for the heart, and tries to stir the heart to act. Our master speaks a lot of chivalry, and for our order the darvish acts without thought of himself, always for others. Both Rumi and Hafez encourage this, of course, but Hafez speaks only to this. He is the darvish's darvish.

This verse is one of my favorites for exactly this reason. He is giving us the same criticism of ego that we hear in other poems, but phrased in such a personal and heart-wrenching way. He is reminding us of our own impermanence, and the need to seek the truth. There is beauty in the world, but don't lose sight of the real meaning of this meditation and remembrance.

Appropriately, this post is my 99th of this blog. In Sufi tradition, there are ninety-nine special names of God. The one hundredth name is unknowable, save for union with the divine. The one hundredth name is often given as a kind of koan, a meditation on the limitations of the intellect. A darvish attempting to become a Sufi is given a name or names as a remembrance, to meditate upon constantly. This is called a zekr, pronounced "zek." I started writing these posts, especially the Sufi ones, to try and get out some of my intellectual wanderings in order to focus on my zekr. I don't know if that was a good idea. It does seem to help, but Lord knows if I'm fooling myself. (A darvish reminded me of the master's comment when anyone started some new project or obsession: "This means they're crazy!")

But, all of that be as it may, I enjoy it. I like writing about my Sufi meditation, my kids, my little hobbies. So, I'm going to keep doing it. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, as a good WV darvish would say.

Sufi Poems: Five

"You've done well," she said, "but listen to me.
All this is the decor of love, the branches
and leaves and blossoms. You must live
at the root to be a true lover."
"Where is that!"
Tell me!"
"You've done the outward acts,
but you haven't died. You must die."

I haven't done a post about Sufi poetry in a while, and I was inspired to write this earlier in the week when I came across some anti-Islam, and in general anti-religion stuff online. I typically avoid reading this, since it is usually bored jerks trying to start a fight. Oh, bad things have been done in the name of religion, wow, you don't say? As if that has never been pointed out. As if evil people wouldn't use any excuse or label necessary to create conflict. The Nazis called themselves socialist, because it sounded nice. Then they executed everyone to the left of Mussolini. The argument from history doesn't hold much weight with me; people do what they do, for their own reasons. Religion has been a useful tool for manipulation for the past few thousand years, of course it's been used. We're seeing now how science is being used for questionable purposes, too. People trapped in their own heads seeking power will grab what they can. What faith they profess is irrelevant, whether Christian, Atheist, or Buddhist.

I was happy about one aspect of that post, however. It did remind me of an important point that is often neglected in these discussions. The superficial trappings of a religion are dangerous, if they are taken literally. The essence of a spiritual path is not in the boundaries which define it for the followers, but the deeper spiritual truth. Most true spiritual paths require a master for exactly this reason. Without a master to guide you, you'll fall back onto dogma or rules, the most basic aspect of a path. The rules exist for reasons, which a master will gladly explain to neophyte disciples. The rules are guides, meant to be elucidated by a master of the path. If you don't have the benefit of a master, you get caught up in your own ego, and the path isn't clear.

This Rumi verse, like many of Rumi's, talks about ridding yourself of ego. He is warning us against the trappings of love, the outward appearance of faith. Living by the trappings of faith is okay, you'll fit into your society fine, but you won't be a true Lover. As usual in Rumi, there is a prescience to this poem. In an age where the superficial information about anything is available to anyone at the click of a button, people believe they can shape the world with their own ego. What they desire to be true is true, and the enlightened people are bypassed. The information is valuable, if your quest for knowledge leads you to a master, but the trappings themselves do not make up the spiritual path. As fundamentalists across the world are teaching us, the branches and blossoms die without the roots to nourish them.

The only way to be free of the issues which divide us, Rumi says, is to let go of your ego. Die before you die, and the remaining is the pure, unpolluted you of the Divine. It's hard to delve into any path and not find this basic message of egolessness and surrender. It's not a coincidence that the other paths even come back to the same terms, in society after society. Truth will out, as Shakespeare said.

Sufi Poems: Four

Tonight I am crazy,
crazy with desire for You.
This impassioned heart of mine
overflows with longing for You

This is a line of poetry by the recently passed master of my order, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh. I'm venturing into the realm of arrogance, I know, but I'm going to make the effort to talk about the master's poem. I'll reiterate the warning I posted at the beginning of this project, that any mistakes and misunderstandings are solely my own, and don't reflect on my teachers or order.

This is one of my favorite of the master's lines, because it expresses the notion of longing that is often mentioned in Sufi poems. That longing, or desire for unity, has been referred to as the answer to the prayers of humanity. Meaning that the hopes and wishes we express, often limited to material needs or psychological issues, is answered with the desire to understand ultimate reality. This reality would open our minds to the truth of existence, and presumably the more mundane concerns would be set aside. Perhaps the solution would be obvious, or the issue would cease to have meaning at all.

The poets often talk of madness, or being crazy. This seems to be the madness of saints, who see the truth of the world and are unable to be comprehended by those of us solely in the realm of material concerns. Seekers of enlightenment from Zen monks to St. John talk of madness, barely being able to function in the face of the overwhelming beauty of the real. People who achieve unity with God have perceptions and abilities that make others misunderstand, envy, or even fear them. Watching someone who can see glimpses of the future, or appear to have a communion with animals, I can guess that it's a bit shocking.

To me, the master's poem is saying that all of this is only to put your heart into longing for God. The intensity and madness is driving the Sufi to seek God with all of his or her heart, and that longing is the communion that we are seeking. I love the use of "tonight," bringing the purpose of the meditation the immediacy of the moment. Tonight stands for the moment, right now, when we should be in remembrance of Absolute Reality.

Sufi Poems: Three

Today is another Rumi poem. A short one this time, in order to focus on the purpose of these entries and avoid too much intellectual wasting of time. A little is perhaps unavoidable, at least for me. Brevity is the soul of wit, the poets say.

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

I like this verse especially in reference to the business and wordiness of modern life. We are bombarded by noise, we inflict noise on ourselves and those around us. The fundamental reality escapes us, and we start to think the noise is reality. Rumi has such a perfect little caution for us, from centuries ago. Remember the quiet, bright reedsong. This is a subtle reference to the constant remembrance of God that all Sufis should be doing, and do when the noise doesn't make us forget. If we stop the remembrance, we stop truly being.

I honestly do have some intent to talk about poems other than Rumi... but boy is it difficult to pull myself away from the great saint himself. I'll make a genuine effort, I promise. I want to start on Sana'i, if I kind find some suitable translations. I even may get arrogant enough to post a poem of the master's, though I'm not sure when I'll dare that.

Sufi Poems: Two

Today's verse is from a poem by Rumi that actually inspired me to start these Sufi poetry posts. It's a well known verse often translated as "Ali in Battle."

Learn from Ali how to fight
without your Ego participating.

God's Lion did nothing
that did not originate
from his deep center.

Once in battle he got the best of a certain knight
and quickly drew his sword. The man,
helpless on the ground, spat
in Ali's face. Ali dropped his sword,
relaxed, and helped the man to his feet.

"Why have you spared me?
How has lightning contracted back
into its cloud? Speak, my prince,
so that my soul can begin to stir
in me like an embryo."

Ali was quiet then finally answered,
"I am God's Lion, not the lion of passion.
The sun is my lord. I have no longing
except for the One.

When a wind of personal reaction comes,
I do not go along with it.

There are many winds full of anger,
and lust and greed. They move the rubbish
around, but the solid mountain of our true nature
stays where it's always been.

There's nothing now
except the divine qualities.
Come through the opening into me.

Your impudence was better than any reverence,
because in this moment I am you and you are me.

I give you this opened heart as God gives gifts:
the poison of your spit has become
the honey of friendship."

This has always been one of my favorite Rumi poems because of the clarity. He is always reminding the reader to let go of the ego, to seek the unity of the divine. In this case he explains through Ali how to act like a noble human being. "There is nothing now/except the divine qualities" is especially interesting, because it is a reminder that even Ali could slip away into ego, if he ceased the constant remembrance of the real.

As in many traditions, to be a darvish you must act from a place of balance, from a center. It is not possible to be in the moment and yet easily stirred by the events around you; being in the moment is grounding. When Ali was challenged to respond with ego, he responded with his divine qualities.

I think Rumi inspires people of many faiths precisely because he takes these moments and creates a poem that ties the specific cultural moment to the universal truth of the statement. A Muslim can read about Ali, and move from a place of piety and justice into the center. A Christian sees the mercy and forgiveness in the lines and finds a balance of his own. All of my years in Japan make me drawn to Rumi's use of "deep center" to describe the remembrance of the divine. And as a darvish, I understand the chivalric aspects of Ali's actions, which Rumi phrases so well.

Rumi begins the poem with the most important element: Learn from this. This is something which will point you on the path to understanding the universe. He ends it with the understanding that it is a gift, an offering to anyone willing to hear it. One of the most beautiful components of his poetry is the elegance with which he can make a profound point about the nature of truth. This is a gift to you, learn from it.

Sufi Poems: One

One of the greatest Sufi poets is Hafez. He is revered above all others, I think it's safe to say. The measure of his importance to Persian culture and Sufis in particular is illustrated by the commonly repeated statement that if there is only one book in a Persian household, it will be the Divan of Hafez.

Having the ability to read Hafez only in translation is a particular problem. According to native speakers, the poetry of Hafez is intensely difficult to capture, making use of complex imagery and allusion to which English cannot do justice. I appreciate this, of course, but as I said previously on translation, if it's what I can get I'll take it. The fact that Hafez frequently moves me to sit in raptured silence in the corner for hours in meditative prayer tells me that some aspect of his meaning is getting through to me. I do have a Robert Bly translation that was in the works for decades which I love. Bly is a member of my order, too, so I guess his approach resonates with me.

The verse that I have been contemplating for several days is this, translated in The Path by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh:

The beggar at Your door
does not need the eight gardens of Paradise.
The prisoner of Your love
is freed from this world and the next.

The theme of this verse is a common one for the Sufi: The purpose of the practice is to abolish the ego and understand the unity of all things. There is no concern of an ego reward, whether it's the desire for reward here or the quest to win a ticket to heaven. These are all ego desires, and not worthy of a Sufi. The image of the beggar appears throughout Sufi poems, but Hafez especially seems to like this image. It is reinforced by Hafez that it isn't about you, spiritual understanding is about God. In order to achieve, you cast aside yourself in favor of Reality.

Understandably, Hafez was persecuted by the mainstream religious figures of his time. Boldly teaching to set aside ego and not be concerned for material gains does not play well with people who both depend on your taxes and expect you to be lulled into complacency by fears of hell and expectations of heaven. A poet who doesn't need the gardens of Paradise doesn't fear the demons of hell, either.

I thought of this verse once when I was accosted at the Seattle Center by some evangelical. I was with my kids, and he asked me if I was a good person, ever broke any commandments. I told him I was a reasonably good man, but sure, I had probably broken a few. He pulled out his trump card: Well, then aren't you worried about going to hell? Your kids? Do you want my get out of jail free card? And I told him I wasn't worried about going to hell, but not because I didn't believe in it. I mean what do I know? Maybe there is a hell. But I wasn't worried because I wanted to accept God's will, good or bad. I didn't like the idea of going to hell, but it didn't motivate me one way or the other.

He was flabbergasted. He was speechless. I wasn't trying to be clever, or give him a hard time, but I replied with the teachings that I have learned from my order, and my Sufi poems. I wasn't going to be a hypocrite. I'm a long way from being enlightened, but I don't imagine turning aside from my path because I'm afraid or greedy will get me any further.

Sufi Poems: Intro

I have decided to do a series of posts about Sufi poetry. This is mainly in response to my own discussion among friends and acquaintances about Sufism, about my order, and specifically about certain poems and images that they run across. These are just my thoughts and experiences, I don't profess to be an expert, so bear that in mind. And more importantly, the mistakes and errors in judgement that come from my words are completely my own, and don't reflect on my order or my teachers. I just want to lay down these ideas somewhere they can be shared and discussed, in hopes that myself or others glean some small benefit from them.

The first discussion I always have with people who have an interest in Sufism is always about wine. Sufi poetry mentions wine a lot, and people are often very curious about that for two reasons. One, they wonder why an order from a part of the world that mostly avoids wine talks so much about wine. Or two, and related, is that they are eager to be a part of an order that talks so much about wine.

Wine is used in poetry to express different things, but always in Sufi poetry the author is steering the reader away from the self, the ego, and towards Divine Unity. I think it is a mistake to take even a word of most Sufi poetry literally, but this is especially true with words like wine. Fundamentalists and material minded people speak of the dangers of wine, the evils of wine, and in some sense this is the spirit that the Sufis are invoking; after all to be a Sufi you are setting aside dogma to pursue the Truth, unvarnished. But of course the poet isn't talking about getting drunk in the woods after prom either. The wine of Sufis is the pure ecstasy of Divine attention.

As Sufis we strive for the experience of Unity. We seek to let go of ego, and holding on to notions of our own can only be limiting. Enlightenment isn't a logical puzzle to be worked out, or a goal for the hardest runner. The poems attempt to pull you away from your ego, show you glimpses of the nature of the universe. There isn't a need for alcohol, or the need to stand around yelling at others about drinking, when your ego isn't involved. As Rumi says:

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoiseur,
and taste with caution.

I imagine there will be a lot of Rumi in these posts, since Rumi is amazing and stated things so well. Unfortunately I don't understand Persian, so I'm forced to trust the translators. Of course Rumi himself said about translation that Love will find its way across all languages on its own. So maybe it's okay.

Again I want to stress these are my own ramblings; consult a master for wise discourse on the subject, I am a simple darvish. I feel like doing this has merit, so I am. And once again, remember Rumi:

When I come to Love, I am ashamed of all that I have ever said about Love.

November

We signed the lease today for our new place.

Appropriately, on the first of the month, we're preparing for some big changes.  I am a little concerned about the commitment we're making, but I think it needs to be done.  We need our own place, with our space clearly defined. We've been living communally for a long time, and it has weakened me a bit. 

Now I'm sitting at Teahouse Kuan Yin, enjoying some Earl Grey and reading Basho.

"do not forget

 that in the thicket are

 plum blossoms"

I hope to use this blog to express some personal ideas and thoughts, since so much of my work lately has been professional.  Which is great; I feel like j and I are on track, planning our future with a clarity that we had never had.  Perhaps prematurely, I feel like we are were we want to be professionally. Strange and wonderful as it is, I think in sixteen years j and I have never been happier with our lives.  Clearly a lot of this is my own work on myself, being a darvish, and j's work on herself as a mother and healer. The confluence has made a great space for us to just be a couple.  

"with that moon

 i wish to paint glitter

 on the inn"

Since I am just beginning this blog, and moving to our new place, I should compose an opening poem myself.  Traditionally the first stanza of a poem sets the tone, prepares the author or authors to move forward and compose a longer poem as a celebration or contest. In that spirit I begin my newest journey, aged 32, father of two.

sweet sounds of life

morning smells through curtains

Love dwells