It is marvellous to think a Sufi poet from the 13th century, Jalal al-Din Muḥammad Rumi, is a best-selling poet today. A death poem of his was recited, full of aphoristic couplets, translated by Farrukh Dhondy, the British writer of Parsi Indian origin. Rumi wrote his famous work, the Masnavi in six volumes over a period of 12 years. Here is a manuscript dating from 1461 of the first book:
First book of the six-volume Masnavi of Rumi, which was written over a period of 12 years
Rumi writes in the poem that was read:
The grave is not the sum of a life complete
It is but the veil beyond which bride and groom retreat.
A long poem by a forgotten poet Robert Service commemorated the final resting place of a gold prospector Sam McGee who was frozen stiff in the northern wilds of Alaska. He made his buddy promise to bury him in a warm place. It has a surprising end, written in a racy ballad metre.
Another forgotten poet Edward Thomas from the WWI era was resurrected to demonstrate the tender feeling he had for nature. His description of trees is surprising:
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Aspens are one of the more popular forest trees in the West. They add a brilliant yellow glow to the collage of fall colors
Thomas talks about the silence of the woods and nature’s ability to captivate the meditative soul; this gives him a place among the important minor poets who preceded the great ferment of modernism. A wonderful paean he wrote for English words is a reminder that poets, above all, are devotees of words:
You English words?
…
I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
Our own Vikram Seth was represented in the session with two poems from his first book of poems, Mappings, published in 1980 by P. Lal’s Writer’s Workshop; that publication house is still going strong after 60 years, with P. Lal’s son, retired professor Ananda Lal, guiding it. The first works of authors as varied as Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Asif Currimbhoy and Ruskin Bond, came out in those distinctive hand-set, hand-printed and hand-bound covers with old saree fabrics.
Vikram Seth‘s Mappings, published by Writer's Workshop
Frank O’Hara was a seminal poet of New York City in the fifties and sixties when he became known as a poet and art critic. He met his longtime partner Vincent Warren, a handsome Canadian ballet dancer, in the summer of 1959. Warren became the inspiration for several of O'Hara's poems. We read a poem about the cityscape of New York detailing its life, much of it ordinary:
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin.
Sometimes one has trouble finding the poetry in such lines.
But such trouble does not arise when you contemplate Matsuo Basho’s 17th century haikus. Six moments in nature, captured and frozen in the briefest of lines, were exhibited at the reading; here is one
How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting
In Japanese:
inazuma ni
satoranu hito no
tattosa yo
Haiku by Basho ‘How admirable, to see lightning, and not think life is fleeting’
We are the fortunate few in KRG whose spirits are restored from time to time at these sessions. Read on.
Arundhaty Nayar
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School, an informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, and contemporary avant-garde art movements.
Frank O'Hara, was born on March 27, 1926 in Baltimore and grew up in Garton Massachusetts. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944 and served in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarman on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II. With the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where artist and writer Edward Gorey was his roommate.[5] O'Hara was heavily influenced by visual art and by contemporary music, which was his first love (he remained a fine piano player all his life . While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love of music, O'Hara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English. He then attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he won a Hopwood Award and, in 1951, received a master's degree in English.[8]
Frank O'Hara, who was gay, met Joe LeSueur in 1951, and the two maintained a relationship until 1965, living together on and off from 1955 to 1965. From 1959 to 1963, the two lived at 441 East 9th Street in the East Village. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after arriving in New York, he was employed at the Museum of Modern Art, selling postcards at the admissions desk, and began to write seriously.
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Frank O'Hara (1926 – 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic
O’ Hara’s poetry is generally autobiographical. Among his friends, O'Hara was known to treat poetry dismissively, as something to be done only in the moment. John Ashbery says he witnessed O'Hara "Dashing poems off at odd moments—in his office at the Museum of Modern Art, in the street at lunchtime, or even in a room full of people—he would then put them away in drawers and cartons and half forget them."
O'Hara met longtime partner Vincent Warren in the summer of 1959. Warren, a Canadian ballet dancer, was the inspiration for several of O'Hara's poem
O'Hara was the "poet laureate" of the Abstract Expressionist movement. He was a leading figure within the new generation of New York poets, but his talent and influence extended beyond free verse into art criticism and curatorship.
It was not until O'Hara's Lunch Poems was published in 1965 that his reputation gained ground and not until after his sudden death that his recognition increased.
O'Hara published many books during his lifetime. Here is a sampling: A City Winter and Other Poems. Two Drawings by Larry Rivers, 1951; Oranges: 12 pastorals, 1953; Meditations in an Emergency, 1957; Odes. Prints by Michael Goldberg, 1960; Lunch Poems 1964;
Many of his works were edited and published posthumously by his friend Donald Allen; The collected Poems of Frank O ‘Hara , Standing Still and Walking in New York , Early writing , Poems retrieved , and selected plays.
Much of this biography is taken from O'Hara's wikipedia entry.
Arundhaty chose a poem from Frank O’Hara’s collection called the Lunch Poems. She liked quite a few of the other poems, like the one Joe just sent her called Having A Coke With You, addressed to his lover Vincent Warren, to whom he addressed over 50 poems. His poems are very descriptive of ordinary life, everyday life, and also art and artists. For instance in the Coke poem he writes about going to an art show:
the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
You would understand the sentiment once your gaze rests on his lover:
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Vincent Warren in New York City (photo by Jack Mitchell)
Arundhaty then read her selection, A Step Away From Them.
Everyone appreciated it. KumKum thought we had not read him before, but Frank O'Hara has been read on another occasion, in fact, the poem that Joe mentioned and another one, were read by Preeti Nambiar in Feb 2018.
Arundhaty was attracted by Frank O’Hara’s life story, because he connected so much with artists, and his poetry treats art as a subject. Pamela found this line interesting:
My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
Devika
Devika had read this poet before, a couple of years back at the Humorous Poems session in December 2019. It was at Arun's house she read Café Comedy; Devika liked his style and went through a lot of poems before choosing this one. She found him interesting for all his adventures and the poem was also a simple. He was a popular verse writer and consciously followed the style of Rudyard Kipling, so he was known as the Canadian Kipling. He was Scottish, but he lived his life, and most of his working years moving around. He spent a lot of time in Yukon and Canada, and became a big name in that part of the world. When Devika was checking about his family, there seemed to be a lot of discrepancies; one web site gave his wife's name as Iris, another as Germaine. Somebody said he was one of ten children, another said he had three siblings.
He's actually Robert William Service. The second name William was given in honour, of a rich uncle, but when that uncle passed away, he didn't leave anything to our poet. So he removed the William from his name and became just Robert W. That's funny, but there's some funny things about him.
He composed his first verse when he was six years old, and he attended school in Glasgow later, and then went on to work for the Royal Bank of Scotland. But he was not very much into that kind of a work, and wanted to travel and have fun. When he was 21, he traveled to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, with dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted along taking up various jobs. He quoted himself as ‘starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver.’
Devika thought how interesting a character he would be to meet. She did not look at what she wrote about him in Dec 2019. It’s always nice to start fresh. And then you see it with new perspective.
When Robert Service was working as a farm labourer and a store clerk, he fell in love with this lady called Constance McLean, who was visiting her uncle. She lived on the mainland in British Columbia, and in those days communication was difficult. He used to write to her, but she was looking for a man who was very highly educated and who could provide for her, and hence she rejected him at that point.
Later on over the years he became a rich man from his poetry earnings. So he went back and courted her and they got engaged. But it fell through. He didn't marry her finally, and so he lived for a long time in a place called Whitehorse, which is a frontier town on the Yukon River. This was a place to camp for prospectors on the way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush. It was when the Gold Rush had started and this town became a big place apparently. But later there was nothing left when everybody moved out.
He settled there and he listened to a lot of stories about the Great Gold Rush and he also recited at social events. The editor of the Whitehorse Star suggested he write something about Yukon, you know. One night he heard revelry from the saloon there. Inspired, he wrote the poem called The Shooting of Dan McGrew. A month later, he heard a gold rush yarn from a mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal. Service spent the night walking in the woods composing the present poem The Cremation of Sam McGee, which Devika read at the session.
Service was so good at writing that he would just walk around, his mind would be full of jumbled up verses, and then he would just come back home and write it all down in orderly fashion. He would just finish it in no time.
Other poets thought that he was not good enough because he didn't put enough thought into his writing, but he really didn't care what others thought. There were times when he used to live in Paris, he would promenade as a gentleman, wearing his monocle and all that. At night he would go out with the security guard who was an ex-policeman to where the low life lived just to savour another Paris.
He was quite an interesting character. Once he visited the USSR and wrote a satirical ballad about Lenin's tomb. Thanks to this, his poetry was never translated into Russian. The Russians were upset with him. He was never mentioned in Soviet encyclopedia, so his name doesn't exist in Russia.
On a second trip to Russia, during the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and USSR. At that point he fled through Poland, Latvia, Estonia, finally managed to reach Canada, which was kind of his second home.
Not long after, the Nazis invaded France, and they actually came to his house and specifically looked for the poet who had mocked Hitler in newspaper articles. Devika thought of him as bindaas character who just did as he pleased. Devika found him fascinating as a person and read a lot about him.
More details of the biography have been added in a formal piece by Devika.
The readers loved this poem, its balladic lilt and the comical ending. They thanked Devika for reading it. It's about the gold rush. Service was inspired, he just walked through the woods one nigh, got it in his head, and then came home and just wrote it out.
Robert William Service was a popular verse writer called the ‘Canadian Kipling’ for his rollicking ballads of the ‘frozen north’ notably The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Partly because of their popularity and the speed with which he wrote them his works were dismissed as Doggerel by critics who tended to say the same about Rudyard Kipling, with whom Service was often compared. This did not worry Service who was happy to classify his works as “verse, not poetry”.
Service was born in Lancashire England. His father was a banker from Kilwinning Scotland who had been transferred to England. His second name, William, was in honour of his rich uncle. After that uncle neglected to provide for him in his will, Service dropped the middle name. Robert Service lived with grandparents in Kilwinning during his early years. It was during this period, at the age of six that he composed his first verse. He attended a school in Glasgow when he moved back with his parents after which he joined the Commercial Bank of Scotland.
At the age of 21, Service travelled to Vancouver Island in British Columbia with dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted along doing various jobs and in his own words ‘starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver’.
When Service was working as a farm labourer and a store clerk, he fell in love with Constance MacLean who was visiting her uncle. As she lived on mainland he courted her through mail. MacLean was looking for a man of education and means to support her. To please her. Service took up courses at McGill University but failed in them. In his later years when he was a rich man, she got engaged to him but it never really worked out for them.
Service was posted at Whitehorse, a frontier town on the Yukon River, for a long time. This was a place to camp for prospectors on the way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush. He settled in well, dreamed and listened to the stories of the great gold rush. He recited his poems at concerts. The editor of the Whitehorse Star suggested that Robert write a poem about the place. Returning from a walk one night he heard revelry from the saloon. Inspired he wrote The Shooting of Dan McGrew. A month later he heard a gold rush yarn from a mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal. And Service spent the night walking in the woods composing The Cremation of Sam McGee.
One remarkable thing about his ballads was as to how easily he wrote them. When he wrote Sam McGee, the verses just flowed. He said “I took the woodland trail, my mind seething with excitement and strange ecstasy, verse after verse developed with scarce a check and when I rolled happily into bed the ballad was clinched. Next day with scarcely an effort of memory I put it on paper.
Service was a newspaper correspondent during the Balkans war of 1912-13 and an ambulance driver and correspondent during World War 1. At the end of war, he settled in Paris. Being a rich man, he would promenade during the day in his best suits with a monocle. At night he went out in old clothes with the company of his doorman, a retired policeman, to visit the lowest dive of the city.
He visited the USSR in 1930 and later wrote a satirical “Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb”. Thanks to this his poetry was never translated into Russian and there is no mention of him in Russian Encyclopaedia.
Robert’s 2nd trip to Russia was during the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the USSR. He fled across Poland, Latvia, and Estonia, finally reaching France and then on to Canada. Not long after the Nazis invaded France and arrived at his house in Lancieux looking specifically for the poet who mocked Hitler.
He received a lot of recognition some of them being – schools named after him, being honoured on a Canadian postage stamp, and a street in Lancieux named for him.
He lived to the end of his life in Lancieux, Brittany.
Edward Thomas Biography (shortened from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edward-thomas)
Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917) was at first a prose writer and critic, before he became a poet in the last three years of his life, 1914–17. Thomas’s wrote many reviews and critical studies, and much of it was done as hack work in response to the demands of married life (he married early).
The poetry of Thomas seems rooted in the countryside: farms, streams, birds, plants, haymaking, teams of horses, silent contemplation by the sea, and listening to sounds of creatures. His diction clearly belongs to the time of Thomas Hardy, that is to the late 1800s. It is imbued with an intensely personal response to Nature and the visions it provides of the countryside. It reminded Joe constantly of Thomas Hardy and his novels where he has so much about the countryside in which he grew up and which he saw changing with industrialisation.
Edward Thomas and Robert Frost ... so close was their friendship that they had planned to live side by side in America
Thomas wrote his first poems in 1914 at the urging of the American poet Robert Frost, with whom he got friendly during Frost’s years in England. Two years later his first book of verse, Six Poems, was published, but under a pseudonym. In 1915 he enlisted in the infantry and was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras, while the first edition of his Six Poems was being prepared for press in 1917.
His earliest poems bear the influence of Frost in their treatment of nature and in their simple style. However, Thomas discovered his own personal voice in poetry slowly. There is a profound sense of solitude running though his poems. Perhaps his appeal to the modern reader is because his poetry expresses an awareness of individual alienation. As Louis Untermeyer said: “always the love of earth shines quietly through his lines. It is an unwavering affection, even though it is joy without buoyancy; a fantasy that cannot keep from being wistful.”
Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s full-scale biography of Thomas, Edward Thomas: From Adlestrop to Arras (2015) offered a frank assessment of his life, including the struggles with depression, marital troubles, and his many attempts at suicide.
Edward Thomas’ archive is at Cardiff University Library.
When she was 16, she met Adam Henry, one of the Liverpool poets, and lived with him until 1982. She applied to the University of Liverpool and began doing a philosophy degree in 1974. She received an honours degree in philosophy in 1977.
She worked as a poetry critic for the Guardian from 1988 to 1989. Duffy became a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996, and later became a creative director of its writing school.
She started living with Scottish woman writer and playwright Jackie Kay and had a daughter, Ella.
Carol Ann Duffy was born in 1955 in Glasgow
Her very productive writing life included plays, editing anthologies, poetry for children, etc. In her first poem, as a poet laureate, Duffy tackled the scandal of British MPs. In March 2010, she wrote The Achilles for David Beckham, a footballer, about his Achilles tendon injury.
Duffy also wrote a 46-line poem, Rings, for the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Duffy's poems explore both everyday experience and her own rich fantasy life and that of others.
Kavita chose the poem Rain. Rain is a song of solitude and yearning. The rain soothes, cleanses, and reveals as if a blessing comes down to envelop the body, hinting at the mysteries and wonders that lingers beneath our everyday lives.
After Kavita read the poem readers marvelled at her imagination:
Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist
for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,
… the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
KumKum said Carol Ann Duffy was introduced to KRG readers by Talitha in July 2008 via the poem Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife who got a legacy of the ’second best bed.’ When KumKum went to Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon she dearly wanted to see that bed.
Vikram Seth Brief Bio
Poems by VS have been read at KRG several times before. He is the only author two of whose works in different genres have been read by us: the novel An Equal Music, and the biography Two Lives.
Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta on the June 20, 1952. He will be 72 years old on his birthday this year. His parents were Leila Seth and Prem Seth. Leila Seth was a distinguished lawyer who practiced in many courts in India and later became Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court, the first woman to be the Chief Justice of a State High Court.. She was also an accomplished author. His father was an executive in a shoe company in India. Seth has a brother Shantum (a Buddhist teacher) and a sister Aradhana (an artist, art director and filmmaker).
Vikram Seth, photo by Chris Boland
Seth has experimented with a number of genres: poetry is the most prominent, and then travelogues, biography, novels, and even the novel in verse mentioned above. He wrote many collections of poems. A Suitable Boy (1993) and An Equal Music (1999) are two of his beautiful novels. His readers are still waiting for A Suitable Girl from Seth, which has long been promised by the author. He quips that the novel is still hidden behind her ghungat.
VS writes: “The wish to write about anything is such a rare and mysterious feeling that it is pointless to preempt or constrain it by notions of subject or geography or genre. One cannot, alas, request the Muse to come back later with something closer to one’s imagined requirements. Even when one is visited, the inspiration is often too unsustained for a work to be born. For good or ill, one must take one’s visions as they come, and be thankful for those that survive.” (From his introduction to The Poems 1981-1994.)
1. Panipat
The poem has 9 stanzas of 4 lines. It tells us about a homesick young man returning to Punjab from “Inglisstan” before completing his studies. One winter afternoon he finds himself in Panipat at his aunt’s home. The aunt was probably sitting on a cot in the courtyard with her neighbours, shelling peas while gossiping. Sitting on a ledge, not far from the aunt and her friends, the young man was trying to play Raag Lalit on his flute, a serene and devotional raag performed at dawn. Though afternoon is not the time to play the mournful meditative tune, it transports him to a universe beyond Panipat. The lad was a mix of things Punjabi and English, and the sound of Koel’s cry suddenly reminds him of the birds of England: the nightingale, the Wren, the Blackbird and and he feels nostalgic for England, having stayed there. The Neem tree of Panipat reminds him of the elm tree and the beeches he left behind in England.
When his cousin offers him a slice of mango, the sharp sweet taste of the fruit brings him back to the present, and he feels “I must be home at last.”
2. Party For The Retirement of The Oldest-Serving British Museum Reading Room Book Attendant
It is a Sonnet, and therefore has 14 lines. It has two themes, the first one being that a long serving British attendant of a Reading room of the British Museum is retiring after serving 50 years. There are many changes that took place in the world outside the Reading room, but not much has changed within. Except that the lighting of the place is new and they have now started checking anything unusual.
The second theme, beginning after the volta, is a poignant one. An old man by the name Marx used to come regularly to the Reading room, year after year, sitting always at desk 10A. He kept writing in some foreign language. One day he left and never came back again.
Of course, as everyone knows Karl Marx wrote the 3 volumes of Das Kapital, his critique of Capitalism, while using the Reading Room of the British Library.
In later years at the India International Centre in New Delhi she used to see Jagmohan, ex-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. He used to sit at the same table in the IIC Library, every day from 11am till 8.30pm. One day KumKum went up and told him he was like Karl Marx, always there in the Library in the same place. Jagmohan replied what else to do, he was retired; he was not doing anything original, though, he said.
For years Jagmohan had a gunman toting an automatic rifle to protect him, stationed just outside the Library’s glass windows. Having been governor in Kashmir he was possibly a target of some terrorists and so they had a guard there, walking up and down. Around 4.30 pm he and the guard would go up for coffee in the lounge, and then be back again till 8.30 pm.
Priya said Jagmohan wrote some explosive revelations about Mrs. Gandhi. He said he was writing down some history and on his table KumKum saw a lot of books, even some books by Nehru, and reference books. Jagmohan said IIC was the best place to come, all his books were there, and it was not very crowded. It gave KumKum the idea that Joe and she should retire somewhere nearby.
It's such a lovely feeling and his name is Rumi. His full name was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi. Pamela narrated that in the school she taught, Deelta Study in Fort Kochi, the students belonged to four houses named after Copernicus, Schweitzer, Ramanujam and Rumi. But Pamela didn't know much about Rumi when she was teaching. But now after reading his whole biography, she thought, ‘My goodness, why didn't I go into his history and let the children know what a great person their house was named after.’
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
Rumi was born on September 30th, 1207, in Balkh, which is now in Afghanistan. He died on December 17th, 1273, in Konya, a town in southern Turkiye. He was the greatest among the Sufi mystics and a poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic, Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī. It is written in Spiritual Couplets, and widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.
After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes.
Rumi's use of Persian and Arabic in his poetry, in addition to some Turkish and less Greek, has resulted in his being claimed variously for Turkish literature and Persian literature, a reflection of the strength of his influence in Iran and Turkey. The influence of his writings in the Indian subcontinent is also substantial.
By the end of the 20th century, his popularity had become a global phenomenon with his poetry achieving a wide circulation in Western Europe and the United States.
His family's moved to Balkh in 1280. He journeyed through Anatolia, then a region that enjoyed peace and prosperity and under the rule of the Turkish Seljuk dynasty.
After a short stay they settled in Karaman, where Jalal al-Din's mother died and his first son was born, they were called to the capital, Konya, in 1228.
He was taught at one of the numerous madrasas, religious schools. The teacher who taught, a year later, one of the disciples arrived in Konya and acquainted Jalal al-Din deeply with some mystical theories that had developed in Iran. Burhan al-Din, who contributed considerably to Jalal al-Din's formation, left Konya about 1240.
But Jalal al-Din is said to have undertaken one or two journeys to Syria. There he may have met Ibn al-Arabi, the leading theosophist whose interpreter and stepson, Sadr al-Din al-Labi, was Jalal al-Din's colleague and friend in Konya. The influence of these people, and the influence of Shams al-Din was the most impactful.
The decisive moment in Rumi's life occurred on November 30, 1244, when in the streets of Konya he met the wandering man Shams al-Din, son of religion, of Tabriz, whom he may have first encountered in Syria. He had a very strong relationship with him. He stopped talking to his friends and his family and was so involved with spending his time with Shams that they were all against him. The family could not tolerate the close relation of Jalal al-Din and one night in 1247, Shams just disappeared forever.
His experience of love, longing, and loss turned Rumi into a poet. It was his whole relationship with Shams that influenced him to become a poet. A few years after Shams' death, Rumi experienced a similar rapture in his acquaintance with an illiterate goldsmith, Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub.
This poem Pamela recited was translated by Farooq Dhondy, who was born in Pune, India in 1944 in a Parsi family.
Dhondy obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Pune University in 1964 and was awarded a scholarship to read English at Cambridge University after which he moved to Dexter University for his Bachelor's degree.
From 1968 to 1978, Dhondy worked as a further education lecturer and school teacher in the Midlands and London before entering television. From 1984 to 1997, Dhondy worked as commissioning editor, multicultural programming for Channel 4 TV, UK.
In this capacity, he was responsible for hundreds of hours of TV production in all genres, entertainment, situation, comedy, TV, drama, film, education, and factual, and helped green light iconic shows like Desmond's and The Band and Five.
The poem for this session is called On His Death, and Pamela was sure it must definitely be even more beautiful in the Persian language.
Persian is a very rich language, and when Pamela was learning Ghazals in Delhi, her Ustad taught her a Persian Ghazal written by Amir Khusroo, so she knows how beautiful this could sound if it was Persian, and it's in the same form as Ghazals, namely couplets.
The readers all exclaimed at the touching nature of the poem where the poet is reflecting on his own death and leaving wishes for those who survive him.
Joe said the couplet that struck him was:
The grave is not the sum of a life complete
It is but the veil beyond which bride and groom retreat.
Pamela liked this one too:
Is not the sun as it sinks, elsewhere rising too?
My grave is but the last door, the entrance to the new.
It's a beautifully translated poem. KumKum said Joe’s library must be having two books of Rumi’s.
Rumi was a philosopher also, besides being a poet. Joe showed the book to the Zoom audience of readers.
Saras said the Sufi movement, sider Rumi as their founder. If not the founder, he's certainly the, the inspiration, and not only that, even the dervish dancers were singing this ode of Rumi, do you recall?
I don't know, but he talks about the entrance to the new. The Sufi philosophy, some of it is very similar to the Hindu philosophy also, actually. Joe said he would second what Saras said.
According to Joe this is a kind of a universal outlook on life, which demonstrates the continuum in which we exist. In our existence, there's a transitory phase, and there is something beyond. Something with which, I don't know whether you have a belief in a religious faith, or even if you don't, it's possibly quite inspiring, because it essentially says that we are all one and our end is only apparent, for it continues beyond. We are all subject to the same experience. Going through and ending, and then you don't know where you are, but Rumi says you are somewhere and not beyond the reach of those you leave behind. And that's a wonderful thought.
Yes, the other readers agreed, it is a beautiful thought.
Joe wanted to add to what Pamela said about the popularity of Rumi now in Western Europe and the United States. Actually, according to the worldwide book publishing industry, Rumi is the most popular poet in the whole world in terms of books sold. Joe has heard Rumi in terms of books sold is the most popular in the whole world, outselling Shakespeare even.
Joe said there is an attraction within his life as well as the words he left behind. He's quite deep, his poetry is worth reflecting about. You can meditate with many of these verses, to find what they mean for you.
He's not legislating any belief, he's not trying to catechise you in some faith, he's just laying it out the way it is and just clothing your experience as a human being in words that anybody will understand, no matter what hiser background. That's what makes him universal. And in that respect, he has many characteristics that make him, in my mind, similar to Shakespeare.
Priya said Kahlil Gibran was influenced by him. In Joe’s opinion Gibran is a very poor imitation – he would almost call Gibran a mushy fake writer, compared to those who write from the experience of having had real mystical experiences. But yes, Gibran too sometimes speaks truths, as this poem of his On Children:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Priya agreed with Joe. But people say that he's in the same, sort of vein, from the Middle East, and coming from the Islamic background, and then professing something which is so universal. In reality Gibran was brought up as a Maronite Christian, but being an Arab, he was influenced also by his exposure to Islam, and especially to the mysticism of the Sufis.
Pamela truly wished she could have told all what Joe said here, to her students when she was the housemistress of the Rumi House at Delta Study School in Fort Kochi. She learned so much about him only now, at KRG.
But Rumi has been read before at KRG. Yes, Joe must have read it 20 years ago, said KumKum. They intended to travel to Turkey with their daughter, Rachel, and son-in-law, Herman. While being taken to many historic places Joe only entertained one thought, that he wanted to go to Konya where Rumi is buried and there is a mausoleum built for him. It’s off the beaten track but many do go and visit.
Devika said these sessions are always a learning experience for her. Every poetry session of ours is a real learning experience. Arundhaty said she tends to like people who have a yen for books and English literature..
Others expressed similar predilections. Arundhaty said she has learned so much about poetry after the last five, six years. She doesn’t know how all these, the best friends in her life were all these people who were into literature. It just happened.
Kavita said she got to read so many lovely poets she had never heard of. Others chimed in. Devika said the readers also have to do much research before choosing a poetry. And because we have to find something, in the process we read many poets whom we would not have otherwise read.
There was a time in 2020 when Joe would consult the word-of-the-day from a dictionary site and make haiku using that word to lampoon Mr Trump:
Trump is living proof
You can be the President
And still act a goof.
Priya introduced haikus as follows. Basho is one of the inventors of the haiku form elevating it to an art. Before the haikus, there existed in Japan the classical Japanese form of poetry, which was called waka. It stood for ‘poetry’ in Japanese. Waka had a lot of rules to follow. A common definition refers to poetry in a 5-7-5-7-7 metre, nowadays known as tanka (meaning short verse). Other forms like choke (long poem), sedoka (repeating-the-first-part poem), and so on were invented.
It was classical in every way, from the kind of language used, the imagery, the length, and everything.
[At this time Zakia who had just returned from a trip abroad to celebrate her son’s graduation from college, showed up on Zoom and everybody wished her. She had prepared a poem, but not sent it on in advance to be included. Readers encouraged her – “ You're the last one anyway, so you can read it. You're the icing on the cake.”]
So coming back to Waka, which was the classical poetry. There was something called Haiku Noringa, a kind of a collaborative poetry, but not in the form of present-day haiku.
The haiku is a 3-line 17-syllable form, as we all know, with a kireji or cut between the second and third line which has the effect of a pause or stop to contemplate before going on. The thought is meant to turn suddenly at the kireji, with a suggestion of surprise.
Ringa was collaborative poetry. It was as if somebody wrote a haiku, and another poet wrote a seven-syllable reply to it. So that was called the ringa. These were existing forms when Basho came on the scene, said Priya.
Basho was in the 16th century. He's the famous poet of the Edo period, from 1603 to 1868. It was this period during the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship by Tokugawa. What is important about that period is that it was a very stable period of internal peace, economic growth, and the flourishing of art and culture. That is how, in this period, poetry flourished as did so many other arts.
His rise to fame gradually happened after 1662. His first poem was published, which is still extant. But Basho rose to fame only after 1675, when the founder of the Dandrin School, Nishiyama Son, came to Edo (that is Tokyo), where he met Basho. The Dandrin School is the school that started writing more modern poetry, as against waka, the classical poetry, which was existing.
If you talk about the haiku, you will see that the meter is 5-7-5. But more than that, the words use a simple language, and the imagery though presented in startling fashion celebrates ordinary things. There is humor too. There is fun. There is seriousness. There is depth.
In the very precise 17-syllable format, they are able to convey a lot. It was very refreshing to have something like that. You'd also find importance given to stillness, meditation, and being very minimalistic.
Those are also Japanese characteristics. In 1675, after he met the founder of the Dandrin School, who noticed his talent and encouraged him, Basho became a teacher and acquired 20 disciples.
A guru needs shishyas and his disciples were in awe of him, obviously. They used to do a lot for him. They built him a hut to live in. And later, it was his students who published his first book of poems, along with other haiku poets, which was called The Shriveled Chestnuts.
In 1682 his hut was burnt down and the following year his mother died. his mother died. He was very disturbed and upset about it. Though a new hut was built by the students, he left on a long journey in 1684.
A very important point to note about Basho is that he undertook long journeys in his life, four of them. He was a traveler. He was a monk too.
One may not know how much of a monk he was. All his biographers state that he was homosexually active right through his life. He had his disciples and people used to apprentice with him.
People warned him not to undertake these journeys, but he was very keen on exploring, and discovering life.
Priya interspersed his life with the reciting of the haikus she had chosen.
When his disciples built a hut for him, they planted the Japanese banana tree, which made him very happy. But after some time, he saw that the reed, called Miscanthus, was growing among them, which irritated him a lot.
So he wrote in 1680:
By my new Banana plant
The first sign of something I loathe
A miscanthus bud
He journeyed for the moon-watching. Then he returned to celebrate the lunar new year. He was teaching all the time. After this long journey, he published a very famous work, Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton.This was in 1686. It is in this collection his most famous poem, The Old Pond, appears.
In 1689, he undertook another long journey. And the famous book that issued, after that journey, of 150 days covering a thousand kilometres, is called, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, published in 1694. Five months of the journey are described in exquisite prose that combines intimate details of his journey with historical background, fictional anecdotes, literary allusions, and his own emotional responses, often expressed in haiku. Although the work is secular, Bashō clearly seeks spiritual enlightenment and a reaffirmation of values that he feels have been lost in the era of the shoguns. From Tokyo, he went to Honshu with his apprentice, Kabai Sona.
Priya read a few of those haikus from this journey.
At KRG we also read a novel by Richard Flanagan titled The Narrow Road to the Deep North which was about a WWII military campaign in Burma and building a railway for the Japanese army by Australian POWs.
Joe recalled in that novel that there is mention of a practice among Japanese soldiers of writing a death haiku when they knew death was approaching.
Priya read a few more haikus Basho wrote while on his journeys.
Staying at an inn
Where prostitutes are also sleeping
Bush clover and the moon
Fleas, lice
A horse peeing
Near my pillow
How admirable!
Now, the most famous one, The Old Pond:
The old Pond
A frog leaps in
Sound of water
This is translated by Robert Haas, who's an American poet laureate and also a haiku writer. There's always a stillness, and the stillness is disturbed. You look at the imagery. It‘s very short, and precise.
In his last years, again, his disciples built another hut for him; he lived there with his nephew and his female friend, Jati and entertained visitors.
Priya said Basho was temperamental. He had some kind of a behaviour issue because he would become a recluse, and then again, he would probably meet people, and he would go off on these explorations.
He was troubled in the last phase, and he stopped interacting with the outer world. But later, he realised that, no, this is not the way out, and then adopted a semi-Buddhist kind of a philosophy called karumi, which means lightness, where he would greet people, but not get into an in-depth kind of an association with them, and maintained a distance.
In 1694, he left for Edo, and while he was going back on his way in Osaka, he developed a stomach illness and died peacefully, surrounded by his disciples. There was no formal death poem that he wrote, but this one, which I'll read, is generally regarded as a farewell death poem:
Falling sick on a journey
My dream goes wandering
On a withered field
If you want to read Basho’s poetic work in full, it's called Basho: The Complete Haiku by Jane Reichhold. It is a good book to read where you get all the haikus.
Joe said it's available as a PDF on the web from thehaikufoundation.org. and there are lots of notes and annotations.
Priya said the haiku survives and survives well. It's flourishing, also, especially for our Twitter generation where we have Twitter poetry. She though the haiku form suits our generation the best.
Joe commented that what irked him about some of these translations is they don't bother in the English to keep the 5-7-5 syllabic translation. Why not? He can’t fathom. The translator should at least seek to imitate the form because the form is very fundamental to haiku. Otherwise, you can just say it's a three-line poem.
Joe didn’t see why the translators don't try to maintain the form because it's worth doing it.
For example, if one reads the one about the lightning in Japanese from that book, Jane Reichhold:
inazuma ni [The lightning]
satoranu hito no [is blinding]
tattosa yo [How precious]
It's very condensed, very precise, and very difficult to translate. But yet, Joe thinks that is the translator's job.
Take Basho’s most famous haiku:
furu ike ya [old pond]
kawazu tobikomu [frog jumps into]
mizu no oto [sound of water]
This was translated originally as:
The old pond;
A frog jumps in ––
The sound of water.
Sid Corman translates it like this:
Old pond, frog leaping, splash.
Joe noted the one about farting and pissing and so on. Such earthy poetry appeals to Joe. So when he saw this one:
Fleas, lice
A horse peeing
Near my pillow.
Joe immediately wanted to translate it into a proper haiku observing the 5-7-5 form. Here it is:
A horse is pissing,
Fleas and lice fly by buzzing,
–– Close by my pillow
But they used to have the 5-7-5 followed by 7-7, said Priya. Ah that makes a tanka, said Joe, 31 syllables in all.
That was it for Basho from our dear Priya who has been struggling with the 5-7-5 form a long time.
Priya’s favourite is the fifth one:
How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting.
She doesn’t know why the old pond is so famous, but thinks it's about the stillness, the stillness continuing after the jumping action. It is lovely imagery, isn't it?
Someone asked if there’s any book teaching how to write haikus. Joe replied: like the frog, you just plunge in!
Saras said you can immediately think also of Japanese single line paintings, which would go so well with this old pond haiku.
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Devika had read this poet before, a couple of years back at the Humorous Poems session in December 2019. It was at Arun's house she read Café Comedy; Devika liked his style and went through a lot of poems before choosing this one. She found him interesting for all his adventures and the poem was also a simple. He was a popular verse writer and consciously followed the style of Rudyard Kipling, so he was known as the Canadian Kipling. He was Scottish, but he lived his life, and most of his working years moving around. He spent a lot of time in Yukon and Canada, and became a big name in that part of the world. When Devika was checking about his family, there seemed to be a lot of discrepancies; one web site gave his wife's name as Iris, another as Germaine. Somebody said he was one of ten children, another said he had three siblings.
Robert W. Service (1874 – 1958) was inspired by Rudyard Kipling
He's actually Robert William Service. The second name William was given in honour, of a rich uncle, but when that uncle passed away, he didn't leave anything to our poet. So he removed the William from his name and became just Robert W. That's funny, but there's some funny things about him.
He composed his first verse when he was six years old, and he attended school in Glasgow later, and then went on to work for the Royal Bank of Scotland. But he was not very much into that kind of a work, and wanted to travel and have fun. When he was 21, he traveled to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, with dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted along taking up various jobs. He quoted himself as ‘starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver.’
Devika thought how interesting a character he would be to meet. She did not look at what she wrote about him in Dec 2019. It’s always nice to start fresh. And then you see it with new perspective.
When Robert Service was working as a farm labourer and a store clerk, he fell in love with this lady called Constance McLean, who was visiting her uncle. She lived on the mainland in British Columbia, and in those days communication was difficult. He used to write to her, but she was looking for a man who was very highly educated and who could provide for her, and hence she rejected him at that point.
Later on over the years he became a rich man from his poetry earnings. So he went back and courted her and they got engaged. But it fell through. He didn't marry her finally, and so he lived for a long time in a place called Whitehorse, which is a frontier town on the Yukon River. This was a place to camp for prospectors on the way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush. It was when the Gold Rush had started and this town became a big place apparently. But later there was nothing left when everybody moved out.
He settled there and he listened to a lot of stories about the Great Gold Rush and he also recited at social events. The editor of the Whitehorse Star suggested he write something about Yukon, you know. One night he heard revelry from the saloon there. Inspired, he wrote the poem called The Shooting of Dan McGrew. A month later, he heard a gold rush yarn from a mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal. Service spent the night walking in the woods composing the present poem The Cremation of Sam McGee, which Devika read at the session.
Service was so good at writing that he would just walk around, his mind would be full of jumbled up verses, and then he would just come back home and write it all down in orderly fashion. He would just finish it in no time.
Other poets thought that he was not good enough because he didn't put enough thought into his writing, but he really didn't care what others thought. There were times when he used to live in Paris, he would promenade as a gentleman, wearing his monocle and all that. At night he would go out with the security guard who was an ex-policeman to where the low life lived just to savour another Paris.
He was quite an interesting character. Once he visited the USSR and wrote a satirical ballad about Lenin's tomb. Thanks to this, his poetry was never translated into Russian. The Russians were upset with him. He was never mentioned in Soviet encyclopedia, so his name doesn't exist in Russia.
On a second trip to Russia, during the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and USSR. At that point he fled through Poland, Latvia, Estonia, finally managed to reach Canada, which was kind of his second home.
Not long after, the Nazis invaded France, and they actually came to his house and specifically looked for the poet who had mocked Hitler in newspaper articles. Devika thought of him as bindaas character who just did as he pleased. Devika found him fascinating as a person and read a lot about him.
More details of the biography have been added in a formal piece by Devika.
The readers loved this poem, its balladic lilt and the comical ending. They thanked Devika for reading it. It's about the gold rush. Service was inspired, he just walked through the woods one nigh, got it in his head, and then came home and just wrote it out.
Readers noted Charlie Chaplin's famous movie The Gold Rush. Everyone has seen it. It's beautiful. It's one of the classics.
Full Biography of Robert W Service – 16th January 1874 to 11th September 1958
Service was born in Lancashire England. His father was a banker from Kilwinning Scotland who had been transferred to England. His second name, William, was in honour of his rich uncle. After that uncle neglected to provide for him in his will, Service dropped the middle name. Robert Service lived with grandparents in Kilwinning during his early years. It was during this period, at the age of six that he composed his first verse. He attended a school in Glasgow when he moved back with his parents after which he joined the Commercial Bank of Scotland.
At the age of 21, Service travelled to Vancouver Island in British Columbia with dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted along doing various jobs and in his own words ‘starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver’.
When Service was working as a farm labourer and a store clerk, he fell in love with Constance MacLean who was visiting her uncle. As she lived on mainland he courted her through mail. MacLean was looking for a man of education and means to support her. To please her. Service took up courses at McGill University but failed in them. In his later years when he was a rich man, she got engaged to him but it never really worked out for them.
Service was posted at Whitehorse, a frontier town on the Yukon River, for a long time. This was a place to camp for prospectors on the way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush. He settled in well, dreamed and listened to the stories of the great gold rush. He recited his poems at concerts. The editor of the Whitehorse Star suggested that Robert write a poem about the place. Returning from a walk one night he heard revelry from the saloon. Inspired he wrote The Shooting of Dan McGrew. A month later he heard a gold rush yarn from a mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal. And Service spent the night walking in the woods composing The Cremation of Sam McGee.
One remarkable thing about his ballads was as to how easily he wrote them. When he wrote Sam McGee, the verses just flowed. He said “I took the woodland trail, my mind seething with excitement and strange ecstasy, verse after verse developed with scarce a check and when I rolled happily into bed the ballad was clinched. Next day with scarcely an effort of memory I put it on paper.
Service was a newspaper correspondent during the Balkans war of 1912-13 and an ambulance driver and correspondent during World War 1. At the end of war, he settled in Paris. Being a rich man, he would promenade during the day in his best suits with a monocle. At night he went out in old clothes with the company of his doorman, a retired policeman, to visit the lowest dive of the city.
He visited the USSR in 1930 and later wrote a satirical “Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb”. Thanks to this his poetry was never translated into Russian and there is no mention of him in Russian Encyclopaedia.
Robert’s 2nd trip to Russia was during the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the USSR. He fled across Poland, Latvia, and Estonia, finally reaching France and then on to Canada. Not long after the Nazis invaded France and arrived at his house in Lancieux looking specifically for the poet who mocked Hitler.
He received a lot of recognition some of them being – schools named after him, being honoured on a Canadian postage stamp, and a street in Lancieux named for him.
He lived to the end of his life in Lancieux, Brittany.
Joe Cleetus
Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917) was at first a prose writer and critic, before he became a poet in the last three years of his life, 1914–17. Thomas’s wrote many reviews and critical studies, and much of it was done as hack work in response to the demands of married life (he married early).
The poetry of Thomas seems rooted in the countryside: farms, streams, birds, plants, haymaking, teams of horses, silent contemplation by the sea, and listening to sounds of creatures. His diction clearly belongs to the time of Thomas Hardy, that is to the late 1800s. It is imbued with an intensely personal response to Nature and the visions it provides of the countryside. It reminded Joe constantly of Thomas Hardy and his novels where he has so much about the countryside in which he grew up and which he saw changing with industrialisation.
Occasionally WWI intrudes into his poems, ever so slightly – what the war did to depopulate the fair realms of Britain. He died in that war in the Battle of Arras, killed on the first day of the battle on Easter 1917; he had survived little more than two months in France. The Battle of Arras was a stalemate in which British and German casualties numbered 285,000. He wrote only one real war poem, This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong.
The modern poet Andrew Motion, poet laureate for 10 years until 2009, writes that Thomas introduced the modern sensibility into English poetry, which later poets like W.H. Auden and Ted Hughes took up.
Thomas was born in London of Welsh parents. His father had six sons and pursued politics. Temperamentally, Edward and his father disagreed on nearly all matters, including Thomas’ desire to pursue a literary career. Thomas met the successful literary journalist James Ashcroft Noble, who encouraged him in his literary ambitions and was instrumental in getting his first book, The Woodland Life, accepted for publication.
Thomas married Noble’s daughter, Helen, and began accepting writing and reviewing assignments from London publishers. Though the work was uncongenial, Thomas gave it his all, producing essays, natural history, criticism, biographies, reviews, fiction, and introductions. All of Thomas’ criticism has been praised for its lucid style, precision of speech, and intelligent observations.
The modern poet Andrew Motion, poet laureate for 10 years until 2009, writes that Thomas introduced the modern sensibility into English poetry, which later poets like W.H. Auden and Ted Hughes took up.
Thomas was born in London of Welsh parents. His father had six sons and pursued politics. Temperamentally, Edward and his father disagreed on nearly all matters, including Thomas’ desire to pursue a literary career. Thomas met the successful literary journalist James Ashcroft Noble, who encouraged him in his literary ambitions and was instrumental in getting his first book, The Woodland Life, accepted for publication.
Thomas married Noble’s daughter, Helen, and began accepting writing and reviewing assignments from London publishers. Though the work was uncongenial, Thomas gave it his all, producing essays, natural history, criticism, biographies, reviews, fiction, and introductions. All of Thomas’ criticism has been praised for its lucid style, precision of speech, and intelligent observations.
Thomas wrote his first poems in 1914 at the urging of the American poet Robert Frost, with whom he got friendly during Frost’s years in England. Two years later his first book of verse, Six Poems, was published, but under a pseudonym. In 1915 he enlisted in the infantry and was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras, while the first edition of his Six Poems was being prepared for press in 1917.
His earliest poems bear the influence of Frost in their treatment of nature and in their simple style. However, Thomas discovered his own personal voice in poetry slowly. There is a profound sense of solitude running though his poems. Perhaps his appeal to the modern reader is because his poetry expresses an awareness of individual alienation. As Louis Untermeyer said: “always the love of earth shines quietly through his lines. It is an unwavering affection, even though it is joy without buoyancy; a fantasy that cannot keep from being wistful.”
Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s full-scale biography of Thomas, Edward Thomas: From Adlestrop to Arras (2015) offered a frank assessment of his life, including the struggles with depression, marital troubles, and his many attempts at suicide.
Edward Thomas’ archive is at Cardiff University Library.
Joe then read his two poems. The first was called Aspens. The aspen is that remarkable tree which grows sheer upright. Its bark is covered with a paper-like white flaky sheathe, which is very striking when you see it in a forest, a whole stands of aspens. The poet is obviously talking about one such copse that he saw:
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
…
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear
But need not listen,
It is clear that for Thomas these trees are alive and talking, even if humans may not care to listen. The last quatrain runs like this:
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves
We cannot other than an aspen be
That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.
This harks to what Untermyer said, that there's a vein of wistfulness in his poetry. His diction though is very different to that of the modern poetry that was to come only two decades later. It resembles Thomas Hardy's poetry. Joe has a whole book of Hardy's poems which he reads from time to time.
The second poem is Words. As a poet, he loves words. You remember when the painter Degas came and told the famous French poet Mallarmé that he had lots of thoughts and ideas but felt unable to achieve what he wanted to in poetry; the poet replied, “Ce n'est point avec des idées, mon cher Degas, que l'on fait des vers. C'est avec des mots.” My dear Degas, it is not with ideas that one makes poetry; it is with words.
Thomas is talking about Words.
OUT of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
...
Choose me,
You English words?
After enumerating all manner of words he cherishes, he ends thus with this apostrophe to Words:
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.
It's a love poem to words by Thomas. Priya remembered an old song, the Bee Gees singing It's only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away. Then Pamela sang a snatch of it. Readers liked the poems.
Kavita
Kavita too was reading a Scottish poet, Carol Ann Duffy, who was the first Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from Scotland, during the years 2009 – 2019.
She was born on 23rd December 1955 in Glasgow. She was the eldest child of Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter, and Mary Black. When Carol was six years old, the family moved to Stafford, England. She was a passionate reader from an early age and always wanted to be a writer. She started writing poems at the age of 11. When Carol was 15, some of her poems were published.
She was born on 23rd December 1955 in Glasgow. She was the eldest child of Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter, and Mary Black. When Carol was six years old, the family moved to Stafford, England. She was a passionate reader from an early age and always wanted to be a writer. She started writing poems at the age of 11. When Carol was 15, some of her poems were published.
When she was 16, she met Adam Henry, one of the Liverpool poets, and lived with him until 1982. She applied to the University of Liverpool and began doing a philosophy degree in 1974. She received an honours degree in philosophy in 1977.
She worked as a poetry critic for the Guardian from 1988 to 1989. Duffy became a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996, and later became a creative director of its writing school.
She started living with Scottish woman writer and playwright Jackie Kay and had a daughter, Ella.
Carol Ann Duffy was born in 1955 in Glasgow
Her very productive writing life included plays, editing anthologies, poetry for children, etc. In her first poem, as a poet laureate, Duffy tackled the scandal of British MPs. In March 2010, she wrote The Achilles for David Beckham, a footballer, about his Achilles tendon injury.
Duffy also wrote a 46-line poem, Rings, for the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Duffy's poems explore both everyday experience and her own rich fantasy life and that of others.
Kavita chose the poem Rain. Rain is a song of solitude and yearning. The rain soothes, cleanses, and reveals as if a blessing comes down to envelop the body, hinting at the mysteries and wonders that lingers beneath our everyday lives.
After Kavita read the poem readers marvelled at her imagination:
Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist
for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,
… the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
KumKum said Carol Ann Duffy was introduced to KRG readers by Talitha in July 2008 via the poem Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife who got a legacy of the ’second best bed.’ When KumKum went to Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon she dearly wanted to see that bed.
KumKum
K2 chose to read two poems by Vikram Seth, both from his first collection, Mappings published in 1980.
Vikram Seth Brief Bio
Poems by VS have been read at KRG several times before. He is the only author two of whose works in different genres have been read by us: the novel An Equal Music, and the biography Two Lives.
Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta on the June 20, 1952. He will be 72 years old on his birthday this year. His parents were Leila Seth and Prem Seth. Leila Seth was a distinguished lawyer who practiced in many courts in India and later became Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court, the first woman to be the Chief Justice of a State High Court.. She was also an accomplished author. His father was an executive in a shoe company in India. Seth has a brother Shantum (a Buddhist teacher) and a sister Aradhana (an artist, art director and filmmaker).
Vikram Seth, photo by Chris Boland
He studied at the Doon School, and then went to England to finish his A-Levels. He graduated from Oxford, and went on to Stanford University to do a Ph.D. in Economics with China’s economy as his subject. Seth left for two years to Nanjing University in China, ostensibly to continue his economic research. He studied Mandarin too and got interested in Classical Chinese Poetry. He did not complete his Ph.D. in economics and took off into writing poetry and travelogues. He dates his fascination with verse from the time he read Charles Johnston's translation in 1977 of Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin written in 1833. Charles Johnston preserved the unusual Onegin stanza form, which sparked his own novel in verse, The Golden Gate, written in the identical form in 1986. It was his first novel.
Seth has experimented with a number of genres: poetry is the most prominent, and then travelogues, biography, novels, and even the novel in verse mentioned above. He wrote many collections of poems. A Suitable Boy (1993) and An Equal Music (1999) are two of his beautiful novels. His readers are still waiting for A Suitable Girl from Seth, which has long been promised by the author. He quips that the novel is still hidden behind her ghungat.
VS writes: “The wish to write about anything is such a rare and mysterious feeling that it is pointless to preempt or constrain it by notions of subject or geography or genre. One cannot, alas, request the Muse to come back later with something closer to one’s imagined requirements. Even when one is visited, the inspiration is often too unsustained for a work to be born. For good or ill, one must take one’s visions as they come, and be thankful for those that survive.” (From his introduction to The Poems 1981-1994.)
1. Panipat
The poem has 9 stanzas of 4 lines. It tells us about a homesick young man returning to Punjab from “Inglisstan” before completing his studies. One winter afternoon he finds himself in Panipat at his aunt’s home. The aunt was probably sitting on a cot in the courtyard with her neighbours, shelling peas while gossiping. Sitting on a ledge, not far from the aunt and her friends, the young man was trying to play Raag Lalit on his flute, a serene and devotional raag performed at dawn. Though afternoon is not the time to play the mournful meditative tune, it transports him to a universe beyond Panipat. The lad was a mix of things Punjabi and English, and the sound of Koel’s cry suddenly reminds him of the birds of England: the nightingale, the Wren, the Blackbird and and he feels nostalgic for England, having stayed there. The Neem tree of Panipat reminds him of the elm tree and the beeches he left behind in England.
When his cousin offers him a slice of mango, the sharp sweet taste of the fruit brings him back to the present, and he feels “I must be home at last.”
2. Party For The Retirement of The Oldest-Serving British Museum Reading Room Book Attendant
It is a Sonnet, and therefore has 14 lines. It has two themes, the first one being that a long serving British attendant of a Reading room of the British Museum is retiring after serving 50 years. There are many changes that took place in the world outside the Reading room, but not much has changed within. Except that the lighting of the place is new and they have now started checking anything unusual.
The second theme, beginning after the volta, is a poignant one. An old man by the name Marx used to come regularly to the Reading room, year after year, sitting always at desk 10A. He kept writing in some foreign language. One day he left and never came back again.
Of course, as everyone knows Karl Marx wrote the 3 volumes of Das Kapital, his critique of Capitalism, while using the Reading Room of the British Library.
The Reading Room in the early 2000s, not long after the British Library moved to its new purpose-built home in Kings Cross
KumKum chose this poem because she always remembered Joe telling her the story Karl Marx sitting in the British Library for years and years to write the three volumes of his big treatise, Das Capital, a critique of Capitalism.
In later years at the India International Centre in New Delhi she used to see Jagmohan, ex-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. He used to sit at the same table in the IIC Library, every day from 11am till 8.30pm. One day KumKum went up and told him he was like Karl Marx, always there in the Library in the same place. Jagmohan replied what else to do, he was retired; he was not doing anything original, though, he said.
For years Jagmohan had a gunman toting an automatic rifle to protect him, stationed just outside the Library’s glass windows. Having been governor in Kashmir he was possibly a target of some terrorists and so they had a guard there, walking up and down. Around 4.30 pm he and the guard would go up for coffee in the lounge, and then be back again till 8.30 pm.
Priya said Jagmohan wrote some explosive revelations about Mrs. Gandhi. He said he was writing down some history and on his table KumKum saw a lot of books, even some books by Nehru, and reference books. Jagmohan said IIC was the best place to come, all his books were there, and it was not very crowded. It gave KumKum the idea that Joe and she should retire somewhere nearby.
Pamela
Pamela was in awe that she was going to be reading a poem written eight centuries ago. This poet belonged to the 13th century. He did something so great that he is with us today and perhaps will remain relevant forever.
It's such a lovely feeling and his name is Rumi. His full name was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi. Pamela narrated that in the school she taught, Deelta Study in Fort Kochi, the students belonged to four houses named after Copernicus, Schweitzer, Ramanujam and Rumi. But Pamela didn't know much about Rumi when she was teaching. But now after reading his whole biography, she thought, ‘My goodness, why didn't I go into his history and let the children know what a great person their house was named after.’
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
Rumi was born on September 30th, 1207, in Balkh, which is now in Afghanistan. He died on December 17th, 1273, in Konya, a town in southern Turkiye. He was the greatest among the Sufi mystics and a poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic, Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī. It is written in Spiritual Couplets, and widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.
After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes.
Rumi's use of Persian and Arabic in his poetry, in addition to some Turkish and less Greek, has resulted in his being claimed variously for Turkish literature and Persian literature, a reflection of the strength of his influence in Iran and Turkey. The influence of his writings in the Indian subcontinent is also substantial.
By the end of the 20th century, his popularity had become a global phenomenon with his poetry achieving a wide circulation in Western Europe and the United States.
His family's moved to Balkh in 1280. He journeyed through Anatolia, then a region that enjoyed peace and prosperity and under the rule of the Turkish Seljuk dynasty.
After a short stay they settled in Karaman, where Jalal al-Din's mother died and his first son was born, they were called to the capital, Konya, in 1228.
He was taught at one of the numerous madrasas, religious schools. The teacher who taught, a year later, one of the disciples arrived in Konya and acquainted Jalal al-Din deeply with some mystical theories that had developed in Iran. Burhan al-Din, who contributed considerably to Jalal al-Din's formation, left Konya about 1240.
But Jalal al-Din is said to have undertaken one or two journeys to Syria. There he may have met Ibn al-Arabi, the leading theosophist whose interpreter and stepson, Sadr al-Din al-Labi, was Jalal al-Din's colleague and friend in Konya. The influence of these people, and the influence of Shams al-Din was the most impactful.
The decisive moment in Rumi's life occurred on November 30, 1244, when in the streets of Konya he met the wandering man Shams al-Din, son of religion, of Tabriz, whom he may have first encountered in Syria. He had a very strong relationship with him. He stopped talking to his friends and his family and was so involved with spending his time with Shams that they were all against him. The family could not tolerate the close relation of Jalal al-Din and one night in 1247, Shams just disappeared forever.
His experience of love, longing, and loss turned Rumi into a poet. It was his whole relationship with Shams that influenced him to become a poet. A few years after Shams' death, Rumi experienced a similar rapture in his acquaintance with an illiterate goldsmith, Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub.
This poem Pamela recited was translated by Farooq Dhondy, who was born in Pune, India in 1944 in a Parsi family.
Rumi, a new translation by Farrukh Dhondy
Dhondy obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Pune University in 1964 and was awarded a scholarship to read English at Cambridge University after which he moved to Dexter University for his Bachelor's degree.
From 1968 to 1978, Dhondy worked as a further education lecturer and school teacher in the Midlands and London before entering television. From 1984 to 1997, Dhondy worked as commissioning editor, multicultural programming for Channel 4 TV, UK.
In this capacity, he was responsible for hundreds of hours of TV production in all genres, entertainment, situation, comedy, TV, drama, film, education, and factual, and helped green light iconic shows like Desmond's and The Band and Five.
The poem for this session is called On His Death, and Pamela was sure it must definitely be even more beautiful in the Persian language.
Persian is a very rich language, and when Pamela was learning Ghazals in Delhi, her Ustad taught her a Persian Ghazal written by Amir Khusroo, so she knows how beautiful this could sound if it was Persian, and it's in the same form as Ghazals, namely couplets.
The readers all exclaimed at the touching nature of the poem where the poet is reflecting on his own death and leaving wishes for those who survive him.
Joe said the couplet that struck him was:
The grave is not the sum of a life complete
It is but the veil beyond which bride and groom retreat.
Pamela liked this one too:
Is not the sun as it sinks, elsewhere rising too?
My grave is but the last door, the entrance to the new.
It's a beautifully translated poem. KumKum said Joe’s library must be having two books of Rumi’s.
Rumi was a philosopher also, besides being a poet. Joe showed the book to the Zoom audience of readers.
Saras said the Sufi movement, sider Rumi as their founder. If not the founder, he's certainly the, the inspiration, and not only that, even the dervish dancers were singing this ode of Rumi, do you recall?
I don't know, but he talks about the entrance to the new. The Sufi philosophy, some of it is very similar to the Hindu philosophy also, actually. Joe said he would second what Saras said.
According to Joe this is a kind of a universal outlook on life, which demonstrates the continuum in which we exist. In our existence, there's a transitory phase, and there is something beyond. Something with which, I don't know whether you have a belief in a religious faith, or even if you don't, it's possibly quite inspiring, because it essentially says that we are all one and our end is only apparent, for it continues beyond. We are all subject to the same experience. Going through and ending, and then you don't know where you are, but Rumi says you are somewhere and not beyond the reach of those you leave behind. And that's a wonderful thought.
Yes, the other readers agreed, it is a beautiful thought.
Joe wanted to add to what Pamela said about the popularity of Rumi now in Western Europe and the United States. Actually, according to the worldwide book publishing industry, Rumi is the most popular poet in the whole world in terms of books sold. Joe has heard Rumi in terms of books sold is the most popular in the whole world, outselling Shakespeare even.
Joe said there is an attraction within his life as well as the words he left behind. He's quite deep, his poetry is worth reflecting about. You can meditate with many of these verses, to find what they mean for you.
He's not legislating any belief, he's not trying to catechise you in some faith, he's just laying it out the way it is and just clothing your experience as a human being in words that anybody will understand, no matter what hiser background. That's what makes him universal. And in that respect, he has many characteristics that make him, in my mind, similar to Shakespeare.
Priya said Kahlil Gibran was influenced by him. In Joe’s opinion Gibran is a very poor imitation – he would almost call Gibran a mushy fake writer, compared to those who write from the experience of having had real mystical experiences. But yes, Gibran too sometimes speaks truths, as this poem of his On Children:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Priya agreed with Joe. But people say that he's in the same, sort of vein, from the Middle East, and coming from the Islamic background, and then professing something which is so universal. In reality Gibran was brought up as a Maronite Christian, but being an Arab, he was influenced also by his exposure to Islam, and especially to the mysticism of the Sufis.
Pamela truly wished she could have told all what Joe said here, to her students when she was the housemistress of the Rumi House at Delta Study School in Fort Kochi. She learned so much about him only now, at KRG.
But Rumi has been read before at KRG. Yes, Joe must have read it 20 years ago, said KumKum. They intended to travel to Turkey with their daughter, Rachel, and son-in-law, Herman. While being taken to many historic places Joe only entertained one thought, that he wanted to go to Konya where Rumi is buried and there is a mausoleum built for him. It’s off the beaten track but many do go and visit.
Devika said these sessions are always a learning experience for her. Every poetry session of ours is a real learning experience. Arundhaty said she tends to like people who have a yen for books and English literature..
Others expressed similar predilections. Arundhaty said she has learned so much about poetry after the last five, six years. She doesn’t know how all these, the best friends in her life were all these people who were into literature. It just happened.
Kavita said she got to read so many lovely poets she had never heard of. Others chimed in. Devika said the readers also have to do much research before choosing a poetry. And because we have to find something, in the process we read many poets whom we would not have otherwise read.
Priya
Priya read six haikus by the famous Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho. Joe used to write haikus all the time and send them to us on the KRG Wapp channel even going so far as to use Hindi as the medium:
श्बद्कोश बगीचे
में फूल कभी न सूखते –
हर वक़्त चमकते
श्बद्कोश बगीचे
में फूल कभी न सूखते –
हर वक़्त चमकते
There was a time in 2020 when Joe would consult the word-of-the-day from a dictionary site and make haiku using that word to lampoon Mr Trump:
Trump is living proof
You can be the President
And still act a goof.
Priya introduced haikus as follows. Basho is one of the inventors of the haiku form elevating it to an art. Before the haikus, there existed in Japan the classical Japanese form of poetry, which was called waka. It stood for ‘poetry’ in Japanese. Waka had a lot of rules to follow. A common definition refers to poetry in a 5-7-5-7-7 metre, nowadays known as tanka (meaning short verse). Other forms like choke (long poem), sedoka (repeating-the-first-part poem), and so on were invented.
It was classical in every way, from the kind of language used, the imagery, the length, and everything.
[At this time Zakia who had just returned from a trip abroad to celebrate her son’s graduation from college, showed up on Zoom and everybody wished her. She had prepared a poem, but not sent it on in advance to be included. Readers encouraged her – “ You're the last one anyway, so you can read it. You're the icing on the cake.”]
Priya continued: this poet, Basho, is mentioned in our next novel selection The Garden of Evening Mists; they mention Basho being celebrated on wood print. That's when Priya thought to explore this poet for our present poetry session. And it was really a pleasurable exploration.
So coming back to Waka, which was the classical poetry. There was something called Haiku Noringa, a kind of a collaborative poetry, but not in the form of present-day haiku.
The haiku is a 3-line 17-syllable form, as we all know, with a kireji or cut between the second and third line which has the effect of a pause or stop to contemplate before going on. The thought is meant to turn suddenly at the kireji, with a suggestion of surprise.
Ringa was collaborative poetry. It was as if somebody wrote a haiku, and another poet wrote a seven-syllable reply to it. So that was called the ringa. These were existing forms when Basho came on the scene, said Priya.
Basho was in the 16th century. He's the famous poet of the Edo period, from 1603 to 1868. It was this period during the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship by Tokugawa. What is important about that period is that it was a very stable period of internal peace, economic growth, and the flourishing of art and culture. That is how, in this period, poetry flourished as did so many other arts.
About his early childhood not much is known. But he was born to a family of samurai descent. In that also, the family was specialised in ninja, which is a special kind of military activity, like espionage or undercover operations. He was a ninjutsu as a young boy. And later, he was a servant to a feudal lord called Todo Yoshitada, doing the housework as a house help. Todo Yoshitada had an interest in poetry and he noticed the young boy's flair for writing poetry.
His rise to fame gradually happened after 1662. His first poem was published, which is still extant. But Basho rose to fame only after 1675, when the founder of the Dandrin School, Nishiyama Son, came to Edo (that is Tokyo), where he met Basho. The Dandrin School is the school that started writing more modern poetry, as against waka, the classical poetry, which was existing.
If you talk about the haiku, you will see that the meter is 5-7-5. But more than that, the words use a simple language, and the imagery though presented in startling fashion celebrates ordinary things. There is humor too. There is fun. There is seriousness. There is depth.
In the very precise 17-syllable format, they are able to convey a lot. It was very refreshing to have something like that. You'd also find importance given to stillness, meditation, and being very minimalistic.
Those are also Japanese characteristics. In 1675, after he met the founder of the Dandrin School, who noticed his talent and encouraged him, Basho became a teacher and acquired 20 disciples.
A guru needs shishyas and his disciples were in awe of him, obviously. They used to do a lot for him. They built him a hut to live in. And later, it was his students who published his first book of poems, along with other haiku poets, which was called The Shriveled Chestnuts.
In 1682 his hut was burnt down and the following year his mother died. his mother died. He was very disturbed and upset about it. Though a new hut was built by the students, he left on a long journey in 1684.
A very important point to note about Basho is that he undertook long journeys in his life, four of them. He was a traveler. He was a monk too.
One may not know how much of a monk he was. All his biographers state that he was homosexually active right through his life. He had his disciples and people used to apprentice with him.
And he started wandering. There were no roads. So his first travel was called the Edo Five Routes; there were five routes from Tokyo, which went in different directions. As he travelled he wrote haikus, about 1,000 of them, from all sorts of places along the way, noticing all kinds of things. In 1687, he journeyed for the moon watching. Then again he went to watch the cherry blossoms – a favourite occupation in Japan.
People warned him not to undertake these journeys, but he was very keen on exploring, and discovering life.
Priya interspersed his life with the reciting of the haikus she had chosen.
When his disciples built a hut for him, they planted the Japanese banana tree, which made him very happy. But after some time, he saw that the reed, called Miscanthus, was growing among them, which irritated him a lot.
So he wrote in 1680:
By my new Banana plant
The first sign of something I loathe
A miscanthus bud
He journeyed for the moon-watching. Then he returned to celebrate the lunar new year. He was teaching all the time. After this long journey, he published a very famous work, Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton.This was in 1686. It is in this collection his most famous poem, The Old Pond, appears.
In 1689, he undertook another long journey. And the famous book that issued, after that journey, of 150 days covering a thousand kilometres, is called, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, published in 1694. Five months of the journey are described in exquisite prose that combines intimate details of his journey with historical background, fictional anecdotes, literary allusions, and his own emotional responses, often expressed in haiku. Although the work is secular, Bashō clearly seeks spiritual enlightenment and a reaffirmation of values that he feels have been lost in the era of the shoguns. From Tokyo, he went to Honshu with his apprentice, Kabai Sona.
Priya read a few of those haikus from this journey.
At KRG we also read a novel by Richard Flanagan titled The Narrow Road to the Deep North which was about a WWII military campaign in Burma and building a railway for the Japanese army by Australian POWs.
Joe recalled in that novel that there is mention of a practice among Japanese soldiers of writing a death haiku when they knew death was approaching.
Priya read a few more haikus Basho wrote while on his journeys.
Staying at an inn
Where prostitutes are also sleeping
Bush clover and the moon
Fleas, lice
A horse peeing
Near my pillow
How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting.
Life is fleeting.
Now, the most famous one, The Old Pond:
The old Pond
A frog leaps in
Sound of water
This is translated by Robert Haas, who's an American poet laureate and also a haiku writer. There's always a stillness, and the stillness is disturbed. You look at the imagery. It‘s very short, and precise.
In his last years, again, his disciples built another hut for him; he lived there with his nephew and his female friend, Jati and entertained visitors.
Priya said Basho was temperamental. He had some kind of a behaviour issue because he would become a recluse, and then again, he would probably meet people, and he would go off on these explorations.
He was troubled in the last phase, and he stopped interacting with the outer world. But later, he realised that, no, this is not the way out, and then adopted a semi-Buddhist kind of a philosophy called karumi, which means lightness, where he would greet people, but not get into an in-depth kind of an association with them, and maintained a distance.
In 1694, he left for Edo, and while he was going back on his way in Osaka, he developed a stomach illness and died peacefully, surrounded by his disciples. There was no formal death poem that he wrote, but this one, which I'll read, is generally regarded as a farewell death poem:
Falling sick on a journey
My dream goes wandering
On a withered field
Basho is celebrated in wood prints, as you will see in the next novel we will read at KRG. Basho is a very celebrated writer in Japan, and his style has inspired the imagist movement, the Beat Generation American poets, Ezra Pound, and Jack Kerouac, the American haiku poet.
If you want to read Basho’s poetic work in full, it's called Basho: The Complete Haiku by Jane Reichhold. It is a good book to read where you get all the haikus.
Joe said it's available as a PDF on the web from thehaikufoundation.org. and there are lots of notes and annotations.
Priya said the haiku survives and survives well. It's flourishing, also, especially for our Twitter generation where we have Twitter poetry. She though the haiku form suits our generation the best.
Joe commented that what irked him about some of these translations is they don't bother in the English to keep the 5-7-5 syllabic translation. Why not? He can’t fathom. The translator should at least seek to imitate the form because the form is very fundamental to haiku. Otherwise, you can just say it's a three-line poem.
Joe didn’t see why the translators don't try to maintain the form because it's worth doing it.
For example, if one reads the one about the lightning in Japanese from that book, Jane Reichhold:
inazuma ni [The lightning]
satoranu hito no [is blinding]
tattosa yo [How precious]
It's very condensed, very precise, and very difficult to translate. But yet, Joe thinks that is the translator's job.
Basho - Haiku master – At the ancient pond, A frog leaps and plunges in The sound of water; furu ike ya [old pond] – kawazu tobikomu [frog jumps into] – mizu no oto [sound of water]
Take Basho’s most famous haiku:
furu ike ya [old pond]
kawazu tobikomu [frog jumps into]
mizu no oto [sound of water]
This was translated originally as:
The old pond;
A frog jumps in ––
The sound of water.
But in the online PDF book Haiku by R.H. Blyth, also published by The Haiku Foundation, you will see various translations and their pros and cons set out. Priya alluded to the variations, such as
An old silent pond,
A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash. Silence again.
An old silent pond,
A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash. Silence again.
Sid Corman translates it like this:
Old pond, frog leaping, splash.
Joe noted the one about farting and pissing and so on. Such earthy poetry appeals to Joe. So when he saw this one:
Fleas, lice
A horse peeing
Near my pillow.
Joe immediately wanted to translate it into a proper haiku observing the 5-7-5 form. Here it is:
A horse is pissing,
Fleas and lice fly by buzzing,
–– Close by my pillow
But they used to have the 5-7-5 followed by 7-7, said Priya. Ah that makes a tanka, said Joe, 31 syllables in all.
That was it for Basho from our dear Priya who has been struggling with the 5-7-5 form a long time.
Priya’s favourite is the fifth one:
How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting.
She doesn’t know why the old pond is so famous, but thinks it's about the stillness, the stillness continuing after the jumping action. It is lovely imagery, isn't it?
Someone asked if there’s any book teaching how to write haikus. Joe replied: like the frog, you just plunge in!
Saras said you can immediately think also of Japanese single line paintings, which would go so well with this old pond haiku.
Saras
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Saras selected two poems by Dorothy Parker, an American short story writer, poet, a screenwriter, and a critic. She was well-known for her exceedingly witty remarks. She has written many poems which, though funny, are also very ironical. She was the epitome of the liberated 1920s woman.
Dorothy Parker (born August 22, 1893, West End, near Long Beach, New Jersey, U.S.—died June 7, 1967, New York, New York) was an American short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and critic known for her witty—and often acerbic—remarks. She was one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal literary group.
She joined the editorial staff of Vogue magazine in 1916 and the next year moved to Vanity Fair as a drama critic. In 1917 she married Edwin Pond Parker II, whom she divorced in 1928 but whose surname she retained in her professional career.Parker was discharged from Vanity Fair in 1920 for the acerbity of her drama reviews, and so she became a freelance writer. Her first book of light, witty, and sometimes cynical verse, Enough Rope, was a best-seller when it appeared in 1926. Two other books of verse, Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931), were collected with it in Collected Poems: Not So Deep As a Well (1936). In 1927 Parker became book reviewer, known as “Constant Reader,” for The New Yorker, and she was associated with that magazine as a staff writer or contributor for much of the rest of her career.
Dorothy Parker was known as the ‘Guinevere of the Round Table’
Early in the 1920s she had been one of the founders of the famous Algonquin Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan and was by no means the least of a group of dazzling wits that included Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, and James Thurber. It was there, in conversations that frequently spilled over from the offices of The New Yorker, that Parker established her reputation as one of the most brilliant conversationalists in New York. Her rapier wit became so widely renowned that quips and mots were frequently attributed to her on the strength of her reputation alone. She came to epitomize the liberated woman of the 1920s.
In 1929 Parker won the O. Henry Award for the best short story of the year with “Big Blonde,” a compassionate account of an aging party girl. Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933) are collections of her short stories, combined and augmented in 1939 as Here Lies. Characteristic of both the stories and Parker’s verses is a view of the human situation as simultaneously tragic and funny.
The Algonquin Round Table is fabled to have been a ‘10-year lunch’ of fabulous, if also ferocious, fun – cartoon by Al Hirschfeld, 1962
In 1933, newly married, she and her second husband, Alan Campbell, went to Hollywood to collaborate as film writers. They received screen credits for more than 15 films, including A Star Is Born (1937), for which they were nominated for an Academy Award. She became active in left-wing politics, disdained her former role as a smart woman about town, reported from the Spanish Civil War, and discovered that her beliefs counted against her employment by the studios in the fervour of anticommunism that seized Hollywood after World War II. She wrote book reviews for Esquire magazine and collaborated on two plays: The Coast of Illyria (first performance 1949), about the English essayist Charles Lamb, and The Ladies of the Corridor (1953), about lonely widows in side-street New York hotels.
Parker’s witty remarks are legendary. When told that the taciturn former U.S. president Calvin Coolidge had died, she is said to have asked, “How can they tell?” Of Katharine Hepburn’s performance in a 1934 play, Parker said she “ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” Parker was also responsible for the couplet
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Joe quoted another witty Parker poem which had Saras in splits:
I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.
She lived in Hollywood until Campbell’s death in 1963 and then returned to New York City.
Saras could find pages of witty quotes attributed to her; wit seems to have been an essential ingredient in her make-up. For example, she said, “I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.” What a combination, remarked Arundhaty. There's another quote about what she asked to be graved on her tombstone. “Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.” Saras found her extremely hilarious.
Perhaps suspicious of her interest in fashion and men, feminists have been wary of claiming Mrs Parker. Parker was accused of disloyal attacks on women, of writing for a male audience, of projecting a female rather than a feminist view of the world. So-called second wave feminists were more interested, and began to portray Parker’s humour as a kind of social protest against patriarchal convention. Certainly, most of the quotes she’s remembered for come from her verse or her Round Table quips, but her stories feature female characters trying to square exhilarating new choices with the enduring constraints of societal expectation. Some of her heroines are lovelorn, suicidal alcoholics but others are undeniably strong characters. Temporarily untethered by the hedonistic ‘20s, their lives embrace contradictions and challenges only too familiar to 21st Century women.
Parker’s stories also deal with questions of family, race, war and economic inequality, and it wasn’t just on the page that these themes interested her. Ironically, while the hectic turmoil of her private life is a tale well-thumbed, her public life has been forgotten. Throughout, she was actively involved in campaigning for social justice. In 1927, she was fined $5 for ‘sauntering’ in a Boston demonstration protesting the execution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; during the Spanish Civil War she travelled to Europe to further the anti-Franco cause; she became national chairman of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. And in her will, she left the bulk of her estate to Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and upon his death a year later to the NAACP.
Until the NAACP claimed them, her ashes spent some 15 years sitting in a lawyer’s filing cabinet – a melancholy but apt fate. We may think of her as a Round Table star, as a distiller of the tipsy, frostbitten sentiments that defined the Roaring ‘20s, as a New Yorker writer. She was all of these things and none of them. As her friend Lillian Hellman put it in her eulogy: “She was part of nothing and nobody except herself; it was this independence of mind and spirit that was her true distinction”. It’s this that makes her such an enduring icon.
Sources:
https://dorothyparker.com/
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170605-dorothy-parkers-stunning-wit-and-tragic-life
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothy-Parker
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170605-dorothy-parkers-stunning-wit-and-tragic-life
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothy-Parker
The first poem Saras read, Love Song, is quite ironical in spirit. Its obvious her lover is faithless, but his sunny ways make him endearing to young things everywhere.
My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
The poet concludes:
My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.
The second poem, Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom, is a forlorn reflection on how the day ends very day:
Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I’m bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Since that how the day ends always she concludes:
I’m a fool to rise at all!
Shoba
The poem Shoba read is called Facts about the Moon, and when choosing this poem she was reminded about the KRG excursion to Cherai Beach to see the full moon. Shoba said she has a fascination with the moon, eclipses, and all things regarding the moon.
The poet is actually talking about the fact that the moon is receding from the Earth, and in the ancient past it would have been really huge and hanging over us, and now it's inching away at the rate of a little less than three inches every year. One wonders how it is possible to measure the Earth-Moon distance (384,400 km) within a precision of inches! That requires a precision of 1 part in 1010
Another fact that we know is that we never see the far side of the moon. Even though it's rotating in plain view, we never get to see the far side of the moon, which actually looks different from the side we see, which has all these craters and mountains. The reason we don't see the far side is that because it revolves around the earth and it rotates about its own axis at the same speed, so that one side is hidden.
That movement and the precision of the speed and all of those facts are very fascinating about the moon and the fact also that if it were not to exist, life on earth would also come to a halt, some say. The main effect of the Moon on the Earth is the height of the tides which are extra high when Sun (which also causes tides) is aligned with the Moon. Th Moon also has an effect on the wobble of the Earth’s axis of rotation, stabilising it. Certainly without the Moon, there will be climate and tidal effects and effects on agriculture, but not a total disappearance of life on Earth, as the pooet imagines.
Shoba then read the poem. Laux paints a doomsday scenario:
What bothers me most is that someday
the moon will spiral right out of orbit
and all land-based life will die.
She has a great poetic affection for the moon, like many of us, and is genuinely worried. She imagines the Moon flying off from the Earth as a mother who has lost her child (the Earth) and still loves it:
… a mother
can’t help it, she loves that boy
anyway, and in spite of herself
she misses him, and if you sit beside her
on the padded hospital bench
outside the door to his room you can’t not
take her hand, listen to her while she
weeps, telling you how sweet he was,
She ends on the note of the gravitational pull of the Moon, equating it to the pull of a mother’s love.
You can hear Debbie Millman read the poem at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twgTTG4NlRI
The poet wrote this book called Facts About the Moon.
Laux is the author of the textbook Finger Exercises for Poets (W. W. Norton, 2024), as well as the poetry collections Life on Earth (W. W. Norton, 2024); Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Book of Women (Red Dragonfly Press, 2012); The Book of Men (W. W. Norton, 2011), which won the Paterson Prize and the Roanoke-Chowan Award; Facts About the Moon (W. W. Norton, 2005), which was the recipient of both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000); What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Awake (BOA Editions, 1990), which was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry. Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Afrikaans, Dutch, and Brazilian Portuguese.
About Laux’s work, the poet Tony Hoagland has said, “Her poems are those of a grown American woman, one who looks clearly, passionately, and affectionately at rites of passage, motherhood, the life of work, sisterhood, and especially sexual love, in a celebratory fashion.”
Dorianne Laux
Laux is also coauthor (with Kim Addonizio) of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1997). Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, an Editor’s Choice III Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2020, Laux was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She has taught at the University of Oregon’s program in creative writing. She lives with her husband, poet Joseph Millar, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she taught in the MFA program at North Carolina State University until her retirement in 2022.
(Taken from https://poets.org/poet/dorianne-laux)
The poet is actually talking about the fact that the moon is receding from the Earth, and in the ancient past it would have been really huge and hanging over us, and now it's inching away at the rate of a little less than three inches every year. One wonders how it is possible to measure the Earth-Moon distance (384,400 km) within a precision of inches! That requires a precision of 1 part in 1010
Another fact that we know is that we never see the far side of the moon. Even though it's rotating in plain view, we never get to see the far side of the moon, which actually looks different from the side we see, which has all these craters and mountains. The reason we don't see the far side is that because it revolves around the earth and it rotates about its own axis at the same speed, so that one side is hidden.
That movement and the precision of the speed and all of those facts are very fascinating about the moon and the fact also that if it were not to exist, life on earth would also come to a halt, some say. The main effect of the Moon on the Earth is the height of the tides which are extra high when Sun (which also causes tides) is aligned with the Moon. Th Moon also has an effect on the wobble of the Earth’s axis of rotation, stabilising it. Certainly without the Moon, there will be climate and tidal effects and effects on agriculture, but not a total disappearance of life on Earth, as the pooet imagines.
Shoba then read the poem. Laux paints a doomsday scenario:
What bothers me most is that someday
the moon will spiral right out of orbit
and all land-based life will die.
She has a great poetic affection for the moon, like many of us, and is genuinely worried. She imagines the Moon flying off from the Earth as a mother who has lost her child (the Earth) and still loves it:
… a mother
can’t help it, she loves that boy
anyway, and in spite of herself
she misses him, and if you sit beside her
on the padded hospital bench
outside the door to his room you can’t not
take her hand, listen to her while she
weeps, telling you how sweet he was,
She ends on the note of the gravitational pull of the Moon, equating it to the pull of a mother’s love.
You can hear Debbie Millman read the poem at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twgTTG4NlRI
The poet wrote this book called Facts About the Moon.
Poet Bio
Dorianne Laux (pronounced ‘locks’) was born on January 10, 1952, in Augusta, Maine. She received a BA in English from Mills College in 1988.
Laux is the author of the textbook Finger Exercises for Poets (W. W. Norton, 2024), as well as the poetry collections Life on Earth (W. W. Norton, 2024); Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Book of Women (Red Dragonfly Press, 2012); The Book of Men (W. W. Norton, 2011), which won the Paterson Prize and the Roanoke-Chowan Award; Facts About the Moon (W. W. Norton, 2005), which was the recipient of both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000); What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Awake (BOA Editions, 1990), which was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry. Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Afrikaans, Dutch, and Brazilian Portuguese.
About Laux’s work, the poet Tony Hoagland has said, “Her poems are those of a grown American woman, one who looks clearly, passionately, and affectionately at rites of passage, motherhood, the life of work, sisterhood, and especially sexual love, in a celebratory fashion.”
Dorianne Laux
Laux is also coauthor (with Kim Addonizio) of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1997). Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, an Editor’s Choice III Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2020, Laux was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She has taught at the University of Oregon’s program in creative writing. She lives with her husband, poet Joseph Millar, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she taught in the MFA program at North Carolina State University until her retirement in 2022.
(Taken from https://poets.org/poet/dorianne-laux)
The Poems
Arundhaty
A Step Away from Them by Frank O’Hara
It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they’ll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
[Frank O’Hara, “A Step Away from Them” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books, www.citylights.com/CLpub.html.
Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995)]
Devika
The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Joe
Two poems by Edward Thomas
Aspens
All day and night, save winter, every weather,
Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing
Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn
The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—
The sounds that for these fifty years have been.
The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,
And over lightless pane and footless road,
Empty as sky, with every other sound
Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,
A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails
In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
In tempest or the night of nightingales,
To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.
And it would be the same were no house near.
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear
But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves
We cannot other than an aspen be
That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.
WORDS
OUT of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes—
As the winds use
A crack in a wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through—
Choose me,
You English words?
I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew,—
As our hills are, old.—
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.
Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings,—
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there,—
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.
(From the poem An Old Song)
Kavita
Rain by Carol Ann Duffy
Not so hot as this for a hundred years.
You were where I was going. I was in tears.
I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers.
A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love.
You returned on the day I had to leave.
I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live.
Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night;
got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right,
in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light.
I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame,
gave it the last of the water, gave it your name.
It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme.
Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist
for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,
and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head,
and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead,
and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
KumKum
Two poems by Vikram Seth
Panipat
My aunts sit in the courtyard,
Gossiping, shelling peas,
While around them parrots
Cackle in the neem trees.
I sit with my flute near the place
Where the well was covered up
To make a septic tank.
I glide from stop to stop
Following the scale of Lalit
Though it is afternoon;
Its mournful meditative
Mood moves into a tune
Leading me God knows where -
Into a universe
Beyond — beyond Panipat!
Well, I could have done worse
Than break my studies and come
Back home from Inglistan.
Punjab, pandits, panir,
Panipat and paan,
Family, music, faces,
Food, land, everything
Drew me back, yet now
To hear the koyal sing
Brings notes of other birds,
The nightingale, the wren,
The blackbird; and my heart's
Barometer turns down.
I think of beeches, elms,
And stare at the neem tree.
My cousin slices a mango
And offers it to me.
I choose the slice with the seed
And learn from the sweet taste,
Well-known and alien,
I must be home at last.
Party For The Retirement Of The Oldest-serving British Museum Reading Room Book Attendant
Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, yes, it has been
A very pleasant forty ... fifty years.
Quite so, sir; how time does fly. I have seen
So many changes that the world appears
Peculiar now. But this place, not much change.
Well, yes, sir, that's correct, the lighting's new.
And now we're particular about checking; strange,
Recently, though, we have lost quite a few.
Marx? ... Marx? ... well, there was someone of that name;
Old gentleman he was. Sat at 10A,
Writing, writing, writing, always the same,
And foreign languages too, day after day,
Year after year. One day he left, and since then
No-one has ever heard of him again.
Pamela
On His Death by Rumi, translated by Farrukh Dhondy
Bear my body to the grave my mortal friends
Knowing that the singing of my heart never ends
No time for your wailing, gnashing of teeth, and tears
The eternal sleep is not at all what it appears.
The grave is not the sum of a life complete
It is but the veil beyond which bride and groom retreat.
You saw the body descending, now see it rise,
Think of me with Him as you shut your eyes
Locked in that coffin my soul is now set free
To join with my beloved in eternity.
Which seed fell in this earth and did not grow?
Your material shape is a drop in the heavenly flow
Of water which springs from That eternal source
Life, death, these illusions, must take their course.
Is not the sun as it sinks, elsewhere rising too?
My grave is but the last door, the entrance to the new.
so save your wails and mourning hymns for another place
This flood bears me beyond, where man sees face to face.
Priya
6 haikus by Matsuo Basho
1.
By my new Banana plant
The first sign of something I loathe
A miscanthus bud
2.
Fleas, lice
A horse peeing
Near my pillow
3.
The old Pond
A frog leaps in
Sound of water
4.
Staying at an inn
Where prostitutes are also sleeping
Bush clover and the moon
5.
How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting
6.
Falling sick on a journey
My dream goes wandering
On a withered field
Saras
Two poems by Dorothy Parker
Love Song
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d never met him.
My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams,—
And I wish he were in Asia.
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.
Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom
DAILY dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend––
Bed awaits me at the end.
Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I’m bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall––
I’m a fool to rise at all!
[From Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker. This poem is in the public domain.]
Shoba
Facts About the Moon by Dorianne Laux
The moon is backing away from us
an inch and a half each year. That means
if you’re like me and were born
around fifty years ago the moon
was a full six feet closer to the earth.
What’s a person supposed to do?
I feel the gray cloud of consternation
travel across my face. I begin thinking
about the moon-lit past, how if you go back
far enough you can imagine the breathtaking
hugeness of the moon, prehistoric
solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun
so completely there was no corona, only
a darkness we had no word for.
And future eclipses will look like this: the moon
a small black pupil in the eye of the sun.
But these are bald facts.
What bothers me most is that someday
the moon will spiral right out of orbit
and all land-based life will die.
The moon keeps the oceans from swallowing
the shores, keeps the electromagnetic fields
in check at the polar ends of the earth.
And please don’t tell me
what I already know, that it won’t happen
for a long time. I don’t care. I’m afraid
of what will happen to the moon.
Forget us. We don’t deserve the moon.
Maybe we once did but not now
after all we’ve done. These nights
I harbor a secret pity for the moon, rolling
around alone in space without
her milky planet, her only child, a mother
who’s lost a child, a bad child,
a greedy child or maybe a grown boy
who’s murdered and raped, a mother
can’t help it, she loves that boy
anyway, and in spite of herself
she misses him, and if you sit beside her
on the padded hospital bench
outside the door to his room you can’t not
take her hand, listen to her while she
weeps, telling you how sweet he was,
how blue his eyes, and you know she’s only
romanticizing, that she’s conveniently
forgotten the bruises and booze,
the stolen car, the day he ripped
the phones from the walls, and you want
to slap her back to sanity, remind her
of the truth: he was a leech, a fuckup,
a little shit, and you almost do
until she lifts her pale puffy face, her eyes
two craters and then you can’t help it
either, you know love when you see it,
you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.
[From the collection Facts About the Moon: Poems]
Excellent recounting of our session Geetha. Enjoyed reading it. Thank you
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