Tag: international poetry

Cupertino Library Diwali Celebration

1 Comment

On October 24, 2015, the Cupertino Library hosted a Diwali Celebration of song, dance, crafts, and food. Amanda Williamsen and Jennifer Swanton Brown (incoming and outgoing poets laureate) presented two poems, one each they had composed from comments and memories shared by visitors to the Cupertino Library booth at the Chamber of Commerce Diwali Festival the previous weekend. Many thanks to Gayathri Kanth, the Cupertino Community Librarian for inviting us and making us feel welcome.

diwali yellow card 2 diwali yellow card 3

Over 60 people left memories, feelings, thoughts, and drawings about Diwali. Amanda and Jennifer split them up and wrote poems that are complimentary in their style and substance. Here is Jennifer’s poem:

Diwali Voices

Diwali is, Latika reminds, the festival of joy and light,
which makes our lives even more bright.
Meera and her daughter eat lots of sweets –
the new lehenga is orange and gold –
and the henna tickles.
Aditri likes the colorful creative beautiful rangoli –

Diwali is the festival of lights,
which even small boys know
celebrates the victory of Rama.
On Diwali, I go to the temple –
Aarav celebrates with family and friends –
Sanyay does nothing and something –
Yash burns firecrackers.

Oh, the firecrackers!
Noopur lights candles,
Kashish puts lights outside the house
and everyone loves the firecrackers
everywhere. On Diwali I light firecrackers –
on Diwali I hold and play with friends
and do stick fireworks –
on Diwali we all fire firecrackers –
At Ria’s house there are 50 candles in the pool!

I feel more in touch with my community –
the lights fill me with warmth –
I study for an hour –
I have fun praying and celebrating our family –
I love Diwali –
I look forward to Diwali –
I call my friends to my house –
I decorate my house –
I celebrate I celebrate –
spreading happiness and love –

On Diwali, I wear a bright green saree
and listen to the voices of Cupertino.

Written with the voices of Cupertino residents from the October 17, 2015 Diwali Festival.

Visit the library in the upcoming months to see the collection of Diwali cards and the poems on display.

Here are some photos of scene on October 24th in the Community Hall. What a wonderful celebration.

Library Diwali Amanda and friends from Amanda Diwali Library 1 girls used Diwali Library 3 altar use Diwali Library 6 program use

Japanese Poetry

1 Comment

As part of my 2015 International Poetry Cantos celebration, April (which is also National Poetry Month, and so quite crowded) is also my opportunity to celebrate Japanese poetry.

I’ll be attending the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival, Saturday April 25, which is sponsored by “Cupertino Toyokawa” — the Sister City relationship between Toyokawa, Japan and Cupertino, established in 1978. Come by and chat, and if you’ve got Japanese poetry to share, please please please bring it by booth 15.

I can’t begin to link here all the splendor and history that is the poetry of Japan. Ancient and strong, the tradition is powerful and delicate at the same time. Here are a couple of links, however, to get you started.

Wikipedia does a good job of getting us started.

32_ban_Shokunin_utaawase_Sanoki-Komoso

Here are some biographies (in English) of famous historical Japanese (in America) poets:

  • Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) here and here.
iza saraba / yukimi ni korobu / tokoromade

now then, let’s go out / to enjoy the snow… until / I slip and fall! [1688]
220px-MatsuoBashoChusonji
  • Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1828) here and here. Translated by Robert Hass here and here.
  • Yosa Buson (1716-1784)  translated by Matthew Rohrer here. And by Edith Shiffert here (below).

The light of a candle
               is transferred to another candle—
               spring twilight.

Read more about Japanese forms at these links:

Michael Dylan Welch (Japanese poetry aficionado and current PL of Redmond Washington) deserves his own shout out. Learn all about Japanese poetry at his website, Graceguts. This tanka is by MDW.

tanka from Graceguts

And, in case you are beginning to wonder if Japanese poetry ended with the death of Issa in the 19th century, or was only written by men, these links provides a wonderful orientation to modern Japanese poetry and poetry by Japanese women.

  • Poetry Kanto — Japan’s longest-running bilingual poetry journal. Really.

pksticky-652x300

Poetry at the Cherry Blossom Festival

1 Comment

Tomorrow is the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival, at Memorial Park. The festival is both days, Saturday April 25 and Sunday April 26, but I’ll only be there on Saturday, with my poetry booth and my poet friends. Erica Goss, Los Gatos Poet Laureate, and David Perez, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, will both be with me (in booth 15) after about 11 am. I’ll be there the whole day.

(Read about Japanese poetry before you come, if you’re new to the subject).

CBFflyer2015

Come by for a chat, for a free poem (written on the spot just for you by a real poet!), to play with my magnetic poetry or my Haikubes (highly in-authentic, but fun).

haikubes

I’ll have books of haiku and senryu, both by Japanese poets and by Americans. I’ll also have anthologies and lesson books from California Poets in the Schools.

I hope to see you there!

San Jose Poetry Festival

4 Comments

This was my first year at the annual San Jose Poetry Festival. It was a busy day, well attended, with many local poets, coming from Santa Cruz to Berkeley to join in the fun. I’m grateful to Pushpa MacFarlane for getting me involved, but the biggest kudos go to David Eisbach, who produced this year’s event.

sjpf building

It was also my first time visiting the (Le Petit) Trianon Theatre in downtown San Jose. A GREAT venue.

I missed the morning, so I missed my friends Erica Goss (and her metaphor workshop) and Renee Schell (and her poetry and music reading). I’m sure they were swell.

I enjoyed reading my work with two other fine poets, new to me, during one of the featured readings held after lunch. (The only problem was missing the other sessions in which other awesome featured readers read.) Here I am with Harry Lafnear (who read some wonderful poetry about animals, sweet and not at all sentimental) and David Sullivan (who gave a lecture later on the poetry of war). I wouldn’t have been able to make the mic work without them, and I enjoyed our camaraderie immensely.

jen with two others at sjpf

For some better photos of us, read this really friendly and fantastic write up of the day by Cupertino’s own Crystal Tai for Cupertino Patch.

After my joint reading with Harry and David, I slipped upstairs for the poetry slam portion of the afternoon. I have to confess, right now, that this was my first ever slam. The slam was hosted by Dennis Norren and MC’d by Scoripana X. It’s hard to describe how much fun this was. The format is very smart: judges picked on the spot from the audience, poets reciting their poems and following all kinds of rules (no hand gestures — or was it no props? and time limits and when your phone isn’t a prop and when it is…). Then the judging, which tends to “creep” as the slam goes on, so the scores get higher and that’s why the poets have to read in a randomly chosen order — any way, it was so much fun. Very much an audience participation event. I was amazed by the artistry, the passion, the voices! I didn’t catch everybody’s name, but you’ll recognize Kim Johnson, a past featured reader on Chaos Never Dies Day and winner of the Silicon Valley Reads 2014 poetry contest.

kim at sjpf slam

Kim Johnson

scorpiana x

Scorpiana X

another slammer other slamer red slammer

After the slam, I was energized enough to stay for another event. Pushpa MacFarlane created a truly wonderful reading, inviting poets from all over the world and the bay area to read what she very smartly called “World Poetry” — perfectly in keeping with my theme for National Poetry Month, these were poems written about what it means to be from all over the world. The poems were in most cases read in English either after or before being read in the language they were written in: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian/Farsi, Japanese, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Native American (by Joy Harjo) and Maori. What a splendid music.

crystal at sjpf

Crystal Tai reading her own poems in Mandarin and English

pushpa and japanese lady at sjpf

Pushpa MacFarlane reading the English translations of Japanese haiku, read by Shizuko Shands.

Okay. That’s about all I’ve got. Again, I’m so grateful to have been part of this lovely day. I hope it’s repeated next year.

Some Awesome April-is-Poetry Month Links + Two Silly Poems

Leave a comment

NaPoMo is overwhelming. Here is a collection of things I’ve salvaged from the onslaught.

“The Library of Congress is Uploading 75 Years of Poetry and Literature Recordings”

robertfrostpoet

Robert Frost

Yesterday selections from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress became available to stream online for the first time — the launch of a project digitizing some of their 2,000 recordings from the past 75 years of literature. “I think that reading poetry and prose on the page is important, but there’s nothing that can replace listening to literature read aloud, especially when it is read by the creator of the work.”

“International Lit Mag Focuses on Dissidents, Exiles and Asking the Hard Questions”

wlt

(Review of World Literature Today, March/April 2015 by Nichole Reber)

The Children’s Poetry StoryBox is a physical traveling box that was launched at The Thurber Center in February 2014 and has returned to Columbus, OH.

(I want to do this so much, but it will have to wait until another April….)

story box

At a reception at the Thurber House, you will hear poetry that was begun by famous children’s poets – including current poet laureate Ken Nesbitt, Jane Yule, Georgia Heard, Nikki Grimes, George Ella, Lyons, David Harrison, Alan Wolf – and finished by hundreds of primarily elementary students around the nation.

“Shakespeare’s Sonnets, All 154, Reimagined Through A New York Lens”

(Yes, really, all 154 sonnets, with video. Oh my.)

06SONNET1-master675

A crew filming Sonnet 108 at the John T. Brush stairway. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Williams tried matching sonnets with locations based on their “imagery and rhetorical arguments,” pairing, for example, the legal-minded Sonnet 46 with the State Supreme Court building. He mixed well-known locations, like Grand Central Terminal and the Unisphere, with less familiar ones, like the Holocaust memorial near Madison Square Park.

That’s enough for now. Whew. What a month.

I even wrote a poem, sort of a rant, really, actually two rant-like poems, very much the same. Here’s the second one.

Photos from Persian New Year Event

1 Comment

Wow. I took a chance on this event and tried something I hadn’t done before. But it was such a delightful experience and I’m so happy we went for it.

On Wednesday, March 25, we gathered in the delightful and perfectly-sized back banquet room of Village Falafel after work. We ordered food and wine, which lent a great relaxed feeling to the evening. There were about 15 of us, including two members of the Library Commission and the Mayor of Cupertino, Rod Sinks, and his wife! (Full disclosure — I’ve known Rod and Britta for many years, our children having gone to the same schools, swum at the same club, etc.). Joy of joys, there were also four people who had never attended a CupPL event before, three of whom saw our flier in the library and one who read about us in the Courier. Joy of joys, new poetry lovers in Cupertino.

To my utter delight, a lady came who studied languages and culture in Iran years ago, and she brought with her some poems by Rumi in Farsi, which she read to us, together with her own translations. It was thrilling to hear the meter of the ghazals, and to hear the repeated words at the end of each couplet, even though I didn’t understand the words. She performed with real gusto.

And even better, if possible, was the presence of three women, Iranian natives: two residents of Cupertino and their visitor from Iran. They brought their Hafez, in a bright blue and gold book, and also read in Farsi, several of the poems for which I had brought in English translations. It was so moving for all of us, to hear the poems in their original melodic language, then to read two different English translations and to all discuss together what we thought and felt. They spoke about how important Hafez was in Iran, and I was envious of the reverence the people still feel there for ancient poetry.

Hafez Roses

This is the poem Robert Bly translated as “One Rose is Enough” — the first line is translated by Dick Davis as “Of all the roses in the world.”

The photo above shows me with my Rumi reader on the left and my Hafez reader on the right. The other two photos I took from the book of Hafez’s poems my guest brought. They are the same poems I had translations of.

Hafez Angels

Bly titled this poem as “The Angels at the Tavern Door” (also the name of his book of Hafez translations). The first line, as translated by Davis, is “Last night I saw the angels.”

We talked about a lot of things that evening. About God, religion, spirit. About spring and nature. About love. About wine and food and the place poetry has in our homes. And we talked about Iran, both historically and today, while the world waits with baited breath to hear of possible movement toward diplomatic relations between the US and that great and complex country. I am so happy to say, it was a perfect evening of poetry and companionship for me, and I hope for my guests.

Side-by-Side Transltions of Rumi

4 Comments

For the Rumi and Hafez reading, I’ll have handouts of three poems by each poet: side-by-side translations into English. I’ll be using A. J. Arberry and Colman Barks for Rumi; Dick Davis and Robert Bly for Hafez. The books from which I’ve selected the poems are identified in my earlier post.

A very good read about the pros and cons of having different translations, read this article, “A Rumi of One’s Own,” at the Poetry Foundation website. Rachel Aviv discusses why some translations might be favored by modern Americans. Provocative.

Here is a selection of other internet resources for Rumi. Whew. It’s amazing.

This blog post offers some great side-by-side translations of some of Rumi’s poems. (There is also a nice selection of translations and context/background information on Rumi and Khayyam elsewhere in the website.)

This Yahoo Group has closed comments, but will still allow you to join over 4000 members to whose commentary you can them have access. Looks pretty intense.

This very cool index of Rumi translators includes only academic translators (does not include Coleman Barks or Robert Bly), but it does contain translations into many languages besides English, as well as a fascinating small selection of A. J. Arberry’s earliest translations (1949) alongside their Persian (Farsi) transliterations. Here’s an example (sorry for the crummy resolution — go to the site and check it out!!):

rumi with farsi transliteration

You can also peruse translations into English together with the Persian (in Arabic script). Here’s an example, again, badly snatched from the website. Translations by Shahriar Shahriari.

rumi in arabic

I found the Sufi dance image on several websites, all which attribute it elsewhere, but not to the original. Forgive me.

Rumi, Hafez and A Lot of Information About Translation

1 Comment

Disclaimer: I do not read Persian, so I can only comment on the English translations and versions of this poetry. I hope to find some friends who can point me toward good videos and audio recordings of these poems in their original language.

Photo credits: The image above is the inside of Rumi’s shrine, in Koyna Turkey. The image further down is the outside.

By some accounts, Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a great poet who lived in the 13th century, is currently the most popular poet in the United States. (BBC (2104). An Amazon search, admittedly not the most scientific approach, turned up – in descending order – Maya Angelou, Dr. Seuss, Mary Oliver, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Claudia Rankine, Rumi, Kahil Gibran, and Homer. While I find this a fascinating subject, it’s not the purpose of this post, so I must move on. If you really want the scoop on America’s relationship to poetry, you will enjoy Kate Angus’ post “Americans Love Poetry, But Not Poetry Books” at this link. Heaven help us.

My intention here is to point you toward different translations of Rumi’s poetry. The following is a goodly sample. I also include translations of Hafez, whom we will also read at our Persian New Year event, if we have the time and/or if he is requested.

Translations and Versions

Recommended translation by Franklin D. Lewis.

  • Rumi: Swallowing the Sun (poems). At Amazon.
  • Rumi – Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi (2007) — biography. At Amazon, on GoodReads. Reviewed on JSTOR.

Recommended Translation by A. J. Arberry (1968)

  • Mystical Poems of Rumi (new edition with forward by Franklin D. Lewis, 2008. At Amazon.
  • More about A. J. Arberry at Wikipedia, including a link to his translation of the Quran.

Robert Bly interviewed by Bill Moyers about Hafez and Rumi, reading his translations of their poems.

Translations by Robert Bly (including Hafez and Rumi )

  • The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door. Thirty Poems of Hafez. (2004) Amazon.
  • Poems of Rumi (Translated and Spoken By Robert Bly and Coleman Barks) – audio recording. On iTunes and at Amazon (1989).

Versions by Colman Barks (will be most familiar to anyone who reads Rumi in English)

  • The Essential Rumi, New Expanded Edition (2004) on Amazon, on GoodReads
  • Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing (2003) on Amazon, on GoodReads
  • Video of Barks and Bly reading Rumi with musical accompaniment on YouTube

Dick Davis translations of Hafez

  • Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (2013) at Amazon
  • Davis reading his translations of three poems by Jahan Malek Khatun, an Inju Princess, on the News Hour on YouTube.
  • NPR interview with Davis about his book (2013)
  • Davis’ translation of Hafez’ “For Years My Heart Inquired of Me” at the Poetry Foundation

Analysis and Commentary

If you want analysis on the different translations and versions, an excellent on-line source is the Dar-al-Masnavi, curated by the international Dar-al-Masnavi group.

“The Masnavi is the great masterpiece of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi who lived in the 13th century. The Masnavi consists of mainly of sufi teaching stories with profound mystical interpretations. It contains thousands of rhyming couplets (a type of poetry called, in Arabic, “mathnawî”) and is a treasury of religious mysticism of a most sublime quality — which is why it has been so famous and well-loved for so many centuries.”

The site discuss the problems of translating Rumi.

  • After more than 700 years, Jalaluddin Rumi might be the most popular poet in the United States. Largely due to US authors, such as the poet Coleman Barks, who has rendered literal translations of Rumi into free verse “American spiritual poetry” in a manner which has reached so many different sectors of American society.
  • Unfortunately, this popularization has a real price: the frequent distortion of Rumi’s words and teachings which permeate these well-selling books. The English “creative versions” rarely sound like Rumi to someone who can read the poems in the original Persian, and they are often “shockingly altered.” Few American’s realize this however, believing instead that versions are faithful renderings into English of Rumi’s thoughts and teachings (when they are very often not).

For the original essay on this subject (which I have drastically summarized above) visit the site to read about the popularization in the United States of Rumi’s poetry, and more about the difference between versions and translations. Of special note to anyone interested in the idea of translating poetry (in any language) consider the author’s comments on Ezra Pound’s scholarly translations of Li Po’s Chinese poems and Japanese Noh plays.

shrine of rumi in turkey

Biographies and More Information

Rumi at The Academy of American Poets

Hafez at The Poetry Foundation (also sometimes spelled Hafiz in English)

Robert Bly at The Poetry Foundation

Coleman Barks at The Poetry Foundation

Rabi’a, female Sufi mystic saint and poet, at The Poetry Foundation, at Sufi Poetry (blog)

Persian New Year Poetry Background

Leave a comment

As part of my International Poetry Cantos project in 2015, Canto Number 2 is Persian New Year Poetry. Persian New Year is celebrated on March 20, 2015 — the date of the Vernal Equinox.

On Wednesday, March 25, please join me in reading poems by Persian poets, in Farsi and in English. We’ll be meeting at Village Falafel, on Stevens Creek Blvd in Cupertino, at 6:30 pm to read poems together and to eat.

To prepare for this event, I want to introduce you to Persian poets of repute, but first a little background. Persian literature is one of the world’s most ancient literatures. You can read about it on Wikipedia for a fast overview, or at the Iran Chamber Society, or Encyclopedia Britannica.  Obviously a few websites can’t do justice to this rich tradition, but if you have no familiarity, I suggest spending a few moments to orient yourself.

When we speak of Persian poetry, we mean in general, poetry written in Farsi, also known as Parsi or Persian, or poetry written by people who live in the land currently known as Iran. An interesting source is Classical Persian Poetry: A Thousand Years of the Persian Book, a fascinating look at a Library of Congress exhibit.

The most famous (to Americans) Persian art form is the ghazal, described here by the Academy of American Poets. This link takes you to a lovely example of the form, in English, by poet Agha Shahid Ali on the Poetry Foundation website. Though a Kashmiri Muslim, Ali is well known for writing in this form for American audiences. While I am not an expert, I found this website, with literal and poetic translations of some of Rumi’s famous ghazals to be very enlightening and inspiring.

The most well know Persian poets in the U.S. are Rumi and Hafez. Here are some resources.

  • Poetry Foundation video, in collaboration with The News Hour, “Bringing Persian Poetry to Western Readers” about Hafez.
  • Hafez biography

hafez

Rumi

There are many books, translations, essays, fantasies about these legendary and vital poets. I’ll be pulling together a bibliography in the next week, getting us ready to read on March 25.

Stay tuned!