Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share How the Qur'an Teaches Me Poetry Writing | Episode 02
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
How the Qur'an Teaches Me Poetry Writing | Episode 02
PODCAST #2: HOW THE QUR’AN TEACHES ME POETRY WRITING | be the scripture you sing
My Talk Show Poetry Exchanges with Passages from the Qur’an
by Martin Bidney
“Be-loving imaginers” can travel into any scripture of the world with the aim of immersion and then enjoy an invigorated emergence to write, in word songs, what they’ve learned. In 9 dialogue exchanges with quoted selections from the Islamic holy book (colloquies published in my East-West Poetry, SUNY Press, now available from Amazon), I show how the Qur’an is my tutor in both form and content. I savor the seventh-century text in the 1922 translation from the Arabic by Marmaduke Pickthall, an English writer who converted to Islam as an adult. He is so immensely gifted that his rendering of the Qur’an is one of the greatest masterworks in English. I’ve spent hundreds of hours opening up his text to random pages and writing poems whenever I was roused to song.
In dialogue 7, one of the noblest ruminations on Forgiveness I’ve ever encountered stimulates me to borrow the 7-beat iambic rhythm of its opening words and to elaborate the central idea that a mentality of Patience and Pardon is “at the steadfast heart of things.” In dialogue 18 I accelerate the 7-beat tempo and intensity of my treatment of forgiveness when another Qur’anic passage offers this theme. The Qur’an teaches me the implications of metaphor. In dialogue 23 I elaborate the Qur’anic likeness of a “goodly saying” to a fruitful tree. For me, it becomes the entire world as a huge equivalent to this – a symbolic world-tree, the Yggdrasil Ash of Norwegian myth.
In dialogue 25, taking the rhythm of a three-verse sequence and using it as my adopted song-vehicle, I apply the metaphor of the sequence to the modern world. A “revelation” ignored, dwellings hewn from the rocky hills to be “secure,” and then a “cry arising” – could this be a Florida condo near a warming ocean? In dialogue 62, taking the juxtaposed images of star and sperm, I show their unity as that of a flash or spurt of coming-into-Being. In dialogue 53 I borrow the form of question-and-answer (maybe a leader and a group?) to develop the given theme of a need for grateful awareness. In dialogue 58 I offer a more concise version of a masterly Prophetic soliloquy to give it the concentrated richness of verse drama.
Dialogue 59 features the Qur’anic sura made specially meaningful to me when I taught for a month at a desert settlement in Egypt, an hour from Cairo. A student asked, “What is your favorite sura?” “‘The Enshrouded One,’” I replied, “where Allah praises the Night,” as that is the time when my poetry comes. Finally, in dialogue 66 I reply to the passage where the Prophet’s message of Love and Care stems, I think, from the kindness he as orphan received from his foster mother. I’ve rarely felt so deeply thankful as when writing my response.
View all episodes
By Martin Bidney
5
11 ratings
PODCAST #2: HOW THE QUR’AN TEACHES ME POETRY WRITING | be the scripture you sing
My Talk Show Poetry Exchanges with Passages from the Qur’an
by Martin Bidney
“Be-loving imaginers” can travel into any scripture of the world with the aim of immersion and then enjoy an invigorated emergence to write, in word songs, what they’ve learned. In 9 dialogue exchanges with quoted selections from the Islamic holy book (colloquies published in my East-West Poetry, SUNY Press, now available from Amazon), I show how the Qur’an is my tutor in both form and content. I savor the seventh-century text in the 1922 translation from the Arabic by Marmaduke Pickthall, an English writer who converted to Islam as an adult. He is so immensely gifted that his rendering of the Qur’an is one of the greatest masterworks in English. I’ve spent hundreds of hours opening up his text to random pages and writing poems whenever I was roused to song.
In dialogue 7, one of the noblest ruminations on Forgiveness I’ve ever encountered stimulates me to borrow the 7-beat iambic rhythm of its opening words and to elaborate the central idea that a mentality of Patience and Pardon is “at the steadfast heart of things.” In dialogue 18 I accelerate the 7-beat tempo and intensity of my treatment of forgiveness when another Qur’anic passage offers this theme. The Qur’an teaches me the implications of metaphor. In dialogue 23 I elaborate the Qur’anic likeness of a “goodly saying” to a fruitful tree. For me, it becomes the entire world as a huge equivalent to this – a symbolic world-tree, the Yggdrasil Ash of Norwegian myth.
In dialogue 25, taking the rhythm of a three-verse sequence and using it as my adopted song-vehicle, I apply the metaphor of the sequence to the modern world. A “revelation” ignored, dwellings hewn from the rocky hills to be “secure,” and then a “cry arising” – could this be a Florida condo near a warming ocean? In dialogue 62, taking the juxtaposed images of star and sperm, I show their unity as that of a flash or spurt of coming-into-Being. In dialogue 53 I borrow the form of question-and-answer (maybe a leader and a group?) to develop the given theme of a need for grateful awareness. In dialogue 58 I offer a more concise version of a masterly Prophetic soliloquy to give it the concentrated richness of verse drama.
Dialogue 59 features the Qur’anic sura made specially meaningful to me when I taught for a month at a desert settlement in Egypt, an hour from Cairo. A student asked, “What is your favorite sura?” “‘The Enshrouded One,’” I replied, “where Allah praises the Night,” as that is the time when my poetry comes. Finally, in dialogue 66 I reply to the passage where the Prophet’s message of Love and Care stems, I think, from the kindness he as orphan received from his foster mother. I’ve rarely felt so deeply thankful as when writing my response.