For years I’ve loved to recite Omar Khayyam (1048-113 as translated by the master Victorian wordsong writer Edward FitzGerald. “Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent / Doctor and sage…” I owe the Persian poet two things: (1) a gently melancholy but likeable skepticism which at the same time says ‘Enjoy the moment!” and (2) a beautiful verse form with rhyme patter AABA. 

Pp. 14-15 show how I tried to “improve” the Omar four-line stanza. P. 17 show how I started to interbreed the Omar stanza with model-quatrains I learned from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The beauty of form and the commonsense cheerfulness of my mood always seemed to be carrying on Omar’s legacy as he might have liked. Now let me show you some fruits of my Omar-pilgrimage:

(1) The game of tag, rewakened, spring = open the door, and write.

(2) A Shakespeare Episode = write up the play you’ve just read.

(3) Who sing become what they proclaim = daily life recalls Sufi tradition.

(4) Do I need to surrender to sleep? Will my dreaming = rhythm of thought.

(40) E-mail to Lucy – and replies from two German “almanac” poets.

(46) Jotted Rubaiyat – and a world of dying-god myths (blogatelle 46)

(51) Moon Guardian Steadfast of the Way – Korean music on the shamisen

(68) That wine’s a problem I’m aware – personality portrait of Persian poet Hafiz

(77) A Prayer of Love – simple Omar-style quatrain with simple Omar-type reply

The three bisexually oriented books I’ll recite from today are landmark achievements in world culture, and I’ve written books in “interview” style to con-verse with them.   

Virgil (70-19 BCE) wrote Eclogues, ten one-act verse plays about Roman country life. All his shepherd-farmers are startlingly cultured people, poets and musicians who speak often about music and whose main form of entertainment is to arrange contests in lyrical composition, singing, and reciting. I’ll read the Second Eclogue, which is a soliloquy of mainly homoerotic love lament. And I’ll read parts 1-3 of my “reply” lyric for context. [I translate Virgil from the 1853 German version by Christian Nathaniel Osiander.]  

Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz (1315-1390) is a Persian pub poet from whose Divan  or Collection I translate using Joseph von Hammer’s 1815 German version. My book, called Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance, sums up Hafiz’ two main concerns. Tavern Romances in medieval Shiraz are chiefly homosexual. Poem 8 dramatizes Hafiz’ love for his boyfriend unforgettably in the first two lines. I’ll read my two-part “reply” in the interview about this poem,  Poem 16 is another lyric I’ll recite.  

In my book Shakespair I interview Shakespeare by replying to each of his 154 sonnets with a sonnet of my own in the same stanza pattern. On p. xiv I sum up the censorship problem he faced early on for his frequent homoerotic focus. In sonnets 1 and 4 with reply I sample talks Will has had with his boyfriend, and in reply 9 I offer a comment. Sonnet 20 focuses on the master-mistress theme, and I comment on this by reading part 4 of my reply to Virgil’s Second Eclogue.   

Let me thank Kristen Kemmerer and Emily Phelps, organizers who helped set up the October 23-24 2021 Annual SUNY Pride Conference at SUNY Oneonta where I presented my virtual contribution, which you are viewing and hearing.

Shi-Jing, or Book of Songs – China’s earliest verse anthology, 11th to 7th centuries BCE, with all poets anonymous, was translated into Latin by an 18th century French Jesuit priest, a prose text lost, then rediscovered, reprinted in Germany in 1830. It became the source text for an 1833 version by German’s greatest translator-poet, Friedrich Rückert, who learned 44 languages.  Chinese wasn’t among them, but Rückert, in his poem “The Spirits of the Songs: A Prelude” shows the spirits of the songs beginning for rebirth in a new language and assuring him of assistance (read final stanza, p. 56).  My approach in this podcast will be simply to read you some of my super-favorites. I’ve chosen a baker’s dozen that are brief but vivid.  #241 Lover’s Journey #100 The Queen Awakes the King #68. Interpreting the Gifts of Love #77 Joys of a Uniform Coat  #3 The Visit of the Young Wife #19 Night-time Duties at Court #36 Modest and Proper #51 Beauty of Unconstraint  #95 Worthy Love #101 The Harried Servant #106 Economic Arrangements #109 Common Need and Non-Participation #279 To the Favorite

Here I sing for you a new national anthem I’ve written for the French people, and

to help everyone celebrate Bastille Day in a tranquil and loving mood. A member

of the French parliament, some decades back, called for an anthem that would be

less bloody and vengeful than the “Marseillaise” by Rouget de Lisle, and I

promptly wrote such a hymn of peace. In this presentation I sing the older version,

first stanza, then I recite the English translation I made of my new “Marseillaise de

la paix,” and lastly I sing my new anthem with spirit and with vigor.

Interfaith Wordsongs: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Poems [$12.50]

Wednesday, June16: 12-1 (Rain Date: Thursday, June 17), Lyceum.

Location: Cutler Gardens, 840 Upper Front St, Binghamton, NY.

Presenter: Poet Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus, English, BU. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims all consider Abraham the founder of their One God religions. The poets I love most from all three intertwining traditions overleap conventional boundaries in the search for an all-enveloping worldview centered on what matters most to the human heart. 'God,' or Ultimate Being, is ultimately unknowable, but if It is the force that imagined our pluriverse, It set the example for imaginative people who wisely reply to that impulse with intensity, calm, and fervor, merged in the rootedness and serenity of unshakable Love. Join us at Cutler Gardens as I read poetry from each tradition.”

Martin Bidney taught at BU for 35 years and has made his 17 years of retirement into a retoolment, publishing 35 books of original and translated verse. Typically, Martin likes to “interview,” in talk-show format, the speaker of a text whom he chooses to be his mentor-friend. To every selection he transcribes or translates, he responds with a “reply” poem of his own.

Today he will sample three books where he has interviewed three thinkers, respectively from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. Martin calls himself not a believer but a “be-lover,” and he’s looking for unities within the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic tradition and elsewhere. He likes particularly to choose mystical writers to dialogue with, for they are distinguished by depth of introspection and scope of cosmic awareness. They love what Martin calls “the boundless and the beating heart.” Here are today’s sources:

Part One: Judaism. Wordsongs of Jewish Thought: 108 Tanya Response Poems – lyrical replies to passages in a classic work of Kabbalah with definitive commentary by the world’s foremost authority on the work, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

(Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2020).

Part Two: Christianity. Book of the Dactyl: Third Journal in Verse, Including Poem-Dialogues with the Witty Mystic Angelus Silesius (Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2019).

Part Three: Islam. God the All-Imaginer: Wisdom of Sufi Master Ibn Arabi in 99 Modern Sonnets, with a new translation of his “Three Mystic Odes” and with 27 full-page calligraphies by Shahid Alam (Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2016).

PODCAST #25 SUPPLEMENT POEMS FOR “ONEGIN”

In Podcast #24 I recited the first few dialogic exchanges of sonnets between Pushkin’s verse novel “Eugene Onegin,” and me, the translator and collocutor. Here I’d like to supplement our book-long con-verse-ation or interview with additional lyrics, mainly by Pushkin, which I added to clarify crucial moments in the Russian poet’s text.

I’ll begin my sampling with an introductory lyric, “Collocutor’s Preface” (26-27) that will convey my mood when beginning the innovative interview project, modeled upon my earlier exchange of sonnets with those of Shakespeare in my book “Shakespair” and with Rilke in "Rilke's Art of Metric Melody."  Then I’ll read Pushkin’s poem of delight called “Winter Morning” (388), where the mood matches my own in the “Preface” poem.

“I built myself a monument” (140), based on an ode by Horace, shows Pushkin’s satisfaction with his career as inclusive poet welcoming many traditions. “Earliest memories…” (335) shows the poet in a more troubled self-presentation, written in the Dantescan terza rima to convey a solemn tone. Then we’ll highlight Pushkin’s talent as ballad writer in “Once there lived a simple knight” (327). The astonishing poem “Feast in Time of Plague” (322), from a minidrama of that name, shows a Shakespearean dramatic power. I’ll offer a couple of strophes in Russian to show the force of the original.

Lastly, I’ll sample a couple of poems on mermaids, one by Pushkin’s disciple Mikhail Lermontov, and one by the later Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, to which I’ll offer a final brief reply (108-109).

Synopsis for Podcast 22 Pushkin's Onegin with Replies  Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia’s most beloved poet. Eugene Onegin, called by Pushkin a “novel in verse,” is Russia’s favorite narrative poem and her most influential novel. The narrative – about what was widely called a “superfluous man” – sets a context for the works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov that were to follow.     From Lord Byron, Pushkin borrowed a clever device: the use of a casual narrator who becomes a fascinating character in the story. Tchaikovsky made Onegin into a great tragic opera, but he had to leave out the entertaining character of the narrator – plus all the delightful mood changes in the storyteller’s personality.     Form-faithful translator Martin Bidney has created a new genre of literature, the verse interview book. For every 14-line poem of Pushkin’s, Bidney writes a Pushkin-style “reply” poem! So the book becomes a total dialogue, really two verse novels in conversation. Utterly unprecedented. The translator as collocutor.

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part 2:  Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British Renaissance, and modern German, plus poems he has written in varied beat-schemes. Readings dramatize the joy the wordsongs give, and discussions are lively.

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part I:  

Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British Renaissance, and modern French, plus poems he has written in varied beat-schemes. Readings dramatize the joy the wordsongs give, and discussions are lively.

PODCAST #21: VALENTINE’S SPECIAL

Originally planned as video collage 9.4, this presentation became Episode #21 of “Martin Bidney, The Be-loving Imaginer” for two compelling reasons. (1) The Valentine’s Day presentation is the most joyous love song I have written. (2) “Love” is pre-eminently the mood of my “Be-loving Imaginer” offerings. Here is a poem that my Valentine’s Day song performance stimulated:

327 Song of Love

I wrote a love song, and a pleasure sweet

Could feel when singing this to a computer!

Be blest, kind Muse of Tech, who are my tutor –

You as my Valentine I also greet.

I started out with improvising. “Wing it!”

The goddess told me, “Loosen up the mind:

A carefree heart will new coherence find.

Abide in me, and I will help you sing it.”

I felt that vocal spirits treasure kept

For decades well protected while they slept…

Then David words had whispered: Shir ḥadash

(“New song”) and then he added yitkadash

(“Let it be sanctified”). And then I knew

My love I’d sing to Universal You.