The Be-Loving Imaginer

Podcast 34: Pushkin’s Hero, Tatyana Larina

In this program, my aim is to introduce the hearer to the hero (now rapidly

becoming a gender-neutral term) of Alexander Pushkin’s world-famed novel in

verse, Eugene Onegin. In many ways, she earns the laudatory title I’m giving her,

and my presentation will help you get acquainted with her background, her cultural

context, her family life, her mother’s personality, and her strong, evolving

personality and character. My “interview” technique, following each 14-line poem

of Pushkin’s with a commentary-sonnet of my own, was stimulated by the

narrator’s own habit of inserting his own comments repeatedly into the action of

the highly absorbing verse novel.

After reading poems 1.1 and 1.5, together with my verse “replies,” to show how

my “interview” or “dialogue” book operates, in my readings about Tatyana I’ll

feature, first, sections 2.23-2.35 with my two poems about Shrove Tuesday (Mardi

Gras) as observed in upstate New York. Then I’ll recite from section 3.1 to 3.21.

The action at this point will have reached a point of major suspense….

PODCAST # 33 Speaking with the Chinese

Theme: interior conversation. Friedrich Rückert completes in 1833 his 325

“adaptations” of the poems in the earliest collection of Chinese verse that we have,

an anonymous work composed by pre-Confucian poets from the 11 th to the 7 th

centuries BCE. Rückert, though he learned 44 languages, didn’t know any more

Chinese than I do. But he did have the recently discovered Latin prose translation

published by Lacharme, a Jesuit priest, in 1733. I call my recital of English

translations of Rückert “Speaking with the Chinese” because the poems Rückert

offers feel to me like interior conversations with the Chinese fictive speakers.

The poets, who lived centuries ago and are alive today through their poems, speak

– or more precisely, sing – their poetic wordsongs to the German listener, and to

each of these memorable people of Ancient China he “replies” by turning their

prose utterances into German poems, in melodious rhythmic forms he invents

to fit the feelings they convey to him.

(1) Introduction to Chinese Life

Poem 158. Pages from a Household Calendar.

Poem 234. The Farmer.

Poem 233. Competition: Outdoing the Steward.

Poem 246. The Wine Steward.

Poem 156. Faithful Steward.

Poem 55. The Building of the Royal House.

Poem 317. Forebears’ Temple.

Poem 310. Music at the Forebear Fest.

Poem 271. A Meal for Death-boy Shi.

Poem 169. Memorial Feast for the Dead.

Poem 225. The Imperial Courier.

Poem 112. Annoyances of Life at Court.

Poem 57. The Border Guard.

Poem 18. The Emperor’s High Priest Robe.

Characterizations and Conflicts

Poem 224. Distribution of Wealth.

Poem 212. Persecuted.

Poem 166. In Praise of Brothers.

Love: Rewards and Discontents

Poem 218. Friends at Odds.

Poem 94. Chance.

Poem 52. Faithful unto Death.

Poem 93. Expectation

Poem 148. By Moonlight.

Poem 149. A Restless Night.

Poem 135. The Queen’s War Song.

Poem 58. At the Entry of the Royal Bride.

Poem 26. Plaint of a Wife Unloved.

Epilogue

Poem 295. Nationwide Drought.

Poem 303. Prayer.

Podcast Synopsis:

The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 32:

Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, A. Tolstoy

This video podcast presentation for Binghamton University Lyceum, via Zoom,

focuses on my new genre of poetry writing, the “Verse Interview Book.” From the

section called “Russian Loves” in my book Six Dialogic Poetry Chapbooks,

available from Amazon, I’ve selected verse interviews with four classic Russian

poets: Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, A. Tolstoy. Here’s my procedure: I’ll read a poem

in Russian, then act out my translation, then perform my “reply,” playing the role

as “interviewer” responding to what the interviewee just said, and using the rhythm

and rhyme pattern and stanza shape that he taught me.

Pushkin poems will be “Cloud,” “Prisoner,” “Raven.”

Lermontov poems will be “Angel,” “Clouds,” “Sail.”

Fet poems will be “Bees,” “In the quiet of the night,” “Grizzle-bearded high

priest,” “Nothingness,” “The winter night has power”

A. Tolstoy poem will be “In the west pallid sunrays were dying.”

PODCAST #31: THREE PARABLES ABOUT JESUS            

My latest book, Persian Poetic Renaissance: 15 Sufi Poets in “Verse Interviews” contains 3 parables about Jesus that are delightful, highly original poetic masterworks. The poets are Nizami (on Jesus and the Dead Dog), Goethe (on Jesus, Peter, and the Horseshoe), and Attar (on Jesus and the Soup Pot). For context I may add: greatly respected as a teacher and prophet, Jesus in the Qur’an is called Messiah and said to have been born of a virgin.            

By each of the 15 poets I chose to translate for this book (from Joseph Hammer’s German encyclopedic anthology of 1818 containing 200 poets) I offered 7 poems, and I added to each a verse “reply” and a more broadly focused interpretive “blogatelle.” In this podcast I’ve chosen to read my “reply” to Attar’s Jesus parable to explore the psychological implications, and in my supplementary podcast comments I offer possible tie-ins with the Sufi teaching of the ultimate unknowability of both our own essential selves and the Ultimate Being in Whose likeness we are fashioned.

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).