The Be-Loving Imaginer

PODCAST #14: INTERVIEWING SUFI POET RUMI

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Martin Bidney

Intro: Rumi = Pre-eminent Sufi Mystic Poet, thirteenth century. I translate him from Tholuck’s German, and I interview him, offering verse replies. 

Dialogue 49 = Inclusion: all religions are one.

Dialogue 46 = Inclusion: all spirits are one.

I  Rumi teaches through Surprise.

Dialogue 53. The saint turns hell to heaven, as Milton’s Satan did in Paradise Lost. Both of these reside within the human spirit. “The mind is its own place, and of itself / Can make heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

Dialogue 42. Forgiveness is an original ACTION, not a mere re-action. Ali shows that, contra Newton, every action does not have an equal and opposite reaction / retaliation. See Qur’an 42:43. “And verily whoso is patient and forgiveth – lo! that, verily is (of) the stedfast heart of things.”

 Dialogue 40 shows, via Rumi’s poem, the Chinese mural painting less perfect than the Byzantine mirror that makes it clearer through purity of heart. But in my Reply I add that a painting = mirror of the Creativity of the Creator.

 Dialogue 68 = “Golden Mean” ethical model of Aristotle vs. immeasurable Height-and-depth. Spokesman for height-and-depth, though, is deemed weak in character by his Sufi hearers. Balance – or Exploration?

II  Freedom through the Holiness of Nature – and Beyond.

 Dialogue 65, about Ibrahim Ibn Adhàm viewed as like St. Francis or Buddha, attuned to Nature.

 Dialogue 66 shows Ibn Adhàm with a parable of twig and orchard relating to the springtime fragrance of the magic shirt of Joseph. Compare to

 Dialogue 67 = Symposium of Senses, holiness of Nature. Cf. Ibn Arabi: one person praying = Complete Congregation of Organs and Thoughts.

PODCAST #13: SUFI LYRICS IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT

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Martin Bidney

My month-long spiritual pilgrimage at the Sekem desert farming settlement in 2011 was guided by Sufi mentors in the Religion of Love. 

I  Poet Omar as my Sufi mentor. Medieval Sufi Omar’s most famous quatrain, from his Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Victorian interpreter Edward FitzGerald, begins, “A book of Verses underneath the Bough.” This world-famed four-line love song introduced me to the SUFI RELIGION OF LOVE. I emulate the “Book of Verses” love song in these poems, where I shorten the Omar lines by one beat to sweeten the harmonies: 

82. So went the caravan away

77. The courtyard – filled with leaves and blooms,  

73. Our worldly life was at an end [a woman’s love for God]

63. The eyes that light the sky of her [a man loves a woman and God]

90. A vast and mighty [love of the Unnamable, my epigraph and epitaph]

I also love Omar’s lines beginning Myself when young did eagerly frequent and ending with the words I came like water, and like wind I go. This I emulate here:

69. Like water come, like wind I go [love every moment]

29. Now labor carefully to pay [theme of carpe diem, seize/love the day]

II  My Medieval Mentors in Sufi Religion of Love

IBN ARABI 21. The curlew painted

RUMI 22. The theme of union

34. Of poet Attar, Rumi said

RABI’A 31. Just pure surrender – that’s enough

46. O Lord, I hope each worldly thing

III  Shahid Alam as My Neighbor-mentor in Sufi Religion of Love

83-85 It is the month of Ramadan [legend of lifegiving love]

86 The coachman told: the glowing rose [miracle parable of love]

71 My friend, called Witness of the World [allusion to the Eastern Romeo & Juliet]

PODCAST #12: RUSSIAN LOVES

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Martin Bidney

Wordsong is like music generally – it transforms whatever it touches. When I select a poetic mentor to teach me word music, I reshape what I’ve heard, and then my reshaped self replies with a new music – always new because engendered by what I’ve just heard.

Nineteenth-century poets Alexander Pushkin, Michael Lermontov, and Athanasius Fet – lyrical writers in the Romantic tradition – are three of my Russian poetic mentors, friends, collaborators, comrades, guides, teachers, examples – and interviewees. 

In talk-show format, I’ll translate a lyric by one of my guests and then reply to it in the style I’ve just learned by doing the form-faithful English rendering! The spur to creativity offered by the interview approach to a cross-cultural encounter, what I call “dialogic” or conversational translating, is a continual source of renewed vigor and poetic strength. I’ll offer samples from the “Russian Loves” section of my Amazon compilation, Six Dialogic Poetry Chapbooks. 

Pushkin’s “Prisoner” and “Raven” both offer a mood and feeling that makes the poem feel like a folksong, so I respond gladly – to the first with exhilaration, to the second with alarm. “I built myself a monument” is a model for a goal-oriented manifesto-poem, and I offer a similar invitation.

Lermontov’s “Angel” and my “Homo Dubitans” offer comparable sober-minded assessments of the perils of retrospection. Lermontov’s triumphant “Clouds,” with its melodious meter, “set free” no fewer than four of my exuberant “replies” in comparably singable stanza forms. 

Fet is the least known of the three masters, but Russian readers have generally ranked him near the top of their roster of supreme lyrical adepts. “Bees” made me want to unfold an explication of the poem’s cleverly subtle psychology in my “reply.” Fet’s poem “Don’t Ask” challenged me even more strongly to reply with psychological spelunking. “My Day Gets Up” took me deeper into the poet’s ways of exploring how his past affects every moment of his present awareness. I was startled at the tenderness and power of these too-long-neglected lyrical revelations. 

PODCAST #11, TAXI DRIVERS

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Martin Bidney

Taxi Drivers – a topic made from an eye problem – and a way of making friends for the be-loving imaginer. Art is at the heart of startle. I like to consider each of my taxi driver interview lyrics a mini-drama with an outcome of startling power, occasioned by either a sudden change of perspective toward the end, or else simply by the surprise of having a moment of life turned into a wordsong to be remembered and resung.

In poem 2, “She growled, and loudly,” we start with a catfight but suddenly switch to places where people fight. Poem 5, “Pettable animals,” leads to a surprise biographical revelation.

Poem 8, “Look searching, mirrored,” varies the pattern: here I am the speaker, and my explanation of a viewpoint to the taxi driver builds up color and strength by adding more and more detail.  In poem 9, “Curved cover, curled-up corners,” indirect discourse, reported statement, lets me unfold the story I’m hearing in the speaker’s own language. Poem 14, “You came back here from Nashville, Tennessee?,” performs the personality-unfolding at a slow, casual tempo. Poem 15, “Sure, more than thirty years. Played bass guitar,” was a ready-made anecdote so effective I wonder if it’s a near-poem that I’m hearing. Poem 18, Year and a half,” about leaving Florida, has the inevitability of a flower unfolding. Poem 19, “Tattoos referring to the tunes he wrote,” shows this again, more intensely.

Poem 20, “Give me this mantle of a grace-rich green,” turns me into a possible fictive taxi driver. I hadn’t guessed that merely looking out of the cab window would draw forth such a deep satisfaction. In poem 21, “Algerian-born, the taxi-driver” a similar surprise awakes from the depth of my gratitude in response to the driver’s earnest, hesitant question. Poem 25 is the monologue of a poet about a cactus. Poem 27, “The changing sets of heaven theater” lets a story unfold through reported statement blending with my own feelings.

Poem 29, “We’re going down – I’m from Manhattan, so you see,” gets all the sudden power from a child’s intelligence. Poem 30, “My car was flooded, so I called to see if maybe” was a drama written by my fellow passenger! In poem 32,

PODCAST #10: GUMILEV, WORLD TRAVELER

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Martin Bidney

Nikolay Gumilev (1886-1921) was Russia’s pre-eminent traveler poet. He has even said that his sponsor, his supernatural patroness, was the “Muse of distant travel,” the Goddess of Journeying. His journeys were adventures in self-discovery. 

TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, RISK, & SELF-DISCOVERY could be the motto of his life-work. Is it a surprise that, working in the literary department of the Soviet bureaucracy to translate, compile, and publish major poems of world literature, he should focus on translating England’s greatest poem of travel, adventure, risk, and self-discovery? And this is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I’ll offer a few lines of each, to show Gumilev as connoisseur-translator.

Then I’ll use 97. Adam’s Dream as a frame narrative to orient us to the twofold character of Gumilev’s poetic travels: joyful self-discovery in the face of risk, peril, and death. Adam and Eve were legendary history’s first self-discovering travelers, having left a protected garden for a protracted Time of Transition.

In Romantic Flowers 35. Giraffe playfully suggests to a young person a trip to present-day Africa, and 36. Rhinoceros continues in that spirit. The poet identifies with both traveler and animals. Yet risks for travelers are shown in 33. Contagion and 52. Forest Fire. Gumilev’s travels to far-off places and cultures resulted in poems of peril and alarm. But also humor, and amusement! My favorite is one of his last lyrics, 258. Drunken Dervish, portrait of a hippie mystic. In contrast, 260. Prayer of the Masters portrays a spokesman for traditional icon painters in a Greek monastery. Gumilev, adventurer and studious literary organizer, can identify strongly with each: the rule-breaking rebel and the spiritual seeker bound to the constraints of duty. Poem 1. Sonnet presents the poet as youthful knight in shining armor, an early Spanish explorer of the Americas, triumphantly envisioning his beauty-adorned death. Then, already in 58. Old Conquistador (Pearls), the explorer plays dice with death as rival. Who can win such a game?

In 72. Antiquity boredom generates a burst of desire for visionary journeys. Gumilev’s travel gets spooky when he enters the dream world and encounters the preternatural, as in 49. Possessed.  

Life and death, travel and risk, peril and self-discovery combine in Gumilev. 75. Backwaters, a poem astonishing for sudden power, contrasts with 211. Ezbekiyeh, where the hero’s life hangs in the balance between affirmation and a sudden end.

PODCAST #9: JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE QUR’AN

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Martin Bidney

The Be-loving Imaginer, seeking to be the scripture he sings, is delighted to discover ways that a love for already be-loved scriptures can be startlingly expanded. The Qur’an is chiefly a storybook, where you encounter participants in the stories of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Qur’an shows you these people in new episodes and adventures. I’ll focus on the new perspectives I love the most. I’ll be using as sourcebooks my A Unifying Light and East-West Poetry. Poem 1 UL shows an inclusive attitude: God offers three religions co-equally.

Adam and Eve (poems 6, 7 UL) are co-equal in their eating of the forbidden fruit (wheat seed?) and are soon forgiven. But one offense remains (poem 5 UL); Adam is a failure at stewardship.  

Abraham is not only founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; for the Qur’an he pardons his father for trying to burn him alive (see Qur’an intro, poem 95 E-W P) and becomes a martyr hero who teaches forgiveness (poem 75 UL).

Joseph has no coat of many colors but acquires a miracle shirt. When the official’s wife at Pharaoh’s court tries to tempt him, she rips the back of his shirt, which turns into a miracle cure for the blindness of his grieving father Jacob. She accuses Joseph of the misdeed and he’s sent to jail (poem 44 UL, no intro). When the court ladies call her to account, she introduces Joseph, and in a comic scene they’re overcome by his beauty (intro to poem 42 UL).

Moses’ cordial welcome by Pharaoh’s wife may have engendered the love that later drew her to convert to the Jewish God and to condemn Pharaoh (poem 79 UL). Pharaoh’s wife Asiya is a wonderful new character in the Qur’anic story of Moses.

King Solomon – a bad steward? I raise the question, as the Qur’an does (poem 87 UL).

Virgin Mary receives miraculous nourishment to soothe her horrendous labor pains (poem 93 E-W P). According to Sufi poet Rumi, we are each a Mary who must bear a Jesus.

The Qur’anic Jesus offers a sermon while still in cradle (2nd half of intro plus poem 30 E-W P). He models a clay bird and it flies (poem 27 UL). This latter story is told in a Chrstian gospel, as the idol-smashing narrative occurs in a Jewish Midrash. But Torah, Gospel, and Qur’an are all Divinely created, as shown way back in Poem 1 UL.

PODCAST #8: ANCIENT WORDSONG FORMS

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Martin Bidney

Today the Be-loving Imaginer finds new things to be-love: the virtually extinct rhythm patterns and stanza forms of ancient Greek lyrical poems, also used with enthusiasm by Roman poets. Some of these forms were briefly and beautifully resurrected in late 18thand early 19th century Germany by Klopstock, Hölderlin, Goethe, and Schiller. But even this partial revival was never picked up by Anglo poets, and that’s why I made it a major career project to become an archeologist of ancient meters, of neglected but extremely attractive rhythms in ancient verses, which are invigorating and – singable!

Three-syllable structure units are basic to ancient verse. Popular English verse rhythms in recent centuries are largely 2-syllable units: the best known example is the iamb (la-LA, weak STRONG) as in Shakespeare’s five-beat lines (iambic pentameter). But what about the threes? Today, they’ve been largely relegated to nursery rhymes and lyrics for children (p. 26). I’ll show you four of these 3-syllable structure units in my new ancient-revival poems.

Ancient writers combine the 2s and 3s in beautiful patterns. The 3s are crucial: that’s why my book is called Bliss in Triple Rhythm.Here are four of the three-syllable structure units.

The amphibrach (weak STRONG weak, x/x) lends energy to poem 2 (p. 79). The anapest (weak weak STRONG, xx/) gives a gallop to poem 51 (p. 135). The dactyl (STRONG weak weak, /xx) shines in the sunflower of poem 100 (196). And

the amphimacer (STRONG weak STRONG /x/), rarest of the four, shows up in a comedy sequence about dieting (Intro to 100 Artisanal Tonal Poems).

Now come the ancient treats, all combos of twos and threes.  (1) The “third asclepiadic” is so musical in poem 109 (p. 211), I’ll even sing it for you! (2) The “fourth asclepiadic” it not only a song but a dance – see poem 149, p. 256. (3) The “fifth asclepiadic” adds drums to the song-and-dance. (4) “Hendecasyllabic,” the 11-syllable form, is good for relaxed thinking-and-feeling (poem 174, p. 292).

With the “alcaic” the dancing gets really lively! (poem 192, p. 315). “Sapphic,” in contrast, is a smoothly flowing song (poem 234, p. 369). Poem 257 on p. 396 will let me conclude with my own freshly-invented combo of threes and fours.

PODCAST #7: RÜCKERT THE MODERN SUFI

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Martin Bidney

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) knew 44 languages and translated poetry and scripture from many, including Arabic and Sanskrit. His spiritual diary, Wisdom of the Brahman: A Didactic Poem in Fragments (1835-1836) is a guidebook fashioned by what I would call a modern western Sufi pilgrim. His outlook often parallels that of medieval Sufi mystical expositor Ibn Arabi. Using opener-poems I wrote (in my God the All-Imaginer) to sum up the earlier writer’s thoughts, I’ll show applications of the wisdom in the later German poet’s lyrical journal, which my book The Boundless and the Beating Heart presents in the form of translated word songs with my own reply-poems. In effect I’m Rückert’s interviewer. 

Love comes first for both the Persian and the German. Ibn Arabi gives us “Boundless Love” (xliv), and Rückert (4) praises the passions in their many forms and stages. On 28-29 my dialogue with R. centers on making friends in new places; on 29-30 we talk about how your child can become your best friend. R. loves jokes but on 36-37 he tells you not to joke too harshly with your child.

Humor, loved by Sufis (e.g. Nasreddin Hodja), may be shown by R. in the punch-line of a witty parable (99-100), also in my reply (100). In 109-110 the joke-stories of the eagle and donkey offer more Sufi humor. And a dialogue on 167 about the perils and opportunities of leaping clinches the humor-point.

Pilgrimage means we’re traveling always toward new “Waystations,” Ibn Arabi explains in my poem of that name (25). In 136-137 R. and I dialogue about the equal viability of endlessly multiple types and ways of living. Two dialogues between R. and me on 219-222 clarify the changing waystations as manifesting different Names, or aspects of God’s nature and of our own potential.

The Cup – all names of poems I wrote about Ibn Arabi (26) – expand the concept of waystation in ways that relate intimately to R. Symbols, religions, myths, poems are cups for the water of spirit, giving them form and color. So on p. 1 R. and I dialogue on the “bead” as a container for spiritual meanings. A colloquy on 36 is provoked by “mildness” as a waystation or cup. On 122-123 we’ve a comedy dialogue about cups or knots: a sentence – or a single letter – can be either one. On 177 we dialogue about the self-sufficiency of the fragment: a small cup. The human receptacle that’s filled with the feeling of ever-expanding horizon may seem a limited container, yet it is The Boundless and the Beating Heart.

PODCAST #6: SOLOMON THE LOVER | be the scripture you sing

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Martin Bidney

As a be-loving imaginer I get from today’s mentor, King Solomon, world-class chances to love and imagine. As one who wants to be the scripture he sings,

I get to re-sing an actual biblical scripture, the “Song of Songs” that Solomon wrote. Note how startling is the first six-liner of my singable rewrite of this Bible book! The whole song is about physical love; no god is ever mentioned. Solomon wrote the best-known love song in the world – also likely the most passionate – and in my 280 poetic responses I try to reframe the wisdom it teaches.

I’ll read, first, Chapter Three, appealing to us moderns with its recurring refrain; and then the last half – the last four page-long chapters, to show you what I mean by making the song “singable” for modern English readers, so you’ll appreciate why I wanted to reply to it not once but 280 times. I’ll then offer my “Prelude” as a mood piece, helping us picture the ancient Middle East. In (1) “Solomon, Calamus, Qalam” I relate one of the Solomonic spicy herbs, the calamus, a symbol of masculinity for Walt Whitman, to the modern Arabic word for a “reed,” used for writing beautiful calligraphy. Poem (2), “Ballad of Solomon and the Tiger,” shows my own imagination taking off! I then pay, in poem (3), a “Tribute to Solomon and Shula,” the latter lady being Solomon’s Shulamite beloved in his “song” and my own beloved in mind, as I’m identifying full-time with my Mentor, Comrade, Collaborator, Friend. In short poems (4) and (5) I offer loving wordsongs of the kind the medieval troubadour love poets made, using freshly invented new forms to create new bezels, golden gem-frames for beauty.

In poem (7) I try the bold experiment of writing up some of Solomon’s Proverbs in an ancient Greco-Roman form I’ve recently revived. For me, the Solomonic Shula has become, like Venus, a veritable goddess not only of love but of Beauty, motivating me to seek out new stanza forms for continually varied, diversified love-liness. And here, too, is my tribute to a new idea. In scripture, Solomon is credited with writing not only the Song of Songs but the Bible book of “Proverbs,” called a source of “wisdom and instruction.” Could Shula, then, be Lady Wisdom? In Jewish mystical kabbalah, God’s Bride, his emanative Female presence, is the vitalizing presence that animates the entire universe. Is the Solomonic Shula both Beauty and world-enlivening Wisdom? Of course!

In poem (12) I translate from Hebrew a hymn to the Sabbath Queen, a Shula of Loving Wisdom.

PODCAST #5: BISEXUAL HAFIZ | be the scripture you sing

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Martin Bidney

The Be-loving Imaginer interviews Hafiz, one of the world’s great poets, greatly treasured in his homeland, Persia, or Iran. As shown in my opener to the book Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance (p. ix), 14th century Sufi pub poet Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz and his translator, Joseph von Hammer, have become my two newest teacher-mentors.

Poem 8, opening 2 lines, had a momentous effect on the future history of European, indeed of world, literature. Hafiz wrote: “I, if the youth from Shiráz took my heart in his hand, for his beauty- / Mark would bestow Samarkand and Bokhara,” and with this homoerotic love declaration he inspired his future translator, Hammer, to write the magnificent tribute on pp. xii-xiii.

I, in response to both Hafiz and Hammer, wrote, to sum up, the significance of the tribute in my “Reply.” Bisexuality is central, say my mentors.

We noted in our Goethe-Hafiz podcast that the German honors the Persian for his attitudes toward poetry-writing, drinking, and loving – all interrelated, each a symbol of the others. Let’s hear what Hafiz can show us on each topic. First: poetry. In “Unbounded” Goethe praised Hafiz for ensuring total unity of world-view and form in a poem: the beginning, end, and middle are all the same. That is what happens in the ghazal, where each couplet ends with the same rhyme word or phrase (refrain). In “You in a thousand forms yourself may hide,” the refrain was always “I acknowledge you.” In Hafiz’ poem 67 it is “candle.” Same in my “Reply.”

Wine? In poem 33 Hafiz calls on attenders of church and mosque – each the “house of love” – to show kindness to pub-attenders. In poem 3 the transition from wine to homoerotic love is clear. In poem 19 love and wine empower Hafiz to identify with the Prophet Muhammad himself. In poem 32 he worries that, with a new regime in power, the Wine Police may come back! Poetry is the only defense against bad luck; compare, in my “Reply,” another medieval lyric on bad luck, “Fortune Plango Vulnera” from Carmina Burana.

Love? When heterosexual, it is a marvel, even though such lyrics are in the minority with Hafiz: see poem 66. In poem 50 and my “Reply” we see the same problem of censorship that plagued Shakespeare; in the love poems, even the admiring Hammer couldn’t resist turning Hafiz’ male addressees into females. In poem 68 the Persian bard celebrates going on a picnic with a man, and in the “Reply” I in turn tell what a picnic it has been to “be the scripture I sing,” entering into the fun lifestyle of a world-class poet of expansive enjoyment, Goethe’s “twin.”