“Within each of us is a divine treasure, and if we hope to discover it we need to go deep into the heart of who we are.” – Meister Eckhart
Readers of Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light: Meditations on the Path of the Wayless Way (Hampton Roads), by Mark S. Burrows and Jon M. Sweeney, will no doubt appreciate these lucid translations in poetic form, taken from the “treatises” of Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1328). The writings of the controversial priest point to a “wayless way” toward inclusive love. “There is a light within you, in your soul, uncreated and uncreateable; it simply is,” Eckhart wrote. “What Coleman Barks has done for Rumi, Sweeney and Burrows have done for Eckhart — making his insight accessible and his wisdom sing,” observed Carl McColman, author of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism and Eternal Heart.
Poetry of Presence
This hefty anthology (252 pages) collects some of the best work of contemporary poets, including Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, Jane Hirshfield, Derek Walcott, Li-Young Lee, Tich Nhat Hanh, Alice Walker, and Joy Harjo, along with ancient poets such as Li-Po, Hafiz, and Rumi. A treasure trove of poems from diverse voices, it reminds us that mindfulness is accessible in the midst of everyday activities. Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Grayson Books, edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson. (Poetry of Presence II is due in May, 2023.)
Poetry of Awakening
This volume collects 78 poems, written mainly by Buddhist and Daoist poets from across the first millennium. Translated by Joe Lamport, the poems in The Poetry of Awakening: An Anthology of Spiritual Chinese Poetry (Fomite) express a sense of liberation through language. A later poem by Su Shui illustrates this paradoxical practice:*
“The bubbling stream is his voice,
the mountains his vast body.
The night bird sings sutras of wisdom —
how can I possibly convey this to others?”
*version by jg
Mountains and Rivers Mind
“The mind is no other than mountains and rivers, the great wide earth, the sun, the moon, the stars.”
– Dogen
Author and Zen Roshi Ruben Habito tells the story of his teacher Yamada Koun Roshi, who was riding on a train from Tokyo to Kamakura many years ago. He was reading from a book by the 13th century founder of Soto Zen, Eihei Dogen, when he came across the above line that stirred something deep in him. He began laughing, trying hard not to make a spectacle of himself. But lying in bed that night, the line returned with a vengeance. With a “loud burst of laughter,” he realized clearly what it was pointing to — that mountains and rivers, all things of the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, indeed all people everywhere were “no other than me,” that “they are me and I am them.” Experiencing Buddhism: Ways of Wisdom and Compassion, by Ruben L. Habito, Orbis Books; Mountains and Waters Sutra (Sansuiko), translated by Shohaku Okumura with an introduction by Gary Snyder, Wisdom Publications.
The cover design for Refuge for Cranes is complete and I think it’s a standout. Designed by Melody Stanford Martin of Wildhouse Publications, it features a photograph of Sandhill Cranes in flight by Chris Briggs that evokes the majesty of these amazing birds (pls. see Books section). My thanks to both Melody and Chris for their beautiful work. I’ll post more information about publication when it’s available.
Susan Fenimore Cooper, “America’s First Recognized Female Nature Writer”
When Rural Hours, a natural history diary by Susan Fenimore Cooper, was first published in 1850, it was done so anonymously “by a lady,” the custom for women writers of the Victorian era. Favorably reviewed, it went into nine editions in Cooper’s lifetime, according to Michelle T. Harris, writing in Audubon Magazine (Jan. 8, 2021). One of the first to warn of the dangers of deforestation, Cooper also lamented the loss of wild Passenger Pigeons (extinct by 1900) and the shrinking populations of other birds. The daughter of popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper, she lived in Cooperstown, New York, where she founded an orphanage and wrote for magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Rural Hours was reissued in 1998 by University of Georgia Press.
Sandhill Cranes Return to Platte River
This month thousands of Sandhill Cranes will touch down in the Platte River Valley in central Nebraska, feeding primarily on corn kernels and insects, before moving on to their nesting grounds in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. Visitors often hear the low, chortling sound of the prehistoric birds before they see them, observes columnist Rick Windham of the Platte River Telegraph. Known as a “rally bugle,” that call “is a sound that moves the spirit,” he says. The Iain Nicolson Rowe Audubon Center in Gibbon, Nebraska, offers guided tours of this annual event. Bird lovers can also observe the cranes in their natural habitat in “virtual tours.” For more information, go to https://www.row.audubon.org/events/.
An Ethics of Wild Mind
Author, poet, and translator David Hinton speaks about his latest book in a recent interview in Emergence Magazine. Drawing on Eastern philosophy, Ch’an, and “an ethics tempered by love,” he discusses the need for a deep relationship between humans and earth. https://www.emergengencemagazine.org
Writing Opportunities
The Annual Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry is open to all writers (including non-U.S. citizens) until March 15th. Winner receives $1000, 50 copies, and publication by the University of Alaska Press.
Passager Journal is now accepting poetry entries for their annual contest issue through April 15th. An independent press located in Baltimore, MD, it was founded in 1990 for writers over the age of fifty. https://www.passagerbooks.com
The Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize is open until March 31st. Winner receives $500 and publication by the Texas Review Press.
Originally celebrated on the first day of spring per the lunar calendar, the New Year is considered a season in itself in Japan and New Year haiku often depict elements such as blossoms and songbirds. Here’s one by Buson*:
plum blossoms
whether I go north or south —
pink everywhere
This one by Issa may refer to the Buddhist idea of the “dharma ending age”:*
New Year’s Day —
petals drifting down
in this fallen world
In another year, date unknown, his spirits were up:*
clear blue sky
this New Year’s Day —
glad to be alive
In this haiku from 1689, Basho offers a glimpse of a spring thaw:*
warmth of the sun
on a glistening field —
New Year’s Day
This last one by Basho, written toward the end of his life, acknowledges a depth of feeling in which beginnings co-exist with endings*:
New Year’s Day
but everything feels like
autumn to me
*versions by jg
Writing Prompt
Writing a New Year’s haiku offers an opportunity to welcome a fresh outlook. This prompt joins mindfulness with images from nature. To begin, make a list of five positive feelings, thoughts, or intentions. Then list several of your recent observations from the natural world. Select one entry from each list and fashion them into a haiku. Here’s an example I wrote recently:
imagining peace,
an end to war — birdsong
from the chimney top
This isn’t the traditional way to write haiku — it’s generally more intuitive, even “accidental” — but I think it’s a good way to widen the lens of attention. You may get one or more effective haiku out of this process; if not, set them aside and try looking at them another day with a fresh eye. Sooner or later, a pearl will show up.
I’m very happy to report that my new collection, Refuge for Cranes: Praise Poems from the Anthropocene, will be the first volume of a poetry series by Wildhouse Publications. Slated for mid-2023, it explores the intersection between inner and outer landscapes, finding refuge in nature, art, and awareness itself. Poems range in topic from climate fires and the demise of bees, to the “transparency of grace” and “the soul’s deep-down unfathoming.” These poems were a way to address my fears about the environment, even as I continue to find beauty all around. Someone used the term eco-grief to describe the psychological effect of the crisis we’re living through — the sorrow at seeing habitats destroyed and species gone forever, and that was part of my impetus. But as the subtitle indicates, they’re also poems of praise. My thanks to everyone at Wildhouse Publications for welcoming this project and for bringing poetry to the forefront during these challenging times. (I’ll post details about ordering, etc., as soon as they’re available.)
Sandhill Crane Conservation
In 1937, conservationist Aldo Leopold warned in his essay, “Marshland Elegy,” that upper Midwest Sandhill Cranes were in danger of extinction. But with the support of farmers, wetland restoration, and changed hunting practices, their population rose from just 25 breeding pairs in Wisconsin to over 15, 000 today, while the eastern population is around 90,000 (“A Conservation Success Story,” October 26, 2022, www.https://wpr.org). Yet cranes still remain at risk throughout the world, with 10 out of 15 species endangered, including Greater and Lesser Sandhill Cranes of California’s Central Valley. The International Crane Foundation “works worldwide to conserve cranes and the ecosystems, watersheds and flyways on which they depend,” according to their mission statement. To learn more and how you can help visit www.https://savingcranes.org.
Writing Opportunities
Wildhouse Poetry, a new imprint of Wildhouse Publications (WHP), is sponsoring a chapbook contest to launch their new poetry series. Offering publication and $500 to the winner, the contest will be judged by Jane Hirshfield. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, WHP “exists to bring transformative spiritual insights to people for whom traditional resources may not fit,” according to their homepage. The non-profit indie press is also considering full-length poetry, fiction, and non-fiction manuscripts through Submittable (https://www.wildhousepublishing.com/WiPo).
The poet Carl Phillips said in an interview recently that, “A place must be made, still, for joy.” That’s probably always been the case but these days the need to cultivate positive feelings and attitudes may seem more critical. May we all find a time and place for joy, now, and in the days to come.
Pushcart Nomination
“Encomium for a Garden” (Spiritus, Fall 2022), was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. This is one of those serendipitous poems that practically wrote itself. I may have changed a word or two and then changed it/them back, again. This is my favorite kind of poem to write, one that flows easily from pen to paper. My thanks to the editor, Mark Burrows, for forwarding it.
Winter Workshops
Cassie Premo Steel, author of Earth Joy Writing: Creating Harmony thorough Journaling and Nature, will lead an online writing workshop, Release the Dark, Receive the Light, sponsored by Ashland Creek Press, on January 2, at 11:a.m. www.https://ashlandcreekpress.com
Robin Farr, poet and co-editor of River Heron Review, will lead a four-session online workshop, Poetry Boost: From Title to Publication on Thursday nights from November 10 to December 8. www.https://riverheronreview.com
Writing Opportunities
Emergence Magazine
An online magazine with an annual print edition, Emergence publishes essays, op-eds, films, and audio stories about the “timeless connections between ecology, culture, and spirituality,” according to their homepage. Focusing on “long-form content that is both thought-provoking and evergreen,” they also offer a weekly podcast with interviews, narrated essays, fiction, and more. www.https://emergencemagazine.org
Passager Journal and Books
Dedicated to the work of writers over the age of 50, Passager Journal publishes a twice-yearly print edition and now features a weekly podcast, too. Passager Books focuses on poetry collections, short fiction, and anthologies by writers who’ve been published in the journal and offers the Morgenthau Prize for a first book of poetry by a writer age 70 or older. www.https://passagerbooks.com
The Cincinnati Review is seeking poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations through December. (Submissions close once they meet their cap.) A print magazine out of the University of Cincinnati, it pays $30 per page for poetry. www.https://cincinnatireview.com
KAIROS Literary Magazine
Founded in 2016, this online magazine is looking for poetry, creative nonfiction, and op-ed pieces. Published tri-annually, submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. www.https://kairoslit.com Prairie Schooner is a print quarterly published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They’re seeking essays, interviews, reviews, short stories, and poetry now until May 1st. The Raz-Shumaker Book Prize opens January 15th. www.https://prairieschooner.unl.edu
Praise seemed to come instinctively to Mary Oliver. One of the most popular late twentieth-century poets, Oliver’s attention was often focused on the woods, ponds, and beaches that she explored in forays around her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In Upstream (2016), a collection of essays on nature and literature, she notes that early on she “did not think of language as the means to self-description…” but as a way “to notice, to contemplate, to praise…” One of my favorite poems, from New and Selected Poems Volume One (winner of the National Book Award) is “Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard.” It captures me from the first line and doesn’t let go until the last line. I could say the same for most of Oliver’s poems, but this one feels as if I’m right there in the orchard listening to a youngish owl “flutter down the little aluminum ladder of his scream.”
If “attention is the beginning of devotion,” as she wrote, then wonder may be the beginning of praise — for the fox “so quiet — he moves like a red rain,” for the hawk with “one exquisite foot” attached to a twig, even for “The cracked bones/of the owl’s most recent feast…” For Oliver, attention most often means being in the presence of, whether it’s the owl in the orchard, a hermit crab on the beach, a hummingbird in a trumpet vine, or egrets at the edge of a pond. This attention to wildlife and the environment alerts her to possibility — the possibility of danger, of beauty, of death, of life, or simply of nothing “but the cold creek moving/over the old pebbles…”
Unlike the narrative “I” of Whitman, who she considered a childhood “friend,” Oliver’s “I” enjoys a relative position in the background. From this vantage point, she offers observations rich with detail, color, and music. She’s not afraid to use a well-placed exclamation point occasionally, or just as often, a question mark. “Are you listening, death?” she asks in “The Rabbit.” These kinds of questions don’t always come with answers, of course, but reflect a sense of mystery that permeates her work, a respect for not knowing and for silence.
She had her darker moments, some of them probably attributable to childhood trauma. In “A Visitor,” she struggles to come to grips with her estrangement from her father, a subject she discussed frankly in her later years. In one of her most well-known poems, “Wild Geese,” she writes, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine./Meanwhile the world goes on.” If there’s a secret to her appeal, I think it’s that she comes to the poem with an inclusive love for the world in all its imperfections — that and a willingness to embrace it again and again.
Writing Prompt: Gratitude
For this prompt, make a list of ten things you’re grateful for. They might be ordinary items around you — just-picked tomatoes, a set of salt and pepper shakers, or a glass of water, for instance, or they might be something more personal such as a family member, pet, or a prized possession. After completing your list, select the most promising subject and write continuously about that for at least five minutes, or more. When you’ve run out of steam, take a look at what you’ve come up with. Is there a poem there, or more than one poem? After fine-tuning your work, let it sit for several days. Then go back and have a second look. If it’s redundant, remove the deadwood. If it feels incomplete, you may want to weave in some additional details, or consider posing a question and answering it.
Writing Opportunities
Poetry Northwest is accepting poetry submissions from October 1st to November 30th. https://www.poetrynw.org
The Colorado Prize for Poetry is open for submissions of full-length manuscripts (48-100 pages) from October 1st to January 14th. https://www.coloradoreview.colostate.edu
Haiku sometimes arrive intact and read just right. But more often than not (at least in my case), they can benefit from revision. This process is the subject of the article, “Haiku as Discovery,” forthcoming in the fall issue of Seashores, #8 (https://www.haikuspirit.org).
Recent Haiku
old pine: Modern Haiku, issue #54.1, Fall 2022
empty swings: Haiku Corner, Japan Society, #34, 2022
Questions naturally arise in first drafts but they can help during the later stages of composition, too, if we’re stalled, or seeking to develop a theme. The right question can move us from reason to intuition, from the prosaic to the unexpected.The following questions all have one thing in common — they ask “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” or “how:”
“What is the world?”(from Book of a Monastic Life, by Rilke)
“Which side am I supposed to be on?” (from the poem of the same title by W.H. Auden)
“How can you look at the Neva…?” (from White Flock, by Anna Akhmatova)
“Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when…?” (from The Swan, by Mary Oliver)
“What can I say to someone…?” (from The Fire in the Center, by Rumi)
“Don’t you want God to want you?” (from The Tradition, by Jericho Brown)
“And what did I do today?” (from Kennedy’s Inauguration, by Robert Bly)
“When did we enter the heartless age?” (from Heartland, by Lisel Mueller)
Writing Opportunities
The Maine Review is open for submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (including hybrid forms) from September 1st to November 30th. A triannual online journal, MeR “publishes culturally significant writing by writers living in Maine, across the country, and around the world. https://www.mainereview.com
Third Coast Magazine, out of Western Michigan University, will be accepting poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction from September 15th to October 15th. Work published in Third Coast has gone on to win both O’Henry Prizes and Pushcart Prizes. https://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com
Born and raised in Ames, Iowa, Ted Kooser has lived for many years in Garland, Nebraska. A teacher of poetry and nonfiction at the University of Nebraska in nearby Lincoln, the former U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize also edits a weekly poetry column, “American Life in Poetry” (www.https://americanlifeinpoetry.org). His poetry depicts a fading world as seen in Ektachrome slides — of family, land, pets, antique teacups, old vehicles and tools — and as Brad Leithauser noted in the New York Times Book Review, it “is rare for its sense of being so firmly and enduringly rooted in one locale.” His poems speak of the weather, arbiter of crop futures and human futures — of hoarfrost and blizzards, searing heat and floods. But they also celebrate the small moments of the heart and everyday pleasures. In the poem, “At Nightfall,” the poet describes the flight of a barn swallow bringing back one white feather to her nest in the rafters, and in “A Morning in Early Spring,” he notes, “In the first light I bend to one knee. I fill the old bowl of my hands/with wet leaves and lift them…”
Reaching beyond the boundaries of small town life, his writing reminds us of our common connections. As David Mason observed in Prairie Schooner, this poetry is beyond regionalism — it’s about “perception itself, the signs of human habitation, the uncertainty of human knowledge and accomplishment.” At times, it can seem almost archeological, as in the poem “The Red Wing Church,” which describes a partially deconstructed church, or in “In the Basement of the Goodwill Store,” a place populated by “doll heads, and rust,” and an old man “trying on glasses.,,,” “…through which he looks to see you looking back.” Kooser’a poetry exhibits what, in Hindu philosophy, is called Sakshi, or witness, a neutral perspective of looking at the world. This quality is apparent in several poems from Kindest Regards — in “Old Soldier’s Home,” for instance, and in “A Letter in October,” but there are many other examples. While Sakshi has been described as the witness of the flow of thought and feeling in an ever-changing world, Chitchhaya, is the reflection of the ego or the residue, it might be said, of personality. It resembles “the moon with its bruises,” the “chalk” on the porch post, “the old yellow shell” of a snakeskin, and “a whisper of dust,” to quote Kooser. This quality of witness in his poetry appears as emotion filtered through a frayed screen door, as a face behind a lace curtain, a tenuous separation between inside and out.
Another aspect of the witness function in poetry concerns the acknowledgment of traumatic events such as those of war or social injustice, and this, too, can be found in his work, although it’s the exception. “Fort Robinson,” for instance, depicts the killing of infant magpies by grounds keepers on the site where the Northern Cheyenne were held captive one “terrible winter,” and “Blackout” describes domestic air raid practices during WWII as seen through the eyes of a six-year old. In “Blizzard Voices” he tells of the devastation of the “Children’s Blizzard” of 1888. Sometimes, the subject involves economic upheaval, as in the poem “Three Steps in the Grass,” which tells how a desperate homeowner bulldozed his house and set it on fire to avoid paying property taxes.
One of his most compelling poems, “Pearl,” describes a visit he paid to a childhood friend of his late mother’s. It evokes not only a sense of loss and the isolation of old age, but a more intimate time when we communicated in person rather than through emails and text messages. It’s this depiction of a fading era that characterizes much of his poetry and has given him a reputation as an elegist. An abandoned tractor, rusty harness bells, a WWI helmet, and “a heap of enameled pans as white as skulls” are a few of the objects from the past that appear in his lines. But, besides a certain wistfulness for days gone by, his work contains a balance of fresh and worn, of young and old, and an abiding wonder at the present moment.
An Interview with Gail Entrekin, Editor of Canary Literary Magazine
Interviewed by Jerome Gagnon
The rise of ecopoetry during the last several years can be seen in the many publications devoted to the environment. Some of the newer periodicals are Ecotone, Emergence, Terrain, Flyway: A Journal of Writing, About Place , and Canary Literary Magazine. These publications carry on the tradition of reverence for nature found in world literatures and serve as witness to the effects of ecological devastation. One of the best of the on-line journalsis Canary Literary Magazine (www.https://canarylitmagazine.org. Started in 2007, it aims to “deepen awareness of the environment and enrich the well-being of the individual,” according to their home page.
I interviewed Editor Gail Entrekin (via email) to learn what influenced her to found Canary and what advice she would give to writers planning to submit their work. A poet, hiker, teacher, and quilt-maker, Gail earned an M.A. in English Lit/Creative Writing from Ohio State University. She’s also the poetry editor of Hip Pocket Press. She taught English and Creative Writing at Sierra College in Grass Valley and, for many years, worked with California Poets in the Schools, teaching poetry to children. Her books of poetry include The Art of Healing, with her husband, Charles Entrekin (2016), Rearrangement of the Invisible (2012), and Change (2005), which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award.
Q. I’d like to start by saying how in awe I am with the overall work and aesthetics of the magazine. The combination of text and photographs is always very inviting visually. Can you please share with us what motivated you to found Canary?
A. I don’t know. It was the thing that was on my mind at the time. Our area of the world (Nevada City, CA) had been gold mined back in the day and there was mercury in many areas that was damaging the soil and the water supply. We were fighting the powers that be not to dam the beautiful and scenic Yuba River, and the air quality was heading down due to the pollution rising up to us on our mountain from Sacramento down below. The more I learned, the more upsetting it was. So it seemed to me that what I could do to help was small, but perhaps it would help some people to wake up. And if nothing else, it might serve as a reminder of all the beauty, the connection to the natural world that we were betraying and stood to lose.
Q. Please tell us a little bit more about your background and what you find most satisfying about the editing process.
A. I started a local online publication for women first, to showcase and discuss work in progress (Women’s Writing Salon). It was wildly popular and I expanded it into a local reading series in Nevada City, where I was living at the time, Beyond that, I’ve been employed as an editor in one way or another, on and off, for about 40 years. I also run poetry critiquing workshops, and an important aspect of critiquing is noticing how line breaks, word choices, etc. contribute to the success or failure of a poet’s ability to reach their desired goal for the poem. I love, love, love the opportunity to read work by so many talented and passionate, mostly unknown writers that I would not have read otherwise — people leading their own quiet campaigns in their neighborhoods to save a small piece of the planet on their watch.
Q. What have you learned in your tenure as an editor?
A. At this point, the only things I learn are the new ways the language is changing: new pronoun usage, use of back slashes within lines, etc.
Q. Do you believe that Canary has had a concrete impact on environmental/ ecological issues?
A. No, I fear that we’ve had very little direct impact on the crisis at hand. I think most of our readership is already well aware of the loss of habitat and species that we’re experiencing. We circulate Canary to friends and fellow writers, though, and my hope is that someone becomes more aware of what’s happening and is able to have some small impact in their own world.
Q. What advice would you give to writers who are planning to submit their poetry, and how would you describe your editorial style?
A. I guess I’d give the same advice any editor would give: read the magazine before you submit, so you understand what kind of work we publish. Be sure to read our mission statement on our home page so you understand what we’re trying to accomplish. I never change anything larger than a comma or a spelling error without letting the author know what I’m doing. If I do more than that, I send them my edited version for approval. Poets are especially interested in the formatting of their poems and they don’t take well to unauthorized changes.
Q. Your mission statement says that the theme of the magazine is “the environmental crises and the losses of species and habitat.” Can you give us an example of a poem from one of your issues that addresses that? What is it that you admire, and how do you think your own tastes help or hinder the selection process?
A. The very first poem I selected for Canary was “Birdsong from My Patio”by Ellen Bass, which I solicited (and which considers the effects of pesticide and acid rain on birds and nature – jg). I hoped for more of these and, indeed, there are many. But after a while I branched out into broader stories of events which are contributing to these losses, and too many pieces that simply praise what IS. Some tell of human indifference to other living things, a broader way of considering what’s coming to pass. “Little Fires” by Christina Lovin, for example, in Issue #4 is about the bats we killed. I can think of so many…
As for the last part of your question, I like poems that have something at stake, that are authentic, and reflect both the passion of the poet and the skill and craft to convey that passion. I can’t know, of course, how who I am affects the decisions I make. I try hard to be open to all kinds of styles of poetry that are new to me or that initially fail to move me. Clichés, awkward language, confusion or lack of logical progression, and lack of images and/or metaphors are all serious drawbacks. But I feel very excited when I come across beautiful and well-crafted work that teaches or moves me. I want to share this work with the world. Those are the finest moments in this job.
Q. Thanks very much, Gail. I have just one last question — how do you approach beginning writers?
A. I always give a read to all pieces in a person’s submissions because sometimes a beginning writer stumbles onto one good poem. If I feel someone is almost there, I often say that and ask them to submit again in the future. I sometimes tell a writer who is really pretty good what I like and how I felt the poem fell short.
Ada Limon, author of six poetry collections and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, was recently named the new U.S. Poet Laureate, taking over the position held for three years bv Joy Harjo. A professor in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, Limon called her appointment “an incredible honor” and the shock of a lifetime.” https://www.npr.org
Rumi’s Little Book of the Heart
This inspiring little book, with translations by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, offers an excellent introduction to the life and poetry of 13th-century Sufi poet Mowlana Jallaledin Mohamad Rumi (Hampton Roads, 2016). Born in Persia on September 30th, 1207 (in what is now Afghanistan), Rumi was the son of a renowned Islamic teacher/theologian, a role Rumi himself later assumed. But it wasn’t until the age of thirty-six when he met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering Sufi mystic, that Rumi’s spiritual genius blossomed, notably in the form of his ecstatic, voluminous poetry. In poem after poem he reveals an overwhelming experience of love that “appears on the wings of grace,” and questions, “How can one remain sober drinking Your wine?” Working from Forouzanfar’s edition of Rumi’s The Divan, Mafi and Kolin have created a lively collection that respects it source yet still feels contemporary. Interspersed among the poems are samples of Persian calligraphy by Hassan Behras Shayjani and Rumi’s signature emblem by Nutan Gungorencan.
The Essential Rumi
At a conference in 1976, Robert Bly handed Coleman Barks some dated translations of the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, with the comment that, “These poems need to be released from their cages.” This was the beginning of a lifelong commitment for the former University of Georgia professor, now 85, whose streamlined versions of the great Rumi have now sold well over two million copies.
To say the poems in Barks’s The Essential Rumi (Harper One, 2004) are spiritual may be somewhat misleading. They don’t deal in hope or certainties, or conventional notions of good and bad. What they offer is clarity, openness, and an invitation to share in Rumi’s generous spirit. But there’s also the grief of separation and longing for the beloved — for union, for ecstasy, for the meeting of heaven and earth. In its mature phase, Rumi tells, us, love becomes “oceanic” and “begins to move with the whole” and (there is) “No better love than love with no object.”
Rumi was the son of a Moslem theologian and served in the same capacity for many years, but his poetry isn’t doctrinaire. It stems from a wide knowledge of religion and deep insight into the “living marrow” of being. Coleman Barks’s translations in The Essential Rumi (2004)containnot only Moslem references, but several Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, and Sufi references, as well. In one poem, “How Finite Minds Most Want to Be,” Jesus, Joseph, and Moses are referenced; in another, “The Well of Sacred Text,” both the Qur’an and the Bible are mentioned in the same line. There are several other examples that demonstrate a kinship of faiths and Rumi’s fluency with their stories. In “A Pilgrimage to a Person,” he says, “Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being,/and Mecca will rise on its own.” To be “inside the majesty,” to “become a lover,” this was Rumi’s message and the heart of his realization.
I think of these poems almost as living things, as scrapings of DNA from the life of an extraordinary teacher/poet, one whose songs go beyond belief and provide a direct view into “the radiant depth of the self,” as Barks has put it. Jacob Needleman summed up the importance of these translations: “Through Coleman Barks’s inspired renderings, we tired, modern people have come not only to love Rumi, but even — a little — to love who and what Rumi himself loved.” In addition to the poems, which are themselves teaching devices, the introductory comments at the beginning of each section in The Essential Rumi are an education — in culture, history, religion, the use and limits of metaphor, and the fluidity of identity. And if that’s not enough, the volume closes with several savory sounding recipes. Like the poems, they’re guides for living a nourishing life.
Interviews
This interview with poet John Silbey Williams by the editors of the River Heron Review (https://www.riverheronreview.com, July 6, 2022) focuses on craft and offers some of the most practical advice I’ve ever heard from a writer. The author of nine books of poetry and winner of multiple awards, Williams also serves as editor of the Inflectionist Review.
Nicole Vassell interviews poet and playwright Claudia Rankin for The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk), June 24, 2022. The author of Citizen, An American Lyric, called one of the most influential poetic works of the 21st century, Rankin speaks candidly here about racism and her new play, The White Card.
Writing Opportunities
New Women’s Voices Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Finishing Line Press, is now accepting poetry manuscripts “by a writer who identifies as a woman and has not yet published a full-length manuscript.” Open until September 15th, the contest offers publication and a prize of $1500.
Blue Mountain Review, an online journal out of Athens, Georgia, is currently accepting poetry, fiction, and visual arts (no simultaneous submissions) “What we sing saves the soul,” reads the introduction to their website. https://www.bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit
Next time: The poetry of Japanese Zen poet Ikkyu (Crazy Cloud), and more.
Jerome Gagnon Blog 