Lauds and praises first to Annie for sharing the power and love of a Persian Shab-e-She’r.

“This.” (with period) in my other active Net community (a passel of simulated historical baseball managers) is a handy tag to indicate agreement with the last speaker. What he said. I was agreeing with the thrust of Terreson’s defense of an American prophetic tradition as against Desmond’s Eurocentric jibes which were already pretty far off thread for the Iranian focus.

Desmond ends up proposing himself for the mantle of American shamanic voice. I’ll be over to take up the reins of Irish poetry just about the time that happens. As to the blame for a thread going off topic, there’s plenty to go around for all of us (including this digression).

It reminds me of the three monks who take a vow of silence. After awhile one asks, “How long did we say we have to be silent?” whereupon the second one accuses, “You talked!” and the third states smugly, “I am the only one who has not broken his vow.”

Probably a gentle nudge in the direction of the original thread is more effective than a scold. I should talk. Wonderfully well-read one-trick-pony Tom pushes my buttons, and I can’t read Desmond’s novella-length rants (mostly I take his advice and scroll on down).

One trick pony.
One horse town.

I thought we might have the beginning of an exquisite corpse there, but nobody picked up on it. Don’t get me started on flarf. Iranian poetry beats it all hollow.

I like when you wrote in a recent thread, Woodie, that you didn’t know and didn’t really care if you were right or wrong. The burden of having to be right all the time saps energy.

A prominent ruler of a country once told, whenever he wanted to know the current situation in his country, he would never ask his officials but he would approach the good poets in his country to get the clear picture of the situations. Because a good poet is widely awake to see what is going around him.

Good poems always stand above all the conflicts. I remember Mahmoud Darwish who termed Arab Israeli conflicts as “a struggle between two memories”. Only can a beautiful mind define such a way.

If poems can unite us, we should stand for poems, we love for poems. Disunity is the catalyst of all the problems in the world. I try to write both in my mother tongue and English. For that, I am indebted to the inspirations of a great and internationally recognized poet: Madhavikutty alias Kamaladas. She passed away recently. Without dedicating a few lines to her, this short piece of writing will remain incomplete.

My story
As told by you
Delves into the infinite;
Hisses at the serpent temple
Aroma of the literary scent
Vanished into the oblivion;
In the lamp of love
Kindle some desires still
Up above the sensual feels;
Tales & poems fold hands
To pay tribute to the golden hand
Yet, the pomegranate tree blooms….

(First letters of each line make her name: MADHAVIKUTTY in acrostic style)

Prem Nizar Hameed

I’d also like to announce that PAF will be cosponsoring with a host of other organizations, like the Association of Iranian-American Writers and ArteEast, on July 11 at BPC, from 2-5 PM, a reading in solidarity with the opposition in Iran. Check out PAF’s website</a for details.

Don’t fail me in your answers!

Do you mean “This!” or “This?”—or what?

If I were Gary I would also want to know, or Terreson.

Indeed, I would like to ask you all to help me, an older man hardly in the mainstream and with almost no blog experience. So please do answer.

1.) Do you feel I was wrong to reply to Gary in Martin Earl’s thread on poets and painters, and then to link to that here? What I want to know is if I have been wrong specifically to ask Gary to post his poems on Harriet only when a.) they address the issue and b.) address the issue in a deeper way than he could in ordinary prose?

2.) Was I wrong to come down so hard on Terreson just above, and indeed accuse him of undermining the integrity and mood of this thread in order to score points? (Perhaps it’s common, but I haven’t seen anything like this on Harriet before.)

What I like about Harriet is it’s sense of self-government. Don’t we all have to give ourselves credit for that?

That’s a huge question in human affairs, of course, and one the events in Iran certainly high-light. And out of a sense of solidarity with those struggling for self-detarmination in Teheran this evening, let’s speak about this huge question right here.

Christopher

http://ubu.com/sound/farrokhzad.html
http://ubu.com/film/farrokhzad.html