Poetry, April, and Me
Who is a poet? Who can write poetry? What can help us write? What inspires?
Bazaar
For this year’s 2021 National Poetry Month, I am honored to share my 2012 poem, Bazaar, as part of Virginia poet laureate Luisa A. Igloria's Poem-A-Day project for Slover Library, in Norfolk, Virginia. To be a part of this with so many great and notable poets is something, because so many people create amazing works, but we never hear about them. I know this well from my work at Studio PAUSE. To intentionally encourage, look for, and bring diverse voices out into the open is important work. It helps us learn many new things about people's lives, their thoughts, and even dreams.
A Poetry Video
In an amazing turn of events, mentor, and dear friend Mary Louise Marino created a poetry video about my artist’s book! In this 2021 avatar, the book and poem come alive in Objects of Our Longing Elsewhere: A Poetry Video by Mary Louise Marino with beautiful imagery and technique, her memories of travel, and more.
"I realized I needed to express this poem for me, too – to express the feeling of elsewhere, of always searching, and how objects remind us of our longing." ~ Mary Louise Marino, 2021
Watch the just released poetry video here!
Read the full essay here.
All these moments are part of the story about poetry and April and me. So come along for a stroll down story lane, bumping into some greats, some unknowns, some languages, some inspirations, and of course, some poems. Because it is April after all.
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Who do we think is a Poet?
I have always loved poetry but didn’t write. I hadn’t read much poetry since my school days when from 8-10th grade we read and studied so many poems in English and Hindi and also an entire play by Shakespeare. I started enjoying poetry again when I was reading to my children. My favorite children’s book about poetry is A River of Words by Jen Bryant illustrated by Melissa Sweet. When I read it and saw the illustrations, I knew I feel those same things, so maybe I too was a poet? I wanted to share what I saw and felt as a poet but I still didn’t write. Then one day I bought a poetry book for adults, Ballistics by Billy Collins. When I read it on a flight from Chicago to New Orleans, I immediately started to write.
For the 2020 NaPoMo, another of my poems was shared by Katherine Young, Arlington’s first poet laureate. Monday Morning & Chai was one of two poems by me to be included in her anthology of poetry called Written in Arlington, an Arlington Arts grant project by Katherine. I think it started when I offered to design the cover of the book. As I worked on the cover I thought about which poems to send Katherine I also thought about who else could send in their poems. What about people who didn’t live in Arlington but wrote their poems at the Studio? Or wrote their poems to be in a Studio show? What about all the poets who had participated in the 2017 Studio project Thou Art: The Beauty of Identity?
With an okay from the editor I started to remember whose names I should suggest. In the end there was Rana Jaafar Yaseen, an award-winning poet from Iraq with 7 books of poetry in Arabic. She would share a poem in English. Hanan Seid, an Arlington slam poet and the Studio’s first artist-in-residence. Sughra Hussainy, who wrote her first English poem at the Studio. And Kori Johnson, a seasoned poet who had 3 poems in the 2018 studio show at UUCA, Baked Clay/Endless Sky: Five Years of PAUSE. It is just so magical for me to see all these writers, and others whose work I love, all in the same book.
Photo: Sushmita with a copy of Written in Arlington
Forever Inspired by Nature
As evident in this gorgeous photo by my friend Colleen Moore, April is also the time in the Washington DC region, and all over the world perhaps, to celebrate cherry blossoms, that gorgeous symbol of spring. My Japanese friend and fellow museum docent Eriko Matsuoka was planning to give her first online tour for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. It would be a cherry blossom tour and it would be from the Japanese point of view, she explained. In that tour I was so grateful to learn about how Japanese poetry is so deeply interconnected with the cherry blossoms. That deep connection comes from an age-old respect for the four seasons and nature. And the Japanese concept of Mono no aware, which she explained was the root of their aesthetic sensibilities and sensitivities.
To explain the concept to us she told us of the 12th century poet, a Samurai-turned-Buddhist monk, Saigyo, who lived in a little hut on Mt Yoshino. Of the over 2000 poems he wrote, 200 were about the cherry blossoms. Apologizing profusely for her rough translation of the great master’s work into English, she shared one of his poems:
“I hope to die under the cherry blossoms in spring
Around the full moon in February.” - Saigyo
What we might miss, Eriko said, was that the flowers don’t bloom until March, but the Buddha did breathe his last in February. And it’s this subtle message, this cultural knowing, that touches one so, how Saigyo’s two dearest wishes—to die on the day the Buddha died, and to die under the cherry blossoms on the spring full moon—could possibly never be fulfilled.
As Eriko explained further, “Full moon in February” in the poem was based on the old Lunar-based calendar, and March in the current calendar. … You know the beginning of the Chinese New Year differs from year to year? I noticed some translation of Saigyo’s last poem says “March” rather than “February”. Then, it doesn’t translate well because February was called “如月 Kisaragi” while March “弥生 Yayoi”. In Japanese poetry, the visual image of words is important because it indicates the mood and emotion of the poet. A poet can choose how to write a word, in Chinese characters, or Hiragana, or a mix. The cherry blossoms in Yoshino Mountain were mostly Yamazakura, literally translates to mountain cheery trees. They start blooming in late March in the current calendar. Therefore, it was possible that cherry flowers were blooming on February 16 (in the old calendar) when Saigyo died. Some later quotes seemed to confirm it, but I did not find any reliable confirmation. It is possible that his admirers wished he had passed away when the cherries were in full. It’s so romantic.”
It turns out, Saigyo died one day after the date of the passing of the Buddha. It was February. We wonder if his beloved cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
Educated by the Past and Connected to the Present
As I was writing this post, I got an email from an old friend, Anjum Altaf. He was replying to the newsletter I had sent out about my new website. He wrote:
“Dear Sushmita, Congratulations on adapting creatively to this very difficult period. I look forward to going through the new website. I am pleased to inform you that my book of poems, Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, is now available on Kindle for $4.99. You might recall I read a couple of them at the Studio well before they were published. The Studio was the only place where I had the opportunity to read them in public. Please pass on the information to the group that is interested in poetry.”
I felt a warmth in my heart that those poems had been shared here, at Studio Pause, before we were all isolated away. I learned from reading his book that Faiz Ahmad Faiz is considered among the most popular modern poets of Urdu, the national language of Pakistan which is also spoken in India. The poems in this collection are inspired by his poetry. "Each poem in the collection provides an intertextual engagement with, and adaptation of, a specific Faiz poem. Altaf supplements each with a brief note, giving the context in which it spoke to him personally and led him to capture its essence in his own verse,” says a review by Muneeza Shamsie, the leading authority on literature in English from Pakistan, in Dawn on Feb 2, 2020.
Yet, in his opening essay By Way of Explanation, he shares how poetry of resistance must be updated to stay current with the times, and laments the lack of present day poets writing in Urdu.
“The absence of equally powerful poetry after Faiz underscores a problem peculiar to Urdu—that it is past its peak as a medium for the expression of lasting literary feelings.” He goes on to say, “But unlike, say, the Russian aristocracy that switched from French to the language of the people for good, the North Indian aristocracy abandoned the native language for English within a few generations.” He worries that as writers of such poetry don’t write in English either, this style of poetry will be lost. The essay is beautiful and absolutely heart-breaking.
I learned a lot when I read the review of Transgressions that appeared in The Friday Times on Feb 7, 2020. It is by Dr. Amjad Hussain, professor emeritus of humanities, University of Toledo in Ohio. As I read more about how he was writing in response to the terrible incidents happening in universities in India in 2016, when authorities and students clash, I remembered that Anjum was an academic himself, having served as the Dean of the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. However, I had met him as a friend of a friend’s friend when he worked at the World Bank in Washington DC and had invited him to the Studio. It was interesting to me how as an administrator, his love for poetry let him relate to the students’ problems in a totally different way.
Photo, left: Anjum Altaf reads at Mic-Less Night at Studio Pause.
“We’re here to EMPOWER”
Urdu poetry led me to look for and find a document in my files from 2016. It says: Hasrat is a popular pen name for Urdu poets in India and Pakistan. It is an Urdu word meaning "unfulfilled wish", which is derived from the Arabic word "Hasrah". One reason this word is favored by Urdu poets is that it has melancholy undertones.
I look for the link and find the Wiki has been updated in March 2021: Hasrat is a popular name predominantly used in Indian subcontinent. It is also a popular pen name for Urdu poets in India and Pakistan. In Hindi and Urdu, the word Hasrat means "wish" or "desire".
In the same document I find an old poem by dear friend and mentor and founder of Empowered Women International, Marga Fripp. It might have been written as part of a graduation speech of the Entrepreneurship Training for Success program:
For Me and for You
by Marga C. Fripp, January 15, 2007
Give artists
a chance to succeed.
Teach them the business
of being fulfilled.
Show them careers
and new ways to live,
Power their spirit,
Give them belief.
It’s hard when you’re new
and no one knows you.
Things can feel different,
but ART can help you.
Find ways to tell the story.
You are EXCEPTIONAL!
Don’t say you’re an artist,
only occasional.
Good people,
come touch these creations.
Their work is amazing,
it exceeds expectations.
Look at their talent,
feel what’s inside.
Stop judging the artists,
it’s all in your mind.
Open new doors,
show possibilities.
Forget being perfect,
share responsibilities.
Art is their job,
their dream is the canvas.
No matter where they come from
Liberia or Kansas.
We’re here to EMPOWER
and give all a voice.
We bring the world together
it’s all about choice.
Believe in yourself,
that’s all we can do.
The sky is the limit
for ME and for YOU.
In the photo above, Marga and I are at the opening of Studio PAUSE in 2013, a space I opened to invite everyday people to make time for creativity. I wonder if Marga even remembers this poem from so long ago. But we are always changing, always evolving, and we should. Because we can decide to do something new, or be inspired by anything at anytime. We just have to do it. It changes us. And then, when we share, we can touch others, inspire them in return, pass it along. So that next year’s National Poetry Month will see even more poems, poetry books, talks about poetry, and even poetry videos.
How beautiful would that be. Right there, with the cherry blossoms! In April!