Tonight, I’ve Been Thinking About Sex

May 17th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I am try­ing to remem­ber the first time I under­stood, really under­stood, that sex was noth­ing but touch, that I wanted the sex I had to be about find­ing ways to touch peo­ple that would leave them feel­ing fully and deeply and irrev­o­ca­bly known inside and out, rec­og­nized, val­i­dated, appre­ci­ated as a human body, a being in a body, a per­son with a phys­i­cal pres­ence, with a stake in mate­r­ial exis­tence that could not be denied; which meant that hav­ing sex was also about learn­ing what I needed to feel touched in that way, about find­ing a vocab­u­lary for it, a gram­mar and a syn­tax, a seman­tics, a lan­guage, in other words, that bespoke who I was and what I wanted/needed and why I wanted/needed it in a way that did not alien­ate me from myself and/or my partner(s); because once I under­stood this, even though I can­not remem­ber when I under­stood this, I under­stood that sex was an ongo­ing explo­ration, a way of know­ing – both a path and a method­ol­ogy – some­thing that did not have a dis­crete begin­ning and end­ing, that inhered in every aspect of my life, not because every­thing is about sex per se, but because sex is, ulti­mately, about every­thing. We bring all of who we are, every­thing we have lived, good and bad, to the bod­ies of the peo­ple we make love with, as they bring all of who they are to us; and I use the phrase “make love with” here because even though the moment when I under­stood that sex was all about touch was also the moment that I fully under­stood that sex was not love, that love was not sex, I do believe that when peo­ple have sex openly and hon­estly, with respect and care and atten­tion, in what­ever com­bi­na­tion, in what­ever roles, with what­ever ancil­lary equip­ment, they are, quite literally, making love, cre­at­ing in this world a space in which one per­son accepts and hon­ors and cel­e­brates the entirely inde­pen­dent, phys­i­cally embod­ied exis­tence of another per­son; and it does not mat­ter if they are in love with each other or not; it does not mat­ter if they know each other’s names or not; or if they will see each other again. What mat­ters is that when they touch each other, they under­stand that they are touch­ing a liv­ing, breath­ing, feel­ing, fully human being, and that even if they don’t know a damned thing about that per­son except that he or she is com­pelling enough to want to have sex with, what mat­ters is that when they touch, they each know that they are also touch­ing the entirety of that person’s life and that they are giv­ing the entirety of their own lives over to that per­son to be touched. I am try­ing to remem­ber the first time I under­stood this, but I can’t.

Farid al-Din Attar Translation in Progress: “Do The Latter”

May 12th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I find the pol­i­tics of this poem fas­ci­nat­ing. For Attar to show this much respect for a reli­gious tra­di­tion he describes in such bar­baric terms, sug­gests a will­ing­ness to grant a cer­tain level of valid­ity to other beliefs that I would not have expected. At the same time, though, the fact that he calls the tra­di­tion described in this poem Chris­t­ian sug­gests that he had all kinds of hate­ful mis­con­cep­tions about Christianity.

Do The Latter

When Abolqasem Hamadani
left Hamadan on a sud­den jour­ney,
he came upon a crowd of peo­ple
gath­ered out­side an idol’s tem­ple.
On a fire, an oil-filled caul­dron
bub­bled like a windswept ocean.
Some min­utes passed and then a Chris­t­ian
entered and bowed before the idol.
When he stood, they asked him this: “Hum­ble
ser­vant, what are you to God?”
“A slave,” he answered. They responded,
“Then quickly make your offer­ing.”
He did and left, like smoke ris­ing.
Another per­son did the same,
then another, and ten more came,
and each was sim­i­larly dis­missed.
At last, a man who could’ve passed
for dead, shriv­eled and weak, pale,
ema­ci­ated, lean, fee­ble—
he was a walk­ing shadow. They asked,
“And what are you? A man, a corpse,
or both?” He said, “I am a piece
of skin. I love my God.” At this
they told him, “Sit down.” He did, at ease
on the golden throne they showed him. Then,
they car­ried over the boil­ing caul­dron
and poured the oil onto his head.
The man’s skin melted from the heat;
his skull landed at his feet.
When it had been removed, they set
the rest of him ablaze. “These ashes,”
they said, “cure every pain there is.”

The shaikh observed this from a dis­tance,
and when they fin­ished ran at once
to pon­der what he’d seen. “You fool,”
he said to him­self, “that Chris­t­ian, full
with false love, gave his life to it.
If you’re truly an ini­ti­ate,
for love of your God do the same.
Oth­er­wise, go make your home
with catamites. If you are sure
of your love for God, then choose: abjure
your life or for­sake your faith. The for­mer
you have not done; so do the latter.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

May 11th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

For my mother and every other mother out there. Enjoy!


Attar Translation in Progress: “This Tale Applies to You”

May 5th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

This is a story that has been told in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ver­sions. Here is my first pass at Attar’s take on it in Elahi Nameh. Izrail is the name of the Angel of Death:

I’ve heard that one day Izrail,
con­sumer of souls, entered the hall
where Solomon reigned. Seated there
was a young man. God’s soul col­lec­tor
glanced quickly at the young man’s face,
turned around and left the palace.
Ter­ri­fied, the young man ran
to Solomon for help. “You can,
I know, com­mand the clouds. Choose one
to carry me away from here.
Death has sick­ened me with fear.”
Solomon did as the man asked.
A cloud car­ried him from Fars
to India. Three days passed
before Izrail came again.
“Sword­less shed­der of blood,” Solomon
addressed him, “why such a keen glance
when you saw that young man?” “I’d planned,”
the angel answered, “at God’s com­mand,
to seize his soul in India
three days from when you saw me last;
but when I saw him in this room,
I did not under­stand how three days’ time
would be enough for him to get there.
When the cloud bore him off, I fol­lowed,
and took his soul to meet with God.”

First Tuesdays Presents: Miguel Falquez-Certain — May 7, 2013

May 4th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Miguel Falquez-Certain (Bar­ran­quilla, Colom­bia) has been liv­ing in New York City for more than three decades, where he works as a mul­ti­lin­gual trans­la­tor and writer. He is the author of six vol­umes of poetry:Refle­jos de una más­cara, Habitación en la pal­abra, Proe­mas en cámara ardi­ente, Doble corona, Usurpa­ciones y dei­cidios, and Palimpses­tos; of a short novel, Bajo el ado­quín, la playa; of six plays: La pasión, Moves Meet Metes Move: A Tragic Farce, “Castil­los de arena,” “Allá en el club hay un run­rún,” “Una angus­tia se abre paso entre los hue­sos,” and Que­mar las naves, as well as of short sto­ries and essays. Book Press – New York pub­lished Tri­a­cas (short fic­tion) and Mañanayer (poetry) in 2010. Mañanayer received the only hon­or­able men­tion in The 2011 Inter­na­tional Latino Book Awards in the cat­e­gory of Best Poetry Book – Span­ish or Bilingual.

When:  May 7, 2013
Where: Ter­raza 7 Café, 40 – 19 Gleane Street, Elmhurst, NY 11373
Time: 7:00 — 9:00 PM (open-mic sign up at 6:45)
Other: $5 sug­gested dona­tion. For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Richard Jef­frey New­man.

Here’s one of Miguel’s poems:

Hypoth­e­sis of a Dream

 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speak­ing onto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

―First Samuel, 18:1

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth ― for thy love is bet­ter than wine.

―The Song of Songs, 1:2

Nev­er­the­less, I never offered a thor­ough report of your absolute sur­ren­der. After all, I was the one who had gone search­ing for your scent of moss, until I found you dis­tracted at the bar in the opal-tinged lights of the after­noon. Syco­phants, pre­vent­ing me from com­ing closer, were sur­round­ing you; our eyes met patiently. While lean­ing over, I noticed the dark-blond down that made fur­rows on the back of your neck; I felt the swell of your breath and fore­saw a capit­u­la­tion. Our lips showed us the path.

A recent break-up had made me vul­ner­a­ble. I lusted after your kisses; I longed for your young body sweet as sugar cane; I breathed in the fas­ci­nat­ing inso­lence of your unso­phis­ti­cated loquacity. I relin­quished every­thing for your lips. While the summer’s scorch­ing sun was hit­ting the walls, I nib­bled on your but­tons, until I pulled them out and found you, strong and flaw­less, in the intox­i­cat­ing sweat of your thighs, in the inner per­spi­ra­tion of your navel: We sat up in the midst of the bed sheets impelled by the obsti­nate onslaught of a deferred lust, ris­ing up in the umbra tree of that irrepara­ble afternoon.

Habits make us despi­ca­ble. Ordi­nary and faint­hearted, pre­fer­ring secu­rity instead of the chance of reach­ing for the sub­lime, I went back to the wind­ing, although famil­iar, path, to the com­pli­ant arthri­tis of forgetfulness.

Even though you offered me every­thing, I chose the com­forts of an insipid bond­ing. Long ago, I lusted after the kisses of your mouth. You are no more. You exist in the hypoth­e­sis of a dream.

To Mag­dalena Araque

Review of Sweta Srivastava Vikram’s “No Ocean Here”

April 27th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Let’s get the obvi­ous, by which I do not mean incon­se­quen­tial, out of the way first. When a writer chooses to use her art to give voice to those who might oth­er­wise be voice­less, that choice deserves to be rec­og­nized for its neces­sity, because bear­ing wit­ness is a choice that all too few writ­ers, and per­haps espe­cially poets, make. In her intro­duc­tion to No Ocean Here, which was pub­lished this year by Mod­ern His­tory Press, Sweta Sri­vas­tava Vikram makes clear that bear­ing wit­ness is what the vol­ume is all about. Based on inter­views she con­ducted, she writes, the poems in No Ocean Here take on the fact that women in many coun­tries through­out the world, “are stripped of basic human rights,” often start­ing life “with­out ade­quate means of nutri­tion, learn­ing, and pro­tec­tion.” Vikram goes on:

I decided to write this book because lis­ten­ing, telling, and writ­ing the sto­ries of those who can’t write them will cre­ate aware­ness.… I can only pray that the book urges read­ers to empathize, and help.… If the book can pro­vide even a hand­ful of women, in unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tions, strength and courage to say NO, I would be humbled.

That is a tall order for any book, much less a book of poetry, given how few peo­ple gen­er­ally read poetry, but it is impos­si­ble not to applaud Vikram’s com­mit­ment to the sto­ries she has gath­ered, the women who have told them to her, and the lan­guage of poetry with which she has strug­gled to bring them to life. Nonethe­less, once you have acknowl­edged the value in Vikram’s moti­va­tion and rec­og­nized that the sto­ries she sets out to tell do still need to be told (because it would be dis­hon­est to pre­tend that these nar­ra­tives of women’s oppres­sion have not been told before), you still need to ask what her poems actu­ally accom­plish, not merely whether they suc­ceed as art – though since they are art, that is the first and most impor­tant ques­tion – but whether they bear wit­ness in a way that makes a difference.

Over­all, I wish Vikram would learn to trust her lan­guage more. There are moments of real, and some­times painful beauty in these poems, metaphors and snip­pets of nar­ra­tive that illu­mi­nate the lives of the women Vikram writes about and that do, I think, have the power to change people’s per­spec­tives in the way that only art can. Too often, how­ever, those moments are under­cut by writ­ing that is pro­saic, self-consciously didac­tic and some­times mired in unfor­tu­nate cliches, as in these lines from the con­clud­ing stro­phe of “Her Wounds Are Mysterious:”

Her wounds are mys­te­ri­ous
like the Congo; the depth unseen
to the world but home to insects
rarely heard.…

The ref­er­ence to the Congo is both cliché and evoca­tive of a racist impe­ri­al­ism that is all too sim­i­lar to the het­ero­sex­ual male pre­rog­a­tive that wounded the girl the poem is about in the first place. Still, you can see the poten­tial in what this stro­phe might have been like if it had been revised a lit­tle more. “Her wounds are home to insects….” is a metaphor that far more pow­er­fully cap­tures, I think, the hor­ror and the dam­age inflicted by the men in the poem. Indeed, read­ing No Ocean Here, I found myself think­ing more than once that one more revi­sion would have strength­ened the vol­ume con­sid­er­ably. Notice how much stronger the poem “Honor Killing” would have been with­out the final three lines:

Dead, she stares at the sea
as it car­ries her bones
thrown by guards,
smok­ing water pipes.

Her mother’s mouth fills with sand,
her father and broth­ers’ hands are cov­ered
with gloves to cleanse the stains
left on the walls of their fam­ily
by a man who spread her legs,
tore her apart like a coyote.

Right before her mur­der, she didn’t see
the sil­hou­ette of her face
in her grandmother’s heart.

Appar­ently the family’s pride lies
under­neath her skirt,
in the space between her legs.

That second-to-last stro­phe is beau­ti­ful and heart­break­ing. It would have made a fine end­ing to the poem, and I am happy to say that there are many moments in No Ocean Here that live up to the poten­tial in those lines. The first cou­plet of “Her Wounds Are Mys­te­ri­ous,” for exam­ple, gives us a girl who “wasn’t always a fallen leaf,/she danced;” and in “There Is Some­thing Wrong with the World,” women “who are com­pelled to kill their own youth/become invis­i­ble like soot inside chim­neys.” The poem “War” deals with rape as a weapon of war in images that are hard to forget:

All cav­i­ties of the women’s trust were emp­tied out
when each man selected a victim:

her mother’s body, stuffed inside soil,
was stomped by feet and ques­tions,
her sis­ter dragged by her dark breasts,
and she was turned to debris and dust.

One of the strongest poems in the book, “Care­taker of Graves” takes on the sub­ject of female infan­ti­cide, but from a mother’s per­spec­tive, and ends with what, for me, is an absolutely dev­as­tat­ing image:

The sun doesn’t sink until 8 p.m.
but she sees dark­ness of bats all day.

Tidal waves of melan­choly mix
with seeds plowed in her every year.

Mouth filled with muf­fled cries,
hos­pi­tals and con­spir­a­tors in doc­tors’ clothes
shadow her through­out mar­ried life.

Frogs get used to the air at night
but her mur­dered womb mourns scars.

No Ocean Here is an uneven vol­ume, but the moments of power and beauty it con­tains make it worth hav­ing and Vikram a poet worth watch­ing.

This Needs to Be an Idiom: Balancing a Feather on the End of a Stick

April 23rd, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

The video speaks for itself:


Questioning the Mission of College: Frank Bruni’s Column in Today’s Times is Worth Reading

April 21st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I think the piece pretty much speaks for itself, but here are a cou­ple of para­graphs that stood out for me:

How prac­ti­cal ver­sus ide­al­is­tic should the approach to col­lege be? I’m some­what torn, and past columns have reflected that. I applaud pro­pos­als to give young peo­ple bet­ter infor­ma­tion about how var­i­ous fields of study match up with the job mar­ket and about pro­jected returns on their invest­ments in col­lege. And for stu­dents who want col­lege to be an instant pivot into a job with decent pay, a nudge toward cer­tain dis­ci­plines makes excel­lent sense.

But col­lege is about more than that, with less tar­geted, long-term ben­e­fits that aren’t eas­ily cap­tured by met­rics. And some of the reforms being pro­moted right now lose sight of that and threaten to lessen the value of a degree.

It’s worth fol­low­ing the links in that quote; each piece raises some impor­tant ques­tions. And I applaud the warn­ing with which he closes:

I’d sound yet another alarm. Scratch the sur­face of some of the efforts to reform state uni­ver­si­ties and you find more than just legit­i­mate qualms about effi­ciency and demands for account­abil­ity. You find the kind of indis­crim­i­nate anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism pop­u­lar among more than a few right-wing conservatives.

Because Men Only Understand Cliches

April 20th, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

That’s the title and the title poem of my sec­ond book of poetry, on which I have just put the fin­ish­ing touches and which I will, over the next cou­ple weeks, start shop­ping around to pub­lish­ers. LIke last time – which was in 2004, the year my first book, The Silence of Men, was accepted for pub­li­ca­tion, though it was actu­ally pub­lished in 2006 – I have decided that I will not be sub­mit­ting this man­u­script to any con­tests. Well, maybe one or two, because the prize money is enough to make it worth gam­bling the entry fee, but what I’m really look­ing for is a pub­lisher with whom I can develop a rela­tion­ship, because I know I have more books of poetry in me. If I can­not find a pub­lisher for this man­u­script, I will almost cer­tainly pub­lish it myself, because I believe the poems in it deserve a hearing.

Edited to add: For me, the book’s title, Because Men Only Under­stand Cliches, is so firmly rooted in the cir­cum­stances that inform the title poem, and also in the poem’s – and there­fore the book’s – posi­tion (in my head) as a response to that asser­tion, that it did not occur to me that some peo­ple might read the title as an accu­sa­tion that I was mak­ing against men. Well, I have been shown the error of my ways. Artos, whose com­ment appears below, won­ders whether or not I “real­ize how offen­sive [Because Men Only Under­stand Cliches] is to men who are not mang­i­nas? Kind of like, “Blacks only know fried chicken and water­melon.” I have decided to let his com­ment through pri­mar­ily because it made me smile; it’s the first time I’ve been called a mang­ina on the Inter­net, cer­tainly on my own blog, and that feels like some kind mile­stone. When I told my son about Artos’ com­ment, he said, after he stopped snort­ing with laugh­ter, “Really, what is he, in fifth grade?” This is from the first move­ment of “Because Men Only Under­stand Cliches,” which tells the story of where the title comes from:

Belly like a water­melon
stuffed up the front
of her white cot­ton sum­mer dress,
the preg­nant woman at the cor­ner
turns her back to me to face
the direc­tion she’ll cross the street in,
and what she’s wear­ing
flares from the waist down
in a twirl that set­tles
along the line of her hips
till only the hem that falls
to just above her ankles
is still rip­pling, a flag
wav­ing sur­ren­der
to this late sum­mer day.

My eyes lift to her shoul­ders,
fol­low the con­tour the fab­ric traces
down from the loops
through which her tanned arms emerge
to the curve of her butt cheeks
that bounce lightly as she steps back,
just avoid­ing the taxi pulling up fast
to the curb where she’s standing.

She’s as tall as me or taller,
black hair tied tight in a braid
point­ing like a com­pass
to the small of her back,
and she isn’t wear­ing panties,
her dress not unlike the one
you wore the night we wan­dered the beach
till the board­walk lights were stars
blink­ing at our backs,
and the camp­fires scat­tered across the sand
were the sig­nal flames of a dis­tant town.

The moon over the ocean
cast our shad­ows behind us.
You stood in front of me,
the blue cloth of what you were wear­ing
bunched in the hand I held to steady you
just beneath your breasts, my other hand
find­ing when I reached
that you’d been naked to the breeze
run­ning up your legs, you’d said,
like the water’s warm breath
before it touched its tongue to you.

You gave a throaty laugh
as I pulled you tighter to me,
stroking and pulling and gen­tly
part­ing the fur you let grow in
once the lover who’d kept you shaved was gone;
and you were wet,
though wet does not do jus­tice
to the fruit burst­ing its skin
between your legs.

I kissed the lips you shape your words with,
and in your com­ing — we were sur­prised:
you never come at home
at just the urg­ing of my hands—
you called your plea­sure out to the open sea
for the wind and tide to carry who-knows-where,
and I heard again my teacher
telling the men in my first-year poetry work­shop
that none of us would ever
“write a suc­cess­ful cunt poem,
because when it comes to cunts,
men only under­stand clichés.”

I thought how you have only ever called it
your vagina, then later, while you slept,
tried to list the rhyming words I’d need
to write a son­net, but China, Car­olina, trichina—
a par­a­site you don’t want to catch — and angina
were the best I could do. I listed off-rhymes,
Mon­tana, banana, and then,
in the New Yawk accent you love to mimic,
I heard linah, finah, minah, and recli­nah,
that last one bring­ing me
the woman from the con­fer­ence
who wor­ried that two kids had made her
“roomier down there”
than any man other than the hus­band
she’d been need­ing to leave for years
would want, and so she hadn’t left him.

What I’m Reading About Iran

April 18th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Some of these arti­cles are per­haps a lit­tle dated, but they are inter­est­ing nonetheless:

  • A Nowruz Ded­i­cated to the Iraqi Peo­ple, 10 Years Later: “The dif­fer­ence between an Iraqi and an Iran­ian held lit­tle weight in any of this, and my self-professed Chris­t­ian faith was mean­ing­less in the face of my appar­ent sym­pa­thies for the enemy cause.  Per­haps this is the strangest part of dis­cussing my own expe­ri­ences of Islam­o­pho­bic bul­ly­ing grow­ing up– as a child who believed pas­sion­ately that he was a Chris­t­ian, it was hard to under­stand how quickly I was racial­ized into a Mus­lim other in the eyes of my classmates.”
  • Pol­ish Shi’ite Show­biz: Slavs and Tatars on Sol­i­darność & the ’79 Rev­o­lu­tion: “In a his­to­ri­o­graphic ver­sion of Whac-a-Mole, our com­par­a­tive look at the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and Sol­i­darność revealed sev­eral unex­pected episodes of com­mon her­itage and cul­tural affini­ties. These include the exo­dus of 200,000 Pol­ish refugees from Siberia and Kaza­khstan to Iran dur­ing World War II as told in Khos­row Sinai’s touch­ing doc­u­men­tary The Lost Requiem or the curi­ous case of 16-17th cen­tury Sar­ma­tism, when the Pol­ish nobil­ity believed itself to be descen­dants of a long-lost Iranic tribe from the Black Sea.”
  • Ahmadine­jad Crit­i­cized for Wel­com­ing Pre-Islamic New Year: “The Iran­ian pres­i­dent has once again upset reli­gious lead­ers in Iran. Ear­lier in the week Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad and his con­tro­ver­sial aid Esfan­diar Rahim Mashaei par­tic­i­pated in a cer­e­mony of wel­com­ing Norouz, the Per­sian New year, which falls on March 20.…Ayatollah Lot­fol­lah Safi asked “how can wel­com­ing Norouz be Islamic? Isn’t music and danc­ing […] that occurred at this cer­e­mony against sacred Islamic laws?” He con­tin­ued, “they are mock­ing the com­mand­ments of Islam and show­ing irreverence.”
  • Inter­net Cen­sor­ship in Iran: An info­graphic show­ing just how com­plex the struc­ture of inter­net cen­sor­ship is in Iran, from the Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania.
  • Obama Misses Tar­get with Nowruz Mes­sage: “Obama’s mes­sage indi­cated that he remains uncer­tain about his audi­ence. If the tar­get is the Iran­ian peo­ple, he demon­strates a lack of aware­ness of how sanc­tions are being felt and inter­preted. If it is the Iran­ian lead­er­ship, then attribut­ing the cur­rent sanc­tions to their “unwill­ing­ness” to alle­vi­ate West­ern con­cerns, the most recent mes­sage is one step for­ward and two steps back.”
  • Rachel Mad­dow gets Iran wrong: I would expect this kind of cul­tural arro­gance from the right; from some­one on the left, frankly, it’s shameful.
  • We’ll Make You Regret Every­thing (PDF): “This report sum­marises a study con­ducted by Free­dom from Tor­ture of 50 Iran­ian tor­ture cases doc­u­mented by clin­i­cians in our Medico Legal Report Ser­vice. The cases all involve tor­ture per­pe­trated in the lead up to and in the weeks, months and years fol­low­ing Iran’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tions held on 12 June 2009. Together they pro­vide an alarm­ing insight into the bru­tal meth­ods used by the Iran­ian author­i­ties to ter­rorise those indi­vid­u­als – and their fam­ily mem­bers – engaged in grass­roots organ­is­ing prior to the elec­tions and in the protests relat­ing to the dis­puted out­come and the human rights abuses that followed.”
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