I’m in the Moroccan desert city of Marrakech, as people from all over arrive. We await the large Sufi Conference sponsored and paid for (airfare, accommodations and meals) by the Royals of Morocco. Sufism in Maroc is a hedge against fundalmentalism, promoting tolerance, inclusiveness and goodwill. It is a mystical tradition, the fragrance from the flower of belief.

We are in a 5 star hotel, and I write from a lobby with fountains and inlaid marble floors. Internet access is patchy, and I sent a few letters from the far corner of the balcony on the 5th floor which overlooks Marrakech, standing in the hot wind in the cooler afternoon, now that the temperature is under 100 degrees. Of course there is airconditioning. I had lunch with my friend Hamza who lives here with his family. Nine years ago he rode on camels with me in the Sahara.

Why am I here? I’ve been invited to read my poetry – from my forthcoming book – at the conference. There are many men, but few women here. It is amazing that anyone could just up and come here with ten days notice. We were in England teaching when we received the formal invitation. So it was easier. Then we were asked on the phone to bring teachers from the Chisti Ruhaniat Sufi Tarika. Cinda Basira and Tansen from England will be joining us Thursday,and Rahima from Germany arrived with us from Berlin. We had breakfast with the Nigerian Tarika. Every few hours more people arrive. I have no idea what will happen. Our good friend Ahamed  - Jonthan Granoff –  just arrived.       Stay tuned. Hu!

Thursday morning, July 9th….

Last night a van drove us to a part of Marrakech I don’t remember at all. At 9 PM we were led through a small, very old keyhole arch down narrow lanes on a soft dirt path. Ancient doors with beautiful detailing appeared in the gray walls on the left and right. Cats. The beginnings of cool air. Then lanterns and a carpet, an open door. Voila! A palace? A restaurant? The ceiling was 4 stories high by American standards, exquisite carved wood. zelige (intricate tile design) walls and white, diaphamous, curtains. We sat at round tables and counted the plates to see how many courses we would eat. A Moroccan ensemble of 12 or so musicians began to play. Bubbley water or plain? Conversation. Prayers before dinner. The Niger / Mali Africans arrived with wonderful headdresses and sat at the next table. We copied them and ate with our hands. They seem like kings. There were maybe eighty of us by this time. More arriving all the time.

Then the olives and eggplant and delicious small dishes, the targe tagine with the meat and apricots, another tagine with chicken, vegetables and couscous. And finally…. fruit.

It was midnight. Ahamed and Pir Granoff wanted to see the square the “square” the Djemaa el Fanaa with the tall  Koutoubia Mosque. I can’t upload any photos, but it was like noon on Saturday in the US. People and bikes and motorbikes were everywhere. Berber boys line-dancing to hand drums. Henna artists, and much to Pir’s delight – piles of cooked snail shells with their occupants steaming in butter.

Today the conference attendees are treated toa visit to the Zawia of Tamslot outside Marrakech. Time for lunch with Khalifa from Nigeria and Shabda. I may not be writing such detailed information now that the conference gets underway. Hu, Hu.

The German Summerschool has wonderful translators. I was lucky to have Fatima Be from Zurich, who brought the stories and poems to life in a seamless way. This is the afternoon class I gave for a week, covering the lives and stories of the 7th century women in the household of Prophet Muhammad.

Safiyya’s Sturz

As-salaamu alaykum, rufen sie

und laufen neben dem Kamel her,

Staedter, seine Familie, ausgehungert nach Muhammads

Heimkehr aus der Schlacht! Als sein Kamel strauchelt,

gleitet die Frau aus dem Umhang des Propheten….

Safiyya’s Fall

They run alongside the camel, hungry

for Muhammad home from the rout;

townspeople, his family all shouting,

as-salaamu alaykum! When his animal stumbles,

the woman rolls out of the Prophet’s mantle….

 During the week of the Summerschool, Natalia sat with the 12 or so Russian speakers and translated all the English into Russian for the classes. She is married to Murshid Saadi and lives in Edinburgh. The number of languages was impressive, as were the variety of countries represented. Prem and Sally were the farthest… New Zealand. Tanzilla is a Bosnian Cultural Muslim.. Gulsina, from Perm, Russia, is a history professor at the university there, in the Urals.

With Summerschool over, we are in the beautiful East German countryside outside Berlin. Nesting storks in the village. We are staying with Rahmana-Rahima in an old parish house next to a cathedral that dates from the beginning of the eighteen hundreds.

It has an immense garden full of apple trees and  fruiting cherries that opens into the fields. 

Shabda and I are preparing to go to Berlin tomorrow and Marrakech, Morocco on Tuesday, where I’ll present poetry at a large Sufi Conference next weekend.

Germany is beautiful, sunsets are after 10:30 PM, and the language still mystifies me!

Proizka Muehle, Germany near Hamburg, deep in the countryside; the birdsongs are dazzling here. Strong and symphonic. The trees are more serious looking than those in the South of England, a darker green and muscular, in order to hold the multitudes of winged singers, the heavy sky.

More than one hundred people are gathered here at the Sufi Summerschool; from Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, Estonia, Latvia, UK, Poland, New Zealand, Russia, and California. In two hours I’ll teach with a translator, named Fatima, from Zurich. Ten poems have been translated into German for discussion in both languages. I don’t know German and have never been here before, but these poems from Married to Muhammad  have a life of their own– not often the line between two points.

Roethke writes: I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words… In poetry there are no casual readers.

Songbirds and poppies. Twilight until 11 PM.

Greetings from Germany.

The yellow lift goes up and down in a sleek glass sleeve in front of me. I’m in the Royal Festival Hall lobby with it’s cafeteria and smart modern look. American jazz greats in blow-ups on the wall cycle through a slide show. On the 5th floor is a massive poetry library, The Saison. The PR tells me: “The Saison Poetry Library houses the Arts Council poetry collection, the most comprehensive and accessible collection of modern poetry in Britain. The collection, dating from about 1914, consists of most poetry from the United Kingdom and Ireland, a large selection from English-speaking countries worldwide, poetry in translation, poetry by and for children, rap and concrete poetry.” OK I’m going up after I write this.

Today in New British Poetry from Graywolf, I read a wonderful poem by British Poet Gillian Allnut. Here is a brief taste:

Scherazade

He is languid as a fed lion.

She in her salt and sackcloth gown is gone

into a wilderness of wind at noon

where the wonderful covered well of tales

is a dry waterhole

or a bell

abandoned….

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My friends the Oliviers have a massive 40 year old lego collection. On Saturday, Aiden took me upstairs and showed me all of it. I mean he has a lego snake and alligator, a cat and pirates, stuff I’d never seen in my years as a lego mom, the days of flat-out-on-the-rug-building-and-building. I took these photos with my I-camera and started thinking about legos again. I found dozens of You Tube lego film clips, and trivia I never imagined. But the most startling lego info was The Lego Book with Merwin’s poetry. 

True. WS Merwin has a poem called “To the Book” contained in a pop-up book called The Lego Poem with inkjet lego designs by Kyung Min Lee. The work seeks to examine “how the interpretation of a language can change the cultural aspect of the poem.” I want to look inside, but I can’t. Here is the picture of the book, though.It is Cloth bound with cut-out windows on front cover. Signed by the artist. Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, 2007, Chicago Il. Then I searched the internet and found the poem:

to the book     by W.S. Merwin

 Go on then

in your own time

this is as far

as I will take you

I am leaving your words with you

as though they had been yours

all the time

   of course you are not finished                          

   how can you be finished

   when the morning begins again

   or the moon rises

   even the words are not finished

   though they may claim to be

never mind

I will not be

listening when they say

how you should be

different in some way

you will be able to tell them

that the fault was all mine

whoever I was

when I made you up

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Here is piece of poetry legos by Kim Hannula. It’s pretty fine.

The Red Wheelbarrow/ William Carlos Williams                  

So much depends

upon

a red wheel                                        

barrow …                                               

beside the white

chickens.

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NOT TO BE MISSED>     The You Tube short in lego-scopic humor “nice pants”  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlkd45W4TWU&feature=related

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FOODIE- Legos:

Hard to believe, but wait, there’s a review from a food critic whose name escaped on a lego truck:

“The shape of each waffle also doesn’t make it ideal for syrup. As we all know, normal waffles have deep grooves which can hold syrup, but the Lego Eggo Waffles have a shape that does the opposite. Sure you could flip the Lego Eggo Waffles over and shoot some syrup into those tight holes, but again, there aren’t enough holes to prevent the syrup from rolling off the waffle.”

I think this is about as far as I can take this…..  Jesus Lego man

if you have lots of white pieces laying around. Lego blessings to all.   

[Sad, painful news in the poetry world! I‘ve been upset, walking around in a gloom after reading about Ruth Padel withdrawing from the Oxford Poetry Chair, perhaps having to do with the road to hell being paved with good intentions. (More on this in the previous post.) I need to write about a British woman author whose words can cheer me up.]

A book to celebrate. It’s my very favorite biography: Mary: A Flesh and Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother. The year: 2004. The author – Lesley Hazelton – rocks!

I didn’t want to put the book down. There may be new books on Mary (referred to here as Maryam), but this is a fantastic read. From the introduction: “There is nothing meek and mild about Maryam. She is neither pale nor passive. Se emerges as far more than we have accepted her as being: a strong woman of ability and wisdom who actively chose her role in history, and lived it to the fullest.” Lesley writes non-fiction as if she were unfolding a page-turning novel on a water slide of words. She wrote as a journalist for a long time and lived in the Middle East. She snoops and story-tracks, burrows and digs into research. She’s a tall, slim, Brit with a voice like Vanessa Redgrave; a former small plane pilot and automotive expert who shared from her book : Everything Women Always Wanted to Know About Cars… on Good Morning America. She says: “Some years ago I spent a starlit night in the sand dunes of the northern Sinai munching on giant olives and listening to Beduin elders recite long narrative poems … This is why we still speak of great story tellers, not great story writers.” Good journalists always drink from the closest source; then one thing leads to another – “Mary…” has 208 meticulous footnotes!

 I meet her at Ghost Ranch near Taos, New Mexico, at A Room of Her Own writing retreat, where she read something from her then soon-to-be-released book, Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen. I hope there’s a movie coming from that book.

What I love about Mary is the flesh and blood part. She comes to life. “[She is] – not the gilded image in the convent school, but the wiry, dark-skinned, hard muscled Maryam, barely out of adolescence when she gave birth, her face lined by hard work and harder experience, etched deep by violence and struggle, survival and loss, determination and courage.”

 From a review  in Amazon: “Hazelton’s musings on the Resurrection and on the meaning of Mary’s virginity are dazzling to read and weighty to ponder.” Ilene Cooper

 “Each time a woman gives birth, each time a woman sits between another’s legs and cradles the emerging newborn’s head, each time a woman sings in joy or wails in mourning, seeks out knowledge or teaches it to others… the mantle of Maryam is handed on.”  (All italic quotes from Mary)

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Difficult times for Ruth Padel! The Guardian posted shocking news yesterday, May 24th, saying that Ruth Padel had withdrawn from her Poetry Chair at Oxford due to the continued controversy around Derek Walcott’s nomination. One version of the troubling report can be read here. I send Ruth my support and wishes for ease in finding her way on this rocky road …………………………. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/24/ruth-padel-derek-walcott-oxford-poetry  

(My earlier post – last week)  ~How sweet it is! Poet Laureate, and The Oxford Poetry Chair are both now occupied by women. The first position is for ten years, the second, five. The poets are Carol Ann Duffy and Ruth Padel; amazingly good writers. I’ve written here about Ruth Padel and reviewed her book, Darwin: A Life in Poems – [see entry for April 9, 2009]. YES for the Brits. Truthfully, I’m getting ready to spend a short time in London, so I’m reading New British Poetry from Graywolf Press, 2004. Here’s a few lines from Carol Ann Duffy from her playful nod to Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red-Cap:

…He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud

in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,

red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears        

he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!

In the interval I made quite sure he spotted me…

…you might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.

The wolf, I knew would lead me into the woods…

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Some words On Carol Ann Duffy from the Press:

“It only took 341 years but, finally, Britain has a female Poet Laureate. Carol Ann Duffy will hold the 10-year post, following in the formidable footsteps of the likes of William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Ted Hughes. Glasgow-born Duffy, 53, said she had thought “long and hard” before accepting the high-profile job, and gave the final say to her 13-year-old daughter [Ella]. Her response? “She said, ‘Yes mummy, there’s never been a woman.’” Glen Levy, Time Magazine, May 1, 2009.

“Duffy lives with Ella in south Manchester, in a house where the doors are painted with poems – William Carlos Williams on eating plums is on the kitchen door. From here, she can walk to the (remarkably rural) River Mersey, where she wrote most of Rapture sitting on a bench. She says her writing tends to be seasonal, with her ’sharpening my pencils in September when it starts to get a bit rainy and melancholy and moody. Then I write until about February, until it begins to fall away in the spring.’” The Guardian, May 26, 2007.

THIS IS THE POEM that I love. See for yourself. “acred in hours?”  Oh. Beautiful.

A Child’s Sleep

I stood at the edge of my child’s sleep

hearing her breathe;

although I could not enter there,      

I could not leave.

Her sleep was a small wood,

perfumed with flowers;

dark, peaceful, sacred,

acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives

in the heart of such woods;

without time, without history,

wordlessly good…..

                     …The greater dark

outside the room

gazed back, maternal, wise,

with its face of moon.

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What happens to the ones forgotten? The ones who shaped my heart from their rib cages, I want to taste the tears in their names…but I    have forgotten my father’s own grandparents middle names, forgotten the color thread God used to sew me together with… I want to teach my future children how to spell “family” with my middle name, Haiole-Melekalani…

Here is the link to Jamaica’s recitation of her interpretation and inspiration of Kumulipo, the Hawaiian chant
of creation, all its inclusion of first life and stars, and the endless
geneologies of self and peoples, self and lands, of earth and sea and sky; spoken  at the White House.   Wonderful.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY7fWlmE-0g&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fochairball.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F05%2Fjamaica-osorios-spoken-word-performance.html&feature=player_embedded

 This You Tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54xhGzwM50 of her from a slam, has Jamaica and another poet giving the Hawaiian and English nearly simultaneously, in a telling of traditional stories with a fresh new slant. Her face and her words call up  deep ancestry.

Standing on the stage at the White House, she spoke her poetry: There is a culture, a people somewhere beneath my skin that I’ve been searching for… After she was congratulated by President Obama, she said that it was humbling to have her words acknowledged by him. Congratulations, Jamaica! Aloha!

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Mothers Day: this is my favorite ancestor photo, my mother’s mother – Dellie – in a theater production at the turn of the century. I like to think some of her colorful qualities have coursed down in vivid matriarchal streams through my mother, my sister and me, and through all my god-daughters and my niece, Tiphani, and cousin Cici.  My adopted mothers of this and that;

<>Ella Fitzgerald is the mother of  how a woman’s voice can play with the air, bounce it, even.

<>Helen Hayes is mother of my first carnival midway prize, and mother of what a woman can do on the big, broad stage of life.

<>my great-aunt Marie was mother of the high life, champagne and room-service, elevators to her room.

My own mother (in her wedding dress) gave me her leather-bound Poems of John Keats, with pages cornered on some of the odes: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ are sweeter…”

I was my own earth-mother, taught myself to garden, pulled those first carrots, got a cat for the gophers. I became mother of the cat, named Alice. We lived in Nicassio. Band mother, pregnant with tunes and moves, and after some time – the guitar-players’s child!  Flower-child mother. Peace mother.

Oh Mother!

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This is the last issue of THE SOUND in the awkward morphing moment between the PDF and an elegant Web-journal at thesoundjournal.org Planned launch around July 20, 2009! Watch for more information.

Here is the May Issue: “HONORING THE MOTHER.”   You can download it here

The Round Top Poetry Festival, April 17-19 2009  in Texas – between Austin and Houston –began in a down pour, with emphasis on both words. Imagine a ring-your-socks-out rain that continued for over a day. I bought the last pair of galoshes in my size – white ones! Soggy poets and wet umbrellas. Lightning. Thunder. Then, as if it never rained, Sunday morning the sun lit everything and the gardens were beautiful. Naomi Shihab Nye calls Round Top “paradise for poets,” and since my idea of poet-paradise would include Naomi and W.S. Merwin, I agree. 

  One unforgettable moment was seeing Paula Merwin leaning across the dinner table, deep in conversation with Dorothy Stafford, widow of William Stafford; the other was the answer W.S. Merwin gave to my question: In the work of translation, is attunement with the poet a serious consideration? I was in the first row, and his word blast scoured my heart and mind. All I remember was the last part, “…for translation, the best way is to LOVE the poem.” Merwin was introduced as “the Complete Poet.”  When he read his poetry his gentle tone and cadence mesmerized the audience. He read long and deeply from his grey book, The Shadow of Sirius. A day or so later, that book won the 2009 Pulitzer prize for poetry, announced April 21. Sirius is not dazzling and clever, but rather casts a solitary even gleam – like gold – that enchants the listener. I feel it is largely important because of the great lifetime of experience and longevity he brings to each poem. In his youth Merwin was mentored by John Berryman and received vital guidance from Ezra Pound. Like Milosz, Merwin shows us the perspective of an octogenerian who is wise and thoughtful. From the poem in the Sirius collection,“Worn Words:” 

…it is the late poems

that are made of words

that have come the whole way

and they have been there.

From “By Dark:”

When it is time I follow the black dog

into the darkness that is the mind of day

I can see nothing there but the black dog

the dog I know is going ahead of me

 not looking back oh it is the black dog

I trust now in my turn after the years                        when I had all the trust of the black dog…

Kudos to the co-directors, Dorothy Barnett and Jack Brannon, who made it happen. Naomi made us all feel welcome and offered us her brave, engaging poems. Other highlights included Fady Joudah’s translations of Mamoud Darwish, and poetry by Jennifer Clement and Jo McDougall, all extraordinary word-masters. Jennifer lives in Mexico City and runs the glorious San Miguel Poetry Week writers’ retreat. Merwin once said these haunting words about Jennifer: “She writes in English but she dreams in Spanish.” From New and Selected Poems, my new favorite poetry is her Lady of the Broom, forty-eight poems about a woman who died of unrequited love at the end of the 17th century. Find it and read it.

from Jennifer Clement’s Lady of the Broom:

XIX

…Without a mother,

no girl walks safely,

no other will place their body

between her body

and the bear.

Here are some jewels from Jennifer’s workshop: “Study the etymology of a word. Sincere has to do with the Roman language of marble. Flaws in a slab were hidden with wax fill. Those without artifice were sincere... If you use dialog – go to the playwrights!” She appreciated Tennessee Williams especially. One technique he used was to “…have one character ask a question and the other ignore it. Then something wonderful happens.” Coleridge wrote that “poetry is best when it is not totally understood.” [Not advice for beginners!] ~   ~    ~    ~    ~   ~ 

The stunningly elegant hall at Round Top where the readings take place.

Jo McDougall offered a class and gave excellent pointers I will talk about in another post. I met a young poet named Jeff Stumpo whose performance poems were a knock-out. More on him as well.

 The word I came home with is fascicle – [rhymes with bicycle], a small bundle or cluster, as in the clusters of poems bound in blue ribbon and placed under her bed by Emily Dickenson.  <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>