FDR Monument designed by Lawrence Halprin

The passing of Lawrence Halprin covered half the front page of the SF Chronicle today. There were many color photos of his architectural creations. My heart goes out to Anna, Daria, and Rana in their loss. Years ago at my sister Wendy’s house I had a conversation with Larry about the creative process. I didn’t know him well, but since his daughter, Rana, was in my art class I taught at Urban School, I had taken the class on a tour of his architectural offices in San Francisco. This was the late 1960’s and his firm had created Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, and was working on Ghiradelli Square and Sea Ranch and many

other noteworthy sites.

Maybe it was the intensity in his voice, or his charisma – or both – but the words he spoke are still with me. “If you want to create using objects, space, and the environment, which is what architects do – be a sculptor. To get anything built, you need to be a politician.” He had just gotten the FDR monument approved, after years of working on it. “How was that?” I wanted to know. He said he had gone to Washington and sat on the grass at the national mall and contemplated what a memorial to FDR might be. He let me know that quiet time was a vital part of the process. A few years later, I was in D.C. with my eleven year old son, Solomon, taking him to visit Uncle Willy, my senator uncle. Larry’s words were still with me, but there was no FDR monument, and as we walked over to the Air and Space Museum, I remembered that conversation. I wouldn’t have seen the construction, on the narrow strip between the Tidal Basin and the Potomac River, flanked by cherry trees, since we stayed on the rectangular green between the Washington Monument and the Capital.

The time line of this project is impressive: approved in 1978, construction began in 1982, and (according to the SF Chronicle) it was completed in 1997. What a long, long time to hold a concentration! I remember watching a news special that year and seeing the FDR Monument unveiled, and an interview with Larry. I was stunned by the nearly two decades that had passed since he spoke to me about it. Then, years later (2006), in the city for my uncle’s memorial, I walked the tidal basin with my older son, Ammon, at the peak of the pink blossoms. I stood upon those terraces of stone, with trees, statues, falling water and pockets of quiet space. I would have liked to go back at night, but never did. His wife, Anna, said after his death, “He always wanted to do the most magnificent, uplifting thing he could. He strove for the ideal, and nothing less.” <>               Rest in peace, Larry.

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The second On-Line issue of The Sound Journal is up at thesoundjournal.org  [See link at the right] <> The theme is Balance, and there is a good variety of offerings including some words from Jane Hirshfield, a Middle Eastern Odyssey, a joyful music video, Fine Art, poetry, and Sufi commentary on Balance. Kyra Epstein and I worked hard on this issue, with a nod to the scales of Libra – now departed – as we gallop toward Halloween. Check it out! <> <>

The Sound Journal invited Scott Cilmi to share two beautiful paintings with our world community. Scott is a Bay Area painter who is featured by the prestigious Cohen Rese Gallery on Sutter Street in San Francisco.

Tuesday evening, October 20th, I begin my poetry class at CIIS in San Francisco entitled Eating Poetry. There may be room for a couple more people, if you are interested. As is my habit, I have been reading and digging through my books and papers and stuffing myself with words.

X-tatic eggplant

Given the culinary title, I find myself in a kind of Julia Childs Poetry Kitchen. This situation may  be dicey, invoking a burned sonnet full of iams, or a crushed carton of egg-like similes. With luck, I can pull off a delicious prose poem souffle. Julia was known to say: “I just hate health food.” I like this one: “It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.” You could say that. About poetry.

Eating Poetry Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees…

I’m excited about They Feed They Lion by Phil Levine, not just because of the “feed” word, but because this poem effects me deeply and I don’t know why; it is disturbing and beautiful. “Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter…” Bearing butter? As in ball-bearing grease? Yuck. “…They feed they Lion and he comes.” That ’s the last line. You need to look it up and see for your self.

Here is a wonderful poem by a poet named Joseph Hutchison:  Artichoke ~  O heart weighed down by so many wings. [That's the poem!@! Yes.]

Gustave Flaubert writes: Language is a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes to make the bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity.

Books I’ve been reading: “Ordinary Genius,” by Kim Addonizio and “The Poetry Home Repair Manual,” by Ted Kooser. Wonderful reading.

The food theme is making me feel bloated. The Tums and Po Chai are in the medicine cabinet.

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I came up with a title for an essay using “word dancing” and a line from Stanley Kunitz that goes, in the Dangerous Traffic Between Self and the Universe. I surprised myself right there. I looked to see what Marvin Bell had to say about “word dancing.” It goes like this: “When poems are written well enough, when they are interesting enough, they’re like a dance…” I’m thinking I want to make the dangerous dance beautiful, so I add SEQUINS, with help from Dorianne Laux. “I write to be one sequin among the shimmering others, hanging by a thread from the evening gown of the world.” Lets have more words with sequins. Picture this from Mark Doty: “ I do my tap routine surrounded by five little girls in sequined outfits like bathing suits dipped in glitter.” Go Mark! From “Firebird: A Memoir.” Donald Justice goes beyond bathing suits and brings in a transvestite. “Some nights out on the dock/…There comes the sound/ of bare feet dancing/which is Mr. Kehoe,/lindying solo,/whirling, dipping/ in his long skirt that swells and billows,/ turquoise and pink,/ Mr. Kehoe in sequins…” from “A Chapter in the Life of Mr. Kehoe, Fisherman.” Imagine! Dorianne, Mark Doty and Donald Justice – all in poetry’s shimmer.

Here is some wisdom on dancing in traffic:

King David, flushed with wine, is dancing before the ark;

the virgins are whispering to each other

and the elders are pursing their lips but the king knows the Lord delights

in the sight of a valorous man/ dancing in the pride of life... Irving Layton: “A Wild Peculiar Joy.“It isn’t easy thumbing through books by my favorite poets for a word, but here are two I found.

“…the moon pocked to distribute more or less/ indwelling alloys of its dim and shine/ by nip and tuck,/ by chance’s dance of laws.” Heather  McHugh: “In Praise of Pain.”

“…like a wave about to break across dance floors/ they still dream of, disguised as bay and meadows.” Wm. Matthews: “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.”

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/ 
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in 
/Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove 
/Dance me to the end of love 
/Dance me to the end of love…” Leonard Cohen: “Dance Me To The End of Love.” Now that we’ve made it through “the panic,” with Leonard’s soothing voice, we can stop dancing. In traffic. Dangerous traffic. Put the red shoes away.

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Finding English words to match Arabic words is a very difficult task, but when you add the factor of poetry, with it’s thought, feeling and nuance, the mental athleticism becomes near Olympian. Khaled Mattawa – my favorite  Arabic-to-English translator – has brought the poems of Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser into the first English collection of his work. Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems is a recent book from Banipal Press, 2009. I like this book, and say, “Good Work, Khaled!

 Alfred Corn comments: “…Nasser has developed an unusually wide expressive range… Khaled Mattawa’s finely calibrated translations open a door onto poetry that is a pleasure to read…”  Here is a taste:

A Rose of Black Lace

…Night

is a train pulled by tired bulls,

and the woman spreads her whiteness on the stranger.

Amjad Nasser, poet

White this black-hearted night,

white

treacherous

costly and tall

wearing a pair of black pumps,

white, and blond

guarded by sleepless grass….

White

with a birthmark,

Khaled Mattawa, poet and translator

with marble,

the white of sapphire,

the white of her turn…

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You finally belong to another generation when 
you read the works of younger poets and grieve about the poetry,/
voices of offspring singers remind you of adamant cicadas in sleepless nights,/ you can count with your fingers the number of people walking the streets/
that are dressed like you and have the same haircut/
looking long and hard before they cross the street. Amjad Nasser

from the website “Lettre Ulysses Award” http://www.lettre-ulysses-award.org/jury04/bio_nasser.html

Four women and a satellite dish are changing everything. A day or so ago, Kyra sent me a link to the documentary film Dishing Democracy. I spent the next couple hours watching four women change my mind about the Middle East. Here is a weekly TV show Kalam Nawaem  (Sweet Talk), with women commentators, modeled on “The View.” It is watched by 200 million people in The Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the USA. It shows and discusses controversial themes. It is a satellite TV MBC show taped in a studio in Beirut, Lebanon, owned by a Saudi businessman named Sheik Wali Ibrahim. This show encourages public discourse, is about challenge, question, and debate. Because the media is so strong today, it can’t be stopped. There is a Content Committee that looks over the material, and brings in experts, so it is difficult for the governments of Muslim countries to interfere. Here are the four women:Rania Barghout is a Lebanese woman from Lebanon, Germany, and London, who is married with two children and lives in Beiruit. Muna Abu Sulayman is the first Saudi woman on international satellite TV. She  is a PHD candidate in Arab/American Literature; Farah Besiso is a Palestinian former actress who was proposed to on the show and was filmed at the birth of her daughter, Habiba, because she feels she wants to stay connected with the people who watch the show. Fawzia Salama is a prominent Egyptian Journalist who is a generation older than the other three and supplies the calm, wise perspective.

Rania Bargout

While Kalam Nawaem pushes social boundaries carefully, with each hot topic that brings controversy, there are more viewers. One theme was how men are becoming more unsatisfied with their wives due to images of young beautiful women seen on TV; that divorce is on the rise. On another show, Fawzia asks about the public manifestation of the sexual phenomenon of homosexuality, not accepted by either society or religion. Have people become more daring? And what is the effect on our traditional society? This is a super taboo. The man who was supposed to come on TV was threatened so they interviewed him on the phone.  He says society is wrong to condemn him as a homosexual. Rania asks for a public response. An imam condemns homosexuality based on his interpretation of a passage in the Qu’ran. Meanwhile people at cafes all over Egypt, Libya and Syria are discussing this question. It is no longer whispered about behind closed doors.

Another time Farah reads from a letter saying they are all going straight to hell, except for Muna who wears a hijab. She speaks to the man who wrote the hate letter: “I want to say Islam is a religion of kindness and respect. Allah knows what is in our hearts.”

Then there is the documentary, Dishing Democracy. [link posted below.] Filmmaker, Bregtje Van der Haak, says she made this film because she hopes “the Western viewers will get to know a different side of the Arab world.” Bregtje continues, and says, “The difference between Arab and Western feminists is that Muslim women focus on the happiness of the community rather than the individual. What also inspired me is the fact that I noticed that in the Arab world, professionals, working women, working men, are driven not only by individual goals, individual happiness, and making money, but they are really working as a community to make something happen. And this is something that I miss sometimes in the West. It really touched me, and I want to learn from it as a media professional. And I want to understand what it means not to put the individual first. And I learned a lot from the team of Kalam Nawaem. And I hope I can use it in my practice, in my professional life, but also in my own personal life.”

I feel this is hopeful and exciting bridge-making! Please check it out.  <> Episodes and intro. to KalamNawaem http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/dishing-democracy/introduction/973/

 <>Interview with the filmmaker of Dishing Democracy: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/dishing-democracy/filmmaker-notes-bregtje-van-der-haak/1842/

It’s Ramadan, right in the middle just past the full moon. In honor of this sacred month, I’d like to offer brief poetry excerpts, one from Palestinian-American, Suheir Hammad b. 1973, and the other from Delhi, India: poet Mirza Ghalib d. 1869.

“mike check”         by Suheir Hammad, from her book Zaatar Diva.

mike check/

one two one two can you/

hear me mike check one two/

mike checked/

my bags at the air/

port in a random/

routine check…/~

I understand it was/

folks who looked smelled/

maybe prayed like me/~

can you hear me mike/

ruddy blond buzz/

cut with corn flower/

eyes and a cross/

round your neck/~

mike check……../

a-yo mike/

whose gonna/

check you?

 Ever since she came out with the defining poetic moment of 9/11, “First Words Since,” and combined spoken word and the best of word-smithing, ever since I saw and heard her read at The Dodge Poetry Fest nearly a decade ago, I have been a Suheir fan. Catch “mike check”  on You Tube –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q11Nnba3iQ

 ”post zionism”       by Suheir Hammad, from her book Zaatar Diva

 my mother has always been/

plaiting hair untangling grape/

leaves preparing plates/

of mahshi between prayers/

and sharpening machetes…/~

Then there is Mirza Ghalib. Robert Bly in his book, The Winged Energy of Delight, describes him as “ …roguish, a breaker of religious norms, a connoisseur of sorrow, and a genius.”

“Questions” translated by Bobert Bly

Since nothing actually exists except you,/

Then why do I keep hearing all this noise?/~

These magnificent women with their beauty astound me./

Their side glances, their eyebrows, how does all that work? What is it?…/~

Good rises from good actions, and that is good./

Beyond that, what else do saints and good people say?/…….

In honor of this sacred month, I’d like to discuss briefly a term I have been considering, mentioned in the Book of Language by Kabir Helminski.

The word Shari’ah is known to mean Sacred Law, and to preserve social order. For me, there is a kind of strictness  associated with the word.  Actually, it is based on the Qu’ran and the example of Muhammad – [who was known to break his own rules!] It comes from the verb shara’a,  literally “an open, clear way.” The term shir’ah (or shari’ah), Kabir writes, “signifies ‘the way to a watering place.’” May we all be refreshed! May this gentle, earthy verbal reality become actual!

Here is my poem about Prophet Muhammad’s wife, Hafsa, and the Quran, from my forthcoming book, Married to Muhammad, Untold History of the Prophet’s Wives.

“Hafsa’s Qu’ran”

Marwan, governor of Medina… sent a courier to Hafsa
asking for the folios but she refused him…   Anas ibn Malik

Tell The Governor I say no,
I don’t accept command or bribe
I do not vacillate
and you can leave, now go.

I am the Prophet’s librarian.  And this
is the book: al-Kitab. The only set
of Abu Bakr’s folios, first copy of God’s kiss.
Its ink still hums against my very skin.

The Mother Who Reads, the Prophet’s librarian,
how blessed I am by al-Kitab,
which, after the last companion’s gone
may wash believers in the Word-of-God

Arabic, a printed alembic architecture of light
recorded on palm stalk, on camel’s
shoulder-bone, or held in memory;
copied to parchment then, and
swaddled with a length of green cloth, first

Qu’ran passed from my father
down to Uthman, then to me. Between the leaves
is Revelation. How can someone like you understand,
Marwan? You set yourself to be the one

to grab and shred and burn
this first Qu’ran (may copies rise and multiply),
as soon as I am shrouded in clean cloth
and lowered into earth.

notes: al-kitab – means the (a) book, any book. <>Source: Alim on CD-ROM, narrator, al-Bukhari, Anas ibn Malik hadith #6:183-184.Alim on CD-ROM, narrator, al-Bukhari, Anas ibn Malik hadith #6:183-184.    <>          <>           <>           <>           

He’s gone now, connecting tsunamis of sound in heavenly gigs. DJ AM, (or Adam Goldstein) died last week in New York City. His was considered the “top” of his genre of Mash Up DJ music. I like the best of anything musical and he was it, so here is the tribute.

It was April, 2006 and my son Solomon was playing San Francisco’s Mezzanine Club south of Market Street – a very  high profile DJ event. He and Guitarist-Songwriter Chris Clouse were opening for DJ AM and Travis Barker, drummer for the group Blink 182. Each duo was a good match: a live musician and a DJ.

DJ AM and DJ Solomon

Solomon had been educating me in his niche music for sometime. Years before, he took me to see the film Scratch about the birth of the rhythmic and inventive art of manipulating vinyl in new ways.  Now Solomon, like DJ AM, was on the cutting edge of digital, and he had offered me mixes of AM, so I could see what he could do. I listened on my i-phone and liked what I heard. 

My friend Cynthia and I passed a line that snaked around the block for the sold out event. At the door we were given passes and entered to find Solomon already at work on the stage, alone. He was warming up the crowd. Chris would join him as soon as the room filled. AM and Travis were due at around 11. An hour later I stood on a balcony wondering if it could hold under the weight of the gathering crowd.

Somehow Ean found us and took us backstage for the last 20 minutes of and Chris and Solomon’s set. Then AM and Travis took the stage. The crowd was screaming and the volume was turned up way above ear safety. My heart began to experience an a-rhythmical take-over by bass tones. It occurred to me that I was in a territory where anyone up to twenty years younger would fear to tread. I had stepped over the line of audial sanity and entered something not unlike the film Close Encounters … standing beneath the gigantic Mothership as it lands… with DJ AM at the controls.

As a writer my job is to translate his music into words. But that is impossible.I offer my own sample 45 second flash of AM and Barker at Mezzanine when I can get this page to up-load it. He is all over You Tube. Here are some clips:

If you want to feel like you are with the band with reasonable volume, try this cut with Travis on drums– recommended by Solomon – (T-Mobile Sidekick Launch Party, Paramount Studios, May 2009): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-n1V-YSLo&feature=fvw

Stunningly unusual recent stuff – (BFD Festival, June 2009)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyykVQcN57c  you mostly can’t indentify the tunes. He’s moved into musical Abstract Expressionism of beats and short lines, not even dance music – though you can’t stay still. It’s like he’s distilled early mixes into this elixir which is internal and physical and new.

Mystery Mix: http://bestdjsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=124  Scroll down to DJ AM “Mystery Mix” part 1 and 2. Good download for the car.

DJ Qbert – tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVERHGpOd0M

I like a couple minutes of a piece recorded outside the loud performance world and nailing the likes of an orchestration of the cool 80’s? song Bette Davis Eyes set to what??  And Jump (for my love)!!

For me his signature opener is Dance to the Music, with “inda da, do do do, inda da do do” –and fast scratches over it. I feel really sad about this loss. DJ AM you won’t be needing those special ear-protectors every DJ mom wants her son to wear… Heavenly tunes to you!

Oona Beatrix Haggerty. Born August 24th 2009.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:/Its loveliness increases; it will never/ Pass into nothingness; but still will keep/ A bower quiet for us, and a sleep/ Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing… John Keats. It was difficult to find a poetic response to the exquisite moment of meeting my Granddaughter.  A couple of months ago I began to re-read my own mother’s leather copy of The Poems of John Keats. On his tombstone was written [with no name at his own request]: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.  The feeling of great joy and great sorrow can melt one completely, dissolving who we take ourselves to be into the same ocean.

Monday night, just after several of us stood in line for, then tasted the best ice cream in Berkeley, Oona Beatrix Haggerty was born in a hospital just a few blocks from the ice cream store. It seems just after I wrote the last posting about waiting for the baby, Laura went into labor – a long labor, but one mercifully, without complications.

Last night I held her and fell into the eternity the new ones carry to us for awhile. Then I felt the hoop of continual life and death, and my new place along it’s curve. I spoke on the phone to Great-Grandmother Gloria, age 87, and felt her up ahead of me. Shabda sang an evening Raga to Oona and she slept.  I kissed my  courageous daughter-in-law and  hugged my son close, savoring our new roles – Grandmother, father, child.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,/Wind of the Western Sea!…/Over the rolling waters go/…While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Everything is going to change next week or the week after.  I have no doubt that is true. For the Sufi there is a kind of elevator that you are in and every now and then it changes floors unexpectedly. Once I was at a sacred place on the white-washed hillside above  Fez, Morocco, bathing in the atmosphere of a saint from centuries ago, when all-at-once I felt as though a large energy filled me and wished me to reach out and touch and empower my fellow travelers. When I felt like myself again, I was different, but my knowing Sufi guide and companion whispered to me, don’t think about it, just let it go. Wise words, because the western mind is always trying to understand stuff, bring experience into something we can examine. There is the human mystery known as labor and birth.. Afterwards, it’s like trying to fit into your 10-year-old shoes when you are 20. Time has marked you. You are on another floor and the elevator door is open and you walk out with your mind blank, changed from the woman who stepped into that “lift,” as they call an elevator in England. A painting can do that. Vermeer’s The Geographer, shows a man, bent over a book and a chart holding a compass. He’s lost in some geographical place or calculation, perhaps inside the flat world with the vanishing edge where boats disappeared… and that mood matches a cool filtered light which enters the painting through the lattice of clear window glass, then falls on the floor and the globe behind him. Great art can put you there, if you are lucky. Step out of the museum washed in that light.

Vermeer, The Geographer

When my son, Ammon, and his beautiful wife Laura become parents for the first time  – very soon–I will enter new light. So they say. In the mean time I am suspended like the geographer; I’m not exactly in the room with the compass and globe, and not quite at some imagined location in his vision. My life will change as when the elevator door opens. I will be a grandmother. My arms will hold a baby and my house will become a grandparent’s house. This is all a normal thing, they tell me; gates across the stairs, child-proof locks, weight training for lifting.  I’m impatient. What will the eyesof my granddaughter see when she looks at me? What will I see in her face? Like all great mysteries, this unseen land will be charted and I will set foot there. There will be a name. And celebration. Oh, yes!