Guide

HetHeret: Thank you. I mean for them to leap, but sometimes they just, you know, sit there. So thank you.

It’s too gray for blood here
and you are far,
far too quiet.

Brilliantly expressed. Simple words have conveyed a profound thought. Keep it up.

To paraphrase Yeats, poetry exists between the writing and the reading of it. Although free verse lacks obvious structure, it`s not as simple as scribbling whatever you want and splitting it up any which way--there`s a music to it, a pacing dependent more on line breaks than on puctuation, and internal rhymes that show the poet`s dexterity and delight in the language. These are some of the things that I look for and enjoy in free verse.

I wonder who said women `get` poetry better than men. I think it`s more a matter of men not being supposed to get poetry out of some silly notion that it`s `girly`. Maybe men make more of a show of not understanding it--I seriously doubt a person`s sex alone decides whether or not they get a particular literary genre.

To go back to Yeats and, more importantly, this piece: Kyla, this one practically leapt off the page...I`ve still got goosebumps.

Yar, this one is brimming with feeling! In simple words, it`s a very well written piece.

PS: I loved your usage of the word `deathlessness` ; gives good meaning to the fact that death is an important part of life.

Fakhra

I liked these....

Ras

I wonder how less of an ego trip writing/reading/interpreting poetry is than other literary forms....in my experience really good writing takes us out of our own worlds and in to other worlds...what`s second best...or mediocre seems to reign among too many...

Rahul, thank you very much! And you know, I really like to get into the `brain` of a poem, but I really agree with you on the pleasure principle.

This will need to be read a few more times.

kyla, this was almost like a visual experience..perhaps more than it..
Thanks for writing such a wonderful piece.
Farzana-
``If writing poetry is a vain exercise, then for me reading it, really reading it, is even more of an ego trip! ``
It could not have been put better.
Only,I believe in the pleasure principle, more than understanding.Perhaps pleasure is another name for understanding, i dont know.

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Ursula Le Guin is alive and kicking actually.

Heh. Also, Robert Frost said that writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. Which is a view I respect. Although I also think that if I feel like luddi dalna on the tennis court and calling it art, what maee ka laal.... ?

acha khair. :D

ferzana thanks, will try your method and report back of success-failure. i am sure there are many poetry-challenged who may benefit.

the song example was just to explain the mechanics (melody-beat then lyric). i am not claiming that it perfectly capture womans existance or something (that was more to get you poetry-types attention).

i liked facets of it like her father who tells her that she is to young but she feels that she is just small-bodied (but big-busted). i also liked that the use of ghisa-pita imagery (korey kagaz pe likh diya nam tune..she seems disappointed by the exeperience) in folksy songs .. its kind of minimalistic.

anyways back to this poem..still over my head. i wil try next one

is it true that women `get` a poem more often than men?

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Yousufi said something funny about the free verse but he was talking specifically about ``aazaad nazam`` (free verse poetry written in Urdu). According to yousufi, one should scribble down something whatever strikes one`s fancy on a piece of paper. Then,he should tear the paper into two. In this way, the guy will instantly become the creator of two poems written in free verse.

Jang:
I read poetry like a simpleton with perhaps an eye for detail...and a feel for metaphors. How does a simpleton understand poetry? The same way you understand songs...the melody, the flow, the rhythm.

As for the words, they should speak to you, not necessarily what has been stated, but what you perceive. The layers of meaning you talk about may or may not unfold... it ought not to be forced. I personally do not like to go back to a poem to `get it` or to look for new meanings. I read it aloud, or softly hum it and see how it works for me.

e.g, in this work the lines, ``And I follow you more with questions than my body,
and you answer sideways, you won’t look back`` `became` this poem. And then other lines got somehow connected to it...the final statement therefore made the winding up so complete: ``Come back from this deathlessness.``

Mine is essentially an emotional response to any such writing and if I prise it open it is to help me deal with my understanding. If writing poetry is a vain exercise, then for me reading it, really reading it, is even more of an ego trip!

Am intrigued as to why you found that the song, ``Mere hathon mein nau anu chooriayan hain /Thoda thaheron, sajan majabooriyan hain`` was about a woman`s existence. I wonder how a man perceives it as such...

Just felt like sharing...

Wow. I really wasn`t expecting literary criticism at all. I was expecting the ron dhon and rhyming comments, but thank you very much Saminasha for that long and detailed critique. That is very interesting and helpful.

In the immortal words of young Pakistani journalists everywhere, I have one thing to say and it has two parts.

Part 1 is free verse: the thing about it is the freedom to invent your own structure. Of course you could just ramble on and break the lines wherever you like, call it poetry and the only ones to question you would be those willing to brave the PC waters of who-decides-what-poetry-is. Thanks, Urstruly, for braving. I think it`s perfectly valid as poetry, but hey, I wrote it. In any case, I could venture into blank verse or rhymey poetry, but I find that I end up with a thakki hui rail gaari sound, and that`s just not attractive.

The real thing though is that it`s not meant to have the kind of flow that comes from a longer line. The line breaks have a point and the point is to inject breath where you wouldn`t necessarily if you were reading it as a sentence straight up. And the point of that takes it to Part 2, reading aloud.

In the school of English language poetry in America, poems are for the page, unless you`re black, in which case you have other rules, or lesbian/feminist, in which case you get into spoken word. Spoken word in itself is relatively new in it`s visibility on the scene. In the Pakistani of school of Urdu language poetry, though, you have the mushyra and the spontaneous recitiation of couplet to make point or declare love. Spoken word is in your face, couplet recitation is lackadaisical and romantic. Moreover, I have yet to find an English language poetry reading where the wah-wah instinct doesn`t get completely stuck in the throat and reduced to a squeak. Which is all a lot of words to say that between rap and spoken word and writing and imperialism and South Asians running amok in gora lands, it`s a good place and time now to give English language poetry more than two dimensions. Which is why my lines are the way they are - they are meant to be read aloud.

Now was that worth reading? I don`t know. I should have gone to arbi class this morning like a good little girl. Thank you for your comments and readings!!

Farzana, thanks for your comment. I`m glad you liked it. I submitted this poem a good 2 months ago and I think I might have gone back to part 3 since then to deal with the language jerkiness. But you found it! I was trying to remember why I was so attached the fights and fucks line, and you found it! Thanks.

# 5 - temporal.

Thanks for commenting. The footnotes are definitely necessary. They`re not mere allusions, they are actual lifting of words that aren`t mine, so I must give credit or be struck down or sued or have karmic badness for the next seven years. :)

can someone try to explain what is poetry to us simpletons? how does one go about apreciating it? i understand songs. they have music and melody, which is apealing (even to a 4 month old baby) kind of naturally. over time the song grows on you and then you start listen to the words and understand its meaning. later over multiple listenings, you may `discover` other facets of the song.

e.g. take this song about an indian womans existence.

Mere hathon mein nau anu chooriayan hain
Thoda thaheron, sajan majabooriyan hain

this song has tons of melody, beat etc. over time i listened to the lyrics and their are layers of meaning.

how does one go about liking or apreciating poetry?

thank you

Abey Urstruly,

Why dont you go back to taking credit for inventing fire, yaar?

Saminashah

Thank you very much. It is this kind of discussion that I`d like to see on the poetry boards- not the usual ``great imagery``, ``nice words etc.`` type of comments.

temporal, the official critic:

you are next,

Usually poems arent read according to their structure but seamlessly. If the poet had chosen the longer line structure, her poem might look like this:


You’re a strange woman.
You ask me out into the night and wear your traveling cloak, your foul weather hat,
you pay for bus tickets to take us across this dark, dry land, you walk ahead of me.


-This is a more obvious flow. In fact, theelegiac lyricism of these verses is hidden by the structure the poet has chosen. Generally, good free verse works on some kind of stanzaic organization. Another example of the long line:

I’ve seen you before; singing out the blood in your veins, the wounds in your breasts,
bellowing in pain and anger at the passerby too stunned from being alive
to comprehend your dying over and over again.

Now you call me into this dark, dry land, you board a train that chuffs off some kind of stasis. And I follow you more with questions than my body, and you answer sideways, you won’t look back.


-What a gorgeous section: And I follow you more with questions than my body, and you answer sideways, you won’t look back. This is a fine example of explicating the inexplicable…more questions than my body…answering sideways…lovely, fresh language. Not sure if the repetition of ``dry, dark land`` is the best route to go.


I’ve been here before. I remember I slid from sore to sore, in chaos.
Now I’m on a locomotive tour of demon carcasses; the horizon separates black from black; the wan stars sicken - You take me across no land.


-What excels here is the repetitive couplets: I slid from sore to sore; locomotive tour (slant vowels?) the horizon separates black from black; this works because the couplets are paradoxical. Then there is the quiet, detached narrative-through the images, the author shows, doesn’t tell.

The tone changes too much here without any warning or transition. While I like that this conversation may happen in any relationship, placid or fraught with the kind of tension already indicated in the two stanzas, after the skill of the first two, the last seems a bit anti climatic. And this is no criticism of the author-how does one “finish” the intensity of the landscape she started? The injunction the narrator gives the “you” to come back is tender and played down-reminds me of Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come and William Matthew’s Misgivings. After the heightened language that precedes it- its like coming down from C.K. Williams-the master of the long, explosive line.

Come on back, love. This is an expensive habit, this traveling the spaces between fights and fucks between conversations between these are the times of my life. You roam bootless. At the still point of the turning of the world, there is no travelling cloak.

Come back from this deathlessness.

-Fights and fucks is too pat, too easy. But, whatever. I dont think it lives up to ``I slid from sore to sore``, etc.

And save you the work of using that brain? Not on your life...

Well, critique it..duh

Whats the problem Urstruly Sahib?

I seriously doubt the literary credentials of this poem as a valid form of poetry. But since I am just a mechanic type aadmi, I will keep my critique to this comment only.

Where is that professor of literary genre when you need her?

Kyla:

worth the wait?!

..bus, walk, train, ...all the (com)motion comes to this:

At the still point
of the turning of the world,
there is no traveling cloak.
Come back from this deathlessness.

...re: the footnotes: ..hmmmm...wonder if they were necessary;)

and yes, welcome back:)

lve,

t

Kyla:

worth the wait?!

..bus, walk, train, ...all the (com)motion comes to this:

At the still point
of the turning of the world,
there is no traveling cloak.
Come back from this deathlessness.

...re: the footnotes: ..hmmmm...wonder if they were necessary;)

and yes, welcome back:)

lve,

t

Kyla:

Seeing good poetry here after quite a while...the first part is no doubt the best, but I think the last segment -- despite the language being a bit jerky -- conveyed a `poetic justice`! I found the ``traveling the spaces between fights and fucks`` particularly interesting if one goes back to your lines in the first segment: ``And I follow you more with questions than my body, /and you answer sideways, you won’t look back.``

Enjoyed the journey with the stasis...

Actually correction: its the third stanza that does not resonate as well as the other two....i.e. fights and fucks..eh....

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Wowee.

The first part is as perfect as I could imagine it. PERFECT.

The second movement isnt quite living up to the language of the first.

But this is very, very good.

More, please!