POETREE

Posted by jjhunter on behalf of Luisa A. Igloria

I can't remember when I first discovered the charms of the ghazal--- but I love this form, originally from Persia, and popularized almost single-handedly in North America by the late poet Agha Shahid Ali. There are many contemporary poets who now use and have adapted the form. My favorite description of it is one that Agha Shahid Ali wrote in one of the anthologies he edited--- where he likens each ghazal couplet to a gem or a pearl that shines in its own right, but gains more lustre as part of a larger setting (the poem/the entire ghazal).

I wrote this ghazal in November 2011 (it's now posted too at Via Negativa as part of my daily poem series), in part as a response to something that caught my eye on Buddhist writer-blogger Kaspalita Thompson's blog (Writing Our Way Home) --- and I wound up using it as the epigraph to my ghazal.

Once I decided on the couplet rhyme word ("singing") it was fairly easy to see what the poem's "scope" of themes would cover; what was surprising was the turns that it took, and how it managed to incorporate even a sense of commentary (on labor and gender), along with some humor. I very much enjoyed writing this poem.

Whenever I write in form, I also try to make my own sense of awareness of writing within the formal constraints, something that doesn't work too much against the sound of the voice I wanted to hear in the poem. I find that, writing in form, it's almost like I have to work to listen a little harder to myself--- but that's a good thing!


Ghazal of the Transcendental
by Luisa A. Igloria

Why can’t the Buddha vacuum underneath the sofa?
Because he has no attachments. ~ Kaspalita Thompson


One of the neighbors has a new statue of the Buddha, plunked down in her garden.
Perhaps she got it at a Black Friday sale, camped out all night, came home singing.

The Buddha teaches that we want to work free of delusion and suffering
in order to ascend, like the wren in the lilac, full-throated, singing.

I don’t know too many intimate details about his life but I do know
the Buddha was not a woman doing chores all day, much less singing.

Suffering is a pain in the ass, in the neck, in the heart mostly; since I
suffer knowing my children’s hurts, will I never know that lithe, joyous singing?

So the sacred verses speak of attachment and illusion. I know, but with all due
respect, it’s hard to feel detached when you nick yourself shaving (not singing).

Perhaps in the wilderness, in solitude, there might not be the struggle that comes of
engagement: but even then, there is the noise the mind makes in its own singing.

The Buddha can’t vacuum underneath my sofa. Or under the beds. Or do the dishes.
I know, I know. If I were to detach from these tasks, they’d be easy as singing.

And one must sing rather than drone, don’t you think? Even in the bramble, that’s
what the birds are saying: the richer the song, the more complex the singing.

—Luisa A. Igloria
11 26 2011

Posted by jjhunter on behalf of Luisa Igloria.

In a few of my beginning poetry workshops, I have students write a single line--- something that conveys with sharpness and precision either an image, an observation, a feeling, or a thought--- many times over. It's harder to do than it sounds. But it is so important, as the line is one of the most basic of the poem's syntactical structures.

How many ways can a line be written? Try five. Or twenty for starters. But the beauty of this exercise is when one begins to realize that a line can take on different forms and ways of saying. It can be declarative, it can be demonstrative; it can meander, or be curt. It can gather and accumulate as it goes.

It can shed weight, aspire toward lightness, or even mystery. One of the ways in which it can do the latter, as the masterful poet Pablo Neruda has shown us, is in the form of a question.

I like the condition of mystery that is at the heart of poetry. That is, I don't necessarily believe that a poem has to work out all the conclusions it aspires to arrive at; or even leave the reader with the sense of having said something final. In fact, I tend to dislike or even mistrust poems which end with too much of the sense of an ending--- much in the same way I liked everything about fables except for the "moral" too explicitly tacked on to the end of the tale. I like poems that leave a little opening to somewhere--- a door or a window that can be jiggled open into further possibility.

This poem, which I wrote in April 2011 as part of the (now) more than 365 days of writing (at least) a poem a day and posting these at Dave Bonta's Via Negativa site, hopefully captures some of what I'm talking about here.


Twenty Questions

Has the darkness lifted?
Is the round bud of the maple not filled with longing?

How close can a room hold two, not speaking or touching?
Does every thought glint, is every fire stolen?

Is everything in the world immersed in the petroleum of desire?
Have the clocks been wound, has the coffeemaker been unplugged?

Has the crying from behind the keyhole subsided?
Do you see where the fabric holds the shape of shoulders?

Do you feel how the music rinses us clear?
Has the rain fed you with riddles?

Have I not been permeable to everything that has come?
Would you tell me where to lay this burden down?

Do you love the sweetness that precedes decay?
Do you love the light behind every green blade?

Do you love me homely?
Do you take me plain?

Have I not met you at every detour?
Can you tell me what it is that brings you back?

Each time, have we bent our heads to drink the water?
Would you lie here with me beneath this ceiling of stars?

—Luisa A. Igloria
04 09 2011