\ Iman’s constant cravings… » Poetry

Worldwide reading in memory of Darwish

Under: Around The World, Art & Culture, Memories, Palestine, Poetry, What I Love @ 1:53 pm on Friday, 09.19.08

Worldwide reading in memory of Mahmoud Darwish on 5 October 2008


The Berlin International Literature Festival is appealing for a worldwide reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry on 5 October 2008. This appeal is directed at cultural institutions, radio stations, schools, universities, theatres and all other Darwish enthusiasts all over.

Readings on 5 October will be held in:
Australia | Austria | Bangladesh | Canada | Egypt | France | Germany | India | Italy | Kenya | Macedonia | Morocco | Norway | Palestine | Russia | South Africa | Spain | Sudan | Switzerland | USA | Zimbabwe [More]

Where is Jordan? Lebanon? Syria?

You can have a reading of your own, too.

One, Fifteen

Under: Art & Culture, Poetry, Uncategorized, What I Love @ 11:37 am on Monday, 09.8.08

I was pleasantly surprised to see this Picasso masterpiece sitting on a shelf in my friend’s living room…picked it up, dusted it off a bit (the nerve of him neglecting such masterpiece), placed it on his counter top, and admired it as some parts of Wallace Stevens’ The Man With The Blue Guitar came to mind … then took a picture of it with my phone … then I overdosed on 1.5 pounds of fried shrimp…

One
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

Fifteen
Is this picture of Picasso’s, this “hoard
Of destructions,” a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?
Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,
Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed.
Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold?
Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood
And whichever it may be, is it mine?
-From Wallace Stevens The Man With the Blue Guitar