Samiya Bashir's Blog, page 6
January 11, 2012
I found an interesting poem today.
So I've been thinking a lot about electronic access to literature since I've been reading Murakami on my Kindle. I read a great deal on my phone. My sister, Asli, has (completely accidentally) helped me to push past my audio-book blocks and I've been enjoying listening to audiobooks and podcasts more than ever--both through my phone, through the wireless connections all over my house, etc.
It was weird to have reached a point in my life where I was completely techy, yet absolutely in resistance to it simultaneously. I'm still there, but I've been learning to find the joy in the connections again, rather than the shackles. Getting away from Facebook for the past few weeks again (indefinitely--the freedom is delicious) has probably helped that quite a bit.
So one thing I've been enjoying is finding interesting poetry and artwork online--not just by folks who I love, but by folks whose work I don't know much or anything about. Discovering a new literary friend. I haven't been following The Storialist, but I do believe I'll start. This is an interesting poem, based on artwork. The couplets are quite effectively and beautifully employed here. The moments they capture, the litany of them, the rhythm. Nice. Enjoy!
The Storialist: Slow Yes(inspired by--Slow Yes, by Matt Bollinger)
Let the objects and locations
around you grow stranger.
Let the road smack your foot
in the jaw when the cobblestone
is higher than you expected.
May the branches corkscrew
and twist as they reach away
from the trees that own them.
May you, a pedestrian, gesture
to cars to allow them to turn.
Doesn't the insurance company
look bewitching in her bricks.
Doesn't the nude light bulb
in the third floor of the vacant
building gleam with good health.
Keep trying tomato juice and olives
and whiskey (not together) in case
your taste buds reupholster themselves.
Keep hold of the year you were
born so you always know your age.
by Hannah Stephenson http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
It was weird to have reached a point in my life where I was completely techy, yet absolutely in resistance to it simultaneously. I'm still there, but I've been learning to find the joy in the connections again, rather than the shackles. Getting away from Facebook for the past few weeks again (indefinitely--the freedom is delicious) has probably helped that quite a bit.
So one thing I've been enjoying is finding interesting poetry and artwork online--not just by folks who I love, but by folks whose work I don't know much or anything about. Discovering a new literary friend. I haven't been following The Storialist, but I do believe I'll start. This is an interesting poem, based on artwork. The couplets are quite effectively and beautifully employed here. The moments they capture, the litany of them, the rhythm. Nice. Enjoy!
The Storialist: Slow Yes(inspired by--Slow Yes, by Matt Bollinger)
Let the objects and locations
around you grow stranger.
Let the road smack your foot
in the jaw when the cobblestone
is higher than you expected.
May the branches corkscrew
and twist as they reach away
from the trees that own them.
May you, a pedestrian, gesture
to cars to allow them to turn.
Doesn't the insurance company
look bewitching in her bricks.
Doesn't the nude light bulb
in the third floor of the vacant
building gleam with good health.
Keep trying tomato juice and olives
and whiskey (not together) in case
your taste buds reupholster themselves.
Keep hold of the year you were
born so you always know your age.
by Hannah Stephenson http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
January 10, 2012
Haruki Murakami: Making My Life Dance Fire
So who knows. I am not a blogger as this blog makes manifest. I can never decide how I want to use this space. Perhaps I'll write a bit about the things I read. I may completely decide against that tomorrow.Today, I've got to say that Haruki Murakami (increasingly one of my favorite writers of all time--every book of his I read cements his place more firmly) and 1Q84 has (as a child I once knew used to say) been "making my head pop off." In the best possible way.
I don't even almost want to write about the book. (See? I told you I'm contrary.) And anyway, I'm still only halfway through the 946-page masterpiece. But I'll let him speak for himself about it. And tell you to run, don't walk, to pick it up. Don't let the largesse of the novel scare you off. I'm actually (gasp) reading it on a Kindle. Makes it actually portable.
Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 182, Haruki Murakami:
"In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers offered the real thing; that was their task. In War and Peace Tolstoy describes the battleground so closely that the readers believe it's the real thing. But I don't. I'm not pretending it's the real thing. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake. But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it's a commitment, it's a true relationship. That's what I want to write about."
**Fear not dear luddites, the Kindle was a gift. I'm not anti-e-reader. I'm likely going to be totally down with e-readers once they separate themselves from single-corporation means of content distribution. I will say that the more I travel, the more I feel like one of the few people on earth without an iPad. But I'm cool with it. The more technology we get (says me, who's a life-long tech girl) the less of it I want. Yep. That's happening. (takes out teeth to put in glass by the bed while looking for pencil and glasses both of which are stuck in my hair)http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
When good things happen to good poet-people
Congratulations to Marilyn Nelson!!
Announcing the 2012 Frost Medalist, Marilyn Nelson - Poetry Society of America: Announcing the 2012 Frost Medalist, Marilyn Nelson
01/06/12 by PSA
The Poetry Society of America is honored to announce that Marilyn Nelson is the 2012 recipient of the organization's highest award, the Frost Medal, presented annually for "distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry." Previous winners of this award include Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Moore, and Charles Simic, who was the 2011 recipient.
Read more here.http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
Announcing the 2012 Frost Medalist, Marilyn Nelson - Poetry Society of America: Announcing the 2012 Frost Medalist, Marilyn Nelson
01/06/12 by PSA
The Poetry Society of America is honored to announce that Marilyn Nelson is the 2012 recipient of the organization's highest award, the Frost Medal, presented annually for "distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry." Previous winners of this award include Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Moore, and Charles Simic, who was the 2011 recipient.
Read more here.http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
December 26, 2011
December 14, 2011
Thank You, Writers, for a Great 2011!
As the year winds down to the dawn of 2012, I want to use this space to say thank you to some wonderful writers who have made 2011 a much more beautiful and productive and loving world in which I may live.I'm going to start with a project I have absolutely loved!
An amazing conversation between a poet and a novelist/essayist is coming to a close and I've loved it.
Writing? Philosophy? Buddhism? Blackness? Where on earth can you find thoughtful commentary on all of these things and their intersections on a daily basis? Right here.
Missed it?
Catch up now with E. Ethelbert Miller's fascinating year-long interview with scholar, essayist, novelist, and MacArthur "genius" Charles Johnson! You'll be glad you did:
http://ethelbert-miller.blogspot.com/http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
December 1, 2011
New Poem in Cura: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action
There is some great work in the new issue of Cura!I'm thrilled to be a part of it!
Thin Filament Pyrometry /or/ "Dag! We ain't even in Detroit yet? Sheeeit. Stop here and lemme get me some chicken."-SAMIYA BASHIR-— then two women one old and one young pulled asideoff the highway and into the poorly lit driveway of Popeye's off I-94 in a truck stop. They wanted to buy some fried chicken.One had a five and the other three ones and together they purchased a three piece two biscuits a leg and a thigh and they let the poor girl with the pockmarked-up face and the torn lace from panties caught up in her apron just keep the change.so she did and she quietly squirreled away five
for herselfand then later that night after steaming in dark lint-lined slacks made of fake polyester and worn to a shine smelling french fried and coated in salt stains the dusty bill rose it emergedfrom that pockmarked girl's pocket and slid to the palm
of the man singing — Newport! Five dollar! Five dollar! who kept it aloft in his palm where the wind swept the frail greasy paper up into the air far above where the man waved his smokes far above far above where a mother leaned outof her window above to the baby who leaned sorta safely up next to the grates. It fell right on his hand which was sticky with Chef Boyardee or Spagetti'Os maybe who cares. I mean really who cares but the breeze and the bill and the man selling smokes because mama needs 'ports so he's one lucky baby who finally gets lifted down.
www.samiyabashir.com
Thin Filament Pyrometry /or/ "Dag! We ain't even in Detroit yet? Sheeeit. Stop here and lemme get me some chicken."-SAMIYA BASHIR-— then two women one old and one young pulled asideoff the highway and into the poorly lit driveway of Popeye's off I-94 in a truck stop. They wanted to buy some fried chicken.One had a five and the other three ones and together they purchased a three piece two biscuits a leg and a thigh and they let the poor girl with the pockmarked-up face and the torn lace from panties caught up in her apron just keep the change.so she did and she quietly squirreled away five
for herselfand then later that night after steaming in dark lint-lined slacks made of fake polyester and worn to a shine smelling french fried and coated in salt stains the dusty bill rose it emergedfrom that pockmarked girl's pocket and slid to the palm
of the man singing — Newport! Five dollar! Five dollar! who kept it aloft in his palm where the wind swept the frail greasy paper up into the air far above where the man waved his smokes far above far above where a mother leaned outof her window above to the baby who leaned sorta safely up next to the grates. It fell right on his hand which was sticky with Chef Boyardee or Spagetti'Os maybe who cares. I mean really who cares but the breeze and the bill and the man selling smokes because mama needs 'ports so he's one lucky baby who finally gets lifted down.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
November 25, 2011
October 31, 2011
Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them
Love Books? Love Ghost Stories? Love Michigan?Love Wayne State University Press?Love Crazy Amazing Literature Marketing?
If not, check this out. You will.
If so, well then Happy Halloween you freak!
You're welcome. ;-)
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
If not, check this out. You will.
If so, well then Happy Halloween you freak!
You're welcome. ;-)
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
October 30, 2011
Some Sunday morning Love for #Occupy Wall Street
Too often monumental moments in history are taught in our schools as so much rote. Too often we fail to connect the lessons learned from our history to the occasions happening right inside, or outside, of our own front doors.
This Sunday morning, employing no poetic license or finagling, I offer a bit of writing that sustains me in hope that it sustains all those who stand and sleep outside in the cold in my stead in Zuccotti Park.
Many of these recent days I have felt much like Whitman, too old and broken of body, too poor and tenuously employed as such that I dare not scoff such employment that so many of my peers so desperately seek. Much as Whitman, at the start of the Civil War, "vowed to live a 'purged' and 'cleansed' life," I have shut down many of my worst distractions and hunkered down to business.
It is my work that is all that I have, and all that I have to offer. So I busy myself to it, and play more rarely than I have these past few years. And hope that what bits of it I complete will be of service to some in any way that might meet that which so many have done which has been so dearly of service to me.
This Sunday morning, as we close another month and look forward to a new one that pushes us further on toward winter, I dig deeply back 148 years and offer a bit of prose, a slice of oratory so meaningful that it grounds me in my own dedication. I am no nationalist, being far more interested in what brings us, as humans, together than what serves to divide us. Yet I see in what is being created at Occupy Wall Street, the same push to bring us together in service of our individual and collective survival as I do in this speech which is well over a century old.
They are seeking, these few dissidents who speak for so many of us, "a new birth of freedom," where--even if we can not yet defeat the stranglehold of capital, we can at least demand that it behave more humanely. In the end, it can not. It is capital.
But we can. We can demand that we, humans, behave more humanely toward each other. And we can demand, at the very least, as has been demanded time and again, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
© Abraham Lincoln OnlineThe Gettysburg AddressGettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
www.samiyabashir.com
This Sunday morning, employing no poetic license or finagling, I offer a bit of writing that sustains me in hope that it sustains all those who stand and sleep outside in the cold in my stead in Zuccotti Park.
Many of these recent days I have felt much like Whitman, too old and broken of body, too poor and tenuously employed as such that I dare not scoff such employment that so many of my peers so desperately seek. Much as Whitman, at the start of the Civil War, "vowed to live a 'purged' and 'cleansed' life," I have shut down many of my worst distractions and hunkered down to business.
It is my work that is all that I have, and all that I have to offer. So I busy myself to it, and play more rarely than I have these past few years. And hope that what bits of it I complete will be of service to some in any way that might meet that which so many have done which has been so dearly of service to me.
This Sunday morning, as we close another month and look forward to a new one that pushes us further on toward winter, I dig deeply back 148 years and offer a bit of prose, a slice of oratory so meaningful that it grounds me in my own dedication. I am no nationalist, being far more interested in what brings us, as humans, together than what serves to divide us. Yet I see in what is being created at Occupy Wall Street, the same push to bring us together in service of our individual and collective survival as I do in this speech which is well over a century old.
They are seeking, these few dissidents who speak for so many of us, "a new birth of freedom," where--even if we can not yet defeat the stranglehold of capital, we can at least demand that it behave more humanely. In the end, it can not. It is capital.
But we can. We can demand that we, humans, behave more humanely toward each other. And we can demand, at the very least, as has been demanded time and again, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
© Abraham Lincoln OnlineThe Gettysburg AddressGettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.comwww.samiyabashir.com
