WhirledView

A Gift for Pakistan and the Women of Pakistan

Finishing Line Press has just published my collection of poems Indus Suite, which is now available at www.finishinglinepress.com and  www.amazon.com.  Regrettably (except for an extract serving as a blurb on the back cover) there was no room for the introduction that Pakistani poet  Fahmida Riaz so kindly and generously wrote when this collection was first coming together.  Here is that "Forward," word for word.  PLS

 The Indus Suite poems were written in Pakistan.  They are interwoven in the years of Patricia Sharpe=s sojourn in Karachi and my friendship with this amazing woman, who was then an official at the American Consulate in Karachi. [We'd first met twenty years before, when I was a Fulbright Professor teaching American Literature at Punjab University in Lahore. PLS] 

How did I become her friend, when I have never had even a nodding acquaintance with anyone belonging to the diplomatic community?  Neither before nor after her.  (This unconscious striving to keep a respectful distance must be mutual!)  And yet I went to her so often, sought her company so frequently while she was here that I was sometimes the first reader or listener of these poems.

I read them or listened to them in silence and wonderment.  There is something inexplicable about them.  Something that defies all notions of keeping one=s distance, remaining aloof, or minding one=s own business. 

I have marveled at them because these poems could have been writtten by a Pakistani.  A sane Pakistani who loved this land and grieved for it.  They could be written by me.

Did I write them, too?  I can see lines from my own poems echoing in hers.  Of course, Patricia never read them.  They are all in Urdu, which she could not read.  Nor did I even read them out to her.  Translating them into English would have been a bother.

But when I read in ACover Up@

You who dare

to hide my handiwork

in windowless rooms,

in coffin-like cells,

and call yourselves

protectors--O

you brain dead

jailors of body and soul,

who

gave

you

this brief

to suffocate daughters and wives

                  for the crime of being female......

I marvel at her passionate involvement and think of my own poem AChadar aur Chardivari@ (AChadar and Four Walls@)

Sire, what shall I do with this black chadar.

Why do you bestow it upon me,

                            your Grace?

Mexican Maid

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

You didn’t make her beautiful, God,
you didn’t get her educated,
or shower riches,
but female is female
in the dark.
You designed her
for making bébés.
You gave her the urge
for sex
and motherhood,
precious motherhood, you said,
the goal of a woman’s life,
the reward for piety.
Be patient!  Be good!

And you made her counterpart,
the guy from nowhere
going nowhere,
angry,
lusty,
machissimo,
doesn’t care if no! means yes! yes!
or no! no! no!  he needs it, he wants it,
and look how she’s dressed, how she walks,
where she is, she’s asking for it,
and he’s no sissy
in rubbers,
besides the priest says
every fuck should be open to love.
Meaning bébé -making,
which happens.
The bébé.
Not the love.

She looks at her fatherless daughter,
her fatherless son,
and gives the one in the making
back to God.
It’s a sin, she tells me.
A sin. 

THE MOTHS OF WINTER '08-'09

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I could
and should
have predicted this.
Denial
was easier.
Then winter came.
I reached
into a stack of sweaters
for a favorite, a mossy green cashmere,
unfolded it, laid it out, made to put it on and saw
the worm,
munching away,
as if it hadn’t already consumed
yarn enough
to give it cramps
and pause.
I saw
so many holes
the most dedicated expert weaver
couldn’t make this very pricey sweater
I liked so much
whole again.

The stack
also contained
a plum merino,
a dove gray alpaca,
an itchily ordinary pink wool turtleneck,
the first two equally gnawed at,
the latter hardly touched.
Moth larvae have good taste.
How comforting!

Disaster unblocks memory.
There had indeed been
a nondescript tan moth
fluttering boldly around one day,
its wings going so fast it had the look
of a bit of fuzz.
I tried to catch it.  It got away. 
I shrugged. 
Maybe it wasn’t a moth.
Most probably it was nothing at all
to worry about. 

Precedent established, I shrugged off
the next one, too, or almost,
in another room, where—I can’t believe
I didn’t focus on this—I’d stashed some modest
Orientals, rolled up, out of the way,
in a dark closet corner,
toward which,
come to think of it,
that second moth was headed
when I made one careless futile attempt
to smash it
between my palms.  

The rugs didn’t have holes
so much as squiggly
little channels
in the nap. 
How nice!  Sculpted carpets. 
And very chic, in a way.
Orientals need
a touch of  history,
which I’ll embroider a bit,
as carpet sellers usually do,
and be rid of them.

Meanwhile, the house stinks
of the mothballs I deluded myself into not
needing, a double dose, to be extra
sure, as if I could ever
make up
for the loss.

Life in the Age of Bush

by Cheryl Rofer

Newsweek started it, according to Kevin Drum. And Jamie has added his tuppence. The San Diego Union-Tribune has contributed its view (via Bouphonia, which is more worth reading).

As Kevin puts it, “Newsweek asked its cultural critics to pick the ‘one work in their field that they believe exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush.’" I’m going to do something that I tend to criticize in others, like the Union-Tribune: way overinterpret some literature that probably doesn’t deserve it. But what the heck.

I’ll put forward a genre that I believe exemplifies some aspects of life in the age of Bush: action novels about the Templars and other religion-related mysteries that originated in the high middle ages. Since that’s one of my favorite periods of history, I’ve particularly noticed this trend. I haven’t read all of them by a long shot, but I was in the middle of one of them when the challenge surfaced, The Templar Legacy, by Steve Berry.

Zen and a Couple of Books

by Cheryl Rofer

I’ve been a great fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance since the very beginning. So when I saw an advertisement for Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Mark Richardson, I rushed out to my local independent bookseller to buy it. They were out; I guess there are a lot more like me in Santa Fe. But they soon got a new batch, and I gobbled it up in two days.

It’s almost always a mistake to write sequels, so I didn’t expect much, and I wasn’t disappointed. Richardson has achieved a sentimentalism that appealed even to me with his mimicry of Pirsig’s tone and style, but as it went on with nothing like the original content, the mimicry cloyed. Pirsig’s odd passive constructions, which reflect the confusion as to the identity of the narrator, mean nothing when used by a motorcycle guy who is running from something we never learn, whose trials and enlightenment, if that is what he achieved, pale next to Pirsig’s heroic journey.

Not Fare Well...

by Cheryl Rofer

We actually have a few clouds in the sky today, and I'm wishing that my blogfriends would send some of their excess rain rather than another of these silly memes. Both Shane and Dave tossed this one my way. I'm wondering how many times it's been around the world electronically. It resembles some I've seen before, with mutations. If we knew the rate of mutation, we might be able to calculate how many times it's been around the world.

The Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you'd like.

1. Done
2/1. I have an aunt named Albert. (Extra credit to anyone who can tell me where this comes from.)
2/2. I lost my little brother on the New York Subway on the way to the Museum of Natural History.
2/3. I can't think of four more things.
3/4. I don't do this. You guys should know that by now!
5.

The post that I didn't get to writing in place of this one involves India, so here is Krishna instructing Arjuna at the battle of Kurukshetra. I'm not much of a student of the Bhagavad Gita, so I may be getting some things wrong here.

This encounter, as I've understood it, has always bothered me and seems to have some resonances for today. Arjuna looks at the field of battle, sees his relatives on the side he will fight, and says no, I just can't do it, I don't see any way that any good will come of this. The god Krishna sees Arjuna's hesitation and instructs him that the war is his destiny, and therefore, no matter what Arjuna's mortal mind tells him, it is right for Arjuna to use his bowman's skill to kill his relatives. Arjuna goes along with this, and the end is far from a marvelous triumph.

T. S. Eliot used this moment in The Dry Salvages, one of his Four Quartets.

So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

I've found that admonition sometimes to be comforting on a personal level, but as a collective justification for war, it's been too much used.

Image from here.

Weekend Project: Ta Lendab Mesipuu Poole

by CKR

I saw "The Singing Revolution" twice this past week, might see it again. It reminded me of something I've understood quite imperfectly from the last Laulupidu in 2004. This video will give you some of the feeling, I think, although I suspect you had to be there.

I was practically crying with the emotion of the crowd. The memory almost makes me cry now. And the applause insisted on a second singing, which evoked even more emotion.

"Ta lendab mesipuu poole" means "It flies toward the honey tree," obviously referring to a bee. My Estonian isn't good enough to get all the words as they're sung, so I have pondered that title. In the film, there is a reference to the Soviet Union reaching west toward Estonia like a bear toward a honey tree, and just a tiny bit from the song.

So I've found the words:

Ta lendab lillest lillesse,
ja lendab mesipuu poole;
ja tõuseb kõuepilv ülesse -
ta lendab mesipuu poole.

Ja langevad teele tuhanded;
veel koju jõuavad tuhanded
ja viivad vaeva ja hoole
ja lendavad mesipuu poole!

Nii hing, oh hing, sa raskel a'al -
kuis õhkad sa isamaa poole;
kas kodu sa, kas võõral maal -
kuis ihkad sa isamaa poole!

Ja puhugu vastu sull' surmatuul
ja lennaku vastu sull' surmakuul:
sa unustad surma ja hoole
ning tõttad isamaa poole!

I can't quite read it all, but I'm starting to see. Like the bee flies to the honey tree, so my spirit flies toward my homeland. That's not exact; I need to look up some of the words.

And maybe PHK or I will write a review of the film. Quick version: It's a very good film. See it if you can. You don't need to understand Estonian.

Update: The review is here.

Arthur C. Clarke, 1917 - 2008

by CKR

Arthur C. Clarke was an imposing figure of the twentieth century. His chosen field was science and its effects on us. He used the medium of science fiction to explore it.

He is being remembered in the media for the book behind the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," but he wrote many, many other science fiction short stories and novels.

I read somewhere that we mourn not so much for the people themselves who have died, but for the parts of ourselves that end with their death.

He was not my favorite science-fiction writer. I think that my love of science fiction came too early in my life to appreciate his writing, which required more maturity than I had in my teens. I did enjoy "The Nine Billion Names of God," which packed the punch I enjoyed at the time, in a simple, but mind-bending concept: that if all the names of God could be enumerated, the universe would have served its purpose and would end. A computer is programmed to enumerate those names. It succeeds, and the stars begin going out, one by one.

That's a very current story for today in multiple dimensions, many years on from the writing. I still get that same shiver down the back of my neck as I write this.

He imagined geosynchronous satellites long before they were a reality and looked forward to meeting aliens in space in more realistic ways (perhaps - we still don't know what will happen) than other writers. He combined the self-assurance of prediction with the profound humility of knowing that we really don't know what will happen, in the best way that science can.

He was a figure who I paid attention to, someone to be looked up to, someone whose name I noticed in the news, part of my intellectual world. I lost my interest in science fiction a long time ago, but Arthur Clarke continued. I tried to reread some of his books, recognizing that my immaturity might have contributed to my lukewarm response to them, but the science fiction part no longer resonated.

Here are obituaries and tributes from others.

New York Times

Washington Post

The Guardian

Kingdaddy

Armchair Generalist

Shane Deichman. Further links here.

Jaan Kross, 1920 - 2007

by CKR

One of the world's great writers died this week. Jaan Kross was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature a number of times. Much of his work has been translated into English.

The Tsar's Madman and Professor Martens' Departure, the two of his novels that I have read, deal with some of the same themes of The White Ship. Aino Kallas was writing before the Soviet occupation, and Kross after, so his novels contain an additional layer of history through which Estonia's nineteenth century is seen.

His writing is exquisite, the characters strongly drawn so that we feel their conflicting loyalties and necessities. Anselm Hollo is an outstanding translator. I can only claim to having read Kross's work in English, but I recommend it highly.

Some photos here.

Update from Eric Dickens: For a longer list of the novels that Jaan Kross wrote (of the 16, only three are available in English translation) please have a look at the Three Percent website, run from Rochester University, New York State, where I have recently posted a quick overview of all the main novels he wrote.

Other people have written, in English, in more detail about specific books, but I wanted to also mention the books that have never appeared in English, plus his 600-page autobiography, which appeared in 2003.

I myself have translated two books by Kross into English; Anselm Hollo, the Finnish-American poet, a further two. But that's all there is in English. There are six of Kross' works in French, some also in German, Swedish, Dutch, Russian and in Finnish, which language closely resembles Estonian.

Further update by CKR: The link that Eric gives us is an outstanding overview of Kross's novels. Suur tänu, Harra Dickens! I'll also add to the list a lovely little volume that I picked up somewhere, either Milwaukee or Tallinn: The Rock from the Sky, five of Kross's short stories (novellas?), probably translated to English through a Russian translation of the Estonian. It was published in 1983 by Raduga Publishers.

A review of one of Kross's books translated into English.

Tänan väga Giustinol. Sketch from Postimees.

The White Ship

by CKR

Some time ago, Phila was kind enough to send me a small volume he found while preparing to move. The volume was The White Ship: Estonian Tales by Aino Kallas, Translated from the Finnish by Alex Matson, With a Foreword by John Galsworthy.

The publication date is 1929 (“first publication;” this particular book appears to be a reprint, but not too far removed from that time), by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith.

The book was very difficult for me to read. It is a collection of stories from Estonia. They seem to have been collected from elderly people in Estonia about the old days, what we would call today oral history. Much about those old days was not good: the nobility in Estonia was German, having been imported in the thirteenth century by crusading orders, and Estonians were serfs. Estonia was part of the Russian empire, which imposed additional layers of oppression.

One story begins with a joyous wedding. The wedding is interrupted by a summons from the lord of the manor for the bride to come to the manor house. The newlyweds face each other wondering what that would do to them and their relationship. The story ends with the bride taking a knife from her husband, along with a promise that he will join her in Siberia.

Another story has overtones of current religious excesses. A young housewife falls under the spell of a religious sect, follows the group to the beach near Lasnamäe in Tallinn (now a Russian enclave), where they await an revelation that never comes, and she returns to her village, perhaps disenchanted, perhaps not.

The collection starts more positively: Odile, the wife of a councillor of Tallinn, finds it within herself to give a rose to a leper and sees him transformed. Perhaps this is Kallas’s way of suggesting that Estonia’s leprous past might be redeemed, a possibility that would have presented itself in 1929, as Estonia enjoyed its seventh year of independence from Russia.

Aino Kallas was not a familiar name to me when the book arrived in the mail. Estonia has many writers, and I knew nothing more of her than was in Galsworthy’s preface. She was Finnish and wrote in that language, but much of her material came from Estonia, her husband’s home. The book’s translator, Alex Matson, was also Finnish. A bit more about her can be found in this article from the Estonian Literary Magazine.

A recent article in the New Yorker made me think again about this book, which has been languishing on my worktable in the hope of a review. It seems that our DNA contains bits and pieces of viruses that infected our ancestors; killed some of them, even, although others survived by incorporating the virus. How this happens is poorly understood. Viruses that may be close to those ancient viruses have been reassembled from the DNA information of modern humans.