At the end of our first session of our first day at Beyond Walls, a writers' conference at Kenyon College, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat gave our small group an assignment. She offered three writing prompts. We could pick one and write something we might want to post on our blogs. Unfortunately, I had just been stricken with a bad case of writer's block. Couldn't think of anything to say about any of the prompts.
A few weeks after returning home and getting over the writer's block, I remembered both the undone assignment and a poem I had worked on in April. The prompt that I thought of from the assignment was "Write 'ten things about me' that you would want your bloggers to know." The prompt I remembered working on was for Day 21 of the 2015 Poem a Day Challenge:
"For today’s prompt, we’re dealing with our third “Two for Tuesday” prompt(s):
- Write a “what you are” poem, or…
- Write a “what you are not” poem."
from the landays being composed by women in Afghanistan. (See below
for links to important articles about the landay today.) When I tracked down the draft of it in my computer, I could see that I had basically just nodded at the landays being written today. Still, it had provided a rough framework and inspiration to get something recorded in a computer file. It doesn't meet the criteria of 10 items, either. Maybe someday I'll rewrite it, maybe add a couple more items. Or... maybe I won't.
...I Am...
... no longer skinny; voluptuous
would be exceeding kind, earth mother might come to mind....
... not rich, having chosen a different path,
although I find I’ve even less for paying bills than I expected...
... not famous — my 15-second share
of fame mostly broke me of desiring it...
... not as wise as I used to think I was,
not even a dragonfly’s breath of what I thought...
... some days too much a needy flapping tongue
unable to sit still or to quiet itself...
... some times sitting quiet with the green frogs,
waiting for the red efts to immerse themselves...
... some days perhaps an ashtray
where the great I AM rests a stray tip of light like a tired firefly...
I am ... humbled by the landay form and those who compose it
I began by trying to use the form of the landays, which I had just read about. I still need to learn more about it. It’s a form Pashtun women use among themselves, a little like a haiku but with more social implications for the women, and perhaps more jarring.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/media/landays.html
An article (a wonderful long article, filled with photos) by Eliza Griswold with photographer Seamus Murphy
This article by Elizabeth Rubin, with photos by Lynsey Addario, talks a bit about landays and tells something of the lives of women who share them.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/06/beauty-and-subversion-in-the-secret-poems-of-afghan-women.html
Review of the book Griswold and Murphy made to show the poetry they discovered, apparently based on the Poetry article above (or vice versa). They make me realize how far I have to go to be worthy of writing a true landay. : "Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy have made a book that is necessary reading for anyone who has ever made assumptions from a distance about what a burka-wearing woman might be like, and for anyone who cannot fathom how poetry could get you killed. In other words, this book is a must-read for every U.S. citizen."
Review of the book Griswold and Murphy made to show the poetry they discovered, apparently based on the Poetry article above (or vice versa). They make me realize how far I have to go to be worthy of writing a true landay. : "Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy have made a book that is necessary reading for anyone who has ever made assumptions from a distance about what a burka-wearing woman might be like, and for anyone who cannot fathom how poetry could get you killed. In other words, this book is a must-read for every U.S. citizen."
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