April Rain

Of you I thought when the day rain.
April sun shun,‘til you overcast.
I met you on a similar day, a rain day,
the streets of Edinburgh cold.

When the day rain.

Near you, my prim-rose soul.
Heard ever a crimson primrose
Bloom in rainy autumn? Not me.

When the day rain.

But to you, my bleeding bud blossoms.
Your warm Soul, wild prim-rose;
To life (bring) in all he traverse

When the day rain.

Glen Coe down Scotland’s borders —
Your smile disorders seasons

When the day rain.

A pilgrimage, like a pilgrim I would go,
Singing hymns, at the altar of your soul.
Come… alter, re-alter, mind and body.
Sanctify fidelity of my devoted Being.

When the day rain.

And two hands held for prayer.
Yes, it is! It were! Of Love embody;

Two Souls naked in hallow communion.
He is no other, and none like him,

When the day rain.

Your mouth, lips, the tongue,
Enunciating. You are poetry!
And I waited to hear you say:
“My luve is like a red, red rose.”

When the day rain.

But I, overcasted your thoughts.
Of who I was, left you clouded.

When the day rain.

Let it, echo, throughout my Eden;
When Adam came, and gave me my name.
I will answer back, “Adam. Adam.”

But Adam must have Eve.
I saw, but Paradise no more.

When the day rain.

The rain fall with me —
rose-coloured lens intact.
The sun, shining, over on East.
In California, there is no sun

When the day rain.

Sharing the rain, bunched primroses.
Drops sleeping on petals; first to bloom.
Mine I left stinging, to my lips.
Embrace cold I imagined you gave.
Of what could, would, never have been.

When the day rain.

All my petals gone dull; frost bitten.
Macabre scent emit is, and not mine.
Each brown petal speaks for Adam.

When the day rain. When the day rain.

Of you I thought when the day rain.
The day rained, and I thought of you.
—-

My poem “April Rain” is a parody of Rumi’s “Like This.” I knew I wanted to use Rumi’s poem after reading both his poem and biography. Reading about Rumi and Hafez’s relationship I found to be one of the tragic things of life, to lose someone so closely without a goodbye or knowing what had happened to them — to suddenly disappear. The emotions he evokes in his love poems, primarily through “Like This” I felt entranced by the passionate sensuality he brings to his audience.

The inspiration for my poem came from my time studying abroad in Edinburgh. For the first time I experienced what it was like to fall in love. It was impossible to ever be with them, but it was through being friends with them that I had discovered much about who I am. We met in one of my class discussions; they were framed within the classroom door’s window when I first spotted them, and out of coincidence we had the same class. Furthering this, we became partners for a discussion assignment where the friendship first began. We had traveled around Scotland, and I learned much about him and myself. The last time I had seen him was after our adventure from the Scottish borders. We were in Waverley station where we parted and I watch him disappear in the crowd. There were many aspects in the poem that were an inspiration from that experience, but the speaker of the poem should certainly not be confused with me. They simply helped shape the content of the poem through the emotions.

This poem is the most vulnerable I’ve ever written and shown to the public, but I chose the emotions of this experience into a poem because of its vulnerability. Rumi, like all poets, create incredible poems of emotional experiences because they let themselves be vulnerable; an emotional experience I hope to reflect.

Aspects of my poem that are similar to Rumi’s “Like This” are the free verse form, love in connection with spirituality, the natural experience of love, repetitions, and sensuality. What I had wanted to replicate is that sense of divine love to someone. Though there are many differences to my poem to Rumi’s. The situational content itself being very different to Rumi’s. I wrote the poem as both a parody and a response to “Like This,” by being its opposite. A spiritual love that is romanticized.

I also wanted to have the freedom to use my voice, to try and create my own meaning by borrowing from Rumi’s themes, form, and meaning primarily between the speaker’s relationship with Hafez rather than trying to attempt being Rumi. That is why I paid close attention to syntax. Each word is intentional to make the poem stand for itself but still hold those thematic elements of spiritual love. Punctuation I focused on also as it was lacking in “Like This,” which might be due to translation, so I utilized punctuation to help give an extra element to the poem.

The speaker in Rumi’s “Like This” is confident about that sense of spiritual love, my speaker lacks that confidence and jumps all over. They compare their love to Adam, the “warm Soul,” God, even the nationalistic identity of Scotland. This brings about the borders of love itself – the speaker resides in California, with his love in Scotland. This border also continues with the identity of the speaker, the “prim-rose” being that ambiguity of the speaker’s gender and their identity overall, questioning it but never passing the border to fully understand themselves. The hyphenation of “prim-rose” is both that division, but also what the speaker also desires as they seek to become the traditional symbol of a rose.

This poem also is Europeanized, mainly to reflect the blindness of the speaker themselves as they “fall” to California and furthering that border of their identity: American-Scottish. With the Quran being used in Rumi’s “Like This” I implemented Christian themes both to reflect Scotland and America’s history with Christianity, and the colonial history in which the West brings with religion. Nonetheless, I chose a poem for my medium as I felt it more accurately helped display syntax evoking certain emotions, and as a way for me to experiment with language.

Phillip Gallo

For the Love of God!

“Like This” by the poet and Sufi mystic Rumi, is a sensual, heart touching, and an open poem that holds a beautiful and loving tone through its English translation. It clearly tells the loving relationship and admiration of the poet to their object of affection through varying literary devices most notably through allusions/ metaphor.

Allusions seen within the poem pertain mainly as a tool to compare the love felt towards two people with that of miracles performed by Jesus from curing a blind man to rising from the tomb. The use of religion in this aspect, from the translation, shows minimal input of the Islamic religion but more so of Christian references. I would be lying to say I am well read and informed about the Islamic religion but unfortunately I am not, which would be helpful in this case, but after reading the article “The Erasure of Islam from the poetry of Rumi” I was able to look online for other translations in English of the poem and saw how religion is actually heavily added to the poem when comparing each one from the other. One I found online was actually longer and had in almost every stanza a mention of some divine being or act to compare with love. But going of the poem assigned, I see the allusion of religion as a comparison of the nature of existence and human experience to that of Jesus resurrecting (coming to life) to even alluding to a possible one sided love of two biblical figure, (to note again I am not well versed in the Koran or even that well with the bible, I could be wrong with this second take). The poem also holds plenty of metaphors comparing the lover to many varying objects from the night sky, the moon, and the spirit/ soul but also, for the most part, comparing the love found within each other with that of miracles and religion.

The comparison of the resurrection of Jesus to that of the lovers kiss is a pretty solidifying in showcasing religion and the acceptance of Islamic spirituality as seen, “If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead, don’t try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips. Like this. Like this.” (line 21-4) this is a sweet line that interlocks Islamic spirituality with that of love, and that attributes much of the openness and acceptance of spirituality to this love with ties to embracing all aspects of life, negative and positive , joyful or challenging, and overall the understanding of all experiences and richness that life has to offer. 

Alondra Garcia

Spirituality, love, and its connection within Rumi’s “Like this”

Rumi’s poem “Like This” showcases the spirituality that is naturally interconnected with love. Rumi continuously answers spiritual questions with sensual and romantic gestures throughout the poem; “If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead, don’t try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips.”  (Rumi, 21-23) Love has the ability to provide the answer to any question. The poet tells the audience that no knowledge is needed except that of love, as love would be the one to give that knowledge. Rumi also uses metaphors to further push this idea; “I am a sky where spirits live. Stare into this deepening blue, while the breeze says a secret” (Rumi, 39-41) with the speaker using the infinite sky and deep blue within their eyes to showcase the grandeur within their love and its infiniteness to showcase the answers that they hold, waiting only for the necessary questions to be asked. The ongoing repetition of the phrase “like this” also serves this purpose. Guiding the listener towards the necessary actions to recognize the importance of love and in turn noting the spirituality within it. 

Unfortunately, some of its deeper references to Islamic spirituality are lost with translation, yet still, in its translated state, it shows a great acceptance and embracement of Islamic spirituality. The strongest reference of which being the mentioning of Shams, who Rumi depicts as the guide of Allah’s love of mankind; “When Shams comes back from Tabriz, he’ll put just his head around the edge of the door to surprise us” (Rumi, 51-53) referencing Shams return from Tabriz to the speakers return to their lover, using it to symbolize the importance of love, but also showcasing the depth of their love comparing to someone as meaningful as Shams was to Rumi. finally, with the mention of Jacobs mourning for Joseph, the speaker compares their love as akin to that of Jacob’s towards his son in Genesis. Showcasing their love and closeness and their overall connection to spirituality. 

Eduardo Ojeda Jr

A Love “Like This”

Coleman Barks’ translation with John Moyne of “Like This” by Rumi rejects Islamic spirituality although Rumi’s original work embraced it. People deserve the opportunity to read Rumi’s work with Islamic references (as he intended). Rumi uses an apostrophe for the speaker of the poem to address their lover (or general lovers). The speaker repeatedly gives their audience instructions like “lean your head toward him or her / Keep your face there close” and “Kiss me on the lips”. This apostrophe makes the poem more intimate because it places readers in the perspective of someone receiving these instructions from their lover. As Rumi describes all the ways love is a “miracle” or close to experiencing God (seen in lines 11 and 12), the reader can picture the passion between these two people. Rumi wrote “How did Jacob’s sight return?”. Based on my limited research, Jacob was blinded due to his sorrow upon losing his son, Joseph, and his sight returned once his son’s shirt was on his face. He recognized his son’s scent from the shirt. The line “A little wind cleans his eyes” appears to be personification. The wind is not literally cleaning Jacob’s eyes. Some Qur’an websites explain this to be a miracle due to Jacob’s patience and trust in God. The line “the breeze says a secret” is another example of personification conveying something that is not physically possible. The speaker appears to feel a closeness to nature that influences their view of love.

Despite the beautiful spiritual imagery that Rumi uses, some of the Islamic context was lost in translation for the first three lines. The “perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting” does not necessarily convey the same meaning as being surrounded by houris (beautiful virgins) in paradise. Merriam-Webster defines houri as “one of the beautiful maidens that in Muslim belief live with the blessed in paradise” (Merriam-Webster). The translation of this line has completely removed any religious connotations. Rumi’s original writing compares love to beautiful women and paradise itself. Rumi describes this love as transcending human experience. This love is so powerful that it is similar to the afterlife. “Perfect satisfaction” hints towards the importance of this love, but it does not fully encapsulate the depths of the original meaning of houris. Throughout the poem, the repetition of “Like this” comes after each image that the speaker offers. Rumi uses similes to compare love (or the tenor) to spirituality and nature (or the vehicles). The original comparison to houris is a transfer of the sexual and paradise elements. However, Rumi probably did not intend to reference the fact that one would have to be dead to reach this paradise. Overall, the comparisons are only “like” this love (that is the closest experience to a miracle) because the speaker has not actually seen the miracles or died for love.

By removing islamic references, translators are “sanitizing” the content and removing important context. Although translators may claim to not intentionally remove islamic context, their unconscious biases may be influencing their decisions. Media without mention of any religion can play for a wider audience. Some religious people feel alienated when their religion is not at the forefront of the media that they want to consume. People may find Rumi’s translated poems (without the references to the Qur’an) and appreciate them more because it does not conflict with their beliefs. Later in the poem, mentions of Jesus, Joseph, and Jacob are still intact. Due to the initial omission of Islam, people might mistake the lines “Jesus raised the dead, / don’t try to explain the miracle” as a reference to Christianity. 

~Miki Chroust

Divine Love in Rumi’s “Like This”

Rumi’s poem “Like This” presents the love between two people as a synecdoche to Islamic spirituality to reflect the spiritual experience of life. The poet utilizes this metaphor when he mentions, “if anyone wants to know what ‘spirit’ is, or what ‘God’s fragrance’ means, lean your head toward him or her” (Rumi 11-13). The closeness between two people is used to parallel that closeness one may feel to religion. It is that devotion that persists between two people that reflects that devotion to Islamic spirituality emanating through love. This closeness becomes complete when the poet furthers this extended metaphor of love as a spiritual experience, “don’t try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips. Like this. Like this” (22-24). The poet insists in withholding the mystery of Jesus’s miracles, connecting it to that desire for why love with all its emotional experiences occurs to be a secret. This secret is also embedded in the natural world with “the breeze [saying] a secret” (41). It also presents themes of faithfulness between the two lovers paralleling that of spirituality. The repetition of “like this” throughout the poem happens usually often after one stanza, but for this line to repeat it twice reflects how the kiss between a couple is what the poet emphasizes as an important attribute to faithfulness and devotion to both religion and love. 

Unity becomes a recurring theme between love and religion through the imagery of a house. The poet explains, “the soul sometimes leaves the body, the returns. When someone doesn’t believe that, walk back into my house” (32-34). The stanza uses the metaphor of how the body itself represents the house, and the soul being the beloved that enters it. Spirituality becomes a sense of protection from sin, in which love becomes that protection by the lover protecting the beloved. The house imagery concludes the poem with Shams returning and putting “just his head around the edge of the door to surprise us” (52-54). The poet’s feelings towards Shams reflects that love between two people, where his return parallels how the soul itself returns to the body, in this case the body-house is a metonymy for the poet. Onomatopoeia also presents itself through the “huuu” repeated between mentioning “Joseph’s scent” and “a little wind” cleaning the eyes of Jacob (46-50). The sound produced to mimic the wind returns to how “God’s fragrance” is obtained, through the closeness displayed from love and presenting the natural world as influential to love and spirituality.

Phillip Gallo

Medieval Persian Poetry in English: Drunkenness, Sex, and Islam

For next Thursday (2/8), students will focus on a close reading of ONE of the three poems assigned for that day: Hafez, “Ode 487,” “Ode 44,” or Rumi, “Like This.”  Write a blog post on the following question prompt:

Consider how these poems (in English translation) use figurative language to describe the love between two people.  Does this love represent an acceptance or rejection of Islamic spirituality?

To help you answer this question, please read this article from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi

The posts are due by this Thursday (2/8) 11:00am.  Please categorize under “Figurative Language” and don’t forget to create specific and relevant tags (as many as necessary). And please remember to write your full name.  To sign in to your account, click on the following link: https://wordpress.com/log-in

And check out this cool illuminated manuscript from Iran around 1531–33: “Allegory of Worldly and Otherworldly Drunkenness”, Folio from the Divan of Hafiz, painted by Sultan Muhammad.

How Strange

[Poem Transcript]

You spent a week at my place
rolled in and out of old vices
conversation layered in dust.
But for you, nothing settles-
your pulse, itching to a rise
tells stories of men like us
who, evading long gazes
could not escape a club
left red and chattering,

Like this.

He’ll be a cowboy for pay,
He’ll ride through Las Vegas
shouting freedom from the street
bare-chested, swanging to sides
claiming frontier and victory.
But we know, in the scope,
what happens in meadows
growing too out of reach
and yanking the trigger back

Like this.

Cursing the old boys down south
we share hollow jokes, knowing
no matter the pasture, vernal pool
neither party is faring greener.
(We giggle in California while
one man rounds a corner
in pursuit of one woman
step shoulder step step and
quick breath falling down
bang bang bang bang bang
then, there were two men)
And even in our hobbled union
shame pervades every gesture
opening for when you go

Like this.

Your reel sits on the counter
Un-reviewed, a violent vision
You’re passing like a death
each new day, a murder.
I’ve met the victims, seen it happen
In and out, in and out
of the doorway, voice trailing
farther and farther West
until you finally left
“Goodbye”, a limp sound
from mouth to floor

Like this.

Somewhere in this nest
of cable, flat obelisks,
and false horizons
beyond the paddock
cattle became conscious:
Gridlocked, set to parallels
striking the walls of adjacent cages
all of us, receding, unable
designed, institutionalized
How strange we must show our love

Like this.

How strange our bodies shrivel and shadow

Like this.

[Review]

To my friends who lent their voices for this assignment,

I have no doubt that you all are really, really confused. But I promise there is a method to my madness. My parody of Rumi’s “Like This” retains the free verse structure and repetitive use of the titular words but keeps little else. I cannot identify with, nor relate to, the perspectives espoused on love in Rumi’s poem. You all intimately know how little faith I put into religion, or for that matter, behavioral ideals. The speaker’s frequent allusions to Islamic culture (Christianity, if reading Coleman Barks’s translation) and idolization of the poem’s subject were quite literally lost in translation when I first read the poem. This is the primary reason why I chose to modernize the poem’s dated depiction of love to one that I could relate to, thus resulting in the odd amalgamation I produced today.

The decision to use video as the primary consumption format for this poem is largely symptomatic of the video essay’s rise to popularity. YouTube channels like Nerdwriter, exurb1a, and Button Poetry all take the written page and transform it into a visual experience. Though I have some reservations on the viability of video essays from an academic standpoint, I find this format to be one of the most successful ways of engaging contemporary audiences. The creative freedoms allowed by video made it possible for me to literally “pay homage” to previous points in history while giving a visual stimulant to viewers. In the background of “How Strange”, I reference two movies, a television interview, and a home video of questionable origin. They each provide context to the poem or supplement the themes embedded within it.

My biggest departure from the source material, however, was the element you all are a part of: the conversational interludes. Initially introduced to combat the fatiguing caused by my expansion of the stanzas (which are lightly worded in Rumi’s poem), I used excerpts of our conversations to ground my poem in your feelings and experiences. The poems I’ve read over the course of this semester have all been singular efforts— one individual, and perhaps their publisher, laboring and toiling alone through the revision process. For this assignment, I didn’t want to operate in a creative vacuum. I wanted to include other people, other voices, as a collaborative and illustrative force rather than an exercise in compromise. Though one could accuse my poem for being too derivative in its constant use of external reference and homage, I instead argue that it is my driving motivation: I want my audience to understand how nebulous and in-congruent my experiences and identities are in relation to each other, even if that means stringing together a multitude of other works.

Heavenly Lovers

By Dijonae Davis

Rumi’s poem “Like this” uses allusion in order to represent love and lust between two people. The poem alludes to this idea of heaven. Throughout the poem it becomes clear that the sex between these people are the closest thing to heaven. The allusion to heaven is especially apparent in the ninth stanza, where Rumi says, “If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead, don’t try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips.”. This poem is very romantic in the sense that he compares this love that he has for this person to heaven. This is a heavy comparison because heaven is seen as this place that is full of light and has this almost majestic aspect to it. The comparison to heaven suggests this love is perfect (because bad things do not happen in heaven). One can infer from lines 1- 5 of the poem, “ If anyone asks you-how the perfect satisfaction-of all our sexual wanting -will look, lift your face- and say..”(Rumi), that this person has at least some element of sexual attraction to this person.  In response to whether or not my interpretation of the poem would change if it was written by a non-Muslim or non-Iranian poet, it would not. The poem is about heavenly love, and the religious undertones of it could have been from any religion. The purpose of the poem is to showcases the perfection of this love, and I believe the poem did just that without mentioning the background of the poet.

Love is Love

In Jalaluddin Rumi’s poem ‘like this’ he uses figurative language such as metaphor and personification to establish the love between two people. In the first couple lines Rumi states, “If anyone asks you how the perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting will look, lift your face and say, Like this.” I did not notice any figurative language in the first few lines but what he means by this is we all have the answer to that question no matter who we chose to love we all have a sexual satisfaction. Throughout the poem Rumi references the self to the gracefulness of the night sky, the perfect satisfaction of our sexual wanting, what God’s fragrance means, clouds gradually uncovering the moon. He then continues to say what God’s fragrance means which I thought was puzzling because I am unsure what he means by god’s fragrance. Perhaps he means we are all children of God and he is in all of us that’s why he says “lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close” We are all evidence of God’s fragrance and it doesn’t matter if we love the same sex or the opposite. Rumi then uses a metaphor/imagery to compare clouds uncovering the moon and someone loosening their rob to reveal themselves. Another metaphor he uses is comparing himself to the sky where spirits live, I thought this to mean he is important and has purpose just like the sky. He also uses personification in the same lines claiming the breeze tells secrets therefore look to your partner for they are there to guide you and listen to your secrets or thoughts.  Rumi’s poem also contains many biblical references from wondering how Jesus rose from the dead to the story of Joseph and Jacob while tying his own religion into the poem when he states, “When Shams come back from Tabriz,” What I also want to bring attention to is the fact that whomever Rumi is talking about we know that whom is a man, “when someone asks what there is to do, light the candle in his hand.” There isn’t any indication that he is talking about having intimate relations with a woman. For example, when he states, “when lovers moan, they’re telling our story.” By referring to a lover’s moan, he isn’t putting a gender norm on love. Through the use of metaphors and personification Rumi explains the love he has for his significant other, many people may not agree with their love but it shouldn’t matter and anyone who doesn’t understand this needs to as Rumi puts it “walk back into my house.” Come to terms with this kind of love and enter my world to fully understand. Essentially Rumi’s use of metaphor and personification tells the reader who he is in love with and how love shouldn’t have formalities because religion tells you it is wrong. We all have sexual desires and feelings, we all yearn for that special type of love that makes us feel like we could die for love and that is why it shouldn’t matter who we love.  

Natalie Rodriguez

Fucking Amazing Poem

Vinnie Kim

I just wanna start off by saying, this poem is off the chain. “Like This” by Rumi is one of the only poems that I can genuinely say I enjoyed while reading. Rumi has such a beautiful way of using figurative language to give more meaning and emotional weight to his words. The English language, in my opinion, is so bland and words don’t carry that much emotion/weight. Especially with modern trends and whatever, even the phrase “I love you” has lost it’s meaning.

The poem depicts a picture of two people almost describing their love for one another, saying our love is perfect/ideal. “When lovers moan, they’re telling our story. Like this.” They’re telling OUR story. Sex now-a-days is something that happens 24/7 everywhere. Everyone to even teenagers are having sex. But everyone forgets that the original meaning and purpose of sex was to make love. Two people coming together and embracing one another to the fullest extent. The author is almost trying to draw the picture of what true love looks/feels like. As you read each line, the “like this” draws you in, almost pulls you.

Rumi also uses figurative language to say that true is love is so irresistible, even more infatuating than religion. “If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead, don’t try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips. Like this. Like this.” Rumi is almost saying that this ideal relationship is more important than religion. He’s almost saying, push religion to the side, this love is more beautiful.

Love between two people is such a beautiful thing and people, because of society and the way the world works now, often forget that. This poem not only depicted the love between two people, but serves as a reminder of what love could be, maybe even should be.