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

Escaping from reality

The poem that I decided to choose was Ode 487. This poem was about trying to use alcohol as an escape while acting on lust and desires. This poem talks about how acting out on your heart’s desires, under the influence, can give you immense confidence. To describe his emotions and environment in HAFEZ  line 4, “The harp and flute were up and in full swing.” This allows us to get a feel for how the alcohol was making him feel very warm and happy and almost gave him a sort of ecstatic energy boost. This also symbolizes that alcohol can evoke many different emotions, and it can get very chaotic. In this poem, the man is rejected, and in a way, his delusions fade due to him not getting what he wants, and he feels defeated, but then there is a sort of acceptance at the end of it all, understanding that things happen in life and that he needs to move on. He then realized that he could escape with alcohol and that, in the end, life doesn’t always turn out how you want. He chose to deliver figurative language in this poem through metaphor, symbolism, and personification.

After reading this poem , I noticed three types of figurative language That took place in this poem. Line 1, “The harp and flute were up and in full swing,” is a metaphor for how a hangover feels. The singing is a metaphor for the headache and pounding that could happen after drinking. Another metaphor that I noticed was in lines 8-9: “If you would reach your daily destination, The holy city of intoxication.” This is a metaphor for his trying to completely escape. He wants to be at a certain level of intoxication that makes him feel like he is on a different plane to satisfy his goal. HAFEZ also uses personification in line 4 “The harp and flute were up and in full swing,” which gives the harp and flute personification as if the objects could get on a swing. Lastly, I noticed that he used symbolism in line 25, “In the good ark of wine; yet, woe is me!” Wine and the feeling of intoxication symbolize Noah’s ark, a place where he feels safe and can drown his sorrows in, and it makes him feel some form of contentment with everything or it was supposed to. As for the question, I don’t think this would be accepted because this seems to be an act of love and not love at all. His partaking in the drinking of wine states that he is not in touch with the Islamic beliefs given, as the drinking of alcohol is discouraged. In a way, his relating the good ark to wine also hints that he is not quite a believer in the practices. However, on the women’s end, her rejection. could symbolize the fact that she was rejecting the worldly desires. However, overall The love does not align with Islamic spirituality because there was only lustful intent behind it.

Victoria Sasere

Ode 44

The poem I chose was Ode 44 as seems like the poet is telling a story about the love between two people, it focuses on one night with a woman. As well as the poet, Hefez portrays this story through figurative language that helps to picture the stunning women, and it appears that he is religious due to his references to “The gods above Ordained this wine for us” (Hafez). It showed the readers that he was instantly taken by her and was intrigued. I also found that the poem seemed to focus on the idea of temptation and love. There is a lot to unpack within this poem as I’ve noticed that there can be different interpretations of what the poet’s true intention was. 

It seems that almost immediately the poet uses a metaphor, “Narcissus-eyes all shining for the fray, Filled full of frolic to her wine-red lips,” (Hafez).In this line, the poet appears to be using personification as well as a simile to portray the woman’s lips and how they may have looked attractive in a way. He chooses very specific words to describe the woman as he seems to compare her to the wine that they are drinking, which I found to be quite an interesting comparison. It also appears that the woman looks to be initiated as her body language says so, “Sudden she slips Into my bed – just in her little shift” (Hafez). Immediately after this happens the poet seems so excited to proceed with their relationship or what he believed was to happen. “ ‘ Oh my old lover, do you sleep or wake!’ And the instant I sat upright for her sake And drank whatever wine she poured for me-” (Hafez). It seems as though the poet hints at the idea that the two of them appear to be intoxicated as he mentions that he “drank whatever wine she poured for me”, which can insinuate that they weren’t sober as the poet had initially been talking about wine. 

I found that this poem did seem to surround the idea of temptation as well as his religion and how it appears that he may be talking more specifically of the temptations that he faced with this woman as well as how alcohol became a key factor within this temptation. It appears that both of these things combined created a huge temptation for the poet which can contribute to something that his God may not believe in. I’ve noticed how the poet also talked about his God throughout all of this, more specifically Islamic spirituality. As well as how the poem seems to embrace this spirituality. 

I am quite interested in what the poets initial intention for this poem is and what he actually wants us to interpret from it. I liked reading and analyzing this poem as it appears to be quite open to different interpretations.

Yue Wu-Jamison

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

The Devil Inside Us?

In both poems, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation and My Brother at 3 A.M., written by Natalie Diaz depict the harsh experiences that the indegenous had to go through. The one I decided to focus on was, My Brother at 3. A.M. 

In My Brother at 3 A.M., the poem revolves around a mother being awaken by her weeping son on her doorstep. There is constant repetition of “He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps/

when Mom unlocked and opened the front door” and the time of it taking place at 3 A.M. Diaz conveys imagery by using diction on describing the brother’s “lips [that] flickered with sores.” The connection between the lips and the mom asking the brother “on what [is he] on” clearly displays that there is some drug abuse going on. It’s been known for a while that the Indigenous people abuse alcohol and drugs to cope with their past experiences, the stress and living situations.

Reflecting on Diaz’s 2018 interview, and her reflection of not having the ability to “be fully in [her] body” relates to the brother in the poem. The brother did not have permission to fully experience his body, allowing the drug to take over his body. Adding on, the time 3 A.M., is also known for it to be the “Devil’s Hour,” where spirit entities and demons alert humans that their presence is here. The brother perhaps thought he was seeing the devil, but in reality is his mind playing tricks on him.

What really stood out to me was the ending. Where the mother realizes that she’s looking at the “hellish vision” of her son.

Evelyn Hernandez

Breathless First Love

Love poems have a way of using a lot of figurative language to describe delicate feelings in the most intricate of ways possible. Not only does it invite the audience into the poet’s mind, but it also paves a pathway of imagination and what it is like for one to feel when in love. In Ode 44, Hafez tells a story of a specific night with a woman and wine through metaphor usage for the purpose of conveying one’s deepest desires in a vulnerable position.

Hafez starts off with laying out the central setting of the poem, which I feel really helps set the scene and gives a visual to the audience of what the atmosphere is like before continuing on with his thoughts. He further continues to describe her appearance and body language by saying “Narcissus-eyes all shining for the fray” (Line 4, Hafez). This word choice lets the readers know that the woman has light, yellowish colored eyes. The second part of the line, especially ‘shining”, indicates that the poet sees a sense of lust in her light eyes, waiting to essentially undress and become exposed to him. Such body language gives the narrator ideas of what the woman might want to initiate. Immediately after the observations, the woman makes a move and gets into bed with him then proceeds to ask if he’s asleep or awake. This questions forces the narrator to literally springs in excitement to show her that he was ready to move forward towards wherever these actions were leading. Hafez then writes “Of Heaven’s own vine: he surely were a churl” (Line 14, Hafez). This line is intriguing in a few ways. For one, readers can notice that the poet capitalizes the word ‘Heaven’, showing the underlying respect he might have when it comes to religion, culture, and God. Going off of that thought, this creates an almost contradicting meaning in the line because it basically shows how an un-welcomed deed is committed while recognizing the respect to the ‘All Knowing’. Such assumptions are later backed up when towards the end Hafez mentions “Foredoomed to drink and foreordained forgiven” (Line 21). The poet is aware what he is doing is a sin, but decided to do it anyways. Taking in account the story and figurative language, this love rejects Islamic spirituality because a lot of things that take place goes against the religion and one can tell that the poet/author is well aware of it, but decided to pursue the love anyways. That’s how powerful this love is for him.

Simranpreet Kaur

Lovers in the night, Poets trying to write

A poem such as “Like This” is one that you can feel deep inside, but a poet like Jalaluddin Rumi, can change lives. From the New Yorker article “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi” we read that celebrities such as Madonna or Chris Martin have experienced spiritual journeys thanks to Rumi. A personal favorite Rumi poem of mine is “Like This”. Forms of figurative language that can be seen throughout “Like This” from ‘The Essential Rumi’, Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne are similes, and hyperboles. In my own interpretation, the simile of “like this” that can be found in between almost every stanza is a comparison between things in nature to things involving love, such as a kiss. An example comes from stanza 11, “Stare into this deepening blue, while the breeze says a secret. Like this.” The next piece of figurative language is hyperbole. When Rumi writes “When lovers moan, they’re telling our story” doesn’t actually mean that these two lovers are telling a story, it’s more of a comparison to the narrator’s love life, and meant to represent all lovers. Another favorite hyperbole that I love is “If someone asks how tall I am, frown and measure with your fingers the space between the creases on your forehead.” The figurative language throughout this poem is connecting the outside world to the body, over and over again. This love embraces Islamic spirituality because of that connection to the body, nature and spirit.

The title for my post comes from one of my favorite movies, ” A Star is Born”. It is not at all relevant to this poem, but I felt like that lyric from the movie really resonated with the poem.

Anne K. Anderson