If in Palo Alto

Asking for a friend

I'm intrigued to discover how much of al-Safadi's Tadhkira (Memoranda) is still extant, including parts 27–30 which are currently for sale, separately bound in morocco leather (except for part 27 which is incomplete and appears to be loose). Hopefully, the buyer won't disappear with them, but make them available to the public. Somewhere there is someone who needs this manuscript more than Gollum needs the ring, and would do wonderful things with what they find there. And they don't have €144,200 to blow. I know this because with regard to part 23 I am that someone. Let me explain.

     
Last page of part 27 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, courtesy INLIBRIS     

Taqi al-Din ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Jabir was a poet of Baghdad known as Ibn al-Maghribi. He died in his forties in the year 1285, so at the time the Mongols took over he was in his teens. He was what they call a "secretary poet," that is a civil servant who wrote poetry on the side, as opposed to a "court poet" whose whole entire job was poetry. But his work was much esteemed, and was published in one volume by his friend Qawam al-Din Turki, probably after the poet's death. I have no hope that this volume will ever be recovered.
      What's left of Ibn al-Maghribi's poetry is preserved in biographical dictionaries. There are fewer than a dozen poems and (with two panegyric exceptions) they are all bangers. I've done several of them (1, 2, 3) and am committed to translating them all, but if someone else jumps in I won't mind because they're obscenely difficult.
      They're also kind of obscene. His poetic specialty was mujun "drollery" and khala‘a "boasting about stuff that can get you in serious trouble." These aren't genres, exactly, but modes, of prose as well as poetry, which brings me to the favor I am asking.
      Ibn al-Maghribi is credited with a prosimetrum treatise called "The Epistle of the Two Luminaries," which is how I'm translating Risalat al-Nayyirayn for the time being. It seems to be about a love triangle. The "luminaries" are the sun and moon. Ibn Abi Hajala quotes two bits from it in Diwan al-Sababa, and you can read them here.
      It pains me to report that Risalat al-Nayyirayn is listed on the title page of Universität Tübingen Ma VI 70, and must have been contained in the forty pages now missing from that manuscript. The only other trace of it to surface is in al-Safadi's biographical entry for the poet: "Ibn al-Maghribi also has an epistle known as 'The Two Luminaries,' written in the style of Ibn al-Wahrani—an excellent treatise which I copied into part 23 of my Tadhkira."

       
Title page of part 28 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, courtesy INLIBRIS       

Other parts of the Tadhkira are out there. Part 14 is prized for its selection of Ibn Daniyal's poems and has been published. Chester Beatty MS 3861 contains it, together with parts 24–26, and hipsters know where to find the microfilm. I found one unnumbered part at the National Library of Iran without trying. Karabulut shows parts of it in Cairo and Istanbul, Brockelmann has them at the Bodleian, the Escurial, the British Library, the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, some God-forsaken "Ind. Off." and at this point my impatience has summated.
      I don't know if manuscript research seems fun or glamorous but it's not. You spend most of your time looking at screens. There is no limit to the amount of time I could lose to the search if it became my project, and so I am going public with this rant of a plea, or "crowd sourcing" it, if you will. If you or someone you know is sitting on part 23 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, please reveal it. I don't need to be the one who locates it, but I do need to edit and translate Risalat al-Nayyirayn. I know how entitled this sounds, but Ibn al-Maghribi and I are way past that. Send the manuscript to my work email, or writing dot gathering dot field at gmail dot com, and doubly you will be on the right side of literary history, helping out two mujun poets at the same time.

If in Abu Dhabi 2.0

For captioned video, follow this link.

A riddle and a mention

Last year, I tried to write a few paragraphs on ghazal poetry and its relation to the craft of spinning, called in Arabic ghazl. Before long, I had 9,500 words on my hands, and now I'm stoked for them to appear in Studia Metrica et Poetica, the open-access poetics journal from University of Tartu Press. For a magnificent editorial experience, I am grateful to Maria-Kristiina Lotman, and to Kalle Paalits for the patient typesetting, and to my friends and colleagues thanked by name in footnote sixty to "The Riddle of the Thread: On Arabic ghazal."

        

Also last year, I entered my translation of "The Palm Tree Sings" (1981) by Tahar Hammami into competition for the Stephen Spender Trust's 2023 Poetry in Translation Prize, and received a Commendation for First-Time Entrants. Whatever I can do to draw attention to Hammami's work won't resolve my debt to his 2003 monograph al-Shi‘r ‘alā al-shi‘r (Poetry on Poetry: A Study of [Arabic] Poetics up to the 5th c. A.H./11th c. CE in View of Poets' Verses About It), without which the book I'm writing would be a vain dream. Profound thanks to the poet's brother Hamma Hammami (Secretary General of the Tunisian Workers' Party) for his permission to reprint the Arabic text, and to Youssef Ben Ismail and Amani Alzoubi for their critical assistance.

Gourd Flower

What to be famous for? is a question only Chance and Fate get to answer. And if my name is remembered, it will be for the song "Gourd Flower," as recorded by my friend Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and appearing on xir new album It's Okay Honey.

The lyrics to this song first appeared on page 40 of Zeroes Were Hollow. Now, in a video jammed together from heart-breaking footage on archive dot org (thanks, Nick), they are the world's to sing along with. I await no higher credit to my name than this:

If lost in the hills

Source | Soundtrack

Interview With a Ampire

 

After thirty years in the arts, it's happened that someone asked me thoughtful questions about my work, and recorded and edited our conversation for everyone to enjoy. I will be forever grateful that it was my friend Tenaya Nasser-Frederick. Thanks also to the editors of Full Stop, where the interview appears in two parts: Part One | Part Two

 

UPDATED AUG. 31: Tenaya and I just gave no. 148 in the Brooklyn Rail's Wednesday reading series, and for better or worse the cloud recording's been made viewable until kingdom come. Thanks to Anselm and everyone at the Rail who makes it happen.

ALSO Gabriel Kruis's review of my new book Zeroes Were Hollow has appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter 273 (Summer 2023), 27-8, and can be read right here. Thanks so much to Kay et alii at the Newsletter and ov course to Gabe.

AND NOW (DEC. 5): Jared Joseph's review of Zeroes appears as an insightful web-exclusive feature of Gulf Coast 36:1 (Summer/Fall 2023). Thanks to Jared, Gabriel and Tenaya, the book's launch is now complete, and I can go back to watching YouTubs.

                             Sly Stone on Dick Cavett (ABC, 1970)

                             Van Halen, "I'll Wait" (1984), fan video

                             AC/DC, "Highway to Hell" (Paris, 1979)

                             Elton John, "I Guess That's Why They Call It the
                             Blues" (Las Vegas, 2012), feat. Jean Witherspoon

If in Abu Dhabi

 For captioned video, follow this link.

It's Out and It's On

    

      Thank you Patrick Durgin, editor and publisher of Kenning Editions
      Thank you Faride Mereb, who designed the cover
      Thanks to all subscribers to the press
      Thanks to Sinan and Rachel

      ISBN 979-8-9856628-2-5
      iv + 75 pages, 21 cm. $16
      Poetry is a furnace

If in New York City and If Not

If in Brooklyn

Flyer by Nicholas DeBoer

Sultan Ezi is the Lord of the Cup

      

In 2017, I made a selection of poems by the caliph Yazid ibn Mu‘awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, and prepared "trots" of them for Peter Lamborn Wilson to versify in his book on the Yezidi religion. That book is now available from Inner Traditions (Rochester, VT), and [UPDATED MAY 23] I'm consoled that Peter lived to see it. Thanks to all who made it possible, especially Charles Stein, Renée Heitman, and Raymond Foye.

If in Boston

After an 18th-century MS of al-Qazwīnī’s ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt 

(The Wonders of Creation) illustrated in a workshop of Palestine. 

Bavarian State Library, Cod. arab. 463, fol. 181v

Adventures in Guest-Blogging II

I don't mean to brag, but a number of my friends have been featured bloggers on Harriet for the Poetry Foundation. Cedar, Rodney, Kasey, Alli, Brandon, Brandon, Matvei, Garrett, Thom, Marie, Asiya, Silvina, Sara, Patrick, Stephanie, Dana, Eddie, Hoa, Rodrigo, Joshua, and if I keep clicking back I'll be reminded of more.

This is all to say I'm glad to be blogging for Harriet finally, on the theme of Poetry and Translation. Thanks, Shoshana! My first post is up today. 

If in Brooklyn

Glad to be reading this Thursday at the launch of Aditya Bahl's chapbook MUKT (Organism for Poetic Research, 2021). 

Two new articles

1. "Night and Day in Islamicate Literary Dispute" appears in Disputation Literature in the Near East and Beyond, ed. Enrique Jiménez and Catherine Mittermayer (de Gruyter, 2020), 191-213. Thanks to Enrique, and to Geert Jan for the connect.

2. "Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s Kitāb Abyāt al-ma‘ānī" appears in Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies, ed. Bilal Orfali and Nadia Maria El Cheikh (Brill, 2021), 37-83. (This is the forthcoming article mentioned in Larsen 2018, p. 210, note 78.) Thank you to the editors, especially Bilal who put me on the path to abyāt al-ma‘ānī in 2015.

The Mu‘allaqa of ‘Abīd ibn al-Abras

appears in translation with an introduction by me

in

A public-access publication 

of the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), 

in cooperation with Al Qafilah magazine, 

produced by Saudi Aramco (Dhahran, 2020)

I would not have missed the chance to work with this team of editors and translators for the world. Many thanks to Hatem Alzahrani and Bander Alharbi. This is my first commissioned translation. My fee went to Climeworks.

The Poem of the Bow

by Ma‘qil ibn Dirar, called al-Shammakh
(floruit 1st half of the 1st century A.H.),
appears in issue 29 (2020) of A Public Space
وبالعربية ت صلاح الدين الهادي
Thanks to the editors

Detail from a folio of the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi,
illuminated by Mir Sayyid Ali and workshop (ca. 1530-1535).
Previously owned by Shah Tahmasp I, now at the Met

Let's have a Qalandar poem

The Muwashshaha Qalandariyya of
Taqi al-Din ibn al-Maghribi (d. 1285)
appears in this month's Brooklyn Rail.
Thanks, Anselm

Detail of a folio from the Divan of Hafez
illuminated by Sultan Muhammad Nur and workshop (ca. 1531-1533),

a joint holding of the Met and Sackler.
Dimensions: Astoundingly small

Public Service Announcement

القناع من سيما الرّؤساء

"The face mask is a badge of eminent people."

al-Jahiz