, 
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
-Elizabeth Bishop
PHILANOMA ART EXPO 2010
@ 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Triumph Brewing Company (2nd Flr Gallery)
117 Chestnut Street - Philadelphia, PA 19106
This unique exhibition showcases works of art created by some of Philadelphia's finest urban architects, artists, photographers, graphic artists, fashion and interior designers.
Enjoy complimentary hors d'oeuvres while networking amongst entrepreneurs and artistic individuals from various professions. There will be something for all art lovers to enjoy, including photography, illustration, paintings, poetry, fashion and more! COME to browse, buy or just mingle amongst friends...
Happy hour drink specials are available until 9:30pm.
MAKE SURE TO RSVP!
Admission is $5 donation* at the door WITH EVENTBRITE RSVP.
*Proceeds from this event will help benefit PhilaNOMA's CAMP Sustain.Ability program for 8th & 9th grade students interested in architecture. Visit http://philanoma.noma.net for more information.
There's a belly in heaven that I love.
It wriggles with satisfaction
like a Buddha's would
at the sight of Jello and whipped cream.
______It doesn't give a damn.
There's a belly in heaven that I miss.
______It jiggles with beer.
It's great for a hug and a squeeze.
It devours cakes, cookies, and pies.
It shakes, rolls, and giggles at bad jokes.
______Get out of my sight diet man.
Take a hasty trolley to hell
______mean man,
______lean man,
______bean man,
______exacting man.
______Scram
new man,
reasoning man,
jogging man,
calculating man,
______whose thoughts you won't reveal,
sly man.
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
to “die for love,” point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.
The soul sometimes leaves the body, the returns.
When someone doesn’t believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.Like this.
How did Joseph’s scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.
How did Jacob’s sight return?
Huuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us
Like this.
-From Essential Rumi(translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne)
. I read it with the pain of knowing that Bolton won't write another (since he took his own life at the age of 28 soon after finishing it). I read it with the fear of finishing it, like the work of Dalida that I dread to know entirely because I am aware of its finiteness and its finality. I wrote in my review of it on Amazon that it would be the one book I'd take to a deserted island--and it's only because I can't commit all of it to memory. Now I understand people who want to commit the Quran to memory: to love a book so much, to find its construction so perfect as to want to make it a part of your self. I turn every page in awe and in anticipation of that voracious humanity, that attuneness to life that proved to be overwhelming. I jump over the words hoping to find in them that which would still that little void perched right above the lungs, at the base of the throat, croaking at the end of the night, longing to be whole..A new book by a former (and favorite) professor of mine, the wonderful Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, has recently been published by Columbia University Press: Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective
The book is a study of contemporary Arab debates on culture. It examines the analyses presented by prominent Arab thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century regarding questions of cultural malaise, cultural decline and cultural renaissance. It puts these debates in the historical context of modern Arab thought spanning the last two centuries and focuses on the post 1967-defeat (in the war against Israel) period that witnessed a mounting polarization between holistic ideologies on the one hand and self-reflective critiques on the other. It breaks new ground in the understanding of contemporary Arab intellectual life by viewing it from three original perspectives:
1. First by focusing on the self-reflective critical turn at a time when attention has been almost exclusively devoted to the ideological side of this intellectual life, whether islamist or nationalist.
2. Secondly by recognizing and examining the political understanding of the cultural malaise among critical thinkers, an understanding that has been systematically overshadowed by a culturalist reading of the malaise, by actors and observers alike.
3. And thirdly by breaking the isolation to which the production and study of the Arab debates on culture have been hitherto confined, by putting them in a comparative post-colonial perspective. Indeed, more than any other region, the Arab world has been consistently stigmatised with exceptionalism.
Hence the main questions the book explores are the following:
1. How has contemporary Arab critique approached questions of cultural malaise? Which issues has it addressed and what shape has this critique taken?
2. To what extent and in what sense have Arab critical thinkers of the post 1967 era seen the cultural crisis as a political one? How old is this political perception of cultural problems in modern Arab thought and what are its implications for the democratic struggle in the Arab world?
3. How do the concerns expressed and approaches adopted in these Arab debates compare with debates in other post-colonial regions of the world such as Africa and Latin America? What patterns of thought does such a comparison reveal across regions, cultures, religions and races? What does it tell us about the post-colonial nature of the Arab debates and what significance does this telling have for our understanding of contemporary Arab thought?
(From Press Release)
11:00am- Ashraf OsmanFor bio info on the readers, please check the event listing in the PhillyPoetry Calendar. For more information on the Queer Literary Festival or for picture requests please contact Maleka Fruean, events coordinator: 215-844-1870, maleka(at)bigbluemarblebooks(dot)com.
11:20am-Jane Cassady
11:40am-Laura Neuman
12:00-12:30pm-Break (Literary Lunch)
12:30pm-Nathan Long
12:50pm-Misia Denea
1:10pm-Saida Agostini
1:30-2:00pm-Break (Open Mic)
2:00pm:Kelli Dunham
2:20pm-Cassendre Xavier
2:40pm: Janet Mason
