American/Iranian poet Kaveh Akbar
Learning to Pray
My father moved patiently
cupping his hands beneath his chin,
kneeling on a janamaz
then pressing his forehead to a circle
of Karbala clay. Occasionally
he’d glance over at my clumsy mirroring,
my too-big Packers T-shirt
and pebble-red shorts,
and smile a little, despite himself.
Bending there with his whole form
marbled in light, he looked like
a photograph of a famous ghost.
I ached to be so beautiful.
I hardly knew anything yet—
not the boiling point of water
or the capital of Iran,
not the five pillars of Islam
or the Verse of the Sword—
I knew only that I wanted
to be like him,
that twilit stripe of father
mesmerizing as the bluewhite Iznik tile
hanging in our kitchen, worshipped
as the long faultless tongue of God.
Kaveh Akbar (1989 - ) from Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Alice James Books, 2017
Not the Sunday morning I planned! But poetry intervened, thank God! Or maybe the God of SUNDAY intervened as Lorna Crozier might say. Why? Because poem after poem I was reading to start my day made me trip over God!
First, I was reading the vivid new book, Calling A Wolf A Wolf, by Kaveh Akbar, another of the striking new poetic voices in the contemporary poetic world adding to those of Sam Sax, Danez Smith, Warson Shire, Rupi Kaur, Ocean Vuong, Billy-Ray Belcourt and others. Notable to me is that so many of these up and coming writers, who are adding a new vigour to the poetic cannon, are not from mainstream but from cultural minorities.
So often this is where transformative movements happen. Not from the safe center of the mainstream. But at the challenged edges. What a gift these writers are. Thank God for diversity! I, located as I am in the mainstream, am grateful for what I learn from them. For the risks they take!
Then I was reading the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, so crushed by the personal losses of loved ones caused by the jackboots of the communist regime, she died by her own hand. And there was God again.
Here, now, is Tsvetaeva. This theft from God! Wanting somehow to take into ourselves the miracle of this world. Its enchantment. Take it for ourselves somehow. Ouch, and the cold, pink lips of God.
Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
I know, I know That earth’s enchantment— This carved Charmed cup— Is no more ours Than air is ours Than stars Than nests Suspended in the dawn.
I know, I know It has a master. Still, like a towering Eagle rising High With your wing Purloin this cup. From the cold pink lips Of God.
—1921
Marina Tsvetaeva from The Paris Review, Fall 1961
Canadian Poet Lorna Crozier (1948 -). Photo Credit: Angie Abdou
When I read Tsvetaeva’s personification of God, his or her cold, pink lips, of course, I thought of Crozier. Her personal, wonderfully diverse God in God of Shadows, her just-released book, all those multiple personalities: God of Insects, God of Grim, God of the Self-Defeating and this tough-as-nails God!:
God of ACCEPTANCE The landscape painter at the artist colony in the country noted for its messianic light, its sparse, hard-to-capture beauty, complains she;s come all this way to paint al fresco but the mosquitoes have driven her inside, no matter the netting on her hat, her cuffed sleeves and pants, a heavy dose of Deet. They bite through everything. And when she tries to snap a picture, a breathy handerchief of mosquitoes flutters over the lens. What can I do? she moans, trapped in a dull and narrow room, thinking of booking a ticket back to her studio in Vancouver. Paint the mosquitoes, god replies.
Now, to write my own poem, trip over my own name for God!