For My Son, A Kind of Prayer Is Out! And Other Publication Announcements

April 2016 has definitly not been cruel to me. I have three publication announcements I’d like to share with you.

Announcement One: For My Son, A Kind of Prayer

I am very happy to announce that my new chapbook For My Son, A Kind of Prayer is now out from Ghostbird Press. (They’re updating their website, so my book does not yet have its own page; but if you scroll down a bit from the top, it’s there.) The book is quite reasonably priced at $10. If you’re local–meaning in Queens or at Nassau Community College–you can get a copy from me. Otherwise, I hope you will support Ghostbird and buy from them. Peter Vanderberg, the publisher, and his brother Paul Vanderberg, who is an artist, combine their talents to weave words and visual art together into beautifully made chapbooks. In For My Son, A Kind of Prayer, Paul’s art–the cover image is his–helps shape the rhythm of the book, adding to the work’s resonance in a way that even the most careful ordering of the poems could not have achieved.

Here’s a sample poem:

My Son’s Theology

Shahob asks if I believe in God.
I tell him no; he doesn’t ask me why.
Instead, he tells me God is a dust-speck
floating on the wind, watching
and waving, though we can’t see Him.

And God created nothing, Shahob says,
except Himself, but He’s not lonely,
and He’s not sad, so we laugh, picturing God
lounging poolside at some Hollywood
superstar’s house. We don’t discuss God’s gender.

Cool drink in hand—when I ask,
it’s orange juice of course—God’s wearing
precisely the gun-metal-blue sunglasses
Shahob convinced us just last week
to buy him for the beach. He puts them on now—

they’re right next to his bed—
leans back against the wall and waves.
“And if you do notice God is there,”
he says, sitting up straight,
raising his eyebrows and smiling,

“don’t be afraid to say hello,
or give Him a high-five.” Then my son
lifts God’s beverage in the generous welcome
he imagines divinity is and grins,
“Just make sure He raises His hand first.”

The official launch for the book will be sometime in June, and I am excited to be sharing the spotlight at that event with two other Ghostbird authors, Kimiko Hahn and Roger Sedarat. In addition to For My Son, A Kind of Prayer, Ghostbird has just released Hahn’s Resplendent Slug and Sedarat’s Eco-Logic of the Word Lamb. I hope you’ll check those books out as well.

Meanwhile, I’ll be doing some readings to promote For My Son, A Kind of Prayer. Click on the links for full details, but here are the dates:

1. April 24th: The Phoenix Reading Series in Manhattan
2. May 12th: Boundless Tales at the Astoria Bookshop
3. June 4th: Brownstone Poets at the Park Plaza Restaurant in Brooklyn
4. June 19th: a Father’s Day reading at the Sunday Salon series in Manhattan

If you’re able to come, please make sure to say hello.

Announcement Two: Veils, Halos & Shackles

I am also very excited to tell you that Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, which includes my poem “For My Son, A Kind of Prayer,” is out from Kasva Press. This first-of-its-kind anthology assembles 249 poems from poets in more than two dozen countries who have chosen to raise their voices against violence against women and in support of the women who are victims and survivors of that violence. Compelled by the December 2012 rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey in Delhi, and by the public activisim for women’s safety that followed, editors Charles A. Fishman and Smita Sahay spent three years combing through more than a thousand poems to compile this volume. They received poems in English, of course, but also in languages as far flung as Sindhi and Irish, a breadth and depth of response that, in their own words, “suprised and encouraged [us]” but also hurt when they realized “how deeply needed this book was.” My own poem is too long to offer you as a sample, so I will offer instead this poem by Susan Kelly De-Witt:

Sati, 1987

for Roop Kanwar, in memory

On September 4, 1987… a young girl of 18 in the village of Deorala in Rajasthan was murdered. She was burnt alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. Yet, according to local tradition, Roop Kanwar had become a ‘sati’ and had ‘voluntarily’ immolated herself … . Two decades later, the problem has not disappeared.
— the Hindu, September 23, 2007

1.

They said a hundred hand-sewn butterflies
ignited the gauze filaments
of your veil, that

once, when you fell off
the pyre with plainly scorched
feet, they hurried to lift you

back, onto the fire: Sati
Mata ki jai! Glory
to the Sati Mother!
They said you were struck by
the beauty of the gesture: Your body a lotus
of flame, your soul rising like incense

from its burning stem.

2.

What do I know,
sitting here, continents away,
weeping?

Weeping for whom?

3.

They said you cradled
your dead husband’s head
in your lap as you burned,

a Kali
with one skull —

his.

I hope you will consider buying a copy of Veils, Halos and Shackles, if not for yourself then for someone who should have it. Poetry has an important role to play in the fight to end gender-based violence. It may play that role more intimately and more slowly than other, more obviously visible forms of activism, but the possibilities of healing and transformation that poetry holds out are no less real. In the coming months, I will be participating in several launch readings for this book. Again, click on the links for full details:

1. April 17th: The Long Island Writers House in Huntington, New York
2. April 28th: The Cornelia Street Café
3. June 5th: The Nassau County Baha’i Center

If you’re able to come, please make sure to say hello.

Announcement Three: Farid al-Din Attar’s “Tale of Marhuma”

This is not, strictly speaking, a publication announcement, at least not yet, but I am very happy to tell you that my translation of what is commonly known as Farid al-Din Attar’s “Tale of Marhuma,” the first story in his Elahi Nameh, or Book of God, has been accepted for publication by Modern Language Studies (MLS), a publication of the Northeast Modern Language Association.

I’ve blogged a bit about my reading of, among other things, some of the sexual politics in The Conference of the Birds, the work for which Attar is best known in the west (See here, here, here, here, here, and here). The introductory essay that will appear with my translation in MLS continues some of that thinking. Unfortunately, I had to put my Attar project aside some time ago. Perhaps this publication will spark some new interest, both in me and in a potential publisher. Attar’s Book of God, I have become convinced, deserves as much attention in the west as Conference of the Birds has gotten. This poem, still in early-draft form, is one of the stories from Book of God that I find absolutely fascinating:

Do The Latter

When Abolqasem Hamadani
left Hamadan on a sudden journey,
he came upon a crowd of people
gathered outside an idol’s temple.
On a fire, an oil-filled cauldron
bubbled like a windswept ocean.
Some minutes passed and then a Christian
entered and bowed before the idol.
When he stood, they asked him this: “Humble
servant, what are you to God?”
“A slave,” he answered. They responded,
“Then quickly make your offering.”
He did and left, like smoke rising.
Another person did the same,
then another, and ten more came,
and each was similarly dismissed.
At last, a man who could’ve passed
for dead, shriveled and weak, pale,
emaciated, lean, feeble—
he was a walking shadow. They asked,
“And what are you? A man, a corpse,
or both?” He said, “I am a piece
of skin. I love my God.” At this
they told him, “Sit down.” He did, at ease
on the golden throne they showed him. Then,
they carried over the boiling cauldron
and poured the oil onto his head.
The man’s skin melted from the heat;
his skull landed at his feet.
When it had been removed, they set
the rest of him ablaze. “These ashes,”
they said, “cure every pain there is.”

The shaikh observed this from a distance,
and when they finished ran at once
to ponder what he’d seen. “You fool,”
he said to himself, “that Christian, full
with false love, gave his life to it.
If you’re truly an initiate,
for love of your God do the same.
Otherwise, go make your home
with catamites. If you are sure
of your love for God, then choose: abjure
your life or forsake your faith. The former
you have not done; so do the latter.”