{"id":18774,"date":"2014-06-20T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=18774"},"modified":"2014-06-20T04:53:14","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T11:53:14","slug":"writing-a-poem-is-a-confrontation-with-the-unknowable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=18774","title":{"rendered":"Writing a Poem is a Confrontation with the Unknowable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s been a long time since I believed in a god like the biblical one I learned as a child that I was supposed to love and fear, respect and obey. I\u2019ve\u00a0written a little bit<\/a>\u00a0about why I stopped believing, and\u00a0I\u2019ve<\/a>\u00a0written<\/a>\u00a0out of<\/a>, though\u00a0I<\/a>\u00a0have not<\/a>\u00a0precisely\u00a0named<\/a>, my deep sense of irony at having become a translator of Sufi poetry, which concerns itself almost solely with how to reach that kind of god through love. I have not, however, written anything about the process of trying to make sing in English a poetry rooted in something that I do not feel\u2014though I suppose the phrase \u201cdo not feel\u201d is not entirely accurate.<\/p>\n

When I was a young teenager, I knew I wanted to be a religious Jew, and I was pretty sure I wanted to be a rabbi. In pursuit of this ambition, I left public school after 7th grade and attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC), an orthodox Jewish day school that had a program for kids like me who came from non-religious homes. While my years at HANC eventually cured me of my religious yearnings\u2014something I will write about another time\u2014I do remember what it felt like to want to be religious, to be close to God (which I am capitalizing here because that is his name in English), and to live a life infused with the meaning of that closeness.<\/p>\n

One of the lessons I learned at HANC that has remained with me all these years is the importance of performing religious obligations with\u00a0kavana,<\/em>with the appropriate intent. I don\u2019t think of it in religious terms anymore, but it does matter to me as a poet, not because I think of poetry as my religion, but because, for me, writing a poem is a confrontation with the absolutely unknowable, with what it is impossible to express fully in language, in a way that feels analogous to what I imagined a confrontation with God would be like when I believed in him, and so perhaps it is also analogous to what that confrontation is for those who believe in him now. The nature of one’s intent in pursuing this confrontation matters, I think, because intent inevitably shapes content.<\/p>\n

A Sufi might say that finding this analogy is a first step along the path\u2014\u201cpath\u201d being the metaphor the Sufis use for the process of achieving enlightenment\u2014and I would probably answer that I do not consider myself a seeker in those terms. Nonetheless, it is this analogy that has allowed me to appreciate both the wisdom and the beauty in Sa\u2019di\u2019s overtly religious poetry and to find the words within myself to help those poems to sing in English. Here is the beginning of this week\u2019s\u00a0Sa\u2019di Says,<\/em> the passage illustrated in the picture above, which is from an Indian manuscript of Sa\u2019di\u2019s\u00a0Golestan:<\/em><\/p>\n

A man of God immersed himself in meditation. When he emerged from the vision that was granted him, a smiling companion welcomed him back, \u201cWhat beautiful gift have you brought us from the garden in which you were walking?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To read the rest, click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Cross-posted<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a long time since I believed in a god like the biblical one I learned as a child that I was supposed to love and fear, respect and obey. I\u2019ve\u00a0written a little bit\u00a0about why I stopped believing, and\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0written\u00a0out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-2","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18774"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18778,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18774\/revisions\/18778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}