by Mohammad Javanmard
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today I woke up hearing the news you all know the news ‘except the one who is still laughing’ I heard the news and meaning erupted on the floor as if a flow of a sticky, dark, smelly liquid poetry is not for talking about politics we all know that but I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry when I heard the news the meaning erupted like a bomb in Gaza near a basement where Sadiqa and her two children live(d) poetry is not a political statement I apologise from all of you it should be about beauty and love and profound things in life like when Mahmoud Darwish talks about: ‘the hesitation of April the smell of bread at dawn the beginning of love, grass on a stone…’ but how can one explain to a terrified one-year-old what bombing is and why the ground is shaking every few minutes and the windows and the half empty glass on the table and the framed picture of a man you’ve never met on the wall and people say that’s your dad I remember once my mom took me to a funeral and everyone was crying and my mom cried I felt the whole world started shaking and I cried and I wet my pants ‘mama let’s go out of here’ pulling her head scarf and people thought I’m so sympathetic with the one who’d died but my mom was crying and all this is pointless the main question is how can one explain to a three-year-old sitting in a bus heading to the south why we should leave our house today in the midst of all these horrible sounds and the rubbles of buildings and of humans and why… (the bus erupted) I’m sorry I’m truly sorry I know we’re not supposed to use too many adjectives in a modern poem that’s just bad taste I know I know that poetry should be self-referential and create a semi-autonomous environment that poetry is not to gain its meaning from outside signs should interrelate and then the surplus significance emerges from within I know we shouldn’t express our feelings so explicitly but forgive me that I couldn’t think of any ‘objective correlative’ for the bombardment of the children’s hospital in Gaza for people’s thirst for the bodies left behind just like when Neruda couldn’t find any for ‘the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood.’ forgive me that there is no literary equivalence for the catastrophe there has never been. today when I was having my cereal sitting beside my daughter in a city in the middle of the UK the meaning erupted and it’s unraveling my poetry (and how cliche this trick is! Disgusting!) I went to the main square afterward to see others who’ve felt the earthquake just like me from far away we looked at each other’s eyes we said ‘oh it’s awful’ it’s horrendous we shared our mutual despise of the political leaders we talked about the horror about water electricity bread about last night’s meal that we’d had in the pub nearby ‘how is Tom by the way?’ a friend asked tom was alright fortunately minding his own business and we chanted someone said ‘what a cute little girl’ but nobody asked that main question that we were all thinking of that how you can explain to a... the basement exploded. (another rubble among the rubbles) no need to explain anymore. no need to think about it.
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Mohammad Javanmard is a poet whose work has thus far appeared in Persian. He also does research on the 21st century collective movements /collective subjectivities through world literature.
Well said
These rules for poetry you cite are so frustrating and why I don't write anymore. I don't need an "objective correlative" or whatever for these words you wrote to be worth reading. Thank you and keep it up.