Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts

Thursday, July 23, 2020

"Travel Tickets," by Samih al-Qasim

Terrific poem by the Lebanese Arab-language poet, Samih al-Qasim. Poem is translated by A.Z. Foreman from his great poetry in translation site.

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_guYEYMbkg

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

What Should I Say?








Once again I've been inspired by another blogger. Inter-blogging inspiration seems to be a good feature of the blogosphere, although I don't know why it has to be a sphere. Can't it be amorphous like one of those "energy fields" in the old Star Trek TV series?




A Scribble or a Sonnet wrote, "What should [or maybe it was "can"] I say when I have nothing to say?" Fabulous question. The most popular answer might be "Nothing," but we mustn't stop there. A Scribble or a Sonnet came up with the most elegant answer, arguably, which was the question itself, which was something to say.


If my father were alive, he would say, of blogging, "What a goddamned waste of time." He would need to know some practical reason for blogging. On the other hand, if there were (and I'm sure there are) bloggers that write about the sub-culture of those who keep hound dogs, especially "coon dogs," he would read that blog. It's a fascinating sub-culture that, in a way, has absolutey nothing to do with raccoons.


One of my brothers would say, "Tell them about the time you . . . ." and then he would reference some comical calamity from my past.


Queen Victoria might have said, "We do not know what blogs are. We are unimpressed."


Homer, Whitman, or Ginsberg--or some other poet who likes to catalogue items in his or her poetry--would make a list of all the reasons why s/he doesn't appear to have anything to say.


One could also make a list of the different ways there are to say nothing.


How is the equivalent of "nothing" pronounced, say, in Abrabic, Farsi, Swahili, Portuguese [close to "nada" or not?], Japanese, and so forth?