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Via today's issue of the Nondual Highlights, the following excerpt comes from the notes of American poet and translator Coleman Barks (website | full article text) during a State-sponsored trip to Afghanistan. Barks was surprised by how warmly he was received and by the interest generated by his translations of Rumi's poetry. Apparently Afghans are highly enamoured with poetry in general and they found were fascinated that a translation of Rumi's poetry into English could be so popular in the West.

This discovery, of course, is part of a blindness I have, that we have in this country, and in the West in general, to things Islamic. It is a long-standing and pervasive condition. Wherever possible I confessed our ignorance, my personal variety, and our general American species. And yet, it must be stressed, there I was, and for a reason. Their Afghan poet has been the most-read poet in the United States during the last ten years! My translations alone have sold over half a million copies. These facts astonished audiences, who inevitably asked why. No one knows, I said, but it feels like to me that a presence comes through the poetry, even in my American versions, the sense of an enlightened, compassionate, hilarious, very clear and sane, and deeply kind, human being. We have been lonely, I told them, in the United States, for what the Sufis call a true human being. In Rumi and his friend Shams Tabriz we have found two of them.

highlights from the highlights

Two more interesting bits from today's highlights.

I Am That I Am

The sun appears to shine because of its rays,
But it is the sun itself which produces the rays.
In fact, that glorious sun and its shining
Are one and the same.
To have a reflection, one must have an object;
If we see a reflection, then we infer that an object exists.
Likewise, the supreme reality, which is one,
Appears to be two.

-- Jnaneshwar

---

The Retarded Children Play Baseball

Never mind the coaches who try
to teach them the game,
and think of the pleasure

of the large-faced boy
on second who raises hand and glove
straight up making the precise

shape of a ball, even though
the ball's now over
the outfield. And think of the left

and right fielders going deeper
just to watch its roundness
materialize out of the sky

and drop at their feet. Both teams
are so in love with this moment
when the bat makes the ball jump

or fly that when it happens
everybody shouts, and the girl
with slanted eyes on first base

leaps off to let the batter by.
Forget the coaches shouting back
about the way the game is played

and consider the game
they're already playing, or playing
perhaps elsewhere on some other field,

like the shortstop, who stands transfixed
all through the action, staring
at what appears to be nothing.

-- Wesley McNair, from Talking in the Dark © David R. Godine, Boston

control the pace

This excellent article on controlling the pace in storytelling includes at the end this richly illustrative book excerpt about the effect of varying sentence length in your writing:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length.

And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals -- sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences.

Create a sound that pleases the reader's ear.

Don't just write words. Write music.

-- Gary Provost