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I had gone to poefrica/rethabile to comment on his works. I landed up on this Country poem meme.
I thought why not give it a try! I did learn something about a country I know nothing! I even plan to find out more about its literature.
Intro for you all:
Take a country whose name begins with the last letter of your surname. (a) Jane Doe would take Ecuador, for example, or Egypt. England (like the USA and Ireland) does not qualify. Wole Soyinka would take Angola, or Afghanistan. If you cannot find a country with that letter (and only then), move back a step. (b) Jane Doe would take Oman, in that case. And as for Wole Soyinka, he would go for Kazakhstan, or Korea. And so on.
Thank you. Please tag two people (leave a message on their blog, too).
Here is my offering:
As my surname is Tripathy, Yemen was the only country that came to my mind.
1. Tell us what the capital city of the country
Yemen is a Middle Eastern country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. Yemen is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the North, the Red Sea to the West, the Arabian Sea. In addition, Gulf of Aden to the South, and Oman to the east. Yemen's territory includes over 200 islands, the largest of which is Socotra, about 415 kilometres to the south of Yemen, off the coast of Somalia. The capital of Yemen is Sana’a.
2. How many inhabitants that country has?
It has a population of about 20 million people
3. Find and share with us a poem in English of not more than 20 lines from that country. If it's longer; cut it to twenty lines or less.
Waddah al-Yaman, born Abdul Rahman bin Isma’il al-Khawlani(d. 708), was an Arab poet. He was born in Yemen in the second half of the seventh century. He was famous for his erotic and romantic poems. He was executed by the Ummayad Caliph Al-Walid I, allegedly due to his over familiarity with the former's wife. Waddah is now regarded as the national poet of Yemen.
One of his poems goes like this:
She said, "Don’t come to our home, my father is deadly jealous."
I said, "I’ll pluck you before he knows it, my sword is razor sharp."
She said, "There’s a whole castle between us."
I said, "I’ll fly my flag over the castle."
She said, "There’s a whole sea between us."
I said, "I’m a strong swimmer."
She said, "My seven brothers keep an eye on me."
I said, "I’m a match for them all."
She said, "Allah is watching us."
I said, "My lord is Merciful and Forgiving."
She said, "I have run out of words, so come tonight when everyone’s floating in dreams, and fall on me like dew, undisturbed."
4. Tell us something you particularly like about the poem you have chosen:
There was no other choice. It is the only poem I could find on the net from Yemen.
5. Add a line anywhere in the poem (beginning, middle or end), and clearly show which line is yours to avoid confusion and/or ambiguity.
I said, "Tonight I come to you and merge our souls."
She said, "Don’t come to our home, my father is deadly jealous."
I said, "I’ll pluck you before he knows it, my sword is razor sharp."
She said, "There’s a whole castle between us."
I said, "I’ll fly my flag over the castle."
She said, "There’s a whole sea between us."
I said, "I’m a strong swimmer."
She said, "My seven brothers keep an eye on me."
I said, "I’m a match for them all."
She said: "Allah is watching us."
I said, "My lord is Merciful and Forgiving."
She said, "I have run out of words, so come tonight when everyone’s floating in dreams, and fall on me like dew, undisturbed."
I tag J. Andrew Lochart, Borut and/or anyone else who wants to play.
Deadly Kisses By Brenda Joyce
ISBN: 0778322688
Pages: 464
Historical
Publisher: MIRA
Time Period: New York, 1902
I picked this book to read while traveling. I rarely read romances but I wanted something light. This is not a romance in the strict sense. I did enjoy it.
It begins with Francesca being summoned to the home of her fiancé Calder Hart's, ex-mistress. She finds Daisy's best friend, Rose, rocking Daisy's bloody corpse. Francesca is hired by Rose to find out who killed her one time friend and rival. Once she learns that Calder lied to her, Francesca begins to fear that he is involved in the death, at the least, and perhaps something more sordid. Still, she is unable to shake her instinctive sense that Calder is lying about something. The police are far less inclined to believe in his innocence, and yet she believes in Calder and is determined to set him free even after his own brother arrests him for Daisy's murder. As her investigation continues, Francesca learns many ugly things in the victim's life. Everyone tells her, it is better to stop her quest but Francesca needs to know the truth.
Calder attempts to distance himself from her until he realizes that no matter what he has or has not done, and no matter what is said of him, Francesca will loyally stand by even as things deteriorate. Only she can see the goodness and vulnerability in this former rogue.
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One down from Summer Reading Challenge..
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré
Pages: 508
Coronet Books
ISBN-10: 034073339X
ISBN-13: 978-0340733394
Tessa is the wife of a minor British diplomat in Nairobi, and is an active crusader for human rights. When she is murdered, her husband Justin awakens himself from his careful apathy and, sorting out the threads that led to her death, sets off in her footsteps. His journey takes him around the world, to a village retreat in Italy, a non-government organisation in Germany, an ostracised scientist in Canada, a food distribution area in southern Sudan, and in the end back to Kenya and the scene of Tessa's death.
In The Constant Gardener, Le Carré offers a compelling account of a man on the run, chased by his "own" side (Intelligence and the Foreign Office) as well as by the bad guys (thugs working for a pharmaceutical company). He presents a characteristically unflattering portrait of the machinations of bureaucracy and bureaucrats. As well as following Justin, we get a glimpse inside the mind of his timeserving and lecherous colleague Sandy. He is an example of not overt evil — the thugs and the corporate executives who send them remain in the background — but of those who allow evil to happen by averting their eyes and by following orders rather than their conscience.
The Constant Gardener revolves around a drug, a diplomat, and a murder. Dypraxa is a new cure for tuberculosis, developed by a Swiss pharmaceutical company that is testing it unscrupulously, and at great human cost, among Kenyan villagers and slum-dwellers in preparation for its debut in the U.S. and other developed nations. Tessa Quayle, a diplomatic wife, attorney and idealist, discovers the corruption and malevolence at the heart of this scheme, only to get her throat cut in the bush north of Nairobi when she threatens to expose the sordid mess. The novel unfolds as Tessa's husband follows her path into the darker recesses of corporate greed, Foreign Office duplicity, and medical science in the service of profit.
''Tuberculosis is megabucks,'' Le Carré writes,” Any day now the richest nations will be facing a tubercular pandemic, and Dypraxa will become the multibillion-dollar earner that all good shareholders dream of.''
Beneath the politics, we find the variance between individuals and their institutional identities that runs through more or less all of Le Carré's novels. Justin Quayle, diplomat and suddenly a widower, is the constant gardener referred to in Le Carré's title: He is complacent in his dedication to the ethos of the British Foreign Office. Justin chucks out his Etonian manners in order to pursue his late wife's cause, joining Le Carré’s renegades in revolt against their circumstances. The Constant Gardener is about the human capacity for transformation. Through Justin, the political themes are elevated to questions of loyalty, integrity, and personal sovereignty in a world that rewards betrayal, venality, and the abdication of moral responsibility.
The Constant Gardener is set in Kenya and traces the extraordinary events within a close-knit British community living in Nairobi, working for Her Majesty's Government and for aid agencies. One gets to see some of the city of Nairobi and its outlying countryside, as well as the machinations of the Kenyan government and media. The politics of the country alone and in relation to the UK, is very much part of the story too. However, the book's focus is its characters. The story unfolds through sharp, clear characterization and strong dialogues.
Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom
ISBN: 0060097833
ISBN-13: 9780060097837
HarperCollins Publishers
Zoya’s Story, vividly brings to life the realities of growing up in a Muslim culture, the terror of living in a perpetual war zone, the pain of losing those she has loved, the horrors of a woman’s life under the Taliban, and the discovered healing and transformation that lead her on a path of resistance.
Although she is only twenty-three, Zoya (not her real name) has seen and suffered more tragedy and terror than most people experience in a lifetime. Born in a land ravaged by war, she loses her parents when Muslim fundamentalists kill them. Devastated, she escapes from Kabul with her grandmother and starts a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joins the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization that challenges the crushing statutes of the Taliban government, and she takes destiny into her own hands, joining a hazardous, secret war to save her nation.
Fear of violence had become a part of the fabric of life, a day-to-day reality, whether from male fanatics among her people, the invading Russian soldiers, or, soon-to-be, American bombs and military men. In her school, from the age of fourteen, Zoya learns the meaning of democracy, human rights and feminism from the teachers of the school in Pakistan.
Soroya, one of her teachers taught her that "politics was not about long discussions among . . . politicians; it was about talking to poor, ignorant, and backward people and showing them that they had a future."
Zoya finds her strength through RAWA, and has since been a dedicated underground activist, based in Pakistan. She has been back in Kabul several times and witnessed the devastation caused by the Taliban, including a "cutting of hands," the punishment for stealing, held at enforced mass gatherings at the former soccer stadium..
John Follain and Rita Cristofari, tracked Zoya down to write her story for us. They met her in secret fully well knowing her life is still in danger.
Zoya says at the end of her story, "If peace returns to my country I would like to go back and walk the destroyed streets of Kabul, the sun shining not on a burqa but on my face. I would think not of the past but of the Future."
Despite her suffering, she has a positive vision for her country. That is what makes this book very interesting. A must read book.
Anchor (1994)
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's first novel, was published in 1958. This book tells us about a great, brave, kind human spirit," is often compared to the great Greek tragedies. It deals with the age-old struggle between unyielding traditionalism and the winds of change.
Mostly, it is about the effects of British colonialism on a small Nigerian village at the turn of the century. A simple story of a "strong man" whose life is dominated by fear and anger, it is written with incredible economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.
The Ibo religious structure consists of chi--the personal god--and many other gods and goddesses. There is an issue here of fate versus personal control over destiny. For example, Okonkwo's father is sometimes held responsible for his own actions, while at other times he is referred to as ill fated and a victim of evil-fortune. The threads of the story follow a circular fashion, as opposed to a conventional linear time pattern. This is what makes it very interesting. Life is never linear but circular. The villagers believe--or maybe pretend to believe--that the "Supreme Court" of the nine egwugwu is ancestral spirits. In fact, they are men of the village in disguise.
Nature plays an integral role in the mythic and real life of the Ibo villagers, much more so than in our own society. Certain barbaric acts are followed as twins are abandoned and children are mutilated. These are done to appease the Gods so that no evil takes place. Okonkwo rejects his father's way and is in turn, rejected by Nwoye. The lives of Ikemefuma and Okonkwo are seen to be parallel to the extent that they both have fathers whose behaviour's are judged unacceptable.
I could identify with it in more ways than one as Hinduism too follows in a parallel way. We have Gods pertaining to every aspect…fire, wind, Earth etc. Hindus too believe in fate or destiny. Difference is, we believe in Karma too and changing the fate with our actions. Hinduism too believes that our ancestors come to bless us on certain days of the year. They do not interfere or anything but, they look on us from above. However, no living being impersonates ancestors. The rural population is still dependant on nature. Even now, Human sacrifice is rampant in some interior parts of India. Many tribes still follow the ancient Gods unquestioningly.
Things Fall Apart, though written almost 50 years back, has much to teach us even today. Nothing has changed in some parts o the world. Time stands still for them. Every day is a struggle and accepting something new is never easy. Though this has a tragic ending, it still teaches us about those basic human values of bravery, fearlessness and indomitable human spirit. Instinct for survival works very strong under any circumstances.
ISBN: 1 85799 733 6
Paperback Edition published in 1996 by Phoenix, division of Orion Books Ltd.
The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder, is an interesting and modern fairy tale that pleases young and adults readers alike.
Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to give his son lessons about Life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left them both when he was four to `find' herself and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En route, in Switzerland, a dwarf at a petrol station gives Hans Thomas a magnifying glass and the next day he finds a tiny book inside a sticky bun, which can only be read with a magnifying glass. Hans Thomas reads the sticky-bun book in the back of his father's car on the way from Norway to the philosopher's homeland using the magnifying glass the dwarf gave him. Hans plays solitaire also with the pack of cards his father bought to obtain the joker. He finishes the sticky-bun book in Greece. By then Hans Thomas knows more about the philosophers, his own family and the mystery contained in the tiny book that binds everything together.
There are two flows in the story -- now and the past. In the journey to Greece, where 12-year-old Han's mother is, the little boy discovers the origin and the story of his family. The story of the book reveals itself fundamental to Hans-Thomas understanding of the trip and of his own life.
How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? What is the significance of the playing cards, most of all, the Joker? It is all very bewildering and Hans Thomas has enough to cope along with the overwhelming prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter with the mysterious or does it all have a logical explanation?
Jostein Gaarder explores all these along with those questions, which have fascinated philosophers through the ages, using a child's journey through reality and mystery to create a world within a world, a story within a story, allowing the listener to form his or her own answers.
A fascinating adventure, unifying the threads of philosophy, fantasy and reality.
When Dana Guthrie Martin asked me to do this column for 10 must read books in our collection, I said why not for poets?
Here is my list of poets. I have taken those from classic to modern. I have read and still reading many poets but this list is my personal favourite. I read them again and again.
Ten poets in my must read collection.
Rumi (1207 - 1273): needs no introduction. He only needs to be read. Rumi to write mystical poetry and tales called Masnavi in the style of Sana'i and 'Attar. Rumi completed six books of these before he died on December 17, 1273. Many of his talks were written down in the book Fihi ma fihi, which means "In it what is in it" and is often referred to as his Discourses.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): His most famous work is Divine Comedy. La divina commedia (Divine Comedy) was completed just before his death. It is a narrative poem in terza rima containing 14,233 lines organized into 100 cantos approximately 142 lines each. Written in the first person, it tells of the poet's journey through the realm of the afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The dual allegory of Commedia - the progress of the soul toward Heaven, and the anguish of humankind on Earth - was later echoed by John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress (1678-84). Gustave Doré's (1832-1883) illustrated text of Inferno (1861) is among the most famous translations.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616): His sonnets are a must read. He wrote 154 sonnets. Evoking Petrarch's style (also known as Shakespearean sonnets) and lyrically writing of beauty, mortality, and love filled with moral anguish and adoration of unattainable love, the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, sonnets 127-152 to a dark lady
John Clare (1793-1864): his poetry is wonderfully descriptive of the English countryside as it existed in the early 19th Century and recaptures the spirit of rural life of that era. Clare's attempts to write like other poets of his day, as well as his financial worries, put tremendous strain on his mind, and in 1837 he was admitted to a mental asylum in High Beach, Epping. The asylum poems are among his best known works, but the haunting descriptions of rural landscapes in poems such as 'The Flitting', 'Decay' and 'Remembrances' are more typical of the true character of his poetic voice.
“I am” is his most famous work.
Robert Browning (1812-1889): My love for poetry started by reading Browning. I read “The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child's Story” and was hooked for life.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886): She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalization as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. At times characterized as a semi-invalid, a hermit, a heartbroken introvert, or a neurotic agoraphobic, her poetry is sometimes brooding and sometimes joyous and celebratory. She wrote 1789 poems.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967): was an American writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. She published seven volumes of short stories and poetry: Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, Laments for the Living, Death and Taxes, After Such Pleasures, Not So Deep as a Well (collected poems) and Here Lies.
Dylan Thomas (1914-.1953): He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own. Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Perhaps no other poem depicts so clearly the innate spirituality, the romantic and the metaphysical nature of Thomas as a poet than "And Death Shall Have no Dominion", for it is especially in this poem that he expresses his wide and deep love of humanity and the immortalist sentiment that death shall never triumph over life. "Do not go gentle into that good night a villanelle composed in 1951, is considered to be among the finest works by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953). Originally published in the journal Botteghe Oscure in 1951, it also appeared as part of the collection "In Country Sleep." It is one of his most-quoted works. It was written for his dying father.
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963): was an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist She is criticized for her controversial allusions to the Holocaust, and is known for her uncanny use of metaphor. Plath's work is valuable for its stylistic accomplishments--it is melding of comic and serious elements, its ribald fashioning of near and slant rhymes in a free-form structure, its terse voicing of themes that have too often been treated only with piety. It is also valuable for its ability to reach today's reader, because of its concern with the real problems of our culture. In this age of gender conflicts, broken families, and economic inequities, Plath's forthright language speaks loudly about the anger of being both betrayed and powerless.
Mary Oliver (1935): I am captivated to her work after reading this:
“From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground; this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.”
— from Mary Oliver’s A Pretty Song in Thirst
An intense and joyful observer of the natural world, Oliver is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau. Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon.
I must not leave out Pablo Neruda. His "Ode to the Lemon" strongly evokes the smell of the same.
There are too many poets I love to read again and again.
Now it is your turn list your poets. Come on, leave your best read poets or poetry books here.
A Story from Boccaccio -
I. -
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by;
They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep
But to each other dream, and nightly weep. -
II. -
With every morn their love grew tenderer,
With every eve deeper and tenderer still;
He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
And his continual voice was pleasanter
To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. -
III. -
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber-window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turn'd to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair. -
IV. -
A whole long month of May in this sad plight
Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:
"To-morrow will I bow to my delight,
"To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon."-
"O may I never see another night,
"Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune."-
So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,
Honeyless days and days did he let pass; -
V. -
Until sweet Isabella's untouch'd cheek
Fell sick within the rose's just domain,
Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek
By every lull to cool her infant's pain:
"How ill she is," said he, "I may not speak,
"And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:
"If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,
"And at the least 'twill startle off her cares." -
VI. -
So said he one fair morning, and all day
His heart beat awfully against his side;
And to his heart he inwardly did pray
For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide
Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away-
Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride,
Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild! -
VII. -
So once more he had wak'd and anguished
A dreary night of love and misery,
If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed
To every symbol on his forehead high;
She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And straight all flush'd; so, lisped tenderly,
"Lorenzo!"- here she ceas'd her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest. -
VIII. -
"O Isabella, I can half perceive
"That I may speak my grief into thine ear;
"If thou didst ever anything believe,
"Believe how I love thee, believe how near
"My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve
"Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear
"Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live
"Another night, and not my passion shrive. -
IX. -
"Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,
"Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,
"And I must taste the blossoms that unfold
"In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time."
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress.
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http://www.4literature.net/John_Keats
