The Be-Loving Imaginer

Episode 48 – Passover Seder Hymn           My favorite thing about the Jewish Passover ceremony, or seder, is the After-Dinner Hymns. And my favorite one to sing is “Ki Lo Ya-eh.” I'll translate the first verse:            TO HIM IT IS FITTING, TO HIM IT IS DUE,          Mighty, supreme in His majesty.          Legions may rightfully sing to You,          Sovran alone will You ever be.          TO HIM IT IS FITTING, TO HIM IT IS DUE.   The 8 verses contain alternate near-synonyms for “legions,” such as “attendants,” “the faithful,” or “disciples,” and the nouns are in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. This device helps give the hymn a coherent structure for Hebrew readers.            For musicians like me, what triumphs most will always be the music! It is a treat to share it with you.

Episode 47 – Wordsongs for Music Celebrating my 80th birthday (April 21, 1923) with this book, I couldn't wait to share wordsongs with you, and I put the first one right on the back cover. It's called “March 1, 2022.” I'll give you a few more samples of my 100 singable poems. They're in all sorts of rhythms and rhyme schemes and stanza patterns. (1) 49 Newspaper p. 15 (2) 23 Kintsugi p. 18 (3) 29 Hafeez p. 19 (4) 89 Linoleum p. 21 (5) 11 Come p. 23 (6) 53 Heaven p. 85 (7) 69 Beloving p. 105

The Beloving Imaginer Episode 46 Poe in Russia, “The Bells” You've heard, maybe too often, about what may be “lost in translation,” but my reading tonight is designed to show that translation may also offer huge dividends, windfall profits. That's what happened when Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont made a Russian version of Edgar Allan Poe's experimental poem, “The Bells,” a rendering which I, in turn, translate for you from the Russian. Poe's inspired design, which so attracted Balmont, was to write a four-part narrative lyric showing how the four stages in the life of a human being may be correlated with the kinds of bells that are heard in the four eras of our life. Childhood = jingle bells. Adolescence and adulthood = wedding bells. Continuing life with its conflicts and crises = fire alarm bells. Final goodbye = funeral bells. Balmont's exciting expansion and extensive elaboration of the Poe idea excited Sergei Rachmaninoff, who used it as the libretto for a grand vocal symphony, an orchestral cantata with solo singers and chorus. It is one of the most memorable works of one of the world's musical masters. Bruce Borton, conductor of the Binghamton University-Community Chorus (where I sang tenor for 15 years), which performed the Rachmaninoff Bells in Russian, asked me to do a form-faithful and accurate translation of the text to be included in the piano reduction score he was preparing for Musica Russica, a firm specializing in choral works by Russian composers. I complied gladly and my singable English rendering, included in this published book, can be conveniently used by any chorus performing Bells

The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 45 Samples from Three Books It's a joy to offer samples from three of my recent books of poems. From More Four! Four Beats Four Lines, Four Stanzas: 330 Four Wordsongs I offer 4 samples: (18) Jeer, (26) Nose, (103) Psalming, and (201) Sheheḥyananu (You Who Have Kept Us Alive). They contribute to the theme of being a Jewish American. From Asclepiadic Explorer: 99 Poems and 4 Songs I offer two kinds of asclepiads from ancient verse stanza forms. (1) Melody 1 exhibits the “Third Asclepiadic” form, as it was called, and (2) Melody 2 exhibits the “Fourth Asclepiadic.” They are so intensely musical, let's not allow this form go so extinct! From No Lovelier Melody Ever Was Known: A Month of 96 Poems in Amphibrachic Tetrameter Catalectic. An amphibrach is la-LA-la. A tetrameter means we'll four of them in each line. A catalexis means a line shortened by a syllable, so instead of la-LA-la, la-LA-la, la-LA-la la-LA-la we'll have a-ONE-and, a-TWO-and, a-THREE-and, a-FOUR. I'll offer the first 4 poems in the book to get you going and whet your appetite.

The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 44 - A Song for Sappho Sappho (ca. 610 BCE to 570 BCE) is the earliest woman poet we know of in Western literature. [Moses' sister Miriam, called a “prophet” (“neviah”), leads the liberated Jews in a song of triumph in Exodus, but the two verses that she recites cannot be proved to be her own compositions; they may have been excerpted from a psalm by her brother.] 1 In the original poem I sing here (three sections, four stanzas per section), I express my feelings about her wondrous achievement. The tune I composed is based on her trademark stanza form. I demonstrate her “rhythm chart” and then show how singable it is. Plato is said to have uttered the judgment that Sappho should be counted as the “tenth Muse,” the newest member of that sisterhood of patrons of the arts and sciences. I mention this in my Part One. 2 Sappho is widely attested to have produced a massive output of lyrics, but only a pamphlet-size collection survives. Since I can't read her in Greek, I try to communicate with her spirit by singing in the rhythm she invented and prized. Will such a stratagem work? I compare my singing of her rhythm to a child's listening to the “ocean” roar in a seashell. The child doesn't hear the physical ocean. What it hears is the sound of the circulation of the child's own blood in the ear, vastly amplified by the intricately shaped shell! I learned this by consulting a scientific encyclopedia years ago. What the child hears, and what you too will hear in a seashell, is the FLOW OF THE OCEAN OF BLOOD WITHIN YOU. I note this in my Part Two while I sing and hear “the Sappho within me.” 3 In my Part Three I envision a chorus joining me in Sapphic song as the currents, waves, and waterdrops combine in the seashell's ocean.

Playful Warm-ups (173) It's time (174) Continued (175) Conclamant (176) From Chaucer to Me (177) Hispanic (178) Chaucer Varied Applications (234) Early Memory (235) Capriccio in Rhyme Royal (236) Psalm 150 in Rhyme Royal (237) What Never Wasn't There (238) Cup of Kindness (245) In and Out, Give and Take (246) Enigmatic Solitude (247) Quarantine (267) Joyce and Me

In this second episode from my latest book High Five! The William Shakespeare Beat is Back I'll offer examples of what can happen when you revive the 5-beat line (and ONE, and TWO, and THREE, and FOUR, and FIVE) that the world's greatest verse writer used in all his plays. Reviving Shakespeare, you also revive Keats, whose six great odes are mostly in iambic pentameter, as well. I wrote a half dozen original odes to emulate those of Keats, and then I wrote another 7 to prove it wasn't just luck. Here I'll give you samples from both groups. First, for context, the opening stanza of Keats' most famous poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (p. 30 of my book). Then, the samples. From Group One: 362 (1) Ode on Weather Theater 363 (2) Ode on Verse Pedagogy 367 (6) Ode on Words New-Wrought From Group Two: 376 (2) Ode on a Shmurah Matzah 377 (3) Ode on Dead Languages 380 (6) Ode to a Cup

Of special interest in this collection of 400 original poems in iambic pentameter is a group of 70 dialogues with Spanish folk singers. I selected them to represent the main category groupings in Love and Hate: Spanish Folk Songs (1911), translated into Russian by K. D. Balmont from the collection (1882) by Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Cantos populares españoles. These delightful micro-melodies (3, 4 or 7 lines each) each elicited from me an interpretive sonnet comment (in 5-beat lines). Poem 78: Introduction: Art of Spanish Wordsong 79 Being in Love (6) 80 Being in Love (32) 88 Tenderness (25) 91 Envy (3) 98 Confessions (4-5) 110 Lamenting (22) 117 Hate and Scorn (5) 136 Serenade (1, 2) 146 Lullabies (12)

Episode #40 Book of the Heaven Eleven (2) As episode #39 offered samples of my 50 catullics, so episode #40 will present examples of my 50 sapphics, another Greco-Roman poetic form that centers on the repeated use of eleven-syllable pentameters. I'll read a melodious poem describing changes in light and shadow in a room, and then present a metaphoric use of the sun-god chariot. Varying the sun-theme, I write a sapphic about Ovid's portrayal of the Phaeton myth as a cautionary allegory of a climate change apocalypse, then I sing an Einstein-influenced poem showing that a raisin, changed to energy, could heat New York City for a day. I conclude with poems elaborating the Sapphic theme of bisexual vision: a presentation of St. Onuphrius and then one of Dionysus.

Episode #39: Book of the Heaven Eleven (1) Roman poet Catullus and Greek poet Sappho both use eleven-syllable lines in their poetic stanzas. In this first part of my Intro I'll read my translation of a Catullus poem (with my commentary verse employing his rhythm) and a half-dozen examples of what I call “catullics.” I'll remark on certain references (Goethe's use of Greek myth, mystical numerology, Persian Sufi interpretation of Noah) which I've explained in my accompanying “blogatelles.” The idea is to ease the reader into the melodic flow of catullic wordsong.

Episode 38: The Heart of Giordano Bruno Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600 by the Inquisition in Rome for alleged heretical teachings (e.g. the multiplicity of worlds), wrote a book of love sonnets as did his contemporary Shakespeare. In modern sonnets and “replies” in the same verse form to the highlights of Bruno's The Heroic Enthusiasms, I hope to suggest the delight and inspiration he conveyed to me. To introduce you to the experience of reading the “interview,” I'll “act out,” with a few comments, the first 5 of our dialogues.

Episode 37: Modern Psalms in Ancient Rhythm (2) As the Biblical psalms often elaborate scripture stories, I want to do that, too. Tonight's reading will feature Abraham, with a couple of short episodes about Jacob, as well – again I'll read a total of 7 psalms. Distinctive about the scripture narratives in my interpretations will be the use of the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic legacy as my frame of reference. The story of Abraham's defiance is shared by Hebrew and Islamic writers; the story of his martyrdom by fire (called to a halt by God's mercy) is Qur'anic but also identical with a Jewish midrash.

Synopsis Episode 36: Modern Psalms in Ancient Rhythm (1) I introduce the reader, first, to ancient psalmodic rhythm by reading (and “conducting”) the opening passages of Psalm 92 (“A Psalm, A Song for the Sabbath Day”) in Hebrew, dramatizing their melodic wordsong achievement. Then, picking up the theme of sabbath, I recite 7 of my modern psalms, all written in the rhythm of my biblical mentor-poems. Kabbalistic and Sufi theme are introduced.

Synopsis Episode 35: Interviewing Sufi Poets We'll read sample interviews with 15 Sufi poets 1050- 1650. Each “interview” includes a lyric, a focused verse “reply” by me, and a contextual “blogatelle.” I Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Love the things of this world: wine Pages 41-43 wine II Anvari (1126-1189) Satire and moral teaching Pages 79-80 satiric-moral teaching III Nizami (1141-1209) Master of the parable Pages 100-103 Tale of Solomon and the Sower IV Attar (1146-1221) Mystical allegory Pages 113-117 Colloquies of the Birds: The Hoopoe V Rumi (1207-1273) Quelling ego to reach God Pages 147-151 Quelling the Ego Pages 152-154 To reach God VI Dervish Breviary (Rumi disciples) Loving a person parallels loving God Pages 182-183 Two love laments VII Saadi (1213-1291) Voice of love and loss Pages 210-213 Love Pages 221-223 Loss VIII Ibn Yemin (1287-1367) Prudent (disillusioned) counsel Pages 227-229 Three on Prudence IX Hafiz (1315-1390) Wine and tavern romance Pages 255-258 Love Song X Kamal Khujandi (1320-1400) Shakespeare-like love poet Pages 299-301 love song with Shakespeare parallel XI Jami (1414-1492) Hafizian love poet Pages 303-305 Hafizian love song XII Hatifi (1454-1529) Poet-prophet Pages 325-329 Summoned by God XIII Hilali (1470-1529) Seeker of the eternal Pages 382-384 Lament for what is gone XIV Faizi (1547-1595) Platonist poet Pages 413-414 From earth to heaven XV Saib (1592-1676) Poet of the middle path Pages 415-417 Middle path

Podcast 34: Pushkin's Hero, Tatyana Larina In this program, my aim is to introduce the hearer to the hero (now rapidly becoming a gender-neutral term) of Alexander Pushkin's world-famed novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. In many ways, she earns the laudatory title I'm giving her, and my presentation will help you get acquainted with her background, her cultural context, her family life, her mother's personality, and her strong, evolving personality and character. My “interview” technique, following each 14-line poem of Pushkin's with a commentary-sonnet of my own, was stimulated by the narrator's own habit of inserting his own comments repeatedly into the action of the highly absorbing verse novel. After reading poems 1.1 and 1.5, together with my verse “replies,” to show how my “interview” or “dialogue” book operates, in my readings about Tatyana I'll feature, first, sections 2.23-2.35 with my two poems about Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) as observed in upstate New York. Then I'll recite from section 3.1 to 3.21. The action at this point will have reached a point of major suspense….

PODCAST # 33 Speaking with the Chinese Theme: interior conversation. Friedrich Rückert completes in 1833 his 325 “adaptations” of the poems in the earliest collection of Chinese verse that we have, an anonymous work composed by pre-Confucian poets from the 11 th to the 7 th centuries BCE. Rückert, though he learned 44 languages, didn't know any more Chinese than I do. But he did have the recently discovered Latin prose translation published by Lacharme, a Jesuit priest, in 1733. I call my recital of English translations of Rückert “Speaking with the Chinese” because the poems Rückert offers feel to me like interior conversations with the Chinese fictive speakers. The poets, who lived centuries ago and are alive today through their poems, speak – or more precisely, sing – their poetic wordsongs to the German listener, and to each of these memorable people of Ancient China he “replies” by turning their prose utterances into German poems, in melodious rhythmic forms he invents to fit the feelings they convey to him. (1) Introduction to Chinese Life Poem 158. Pages from a Household Calendar. Poem 234. The Farmer. Poem 233. Competition: Outdoing the Steward. Poem 246. The Wine Steward. Poem 156. Faithful Steward. Poem 55. The Building of the Royal House. Poem 317. Forebears' Temple. Poem 310. Music at the Forebear Fest. Poem 271. A Meal for Death-boy Shi. Poem 169. Memorial Feast for the Dead. Poem 225. The Imperial Courier. Poem 112. Annoyances of Life at Court. Poem 57. The Border Guard. Poem 18. The Emperor's High Priest Robe. Characterizations and Conflicts Poem 224. Distribution of Wealth. Poem 212. Persecuted. Poem 166. In Praise of Brothers. Love: Rewards and Discontents Poem 218. Friends at Odds. Poem 94. Chance. Poem 52. Faithful unto Death. Poem 93. Expectation Poem 148. By Moonlight. Poem 149. A Restless Night. Poem 135. The Queen's War Song. Poem 58. At the Entry of the Royal Bride. Poem 26. Plaint of a Wife Unloved. Epilogue Poem 295. Nationwide Drought. Poem 303. Prayer.

Podcast Synopsis: The Be-loving Imaginer Episode 32: Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, A. Tolstoy This video podcast presentation for Binghamton University Lyceum, via Zoom, focuses on my new genre of poetry writing, the “Verse Interview Book.” From the section called “Russian Loves” in my book Six Dialogic Poetry Chapbooks, available from Amazon, I've selected verse interviews with four classic Russian poets: Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, A. Tolstoy. Here's my procedure: I'll read a poem in Russian, then act out my translation, then perform my “reply,” playing the role as “interviewer” responding to what the interviewee just said, and using the rhythm and rhyme pattern and stanza shape that he taught me. Pushkin poems will be “Cloud,” “Prisoner,” “Raven.” Lermontov poems will be “Angel,” “Clouds,” “Sail.” Fet poems will be “Bees,” “In the quiet of the night,” “Grizzle-bearded high priest,” “Nothingness,” “The winter night has power” A. Tolstoy poem will be “In the west pallid sunrays were dying.”

PODCAST #31: THREE PARABLES ABOUT JESUS My latest book, Persian Poetic Renaissance: 15 Sufi Poets in “Verse Interviews” contains 3 parables about Jesus that are delightful, highly original poetic masterworks. The poets are Nizami (on Jesus and the Dead Dog), Goethe (on Jesus, Peter, and the Horseshoe), and Attar (on Jesus and the Soup Pot). For context I may add: greatly respected as a teacher and prophet, Jesus in the Qur'an is called Messiah and said to have been born of a virgin. By each of the 15 poets I chose to translate for this book (from Joseph Hammer's German encyclopedic anthology of 1818 containing 200 poets) I offered 7 poems, and I added to each a verse “reply” and a more broadly focused interpretive “blogatelle.” In this podcast I've chosen to read my “reply” to Attar's Jesus parable to explore the psychological implications, and in my supplementary podcast comments I offer possible tie-ins with the Sufi teaching of the ultimate unknowability of both our own essential selves and the Ultimate Being in Whose likeness we are fashioned.

For years I've loved to recite Omar Khayyam (1048-113 as translated by the master Victorian wordsong writer Edward FitzGerald. “Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent / Doctor and sage…” I owe the Persian poet two things: (1) a gently melancholy but likeable skepticism which at the same time says ‘Enjoy the moment!” and (2) a beautiful verse form with rhyme patter AABA. Pp. 14-15 show how I tried to “improve” the Omar four-line stanza. P. 17 show how I started to interbreed the Omar stanza with model-quatrains I learned from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The beauty of form and the commonsense cheerfulness of my mood always seemed to be carrying on Omar's legacy as he might have liked. Now let me show you some fruits of my Omar-pilgrimage: (1) The game of tag, rewakened, spring = open the door, and write. (2) A Shakespeare Episode = write up the play you've just read. (3) Who sing become what they proclaim = daily life recalls Sufi tradition. (4) Do I need to surrender to sleep? Will my dreaming = rhythm of thought. (40) E-mail to Lucy – and replies from two German “almanac” poets. (46) Jotted Rubaiyat – and a world of dying-god myths (blogatelle 46) (51) Moon Guardian Steadfast of the Way – Korean music on the shamisen (68) That wine's a problem I'm aware – personality portrait of Persian poet Hafiz (77) A Prayer of Love – simple Omar-style quatrain with simple Omar-type reply

The three bisexually oriented books I'll recite from today are landmark achievements in world culture, and I've written books in “interview” style to con-verse with them. Virgil (70-19 BCE) wrote Eclogues, ten one-act verse plays about Roman country life. All his shepherd-farmers are startlingly cultured people, poets and musicians who speak often about music and whose main form of entertainment is to arrange contests in lyrical composition, singing, and reciting. I'll read the Second Eclogue, which is a soliloquy of mainly homoerotic love lament. And I'll read parts 1-3 of my “reply” lyric for context. [I translate Virgil from the 1853 German version by Christian Nathaniel Osiander.] Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz (1315-1390) is a Persian pub poet from whose Divan or Collection I translate using Joseph von Hammer's 1815 German version. My book, called Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance, sums up Hafiz' two main concerns. Tavern Romances in medieval Shiraz are chiefly homosexual. Poem 8 dramatizes Hafiz' love for his boyfriend unforgettably in the first two lines. I'll read my two-part “reply” in the interview about this poem, Poem 16 is another lyric I'll recite. In my book Shakespair I interview Shakespeare by replying to each of his 154 sonnets with a sonnet of my own in the same stanza pattern. On p. xiv I sum up the censorship problem he faced early on for his frequent homoerotic focus. In sonnets 1 and 4 with reply I sample talks Will has had with his boyfriend, and in reply 9 I offer a comment. Sonnet 20 focuses on the master-mistress theme, and I comment on this by reading part 4 of my reply to Virgil's Second Eclogue. Let me thank Kristen Kemmerer and Emily Phelps, organizers who helped set up the October 23-24 2021 Annual SUNY Pride Conference at SUNY Oneonta where I presented my virtual contribution, which you are viewing and hearing.

Shi-Jing, or Book of Songs – China's earliest verse anthology, 11th to 7th centuries BCE, with all poets anonymous, was translated into Latin by an 18th century French Jesuit priest, a prose text lost, then rediscovered, reprinted in Germany in 1830. It became the source text for an 1833 version by German's greatest translator-poet, Friedrich Rückert, who learned 44 languages. Chinese wasn't among them, but Rückert, in his poem “The Spirits of the Songs: A Prelude” shows the spirits of the songs beginning for rebirth in a new language and assuring him of assistance (read final stanza, p. 56). My approach in this podcast will be simply to read you some of my super-favorites. I've chosen a baker's dozen that are brief but vivid. #241 Lover's Journey #100 The Queen Awakes the King #68. Interpreting the Gifts of Love #77 Joys of a Uniform Coat #3 The Visit of the Young Wife #19 Night-time Duties at Court #36 Modest and Proper #51 Beauty of Unconstraint #95 Worthy Love #101 The Harried Servant #106 Economic Arrangements #109 Common Need and Non-Participation #279 To the Favorite

Here I sing for you a new national anthem I've written for the French people, and to help everyone celebrate Bastille Day in a tranquil and loving mood. A member of the French parliament, some decades back, called for an anthem that would be less bloody and vengeful than the “Marseillaise” by Rouget de Lisle, and I promptly wrote such a hymn of peace. In this presentation I sing the older version, first stanza, then I recite the English translation I made of my new “Marseillaise de la paix,” and lastly I sing my new anthem with spirit and with vigor.

Interfaith Wordsongs: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Poems [$12.50] Wednesday, June16: 12-1 (Rain Date: Thursday, June 17), Lyceum. Location: Cutler Gardens, 840 Upper Front St, Binghamton, NY. Presenter: Poet Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus, English, BU. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims all consider Abraham the founder of their One God religions. The poets I love most from all three intertwining traditions overleap conventional boundaries in the search for an all-enveloping worldview centered on what matters most to the human heart. 'God,' or Ultimate Being, is ultimately unknowable, but if It is the force that imagined our pluriverse, It set the example for imaginative people who wisely reply to that impulse with intensity, calm, and fervor, merged in the rootedness and serenity of unshakable Love. Join us at Cutler Gardens as I read poetry from each tradition.” Martin Bidney taught at BU for 35 years and has made his 17 years of retirement into a retoolment, publishing 35 books of original and translated verse. Typically, Martin likes to “interview,” in talk-show format, the speaker of a text whom he chooses to be his mentor-friend. To every selection he transcribes or translates, he responds with a “reply” poem of his own. Today he will sample three books where he has interviewed three thinkers, respectively from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. Martin calls himself not a believer but a “be-lover,” and he's looking for unities within the Judaeo-Christo-Islamic tradition and elsewhere. He likes particularly to choose mystical writers to dialogue with, for they are distinguished by depth of introspection and scope of cosmic awareness. They love what Martin calls “the boundless and the beating heart.” Here are today's sources: Part One: Judaism. Wordsongs of Jewish Thought: 108 Tanya Response Poems – lyrical replies to passages in a classic work of Kabbalah with definitive commentary by the world's foremost authority on the work, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2020). Part Two: Christianity. Book of the Dactyl: Third Journal in Verse, Including Poem-Dialogues with the Witty Mystic Angelus Silesius (Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2019). Part Three: Islam. God the All-Imaginer: Wisdom of Sufi Master Ibn Arabi in 99 Modern Sonnets, with a new translation of his “Three Mystic Odes” and with 27 full-page calligraphies by Shahid Alam (Vestal NY: Dialogic Poetry Press, 2016).

PODCAST #25 SUPPLEMENT POEMS FOR “ONEGIN” In Podcast #24 I recited the first few dialogic exchanges of sonnets between Pushkin's verse novel “Eugene Onegin,” and me, the translator and collocutor. Here I'd like to supplement our book-long con-verse-ation or interview with additional lyrics, mainly by Pushkin, which I added to clarify crucial moments in the Russian poet's text. I'll begin my sampling with an introductory lyric, “Collocutor's Preface” (26-27) that will convey my mood when beginning the innovative interview project, modeled upon my earlier exchange of sonnets with those of Shakespeare in my book “Shakespair” and with Rilke in "Rilke's Art of Metric Melody." Then I'll read Pushkin's poem of delight called “Winter Morning” (388), where the mood matches my own in the “Preface” poem. “I built myself a monument” (140), based on an ode by Horace, shows Pushkin's satisfaction with his career as inclusive poet welcoming many traditions. “Earliest memories…” (335) shows the poet in a more troubled self-presentation, written in the Dantescan terza rima to convey a solemn tone. Then we'll highlight Pushkin's talent as ballad writer in “Once there lived a simple knight” (327). The astonishing poem “Feast in Time of Plague” (322), from a minidrama of that name, shows a Shakespearean dramatic power. I'll offer a couple of strophes in Russian to show the force of the original. Lastly, I'll sample a couple of poems on mermaids, one by Pushkin's disciple Mikhail Lermontov, and one by the later Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont, to which I'll offer a final brief reply (108-109).

Synopsis for Podcast 22 Pushkin's Onegin with Replies Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's most beloved poet. Eugene Onegin, called by Pushkin a “novel in verse,” is Russia's favorite narrative poem and her most influential novel. The narrative – about what was widely called a “superfluous man” – sets a context for the works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov that were to follow. From Lord Byron, Pushkin borrowed a clever device: the use of a casual narrator who becomes a fascinating character in the story. Tchaikovsky made Onegin into a great tragic opera, but he had to leave out the entertaining character of the narrator – plus all the delightful mood changes in the storyteller's personality. Form-faithful translator Martin Bidney has created a new genre of literature, the verse interview book. For every 14-line poem of Pushkin's, Bidney writes a Pushkin-style “reply” poem! So the book becomes a total dialogue, really two verse novels in conversation. Utterly unprecedented. The translator as collocutor.

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part 2: Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British Renaissance, and modern German, plus poems he has written in varied beat-schemes. Readings dramatize the joy the wordsongs give, and discussions are lively.

The Joys of Poetic Meter, Part I: Martin Bidney, a poet, translator, scholar, and critic who has published 33 volumes of verse, here offers on a zoom YouTube the first presentation in a two-part mini-course, "The Joys of Poetic Meter." The course, as a whole, explores the rhythmic forms of lines and stanzas from poems of the last 3000 years, including ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, British Renaissance, and modern French, plus poems he has written in varied beat-schemes. Readings dramatize the joy the wordsongs give, and discussions are lively.

PODCAST #21: VALENTINE'S SPECIAL Originally planned as video collage 9.4, this presentation became Episode #21 of “Martin Bidney, The Be-loving Imaginer” for two compelling reasons. (1) The Valentine's Day presentation is the most joyous love song I have written. (2) “Love” is pre-eminently the mood of my “Be-loving Imaginer” offerings. Here is a poem that my Valentine's Day song performance stimulated: 327 Song of Love I wrote a love song, and a pleasure sweet Could feel when singing this to a computer! Be blest, kind Muse of Tech, who are my tutor – You as my Valentine I also greet. I started out with improvising. “Wing it!” The goddess told me, “Loosen up the mind: A carefree heart will new coherence find. Abide in me, and I will help you sing it.” I felt that vocal spirits treasure kept For decades well protected while they slept… Then David words had whispered: Shir ḥadash (“New song”) and then he added yitkadash (“Let it be sanctified”). And then I knew My love I'd sing to Universal You.

PODCAST #20: WORDSONGS OF JEWISH TRADITION In this interview book I converse with the commentator (and at times with the original author) who together produced a new, 3-volume version of the Tanya, an 18th century spiritual handbook, so that the modern reader can place the mystical thinking in a wide context of Hasidic anecdotes and legends. Schneur Zalman, the original author, provided what amounts to a runway for the modern interpreter, the late Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, can launch us on a tour of the many parables he knows and retells with wonderful charm and often witty humor. I write wordsongs in reply to 108 songs of the Steinsaltz Tanya, 36 for each of the three volumes. I'll give a few samples of these entertaining interviews. Dialogue II.23 Unaware of What We Are Doing shows how the storyteller and the wordsong interpreter cooperate as (so it feels to me) a fruitful unity. Dialogue II.3 Without any desire to receive shows how we “take off” from a lively anecdote and together reach a helpful lesson. Dialogue II.1 Lined with Pillows highlights Rabbi Steinsaltz' quite special fondness for quirky, peculiar stories about real people. Dialogue I.14 Six Mighty Horses features our shared love of a wide range of diverse human beings. My introduction of the theme of children leads us then to Dialogue III.5 Stress on Direct Perception. I love to emphasize the central mood of the book, which is good humor and the love of life. Dialogue I.1 What's the first is perfect for an opener. Dialogue I.3. The Talmud Relates tells us comedians have reserved seats in heaven. Humor is a kind of energetic vitality, or vital energy, a virtue praised in Dialogue I.4 We find the soul, telling of the delights of vigorous breathing. Dialogue I.9 I do not want shows me replying to the religious teacher's affirmations with agreement, but from my somewhat different perspective as a poet. Dialogue III.10 The degree of intensity may be the best conclusion, to show an overall impression we get from the whole interview book: intensity of life is happiness.

PODCAST #19: VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES WITH VERSE REPLIES On the back cover I write, summing up the global importance of this ancient Roman work: “One of the major bisexual imaginings in world literature, the Eclogues of Virgil are ancient Roman musical masterworks, rivaling the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Every wordsong in the group of ten is a one-act play, and every character is a music lover. Love and Death are always with us, to enjoy and to suffer, but word music is the great transcender: Art redeems Life. Since the works in this collection are rather longer than those I've worked with before, I'll recite, among Virgil's poems, only Eclogue Two, featuring the love soliloquy of Corydon, lamenting the inattention of his male friend Alexis and pleading for a more encouraging response to the would-be lover's gifts and requests. I then recite “Virgil and Shakespeare,” the opening section of my verse reply to the eclogue, important in highlighting a central fact about the Virgilian achievement in this volume: as a triumph of bisexual lyrical imagining, it is the precursor of the Shakespeare Sonnets.

PODCAST #17: INDIAN, PERSIAN, ARABIAN POEMS I have an astonishing opportunity to acquaint you with Indian, Persian, and Arabian poems in perfectly crafted versions, thanks to the mid-19th-century German translator, scholar, and poet Friedrich Rückert, who learned 44 languages, including Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabian. In talk-show interview style, I offer English versions of Rückert's poetic treasures, each one followed by a “reply” poem of my own in closely similar style. To show how enlivening the interaction can be, let me start with Dialogue 64, The Dream Form. In Dialogue 65 Guidance in Love you'll hear a dialogue in a highly unusual stanza form, faithfully followed by me from the folk poet. Dialogue 51, Verses in the Desert offers an alarming view of love for me to cope with… Of high entertainment value are the many stories we're given. Dialogue 52, The Hermit and the Hound is a short narrative masterpiece. Dialogue 115, Most Handsome Gift to the Handsome is a neatly paired couple of clever tales, the second one by Persian poet Rumi. And I love the clever girl featured in Dialogue 127, Abulaina. Finally, Dialogue 128, Al-Mansur's Death on a Pilgrimage is an extremely short story followed by a relaxed reply. Love stories are outstanding in this collection. Dialogue 1 and poem 2 of the books opening story Aja and Indumati by the greatest ancient poet of India Kalidasa, shows a typical feature of love narratives in a Hindu context: two sets of characters – the human and the preter-human (gods. who are intensified versions of ourselves). Dialogue 43, Stages of Love features the love-philosophy of Bhatrihari, a man who tried seven times to become a monk.

PODCAST #16, A MUSIC LOVER'S ART This book is filled with poems about classical and folk music I love. Let's begin with Mozart, a composer everyone loves because his music is so packed with great tunes, and his personality is youthfully impulsive. Try “The ‘trumpet concerto'” (312). Beethoven equals him in popularity, and I join in, translating Nikolai Zabolotsky's “Beethoven” (314) and offering a “reply” to the great “Ode to Joy” in my brief lyric, “Beethoven's Ninth” (318). I could hardly choose from the many I've done on Bach: a sample is “Thoughts on a Bach Cantata Strophe” (276). Schubert's “Alder King” (246) stimulated a lively reply Let's try composers from a variety of nationalities. American Samuel Barber is a great favorite of mine, and he stimulated “I want to write what never wasn't there” (329). “Old Man River” from the Kern-Hammerstein “Show Boat” (119) entranced me. Verdi's (“La Traviata,” 96) at Glimmerglass affected me strongly. Russian composer Moussorgsky I love for his “Song of the Flea” (168), and about Stravinsky I wrote in “Rite of Spring?” (332). Finnish composer Sibelius is perfect in his orchestral piece “Tapiola” (217). Spanish “Sarasate” (71) kindled my interest in the music of Spanish verses, too (“Song arising to the mouth,” 269). Another national folk tradition comes through in O'Carolan's tune to which Thomas Moore set his poem “The Young May Moon,” but I have written new lyrics to it! (see Planxty Peyton, 59).

Today's freestyle chat has 4 parts, all stemming from Roger Brooks' book The Power of Being Rich: 10 Essential Principles to Manifest What You Already Have. As dialogic interpreter, my bold beginning is to suggest that Roger's admirable volume might equally well be titled The Power of Rich Being. Roger wants to show people how to conceive and advance a practical enterprise by starting with a feeling of abundant Being, fullness of Being, plenitude of Being. It starts with confidence, which is nothing more than faith – faith in yourself. Gratitude for your gifts is both starting point and end result. Next, I show that the exchange of approaches between Roger and me amplifies the meaning of the book we're discussing, and this deepening or broadening of significance is the essence of friendship. Friendship is mutual mentorship, reciprocal shared learning. I invented the new literary genre of the verse interview to develop dialogue-friendships of this kind with writers I admire. In Shakespair I answer all the Bard's 154 love sonnets with Shakespearean-style sonnets on facing pages. What an extraordinary human experience! But it's also, for me, very ordinary in that my poetic “career” began when I discovered it was more fun to write e-mails in sonnets rather than in the usual conversational prose. In part 3 I show how Goethe, Germany's greatest poet, relates the theme of rich being to that of friendship. In his poem “Breathing,” he tells us that the tension of inhaling and the relaxation of exhaling are two types of “grace” or vital taking-and-giving, the healthiness of rich Being. Next, he writes a myth of Lucifer or Satan as uneasy in the continual society of God or Elohim. Satan leaves them to be on his own, but gets lonely. Using Jesus as a role model, Satan decides to return to harmony with the Elohim. But, being the kind of person he is, Satan eventually gets restless and has to leave again. What results is a pendular movement between Solitude and Friendship. The “devil” loves it, and so will we. This alternation I correlate to the contrasts in the “Breathing” poem between inhaling and exhaling. Moral and psychological “breathing” means alternating between taking and giving, between self-affirming (inhaling) and self-transcendence (exhaling), between “Selving” and “Unselving,” two wonderful word coinages of Goethe. This alternation is deeply, powerfully lifegiving. It enriches our Being. Finally, in part 4, I show how the gift of a gingko-patterned coffee cup from a potter friend (artist mentor), added to reverie-thoughts on the November window landscape (reminding me of the paintings of painter Andrew Wyeth, another artist mentor), produced a dialogue-response in the form of a newly composed sonnet.

PODCAST #15: ANGELUS, GUIDE TO GOD WITHIN by Martin Bidney Angelus Silesius, the Silesian Angel, was the name Johannes Scheffler took when he converted from the Lutheran to the Catholic Church. But as witty mystic poet, he aims to bring his imagining Heart to oneness with ULTIMATE BEING, THE GOD BEHIND THE NAMES and formulations. His poetry book, “Cherubinischer Wandersmann,” could be translated Companion Angel. Living in a century of religious wars, he wants, through introspection, to find harmony. Mystic = Greek myein = to close the eyes. Looking inward, Angelus finds the oneness of the Beating Heart with the Boundless. Immensely daring imaginative calisthenics through intense love can expand the heart so that it, too, is boundless. I interview Angelus 86 times, commenting on his deep and innovative metaphors. The Boundless itself is a metaphor – a closely related one is Horizon, the Ultimate Being we can't reach. Look in your heart to find the boundless – I use this thought of Angelus as my own personal motto (Dialogue 200). Exploring the Boundless – Beyond the Names Dialogue 115. The Uncreated Ocean. Dialogue 119. The Over-Godhead. Dialogue 120. Love brings us to the Over-God. Dialogue 116. I'm as big and as small as God. Dialogue 117. God's the fire, I'm the shine. Dialogue 140. Become all things & thus a god. Poet as Mary and God as Her Child Dialogue 121. Let me be Mary and bear God. Dialogue 132. I want to be Mary! Dialogue 136. God allows for all metaphoric family roles.

PODCAST #14: INTERVIEWING SUFI POET RUMI by Martin Bidney Intro: Rumi = Pre-eminent Sufi Mystic Poet, thirteenth century. I translate him from Tholuck's German, and I interview him, offering verse replies. Dialogue 49 = Inclusion: all religions are one. Dialogue 46 = Inclusion: all spirits are one. I Rumi teaches through Surprise. Dialogue 53. The saint turns hell to heaven, as Milton's Satan did in Paradise Lost. Both of these reside within the human spirit. “The mind is its own place, and of itself / Can make heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. Dialogue 42. Forgiveness is an original ACTION, not a mere re-action. Ali shows that, contra Newton, every action does not have an equal and opposite reaction / retaliation. See Qur'an 42:43. “And verily whoso is patient and forgiveth – lo! that, verily is (of) the stedfast heart of things.” Dialogue 40 shows, via Rumi's poem, the Chinese mural painting less perfect than the Byzantine mirror that makes it clearer through purity of heart. But in my Reply I add that a painting = mirror of the Creativity of the Creator. Dialogue 68 = “Golden Mean” ethical model of Aristotle vs. immeasurable Height-and-depth. Spokesman for height-and-depth, though, is deemed weak in character by his Sufi hearers. Balance – or Exploration? II Freedom through the Holiness of Nature – and Beyond. Dialogue 65, about Ibrahim Ibn Adhàm viewed as like St. Francis or Buddha, attuned to Nature. Dialogue 66 shows Ibn Adhàm with a parable of twig and orchard relating to the springtime fragrance of the magic shirt of Joseph. Compare to Dialogue 67 = Symposium of Senses, holiness of Nature. Cf. Ibn Arabi: one person praying = Complete Congregation of Organs and Thoughts.

PODCAST #13: SUFI LYRICS IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT by Martin Bidney My month-long spiritual pilgrimage at the Sekem desert farming settlement in 2011 was guided by Sufi mentors in the Religion of Love. I Poet Omar as my Sufi mentor. Medieval Sufi Omar's most famous quatrain, from his Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Victorian interpreter Edward FitzGerald, begins, “A book of Verses underneath the Bough.” This world-famed four-line love song introduced me to the SUFI RELIGION OF LOVE. I emulate the “Book of Verses” love song in these poems, where I shorten the Omar lines by one beat to sweeten the harmonies: 82. So went the caravan away 77. The courtyard – filled with leaves and blooms, 73. Our worldly life was at an end [a woman's love for God] 63. The eyes that light the sky of her [a man loves a woman and God] 90. A vast and mighty [love of the Unnamable, my epigraph and epitaph] I also love Omar's lines beginning Myself when young did eagerly frequent and ending with the words I came like water, and like wind I go. This I emulate here: 69. Like water come, like wind I go [love every moment] 29. Now labor carefully to pay [theme of carpe diem, seize/love the day] II My Medieval Mentors in Sufi Religion of Love IBN ARABI 21. The curlew painted RUMI 22. The theme of union 34. Of poet Attar, Rumi said RABI'A 31. Just pure surrender – that's enough 46. O Lord, I hope each worldly thing III Shahid Alam as My Neighbor-mentor in Sufi Religion of Love 83-85 It is the month of Ramadan [legend of lifegiving love] 86 The coachman told: the glowing rose [miracle parable of love] 71 My friend, called Witness of the World [allusion to the Eastern Romeo & Juliet]

PODCAST #12: RUSSIAN LOVES by Martin Bidney Wordsong is like music generally – it transforms whatever it touches. When I select a poetic mentor to teach me word music, I reshape what I've heard, and then my reshaped self replies with a new music – always new because engendered by what I've just heard. Nineteenth-century poets Alexander Pushkin, Michael Lermontov, and Athanasius Fet – lyrical writers in the Romantic tradition – are three of my Russian poetic mentors, friends, collaborators, comrades, guides, teachers, examples – and interviewees. In talk-show format, I'll translate a lyric by one of my guests and then reply to it in the style I've just learned by doing the form-faithful English rendering! The spur to creativity offered by the interview approach to a cross-cultural encounter, what I call “dialogic” or conversational translating, is a continual source of renewed vigor and poetic strength. I'll offer samples from the “Russian Loves” section of my Amazon compilation, Six Dialogic Poetry Chapbooks. Pushkin's “Prisoner” and “Raven” both offer a mood and feeling that makes the poem feel like a folksong, so I respond gladly – to the first with exhilaration, to the second with alarm. “I built myself a monument” is a model for a goal-oriented manifesto-poem, and I offer a similar invitation. Lermontov's “Angel” and my “Homo Dubitans” offer comparable sober-minded assessments of the perils of retrospection. Lermontov's triumphant “Clouds,” with its melodious meter, “set free” no fewer than four of my exuberant “replies” in comparably singable stanza forms. Fet is the least known of the three masters, but Russian readers have generally ranked him near the top of their roster of supreme lyrical adepts. “Bees” made me want to unfold an explication of the poem's cleverly subtle psychology in my “reply.” Fet's poem “Don't Ask” challenged me even more strongly to reply with psychological spelunking. “My Day Gets Up” took me deeper into the poet's ways of exploring how his past affects every moment of his present awareness. I was startled at the tenderness and power of these too-long-neglected lyrical revelations.

PODCAST #11, TAXI DRIVERS by Martin Bidney Taxi Drivers – a topic made from an eye problem – and a way of making friends for the be-loving imaginer. Art is at the heart of startle. I like to consider each of my taxi driver interview lyrics a mini-drama with an outcome of startling power, occasioned by either a sudden change of perspective toward the end, or else simply by the surprise of having a moment of life turned into a wordsong to be remembered and resung. In poem 2, “She growled, and loudly,” we start with a catfight but suddenly switch to places where people fight. Poem 5, “Pettable animals,” leads to a surprise biographical revelation. Poem 8, “Look searching, mirrored,” varies the pattern: here I am the speaker, and my explanation of a viewpoint to the taxi driver builds up color and strength by adding more and more detail. In poem 9, “Curved cover, curled-up corners,” indirect discourse, reported statement, lets me unfold the story I'm hearing in the speaker's own language. Poem 14, “You came back here from Nashville, Tennessee?,” performs the personality-unfolding at a slow, casual tempo. Poem 15, “Sure, more than thirty years. Played bass guitar,” was a ready-made anecdote so effective I wonder if it's a near-poem that I'm hearing. Poem 18, Year and a half,” about leaving Florida, has the inevitability of a flower unfolding. Poem 19, “Tattoos referring to the tunes he wrote,” shows this again, more intensely. Poem 20, “Give me this mantle of a grace-rich green,” turns me into a possible fictive taxi driver. I hadn't guessed that merely looking out of the cab window would draw forth such a deep satisfaction. In poem 21, “Algerian-born, the taxi-driver” a similar surprise awakes from the depth of my gratitude in response to the driver's earnest, hesitant question. Poem 25 is the monologue of a poet about a cactus. Poem 27, “The changing sets of heaven theater” lets a story unfold through reported statement blending with my own feelings. Poem 29, “We're going down – I'm from Manhattan, so you see,” gets all the sudden power from a child's intelligence. Poem 30, “My car was flooded, so I called to see if maybe” was a drama written by my fellow passenger! In poem 32, “I've gone across the country on my motorbike” lets the biker add drama with a sudden switch of perspective at the end. And poem 34, “I really liked my neighbor; she had passed away” does the same thing with equal surprise.

PODCAST #10: GUMILEV, WORLD TRAVELER by Martin Bidney Nikolay Gumilev (1886-1921) was Russia's pre-eminent traveler poet. He has even said that his sponsor, his supernatural patroness, was the “Muse of distant travel,” the Goddess of Journeying. His journeys were adventures in self-discovery. TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, RISK, & SELF-DISCOVERY could be the motto of his life-work. Is it a surprise that, working in the literary department of the Soviet bureaucracy to translate, compile, and publish major poems of world literature, he should focus on translating England's greatest poem of travel, adventure, risk, and self-discovery? And this is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I'll offer a few lines of each, to show Gumilev as connoisseur-translator. Then I'll use 97. Adam's Dream as a frame narrative to orient us to the twofold character of Gumilev's poetic travels: joyful self-discovery in the face of risk, peril, and death. Adam and Eve were legendary history's first self-discovering travelers, having left a protected garden for a protracted Time of Transition. In Romantic Flowers 35. Giraffe playfully suggests to a young person a trip to present-day Africa, and 36. Rhinoceros continues in that spirit. The poet identifies with both traveler and animals. Yet risks for travelers are shown in 33. Contagion and 52. Forest Fire. Gumilev's travels to far-off places and cultures resulted in poems of peril and alarm. But also humor, and amusement! My favorite is one of his last lyrics, 258. Drunken Dervish, portrait of a hippie mystic. In contrast, 260. Prayer of the Masters portrays a spokesman for traditional icon painters in a Greek monastery. Gumilev, adventurer and studious literary organizer, can identify strongly with each: the rule-breaking rebel and the spiritual seeker bound to the constraints of duty. Poem 1. Sonnet presents the poet as youthful knight in shining armor, an early Spanish explorer of the Americas, triumphantly envisioning his beauty-adorned death. Then, already in 58. Old Conquistador (Pearls), the explorer plays dice with death as rival. Who can win such a game? In 72. Antiquity boredom generates a burst of desire for visionary journeys. Gumilev's travel gets spooky when he enters the dream world and encounters the preternatural, as in 49. Possessed. Life and death, travel and risk, peril and self-discovery combine in Gumilev. 75. Backwaters, a poem astonishing for sudden power, contrasts with 211. Ezbekiyeh, where the hero's life hangs in the balance between affirmation and a sudden end.

PODCAST #9: JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE QUR'AN by Martin Bidney The Be-loving Imaginer, seeking to be the scripture he sings, is delighted to discover ways that a love for already be-loved scriptures can be startlingly expanded. The Qur'an is chiefly a storybook, where you encounter participants in the stories of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Qur'an shows you these people in new episodes and adventures. I'll focus on the new perspectives I love the most. I'll be using as sourcebooks my A Unifying Light and East-West Poetry. Poem 1 UL shows an inclusive attitude: God offers three religions co-equally. Adam and Eve (poems 6, 7 UL) are co-equal in their eating of the forbidden fruit (wheat seed?) and are soon forgiven. But one offense remains (poem 5 UL); Adam is a failure at stewardship. Abraham is not only founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; for the Qur'an he pardons his father for trying to burn him alive (see Qur'an intro, poem 95 E-W P) and becomes a martyr hero who teaches forgiveness (poem 75 UL). Joseph has no coat of many colors but acquires a miracle shirt. When the official's wife at Pharaoh's court tries to tempt him, she rips the back of his shirt, which turns into a miracle cure for the blindness of his grieving father Jacob. She accuses Joseph of the misdeed and he's sent to jail (poem 44 UL, no intro). When the court ladies call her to account, she introduces Joseph, and in a comic scene they're overcome by his beauty (intro to poem 42 UL). Moses' cordial welcome by Pharaoh's wife may have engendered the love that later drew her to convert to the Jewish God and to condemn Pharaoh (poem 79 UL). Pharaoh's wife Asiya is a wonderful new character in the Qur'anic story of Moses. King Solomon – a bad steward? I raise the question, as the Qur'an does (poem 87 UL). Virgin Mary receives miraculous nourishment to soothe her horrendous labor pains (poem 93 E-W P). According to Sufi poet Rumi, we are each a Mary who must bear a Jesus. The Qur'anic Jesus offers a sermon while still in cradle (2nd half of intro plus poem 30 E-W P). He models a clay bird and it flies (poem 27 UL). This latter story is told in a Chrstian gospel, as the idol-smashing narrative occurs in a Jewish Midrash. But Torah, Gospel, and Qur'an are all Divinely created, as shown way back in Poem 1 UL.

PODCAST #8: ANCIENT WORDSONG FORMS by Martin Bidney Today the Be-loving Imaginer finds new things to be-love: the virtually extinct rhythm patterns and stanza forms of ancient Greek lyrical poems, also used with enthusiasm by Roman poets. Some of these forms were briefly and beautifully resurrected in late 18thand early 19th century Germany by Klopstock, Hölderlin, Goethe, and Schiller. But even this partial revival was never picked up by Anglo poets, and that's why I made it a major career project to become an archeologist of ancient meters, of neglected but extremely attractive rhythms in ancient verses, which are invigorating and – singable! Three-syllable structure units are basic to ancient verse. Popular English verse rhythms in recent centuries are largely 2-syllable units: the best known example is the iamb (la-LA, weak STRONG) as in Shakespeare's five-beat lines (iambic pentameter). But what about the threes? Today, they've been largely relegated to nursery rhymes and lyrics for children (p. 26). I'll show you four of these 3-syllable structure units in my new ancient-revival poems. Ancient writers combine the 2s and 3s in beautiful patterns. The 3s are crucial: that's why my book is called Bliss in Triple Rhythm.Here are four of the three-syllable structure units. The amphibrach (weak STRONG weak, x/x) lends energy to poem 2 (p. 79). The anapest (weak weak STRONG, xx/) gives a gallop to poem 51 (p. 135). The dactyl (STRONG weak weak, /xx) shines in the sunflower of poem 100 (196). And the amphimacer (STRONG weak STRONG /x/), rarest of the four, shows up in a comedy sequence about dieting (Intro to 100 Artisanal Tonal Poems). Now come the ancient treats, all combos of twos and threes. (1) The “third asclepiadic” is so musical in poem 109 (p. 211), I'll even sing it for you! (2) The “fourth asclepiadic” it not only a song but a dance – see poem 149, p. 256. (3) The “fifth asclepiadic” adds drums to the song-and-dance. (4) “Hendecasyllabic,” the 11-syllable form, is good for relaxed thinking-and-feeling (poem 174, p. 292). With the “alcaic” the dancing gets really lively! (poem 192, p. 315). “Sapphic,” in contrast, is a smoothly flowing song (poem 234, p. 369). Poem 257 on p. 396 will let me conclude with my own freshly-invented combo of threes and fours.

PODCAST #7: RÜCKERT THE MODERN SUFI by Martin Bidney Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) knew 44 languages and translated poetry and scripture from many, including Arabic and Sanskrit. His spiritual diary, Wisdom of the Brahman: A Didactic Poem in Fragments (1835-1836) is a guidebook fashioned by what I would call a modern western Sufi pilgrim. His outlook often parallels that of medieval Sufi mystical expositor Ibn Arabi. Using opener-poems I wrote (in my God the All-Imaginer) to sum up the earlier writer's thoughts, I'll show applications of the wisdom in the later German poet's lyrical journal, which my book The Boundless and the Beating Heart presents in the form of translated word songs with my own reply-poems. In effect I'm Rückert's interviewer. Love comes first for both the Persian and the German. Ibn Arabi gives us “Boundless Love” (xliv), and Rückert (4) praises the passions in their many forms and stages. On 28-29 my dialogue with R. centers on making friends in new places; on 29-30 we talk about how your child can become your best friend. R. loves jokes but on 36-37 he tells you not to joke too harshly with your child. Humor, loved by Sufis (e.g. Nasreddin Hodja), may be shown by R. in the punch-line of a witty parable (99-100), also in my reply (100). In 109-110 the joke-stories of the eagle and donkey offer more Sufi humor. And a dialogue on 167 about the perils and opportunities of leaping clinches the humor-point. Pilgrimage means we're traveling always toward new “Waystations,” Ibn Arabi explains in my poem of that name (25). In 136-137 R. and I dialogue about the equal viability of endlessly multiple types and ways of living. Two dialogues between R. and me on 219-222 clarify the changing waystations as manifesting different Names, or aspects of God's nature and of our own potential. The Cup – all names of poems I wrote about Ibn Arabi (26) – expand the concept of waystation in ways that relate intimately to R. Symbols, religions, myths, poems are cups for the water of spirit, giving them form and color. So on p. 1 R. and I dialogue on the “bead” as a container for spiritual meanings. A colloquy on 36 is provoked by “mildness” as a waystation or cup. On 122-123 we've a comedy dialogue about cups or knots: a sentence – or a single letter – can be either one. On 177 we dialogue about the self-sufficiency of the fragment: a small cup. The human receptacle that's filled with the feeling of ever-expanding horizon may seem a limited container, yet it is The Boundless and the Beating Heart.

PODCAST #6: SOLOMON THE LOVER | be the scripture you sing by Martin Bidney As a be-loving imaginer I get from today's mentor, King Solomon, world-class chances to love and imagine. As one who wants to be the scripture he sings, I get to re-sing an actual biblical scripture, the “Song of Songs” that Solomon wrote. Note how startling is the first six-liner of my singable rewrite of this Bible book! The whole song is about physical love; no god is ever mentioned. Solomon wrote the best-known love song in the world – also likely the most passionate – and in my 280 poetic responses I try to reframe the wisdom it teaches. I'll read, first, Chapter Three, appealing to us moderns with its recurring refrain; and then the last half – the last four page-long chapters, to show you what I mean by making the song “singable” for modern English readers, so you'll appreciate why I wanted to reply to it not once but 280 times. I'll then offer my “Prelude” as a mood piece, helping us picture the ancient Middle East. In (1) “Solomon, Calamus, Qalam” I relate one of the Solomonic spicy herbs, the calamus, a symbol of masculinity for Walt Whitman, to the modern Arabic word for a “reed,” used for writing beautiful calligraphy. Poem (2), “Ballad of Solomon and the Tiger,” shows my own imagination taking off! I then pay, in poem (3), a “Tribute to Solomon and Shula,” the latter lady being Solomon's Shulamite beloved in his “song” and my own beloved in mind, as I'm identifying full-time with my Mentor, Comrade, Collaborator, Friend. In short poems (4) and (5) I offer loving wordsongs of the kind the medieval troubadour love poets made, using freshly invented new forms to create new bezels, golden gem-frames for beauty. In poem (7) I try the bold experiment of writing up some of Solomon's Proverbs in an ancient Greco-Roman form I've recently revived. For me, the Solomonic Shula has become, like Venus, a veritable goddess not only of love but of Beauty, motivating me to seek out new stanza forms for continually varied, diversified love-liness. And here, too, is my tribute to a new idea. In scripture, Solomon is credited with writing not only the Song of Songs but the Bible book of “Proverbs,” called a source of “wisdom and instruction.” Could Shula, then, be Lady Wisdom? In Jewish mystical kabbalah, God's Bride, his emanative Female presence, is the vitalizing presence that animates the entire universe. Is the Solomonic Shula both Beauty and world-enlivening Wisdom? Of course! In poem (12) I translate from Hebrew a hymn to the Sabbath Queen, a Shula of Loving Wisdom.

PODCAST #5: BISEXUAL HAFIZ | be the scripture you sing by Martin Bidney The Be-loving Imaginer interviews Hafiz, one of the world's great poets, greatly treasured in his homeland, Persia, or Iran. As shown in my opener to the book Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance (p. ix), 14th century Sufi pub poet Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz and his translator, Joseph von Hammer, have become my two newest teacher-mentors. Poem 8, opening 2 lines, had a momentous effect on the future history of European, indeed of world, literature. Hafiz wrote: “I, if the youth from Shiráz took my heart in his hand, for his beauty- / Mark would bestow Samarkand and Bokhara,” and with this homoerotic love declaration he inspired his future translator, Hammer, to write the magnificent tribute on pp. xii-xiii. I, in response to both Hafiz and Hammer, wrote, to sum up, the significance of the tribute in my “Reply.” Bisexuality is central, say my mentors. We noted in our Goethe-Hafiz podcast that the German honors the Persian for his attitudes toward poetry-writing, drinking, and loving – all interrelated, each a symbol of the others. Let's hear what Hafiz can show us on each topic. First: poetry. In “Unbounded” Goethe praised Hafiz for ensuring total unity of world-view and form in a poem: the beginning, end, and middle are all the same. That is what happens in the ghazal, where each couplet ends with the same rhyme word or phrase (refrain). In “You in a thousand forms yourself may hide,” the refrain was always “I acknowledge you.” In Hafiz' poem 67 it is “candle.” Same in my “Reply.” Wine? In poem 33 Hafiz calls on attenders of church and mosque – each the “house of love” – to show kindness to pub-attenders. In poem 3 the transition from wine to homoerotic love is clear. In poem 19 love and wine empower Hafiz to identify with the Prophet Muhammad himself. In poem 32 he worries that, with a new regime in power, the Wine Police may come back! Poetry is the only defense against bad luck; compare, in my “Reply,” another medieval lyric on bad luck, “Fortune Plango Vulnera” from Carmina Burana. Love? When heterosexual, it is a marvel, even though such lyrics are in the minority with Hafiz: see poem 66. In poem 50 and my “Reply” we see the same problem of censorship that plagued Shakespeare; in the love poems, even the admiring Hammer couldn't resist turning Hafiz' male addressees into females. In poem 68 the Persian bard celebrates going on a picnic with a man, and in the “Reply” I in turn tell what a picnic it has been to “be the scripture I sing,” entering into the fun lifestyle of a world-class poet of expansive enjoyment, Goethe's “twin.”

PODCAST #4: GOETHE AND HAFIZ | be the scripture you sing by Martin Bidney As be-loving imaginer I have no greater mentor-friend than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of Faust and Germany's number one poet. How did he set me an example in both life and art? When he read the 1814 edition of Hafiz' Divan (or Collection) newly translated (for the first time into any European language!) by the marvelously talented scholar-poet Joseph von Hammer, Goethe decided this medieval Persian Muslim pub poet was his “twin brother” and worked for five years until at last his multicultural dialogue-reply was finished: the West-East Divan of 1819. The Hafiz masterwork had transformed Goethe's life. I am Goethe's spiritual brother as he was twin brother to Hafiz – I'm brother to them both. Poem 2, “Hegira,” shows Goethe patterning the new book on the examples of the traveler Hafiz and of Muhammad himself, who journeyed from Mecca to Medina. So in my verse reply I show how I'm trying to “be the scripture I sing,” a fellow traveler with the two men throughout my book West-East Divan: The Poems, with ‘Notes and Essays': Goethe's Intercultural Dialogues. In “Unbounded,” the poem where Goethe identified his “twin brother,” the German Hafiz-admirer declares the Persian mentor to be akin to him as poet, drinker, and lover. So I study what Goethe thought on all three topics. Medieval Persian society interpreted quite liberally Muhammad's remarks on wine, tending to see them as warning about excess, not as commanding abstention. In Poems 197-200, I show how Goethe shares the Hafizian light-hearted attitude to drinking. In this last poem of this group, “Cupboy, come! Another cup!” I note two kinds of breakthrough. (1) Goethe wittily confides that Muhammad's dissuasion from wine-indulgence was brought on by the Prophet's wish to be the only one drunk – drunk on God. Second, there's a hint of homoerotic love in the relation of the tavern customer in the lyric to the tavern waiter he's conversing with. Therefore, to elucidate Goethe's attitude of bisexual inclusion and acceptance, I study poem 8 by Hafiz, in Poems of Wine and Romance, which contains 103 Hafizian lyrics I translated (with a verse reply to each). Of course Goethe, Germany's greatest love poet, also shines in love lyrics addressed to women, as we see in Poem 227, “It is good.” In poem 13, “Past and Present,” we find the aging Goethe, who's over sixty, enjoying pleasurable memories and again paying grateful tribute to Hafiz, the master enjoyer. I conclude with Goethe's finest love poem of all, “You in a thousand forms may hide,” where the beloved lady is said to deserve a multitude of laudatory names, comparable to the 99 which – as Hafiz had known well – the Qur'an gives to God.

PODCAST #3: RILKE: LOVE AND CONFLICT | be the scripture you sing by Martin Bidney Rainer Maria Rilke, greatest 20th century poet writing in German, enters the imaginal worlds of Buddhism, Islam, and the ancient Greeks in a be-loving way, seeking to embody the traditions he sings of. When I “interview” him in my book Rilke's Melodic and Metrical Art Vol I, I seek to create a word music of empathy in “replying” to Rilke as my mentor, friend, teacher, and dialogue partner. In dialogue 178 where we discuss the concluding poem in Rilke's two-volume work New Poems (1907-8), I respond to his transcendent vision of Buddha with a simpler reaction from my own experience of viewing Buddha statues like the one Rilke described. Turning to the sonnet “Muhammad's Calling,” I respond in dialogue 172 to the Prophet's terrifying encounter with Angel Gabriel by telling, in my sonnet, of the parentally loving protections the Qur'an reciter would receive. The dramatic contrast between these two Islam-related poems will only intensify in what we speak of next. In dialogue 75, Rilke portrays “Cretan Artemis” as formidably complex in combining the compassion of a midwife with the prowess of an archer-warrior. My reply, contrastingly, focuses on the way Artemis applied her obstetric skills the minute after she was born by helping twin brother Apollo issue from their mother's body. Then, to develop more fully the idea of a pervading conflict in cultural history – and in human psychology – between the impulses to Love and War, I open our three ambitious final dialogues. Dialogue 72 centers on Rilke's “The Birth of Venus,” where the violence that concludes the poet's presentation of this marvelous episode dramatizes the intimate linkage of love and war. Replying, I focus on Rilke's image of the bloodied dolphin to begin an overview of love-and-war myths beginning with the leading of sailor-explorers by amiable, human-like dolphins to what would become the site of the powerfully enigmatic – and dolphin-named – Oracle at Delphi. Why does Rilke's “The Vase of Roses” in dialogue 73 begin with the image of two men clasped together in a perilous wrestling match? Clearly to ensure we never forget the linkage of the deities of Love and War, who extramaritally begot the harmless-looking Cupid, with his, at times, lethal darts. Responding, I focus rather on the flowers themselves, viewing them, for a complementary perspective, from the standpoint of mystical Sufi Persian love poets. Finally, in dialogue 70, I react to Rilke's profoundly empathetic neo-Grecian poem “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes” by answering him with a lyric I translated from Russian which proves the strong affinity of Anna Akhmatova's outlook with Rilke's own. In “Lot's Wife,” too, we come to see the need to look back, and we clearly comprehend the futility of prohibitions that would try to stop us!

PODCAST #2: HOW THE QUR'AN TEACHES ME POETRY WRITING | be the scripture you sing My Talk Show Poetry Exchanges with Passages from the Qur'an by Martin Bidney “Be-loving imaginers” can travel into any scripture of the world with the aim of immersion and then enjoy an invigorated emergence to write, in word songs, what they've learned. In 9 dialogue exchanges with quoted selections from the Islamic holy book (colloquies published in my East-West Poetry, SUNY Press, now available from Amazon), I show how the Qur'an is my tutor in both form and content. I savor the seventh-century text in the 1922 translation from the Arabic by Marmaduke Pickthall, an English writer who converted to Islam as an adult. He is so immensely gifted that his rendering of the Qur'an is one of the greatest masterworks in English. I've spent hundreds of hours opening up his text to random pages and writing poems whenever I was roused to song. In dialogue 7, one of the noblest ruminations on Forgiveness I've ever encountered stimulates me to borrow the 7-beat iambic rhythm of its opening words and to elaborate the central idea that a mentality of Patience and Pardon is “at the steadfast heart of things.” In dialogue 18 I accelerate the 7-beat tempo and intensity of my treatment of forgiveness when another Qur'anic passage offers this theme. The Qur'an teaches me the implications of metaphor. In dialogue 23 I elaborate the Qur'anic likeness of a “goodly saying” to a fruitful tree. For me, it becomes the entire world as a huge equivalent to this – a symbolic world-tree, the Yggdrasil Ash of Norwegian myth. In dialogue 25, taking the rhythm of a three-verse sequence and using it as my adopted song-vehicle, I apply the metaphor of the sequence to the modern world. A “revelation” ignored, dwellings hewn from the rocky hills to be “secure,” and then a “cry arising” – could this be a Florida condo near a warming ocean? In dialogue 62, taking the juxtaposed images of star and sperm, I show their unity as that of a flash or spurt of coming-into-Being. In dialogue 53 I borrow the form of question-and-answer (maybe a leader and a group?) to develop the given theme of a need for grateful awareness. In dialogue 58 I offer a more concise version of a masterly Prophetic soliloquy to give it the concentrated richness of verse drama. Dialogue 59 features the Qur'anic sura made specially meaningful to me when I taught for a month at a desert settlement in Egypt, an hour from Cairo. A student asked, “What is your favorite sura?” “‘The Enshrouded One,'” I replied, “where Allah praises the Night,” as that is the time when my poetry comes. Finally, in dialogue 66 I reply to the passage where the Prophet's message of Love and Care stems, I think, from the kindness he as orphan received from his foster mother. I've rarely felt so deeply thankful as when writing my response.

PODCAST #1: BISEXUAL SHAKESPEARE | be the scripture you sing My Talk Show Verse Interview with the Narrator of the Sonnets by Martin Bidney As “be-loving imaginer,” I like to dialogue with poets by building a bridge that starts where my chosen mentor-poet lives. I do this by entering the poetic form the mentor-friend loves best. Naturally I con-verse with the fictive narrator of Shakespeare's sonnets (14-line poems) in the beautiful stanza form he can teach me, and I try to emulate my teacher in a gentle rivalry. Shakespeare, like prophets of older times, left us a life-testament, an imagined bio-scripture or life-bible embodying lasting values. My motto, “Be the scripture you sing,” means this: while you emulate the word-songs of your chosen master, think about applying to your own mentality the values that his work embodies. I play the role of a talk-show host in 154 exchanges of sonnets with my “guest” to learn about love and art. The theme of Shakespeare's book is love. It offers an adventurously inclusive outlook, a generously welcoming approach to love which is emphatically bisexual. In dialogue 1, we discuss the readiness of the fictive narrator to describe his boyfriend as “beauty's rose,” a metaphor traditionally used for women. In this opening poem, as in the 38 poems that follow, the speaker will beg his beauteous boyfriend to get married and have children, so as to pay forward his attractive gifts. In dialogue 4 we clarify what the narrator means by imploring the boyfriend not to “traffic with thyself alone.” In dialogue 6 I playfully respond to the speaker's hope that the friend will have at least ten children by suggesting that, in the broad sense of “progeny,” I might apply this philoprogenitive attitude to the books I hope to write. In dialogue 9, I deal head-on with the obsessive quality of the somewhat hectoring requests: if the boyfriend gets happy and excited by falling in love with a woman, and if the speaker identifies with him, won't the speaker get equally happy and excited, maybe even more so, with a double love? In dialogue 18, noting that the boyfriend is lovelier than a summer's day, I liken the speaker's amorous attitude to that of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in writing “In Memoriam” to memorialize his own boyfriend who died at sea, noted that “'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” The climax of my talk is dialogue 20, where the speaker tells us that Nature, while creating the boyfriend initially to be a woman, fell “a-doting” and gave the creature, along with a “woman's face,” a male organ in addition, thus fitting him to be not only “prick'd out” for women's pleasure but also perfectly designed to be “master-mistress” of the enamored bisexual contemplator. Finally, in conversation 109, we return to the original rose metaphor, with all its boundary-defying implications: “For nothing this wide universe I call / Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.”