https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Poetry-Soup-Ep.-18.MP3.mp3 Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’m excited to talk about “A Music Sentence,” a poem with an intriguing form by a poet I discovered recently – Mahmoud Darwish. Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941 (he actually happens to share a birthday with me!), in Al-Birwa, Palestine. His family fled their hometown to Lebanon when it was invaded by the Israeli military, but eventually returned. However, Darwish moved multiple times when he got older, and even studied for a year in the Soviet Union. He was greatly interested in Palestinian liberation and joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which led to his exile from Palestine. His ban from coming back to his homeland is a topic that comes up often in his poetry – for example, the poem I’ll be talking about today. Before joining the PLO, Darwish was a member of the Israeli Communist Party. Darwish published his first book of poetry when he was 19 years old and went on to publish 30 books of poetry and 8 works of prose. Among other awards, he earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. He edited multiple journals throughout his lifetime and was a very important Palestinian symbol. His poetry represented the resistance of Palestinian people to Israeli occupation. He died on August 9, 2008. Darwish’s poems were filled with social commentary and drew extreme reactions from many people due to their controversial subject matter. His poems vary in length and style, but his Palestinian heritage is very important in many of them. “A Music Sentence” is included in his poetry collection “If I Were Another,” which has many long poems, broken up into shorter parts. The collection was translated by Fady Joudah. “A Music Sentence” achieves a slightly regretful tone and offers two different perspectives – one from the inside of Palestine, and one from the outside – through its melodious rhythm and repetition. A poet now, instead of me, writes a poem on the willow of distant wind. So why does a rose in the wall wear new petals? A boy now, instead of us, sets a dove flying high toward the cloud ceiling. So why does the forest shed all this snow around a smile? A bird now, instead of us, carries a letter from the land of the gazelle to the blue. So why does the hunter enter the scene and fling his arrow? A man now, instead of us, washes the moon and walks over the river’s crystal. So why does color fall on the earth and we are naked like trees? A lover now, instead of me, sweeps his love into the mire of bottomless springs. So why does the cypress stand here like a watchman at the garden gate? A horseman now, instead of me, stops his horse and dozes under the shadow of a holm oak. So why do the dead flock to us out of wall and closet? In his poem, Darwish depicts an ordinary scene of a community continuing its daily activities despite him not being there. Though he’s no longer there, everything is continuing the way it has always continued. It’s like the old people of the land, the people of history, as well as himself, are still represented in the actions and new people in the poem. Though the poem is not hostile or angry, it also portrays a bit of regret. It shows Darwish’s longing to be back in his home and a sense of loss. Darwish uses the repeated “so why” statements in his poem to convey this – he’s confused by how easily everything stays the same despite him no longer being there. He misses Palestine during his exile, and the knowledge that nothing has changed just because of his absence is saddening. The structure of this poem also gives it an almost song-like quality (hence, the title, “A Musical Sentence”). Each stanza is two sentences. The first sentence is a statement describing an animal or person that Darwish sees a bit of his own life in Palestine in, that the people of the past can see themselves in, but that are also not the same, that are new. The second sentence is the question I described earlier, building the poem’s tone. But the question in the last stanza also serves another purpose. It references the past, showing how the dead, or the previous inhabitants of the land, are still present in the actions of the new inhabitants, even if they’re not there anymore. Each single stanza is an image, but all together it paints a picture of an everyday town. When I read the poem, it makes me imagine a place with lots of trees (actually, Al-Birwa happened to have many olive trees). This gives the poem its flow and ensures that the repetition doesn’t end up being stunted or clunky. Darwish’s images, while being clear and concrete, are also very surreal. He doesn’t directly describe them, but instead does so in a very roundabout way (“a man now, instead of us,/washes the moon/and walks over the river’s crystal”). These metaphors and pictures form snapshots, one per stanza, which fit together like puzzle pieces to create Darwish’s nostalgic remembrance of his homeland. This poem’s structure can be helpful as a jumping off point to write your own poem! It really shows the power that repetition can have in poetry. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one.
Young Bloggers
The Pipe Tree, Reviewed by Jeremy Lim, 11
When Ecláir the sparrow is forcefully shoved into a life in a cage, it is like a storm has come and swept away everything he has ever known. After years of living free in the wild, Ecláir is now entrapped inside an constricting and inescapable prison. But when his captor, a woman coined as “the handkerchief woman,” starts bribing Ecláir with muffins and bombarding him with stories from her daily life, he starts to grudgingly make a hesitant friendship with her. Such begins The Pipe Tree, the moving debut novel by Lily Jensen. It portrays the protagonist coming to terms with an uncertain future and friendship, with the easy choice between freedom and life behind bars suddenly becoming almost impossible as the relationship between the two becomes more and more complex. In short chapters set at Ecláir’s present-day Portland, Maine, he narrates the story of how the friendship between him and the handkerchief woman came to be, and what further steps he should take to gain trust- and potentially a route to freedom. Some of the novel, however, addresses the question of freedom itself, and testing whether their friendship is strong enough to hold themselves together. As a wild, pastry-loving sparrow, Ecláir easily falls to the temptation of a sweet treat, especially ecláirs and blueberry muffins. When he arrives at the apartment, he easily feels out of place, trapped in a mysterious world. Looking for potential ways to escape, he starts closely observing the woman’s routine, and the house around him. When, on the first few days after capture, he immediately notices the lack of extravagance in the apartment, especially when it comes to the dinners, in which the woman eats cereal. But Ecláir is particularly moved by the way the woman seemed to be missing something, just like he himself, something expressed in the way she talks and sings. Ecláir sees the sadness in her actions. Over the course of the next year or so, Ecláir and the woman find themselves intertwined in a friendship and history with connections far deeper than what meets the eye. Both sacrifice what is quite dear to them for the other in this heartbreaking friendship that was not meant to be. Ecláir sings for the woman every day, staying obedient otherwise, while the woman spends her tight supply of money for pastries and food for Ecláir. But escape is imminent as time ticks before a new cage is built, one with no physical bars anymore- but instead mental ones. As Lily King, the author of Euphoria and The English Teacher stated perfectly: “The Pipe Tree is a powerful act of imagination. Through the eyes of a bird, Lily Jessen explores the truths and contradictions of human nature in a tale full of humor, delight, and deep understanding.” While the Pipe Tree lies from the viewpoint of a carefree sparrow, Lily Jensen has tapped into a universal connection facing the importance of freedom and friendship with consequences and if well-meant acts of love can actually hurt the other, as well as yourself. The Pipe Tree by Lily Jessen. Children’s Art Foundation – Stone Soup Inc., 2024. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Rescue, Reviewed by Emily Ke, 12
You’re running in a dark forest, the full moon’s light illuminating spots of the ground through the trees. Fallen leaves crinkle under your feet as you sprint mindlessly. You’re just trying to get anywhere away from your enemies; they’re out to get you. Suddenly, the sounds of a truck echo through the woods, causing a galvanizing feeling of panic to pass through you. Well…I’ve never been this nervous holding a book. Like many gripping accounts from World War II, the characters all had a universal fear looming from one towering figure of antagonism: Nazi Germany. To be honest, it never gets old. As horrible as it was for people to be locked up in concentration camps back then, each story – imagined or true – needs to be retold. In the amazing historical fiction titled Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen, I am rooting for Margaret to escape for freedom—but the many challenges she endured really speaks to what humanity means to us all. In this review, I want to share some of it with you. Margaret, also known as Meg, lives in France at the time of the war. She and her father would play a game where one of them creates a code for the other to decode. They would do this every day, until Meg’s father got drafted into the war. Her father’s parting gift was a jar full of tiny paper slips with many codes written on them, each for her to decode. Her father had promised her that by the time she finished the last riddle, he would come back. There was only one slip of paper left, and her father still hadn’t come back for three years. Already, I’m thinking to myself about impossible choices. Even though the reality looks grim, why are we so driven by the small sliver of hope? An injured British pilot shows up to Meg’s family’s farm, and the catalyst begins. Basically, she was told this: Decode the last riddle. If you do, it’ll likely cost you your life. If you succeed, however, you can maybe have eternal freedom. In times of struggle, when it’s so easy to give up, why do we make the illogical choice of bravery and sacrifice? Of course there are those who do give up, but Meg is the symbol of determination for many. When we look at history, we sometimes forget how brave some of these people were. Helping strangers along the way? Even braver. I look at our world now. Do we have what it takes to be brave? If our comfortable lives were turned upside down suddenly, would we fight for freedom again and save each other? I think about this often when I read historical fiction, the fun what-ifs. The plot twists in this book seriously deserve a gold medal. I think Nielsen’s portrayal of humans – sometimes the people that you trust the most end up betraying you – made me accept the good and the bad parts of being human. It hurts, like war itself, but that is something we cannot run away from. It might be practical to be selfish, but in the end, what makes us unreasonable is also the thing that makes us chase for what’s worth fighting for. When you’re ready to escape for that something, join me in reading Rescue. Who knows, you might even rescue yourself? 🙂 Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen. Scholastic Press, 2022. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
