What Happened to Poetry?

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Event Name: What Happened to Poetry? Transcript Author: Islamic Transcripts Description: http://www.islamictranscripts.net/transcripts/hamza_yusuf_What%20%20Happened%20to%20Poetry .pdf Date Transcribed: 1/1/2011 12:00:00 AM Original URL: http://www.islamictranscripts.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68:hamza yusufpoetry&catid=44:transcriptsothers&Itemid=66

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The Spiritual Rumi Conferece, Freemont CA

In the name of Allah, The Merciful, The Compassionate.

I want to start off by saying that I know next to nothing about Jalaluddin ul Rumi, so Im not going to talk about Maulana Rumi. Ive read his poetry in translation, and the Mathnawi several years ago from Nicholsons translation but what I wanted to talk about was words, and in particular about poetry, which I do know a little bit about. And the reason for that is two-fold: one, in terms of the English language, I dont know anybody that knows English poetry better than my father does. He was somebody who, as far as I can tell, had a religious experience at Columbia University taking classes with a man called Mark Van Doren[i] who was also one of the teachers of John Berryman[ii], who some of you might know, who was an expert on Shakespeare. Van Doren was a teacher of literature. He taught the great literature of Western civilization and my father sat in his classes for three years at Columbia University, and then audited his classes after hed finished all the courses that he could take with him. And I dont think he ever said anything in any of his classes but he, he told me many stories and actually he named me after Mark Van Doren, so that tells you I was his first born son and I think that tells you the impact that this man had on his life. But one of the things that he said about Van Doren that struck him, as to his teaching technique, he said unlike the other professors at Columbia University, who would always look at the masters with their critical eyes, Van Doren was in awe of these great teachers and poets and writers of Western civilization and he said that he had a deep humility in their presence. And he said that the other thing, and Robert

Giroux[iii] some of you might know also, who was also a student of Van Dorens he said Van Doren had a very clever technique in his class, and that was that he would pretend that you were his intellectual peer or equal. And when I mentioned that to my father, he said its not true. He didnt pretend, he actually really believed that. And thats what was powerful about his teaching. So, my father actually wrote a commentary on an Elizabethan treatise on verse and so I grew up hearing he memorized a lot of poetry I grew up hearing poetry, and also just hearing his discussions about these things, but I didnt appreciate any of it until I had a great teacher. And that occurred in the Middle East, and he was from West Africa. And so it was very strange that this American young man from the West Coast, who had a father who was immersed in great literature and hes one of the only people that I know, he actually read the 37 plays of Shakespeare every year, like the Muslims do a khatam, and every time he would finish, he would start over again. But I learned to appreciate poetry hearing West Africans listen to poetry, recite poetry and be moved by poetry. And particularly, their expressions when they heard a line, and this is called tarab. The Arabs call it tarab and we get the word troubadour from that Arabic word. The troubadour is the one that makes you delight in what he has to say or tell, his story, and the Arabs, if theyre moved by poetry, theyre moved with this tarab. And the way the Mauritanians, theyre very expressive because theyre literally its almost like you stab them. When they hear a really good line of poetry, theyll say Argh like that, literally, just like that. And theyll make a move when they hear it, Argh. Theyll literally make a move. [makes a stabbing motion at his heart] And initially, I thought that this was kind of an affected type of thing, but after awhile I realized that it wasnt. It was that they really were being moved by the poetry. And that, obviously, got me more and more interested in poetry. And it forced me, when I came back to the States, to go back to my own tradition. So its funny and by my own tradition, I mean the civilization which I grew up in, which has a tradition of great poetry. And one of the things about poetry, and I really believe that one of the reasons that poetry is no longer taught, and if youve ever had a teacher that taught you poetry in any real way, that would have been probably the most profound class or experience that you had. But very few people are afforded that extraordinary delight of having a great teacher. Most of us have to suffer the mediocrity of passionless people teach words the emanated from the hearts of deeply passionate people. Because what poetry is about is passion, and whats forbidden in the modern world is passion. Its actually forbidden. You cant be passionate about anything. And woe unto you, if youre passionate! And if you think whats out there mimicking passion has anything to do with real passion, then youve been completely deluded. Really, completely deluded. And if you think that any of these politicians that seem to be passionate about what theyre talking about that is one of the greatest examples of the lie and the mimicry of what passion is about. One of the reasons that they dont teach poets anymore is because poets arent melodramatic. And in a world that you want people to think in melodramatic terms,

you dont want them to understand the subtleties of the poet. And Ill just give you an example from Western tradition. In Homers The Iliad, you never know whether Homer the Greek is on the side of the Greeks or the Trojans. You dont know whos more noble, the Greeks or the Trojans. And hes telling you something about most wars that are fought between people. If you look at the wars that were fought between the Muslims and the non-Muslims in that first part of Islam, the greatest warriors of the Quraysh, men like Khalid ibn al-Walid[iv], who fought against the Prophet in so many battles, end up becoming one of the greatest warriors of Islam. Because its not about this battle between black and white. Its about the living coming from the dead, and the dead coming from the living. In Homers Iliad, he has Achilles, when his beloved is killed by Hector, and Achilles has a few flaws and one of them is wrath he gets angry very easily and hes petulant. What Achilles does is he goes and he kills Hector, and then he drags him around the tomb of his friend, and then he leaves his body to be eaten by the dogs, which was a sacrilege to the Greeks and the Trojans, something terrible no respect for the dead. And one of the things that Apollo says in a gathering and Apollo was opposed to Achilles, he was on the side of the Trojans Apollo says, Woe unto Achilles! Lest we become angry at him, and he is a good man. And what that tells you is that when you look at your enemy, you have to be willing to admit that even your enemy has redeeming qualities. Because if youre not willing to admit that, then youre stuck in this mannequin duality of black versus white. And this is the melodrama of the modern world: Theyre evil, therefore were good. And the problem with that world view, like an American poet who was more noted for her doggerels than for her poetry, but I still like her, shes Ella Wheeler Wilcox. She used to write a poem every day for one of the newspapers in the 1880s. She said that the worlds divided into two people. And its been said that the world is indeed divided into two people one group are the group that divide the world into two people, and the other group is all the rest. So she said that the world is divided into two people, and she said and Im not talking about the good and bad because the good are half bad and the bad are half good. Thats the human condition. So thats one of the things that poets teach that they dont want taught anymore because it makes people have to actually think, and thinking is problematic in a society where you dont want people to think. So what happened to poetry? Thats a good question, what happened to English poetry? One of the things about the modern world is that they tell us that anybody can write poetry. This is what youll learn in a creative writing class. Thats the biggest lie anybody ever told you. You can just sit down and put down your thoughts and call that poetry. Its not poetry. Because this is another lie that this culture wants to teach its that hard things come easy. Fast food. Just go to Macdonalds. You can be satiated. And if you think that food satiates you, listen to your body after a few years of eating it. As the heart begins to harden, literally and figuratively. Its not just the literal hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, its a spiritual hardening of the heart, eating food that has no blessing. Eating food that wasnt made with the hands of a loving person who

actually cares for the people he or she is feeding. Food sacrificed to the altar of God. There used to be something in this country they called soul food, right? Soul food. That was the food that your mother cooked with love because it actually nourished your soul. It wasnt hamburgers made with beef that are fed other animals that give them diseases like mad cows disease. Its not Old Macdonalds Farm anymore, right? What happened to Old Macdonald? He became Macdonalds and thats part of the problem. Really. So this..what happened to poetry? Well, Ill tell you what happened to poetry. The Quran has a chapter called The Poets. Al Shuara. And theres no chapter in The Quran that isnt named after something that is great. You will not find any chapter in The Quran that is not named after something that has immense import. Whether its The Spider, whether its The Cow, whether its The Bee, whether its The Morning Sunlight, whether its The Moon, whether its The Moving Sand-dunes, whether its Mutual Consultation, every word that is used as a title for one of the chapters of The Quran has immense import in the lives of human beings. And one of them is The Poets. But The Quran divides the poets into two types of people the poets who sell the gift that they have been given for the highest bidder. And this was the jahili poet, he was called the sha-il. And what he would do is, if you paid him enough money, he would say whatever you wanted to say with him, and when I mentioned that to my father, about that, in The Quran, he said, It reminds me of Simonides that Aristotle mentioned. He was a poet, a Greek poet, that used to sell his ability to do verse to the highest bidder. And somebody once came to him and asked him to write a poem about a donkey that he had particular love for. And it bothered Simonides that he would have to write a poem about a donkey. But because the man was paying him enough money, he wrote the poem and Socrates quoted a couple of lines from it, How beautiful thou art, thou storm-footed ass. So thats one type of poet. And whether you realize it or not, he is now disguised as an ad man. And The Quran says about these people, The poets, they follow them, those who are astray. Havent you seen them wandering in every valley, saying with their mouths what they dont do? So I want to give you a couple of examples of that. All I did, opened up a magazine today, didnt even have to look very far, just opened it up. [shows ad] First ad: Godiva chocolate will make her heart skip a beat. If she wins the ring, you may need to know CPR. To be or not to be, that is the question. Godiva chocolate will make her heart skip a beat. If she wins the ring, you may need to know CPR. [puts ad aside] [shows second ad] Next one: One part protection, one part complexion. Whose words these are, I think I know. Whose house is in the village, though? One part protection, one part complexion. Estratab, estrastep. Your pill for more reasons than one.

[shows third ad] Make your bones rock hard. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Creeps in this petty pace of time from day to day. Make your bones rock hard. [puts aside] Plop plop, fizz fizz. Oh, what a relief it is. The ancients would never do that! Even Simonides would not stoop that low. And thats the problem with our modern world. They dont know what words are. They dont know the power of words, they dont know who gave Man words. They dont know where they gave from. Elizabeth Browning did. She gave one of the best descriptions of Jalaluddin Rumi. She wasnt talking about Rumi, but she was talking about a poet. He bore by day, he bore by night, the pressure of Gods infinite on his finite soul. I mean, thats the poet. One part
protection, one part complexion. Chiquita Banana. Im Chiquita Banana and Im here to say, a bananas gotta ripe in a particular way. The Quran says about language: Arrahman alam Al Quran, khalaqal insan, alamuhul bayyan. The Merciful, who has taught The Quran, created the human being and

taught the human being how to articulate his needs, how to speak what was in his heart. Speak what was in his heart. Allamuhul bayyan. The word in Arabic, to speak whats in your heart, is yuribu. In fact, thats what an Arab was, and thats why Herodotus said, of all people, the Arabs hated the lie more than anything else. Herodotus said about the Arabs, Of all people, the Arabs hated the lie more than any other people. Because they knew what words were. Words are meant to speak the truth. Thats what words are for, and thats what the other type of poet does he speaks the truth. And thats a very difficult thing in the modern world, because like Mark Twain said, only dead men can speak the truth. Now, I want to just take a liar as an example here. This is a book called Why I Am Not A Muslim. His names Ibn Warraq and its interesting, he says Acknowledgements and the first thing he acknowledges, I am not a scholar or a specialist. Well then, what are you doing writing a book about Islam? I mean, thats an interesting question to ask somebody whos writing a book about Islam. But he says here that there are three types of Islam: Islam 1 was what the Prophet taught. Islam 2: what is expounded in the religion, interpreted and developed by theologians through traditions. It includes shariah and Islam law. And Islam 3, what Muslims actually did do and achieve, that is to say, Islamic civilization.
My general thesis emerges in this book is that Islam 3, i.e., Islamic civilization, often reached magnificent heights despite Islam 1 and 2. And heres the example he gives. In the Mishkat of the Prophet Muhammad and this is revealing his ignorance because even though its in the Mishkat, the hadith is from Sahih Bukhari and Muslim and its mutafa qalai, which means its agreed upon and it

has one of the highest authorities in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad is made to say, A belly full of purulent matter is better than a belly full of poetry. Thats the hadith, its actually a true hadith.

Had the poets adhered to Islam 1 and 2, we certainly would not have had the poems of Abu Nuwas[v] singing the praises of wine and the beautiful buttocks of young boys. I mean, this is a very odd things for Ibn Warraq to be happy about that poems about the buttocks of beautiful young boys was preserved for postery, because the hadith wasnt followed. In this culture, they call it pedophilia, I think, if you write poems about young boys buttocks, but thats for the FBI to deal with in Operation Candyman[vi]. Maybe Abu Nuwas would have been part of that sting operation. The interesting thing about that hadith is, what the Prophet was talking about is these type characters one part protection, one part complexion. And most of you, unfortunately, have enough of these types of lines and many of you dont even know that theyre actually in metered verse. And if you go through a lot of these socalled I mean, this is just lousy, its not very well done. Were changing the face of security, protecting people, preserving privacy. I mean, thats the poets that its better that you had your belly filled with puss than if you fill it with empty words. Right? And if you just look because the world is filled with poetry and people love poetry, and thats why pop songs are filling the air waves. Its because people actually love to hear metered words, they love to hear lyric verse. And so people listen to this music, and they dont think about what their minds are being filled with. They dont think about we worry about pollution of the environment, but people dont worry about pollution of the mind, about what actually goes into your ears and enters into your heart, because The Quran says, Your ears, your eyes, your heart, these you have been made responsible for. Youre actually responsible to protect your heart so that your soul doesnt die. Because one of the ways the soul is killed is by allowing things into the soul that poison the soul. And one of the most powerful and toxic elements is words that are not true. False words. And this is the poetry that the Prophet saw was warning about. His wife Aisha memorized 12,000 lines of poetry from the poet Labid alone. 12,000 lines. The Prophet saw was once riding on a camel and he asked to hear some lines of one of the jahaliyya poets who was a pre-Islamic poet whose poetry was filled with wisdom. And the narrator says, I mentioned a line and the Prophet said Hee. Lets hear some more. And I mentioned some more and he said, Hee hee. Lets hear some more until I mentioned a hundred lines of poetry. The Prophet saw used to have poets in his gatherings. His own Hassan ibn Thabit[vii], who was one of the great poets of that time, he said, This mans poetry is strengthened by the Holy Spirit. One time a man al-Aqra ibn Habis[viii] came to him, and he was from Bani Tameem, whos a nasty tribe, and he called from behind the Prophets house, he said O Muhammad! (saw) You better come out! Because Im a poet and my praise is good and my blame is bad. And the Prophet saw said, Thats God. Its not you, thats God. The one whose praise is good and whose blame is bad, thats God. So he said Come out! Because we want to have a the Arabs had these kind of poetic combat, where they would have one poet of one tribe get up and oppose a poet of

another tribe and this was a civilized way of fighting. And sometimes it led to uncivilized ways of fighting. Because words meant something to those people. And thats part of the problem of modern peoples words dont mean anything anymore. You can say anything, and you know Dennis Miller[ix]. I mean, these are the types of people who can get out there and just say anything. And part of this culture is that weve become such a shameless culture. And one of the things about shamelessness, is that the root of shamelessness is shame. And if you want that insight, you have to go to the great Russian poet. And he is a poet, even though he wrote in prose. Dostoyevsky. Because in his Brothers Karamazov, if anybody whos read that remembers the meeting with the priest, who is the mystic and the father, hes a debauchee, hes always having orgies in his houses and hes a terrible man and he always behaves like a buffoon shameless. And hes in the presence of this mystic, Father Zosima, and he begins to act like a buffoon and Ilyusha, whos trying to perfect his soul, is mortified and his other son Ivan is mortified, and theres a point where he says, Im so ashamed at behaving like this. And the priest says to him, Dont be ashamed because thats the root of the problem. In other words, thats why youre so shameless. Its because youre so filled with shame. And thats whats happened in this culture. This culture, weve become such a shameless culture that we have to be shameless in order to deal with the pain of being so shameless. And thats something very difficult for us. So those are the poets that the Prophet saw warned about, not poets who had truth to say. So I want to look just at a few things, and then Ill stop because its been a long night. One of the things that Borges, whos extraordinary he wrote a wonderful story about a meeting between Ibn Rush (Averroes) and several other intellectuals. Its a beautiful story. Its a fictionalized account of something that could have happened. And the beauty of the story for me, was that what Borges was trying to do was trying to give us a glimpse of the exalted level of conversation that the people of Andalusia had. And theyre discussing a line of poetry that comes out of the Muallaqat, which is the, these are the great odes that the Arabs hung in the Kaabah before Islam and they considered them to be testimony to the greatness of the Arabic language. And they were, they were great, but many of them were filled with meanings that Islam would radically transform. But they talk about this line of poetry in which the poet says, Zuhair says I saw death like the stumbling of a camel. The one that it hits, it destroys, and the one that it misses lives a long life and grows old. And they begin to argue about this line of poetry, and they say its a bad line because fate is not like the stumbling of a camel. Fate is determined by God. And Ibn Rushd or Averroes in the story says, No youre wrong. Because what the poet describes, is he describes something we can all relate to and thats what makes poetry great, its that the poet speaks in a universal language. And this is why Aristotle and Averroes is the greatest commentator of Aristotle and so Borges knew that, and Borges knew Aristotle very well. What Aristotle says is that poetry is greater than history, because history deals with particulars but poetry deals with the universal.

And that is why, when the poet speaks, the poet impacts our hearts if he speaks the truth. Because we recognize that truth in our hearts. And what Ibn Rushd says in this story, is that the poet, when he what he says is he says fate is not like a stumbling camel, but he says, I see it like that. Raaytu. Thats whats hes describing. And what hes saying is that often, when we look at the world, we see chaos. It doesnt mean that its chaotic, but we often see only chaos. And that is what the poet is saying. Hes describing something that human beings experience. And thats why, when we look at the world today, when we look at human beings, we can often forget that there is an order in this universe. When we look at Palestine right now and look at the madness thats taking place there in Palestine, its a meeting of two worlds. Thats all Palestine is. If you want to understand Palestine, all you have to understand is that half of this planet, half of this planet, lives on less than $2 a day. And we in the West consume 60% of the worlds resources even though we are less than 10% the inhabitants of the planet. And where do those two civilizations meet? They meet in Palestine. Because Palestine is taking people from the West and planting them in the midst of a society that has been too long exploited, and had its resources expropriated, lived under despotism largely due to post-colonial traumatic syndrome. And most people are too busy watching the important messages from our sponsors, to actually read a book about the history of the Middle East, about colonialism. I mean, just read David Fromkins A Peace to End All Peace. Most of the people are too busy to realize that most of whats going on in the West thats troubling us is what they call blowback. In CIA parlance, blowback, the unsuspected consequences or unforeseen consequences of our own covert activities. Thats all there is. But people dont want that, thats troublesome. We want to be in melodrama, remember? Us versus them. Good versus evil. The evil empire. The Axis of Evil. These wonderful terms that make life so easy. Theres all bad, remember? And were all good, thank God. Makes it very easy, instead of having to deal with these ambiguities, which is what the poets are trying to tell us. Weve got problems. You have to think a little bit deeper. So thats what the poet has. He has a universal message. And thats what Rumi had, and I think thats why Rumi.. Rumi strikes me as being popular for 2 reasons. One, hes calling our bluff because everybody knows in our heart of hearts that theyre going to die. And all he is is somebody whos in the moment, recognizing that death is imminent and the only important thing is the readiness. And thats something another great poet from the West said. If you look at the play Hamlet, which really is a play about spiritual evolution a lot of people dont read Shakespeare like that, but Shakespeare actually was working within deeply spiritual motifs. And Im just going to use 2 examples, and then Im done. One of them is the idea of purifying the soul. And Hamlet, if you remember in the great soliloquy, when he says To be or not to be, whats it about? Its about fear of death. Thats what its all about, its about fear of death. Because thats part of Hamlets dilemma, its this fear of his own mortality. But by the end of the play, whats happened to the man? Hes had a complete transformation, and when hes

about to go into this duel, Horatio theyre talking, and he hints to Horatio that even though he feels hes going to win the duel, he has this sense of his own death. And Horatios worried about it, and he says, well, stop it for another time. And what does Hamlet say? He says: Not a wit. We defy augury. Dont stop it, were going to defy augury, in other words, having a bad omen. And this is something the Prophet Muhammad saw taught. He said, if you have a bad omen, do the thing anyway. Go against that thing in your soul. And then he (Hamlet) says: Theres a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. In other words, even God is aware of the fall of a sparrow. And theres a providence in that fall. If it be now, tis not to come If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. Hes talking about death. Its nothing you can stop. If its not meant to be now, its coming later. If its coming later, its not meant to come now. And then he says, The
readiness is all.

Thats what life is about. Its not trying to put off death. Its being ready for death. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what ist to leave betimes? Let be. If you cant take anything with you, then why are you so worried about living this long life? Because once death comes and this is said by many many great people before him and after him Marcus Aurelius was one of them. And finally, my favourite sonnet. And Im sorry if you came to hear Rumi, Im quoting Shakespeare. [laughs] They call Shakespeare the Rumi no, they call Rumi the Shakespeare of the East, which is..thats, thats not..Shakespeare is Shakespeare, Rumi is Rumi. So, dont try to compare them. But this is a great sonnet, its actually my favourite, but everybodys..my father says his favourites the one he happens to be reading at the time, so.. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait, On purpose laid to make the taker mad: Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

And that is a commentary on a hadith, that hell is surrounded by pleasurable things and heaven is surrounded by displeasurable things. Thats all hes saying, is that you look at the enticements of this world, and you go after them without any thinking, and as soon as youve got them, you realise the bitterness of their reality. They didnt get you what you wanted. And he says, we all know it, because weve done it again and again and again, and yet we dont know to shun the heaven that leads to hell. In other words, these temporary pleasures that end up leading us to something thats frightening and this is one of the truths that the poet said, and the Prophet saw said, Surely, in poetry is great wisdom. Ibn Hajjar r.a. says, A true word that is in accordance with the truth. And the Prophet Muhammad saw said, The truest thing that a poet every said was what Labid said, Isnt it that everything other than God is falsehood? And thats in Sahihh Bukhari. And thats all Rumi ever said. You can read all those lines words, words, words thats all his message is. Its just a commentary on that one statement of the Prophet Muhammad saw. Everything other than God is false, and if you realise that at the intellectual level, he and every other scholar of Islam has been calling us to realise it at an experiential level. And thats the path of submission to Allah swt, which in Arabic is called AlIslam submission to God. And Im going to finish with aha I tricked you Im going to finish with a poem by Jalaludin Rumi, which is translated by Coleman Barks - I like Coleman a lot, but my friend Muhammad Isa Weli said His translations are too roomy for me R-O-O. This is called One Who Wraps Himself and its a commentary on a chapter in the Quran, Muzzammmil. God called the Prophet Muhammad Muzzammil, The One Who Wraps Himself, and said, Come out from under your cloak, you so fond Of concealment and fleeing Because the Prophet saw loved to go off to the cave and meditate. And so hes being told now to come back. Dont cover your face. The world is a reeling, drunken body, and you are its intelligent head. Dont hide the candle of your clarity. Stand up and burn through the night, my prince. Without your light a great lion is held captive by a rabbit! Thats what Odysseus in one of Shakespeares plays says to the Greeks. It is by our weakness that Troy stands, not by their strength. And thats the reality. Its by the weakness

of the people of truth that the people of falsehood stand. Not by their strength, because falsehood has no strength. But when the people of truth are weak, then a rabbit can hold a lion captive. Alhamdulillah. I thank my teachers for instilling in me a love of poetry that my father tried to instill in me. And I thank all of you for bearing with me tonight, and being very patient and polite.
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