THE SONNETS AND THE RUBAIYAT OF MOHAMMED FAKHRUDDIN

 “The Sonnets and The Rubaiyaat of Mohammed Fakhruddin” published by Fazila Banu makes an enlightening reading . Be it the matter of you holding the book and looking at the lush green pagescape or at the rear with a crisp quatrain and a stamp size photograph of the poet, it is quite charming and as you turn the very first page over you come to know “How beautiful the fire is”. Dr. Fakhruddin’s name is well known to the poet fraternity . He writes with ease and has a lucid vocabulary despite complete adherence to the established norms of rhetoric and prosody. In his sonnets, his is a cloistered spirit, like that of Christina Rossetti, and the erudition reflected in his rubaiyaat makes us believe that he is a man of no mean ability like Coleridge and Dr. Johnson. He seems to have explored every sense the human mind can experience. As an engineer selects his tools and equipment the poet is very specific in the very choice of his words and phrases. He deserves all praise and acclaim he has received world wide and if I am asked why I have compared him with Johnson and Coleridge, I would not miss saying that though writing in an alien language the poet doesn’t let you feel he is trying to find “cohesive devices of translation” in some target language. Dr. Fakhruddin’s work makes a better reading in comparison to Edward Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of 101 quatrains from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a twelfth-century work in Persian, in the sense that the beauty of work in Fitzgerald’s quatrains is suppressed due to technicalities of translation and transliteration whereas Dr. Fakhruddin’s work is directly done in English and is not victimized to “the efforts of rendering”. He is highly productive in his sonnets and the flow of ideas reaches to its climax in the beginning of one of his sonnets when he says, “Words, words, and words, I write but to what end?”. He is, though, a little insecure due to obsession when he says, “What do I know?
The world around me I may comprehend,
And know myself a little”. This obsession is very Conradian in its essence and is so due to an inner urge which further prompts the poet, in the language of T. S. Elliot, to explore different layers of his own psychic being. There is a search for a new self and rediscovery and the element of Deconstruction is very strong. We are living in a jazz minded world and ours is an age of disintegration. The youth fails to see the poetry around and about life. Dr. Fakhruddin is a true disciple of Auden as he uses his words like the strokes of brush and presents a word picture of what he intends to communicate through his sonnets. The meter and the rhyme scheme he has chosen provide a good grounding to his ideas and the “Zeal for work earns all comfort and pleasure”. The book is all about various experiences of the human life and the poetry around the incidents taking place in our day-to-day life. The poet seems to have championed every cause and the idea of the universal fraternity does echo so profoundly that there hardly remains any room for cynicism or skepticism. There is a faith and a strong desire to rise above the level of “reason and argument”.

---- Book Review by M.K. Nanda
http://www.shvoong.com/books/poetry/1721086-sonnets-rubaiyat-mohammed-fakhruddin/

 

THE SONNETS AND THE RUBAIYAT OF MOHAMMED FAKHRUDDIN

“The Sonnets and The Rubaiyat of Mohammed Fakhruddin”, Published by Poets International Society, No. 51 Ground Floor, Khazi Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore-560004. INDIA. Publisher: Fazila Banu,  2006.  292 pp.  ISBN 81-89345-03-6.  Price: $10 USD

Reviewed by Patricia Prime (Auckland, New Zealand)

     The name of the poet Mohammed Fakhruddin is one that is well known.  This is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that he is a journalist, poet, film scriptwriter and film director.  He has also authored 25 books on poetry and poetics in English.  Fakhruddin also teaches the art of writing poetry in English in various structured forms including the Japanese short forms of verse and edits the journal Poets International.

     Wherever literary value is regarded as a relevant consideration, Fakhruddin’s stature as a poet usually receives its due tribute of acknowledgement.  His poetic voice is a strongly individual one, expressing the distinctive vision and sensibility of a writer of congenial spirit.

    In introducing the book The Sonnets & The Rubaiyat of Mohammed Fakhruddin, I would first like to point out some of the salient features of the sonnet and the rubai.

      The sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, usually rhymed, usually written in iambic pentameter; a song usurped by ideas.

     A sonnet often presents an argument, perhaps a romantic plea in the guise of a legal  brief.  But it may also contain a description of a memorable scene, or a meditation, or a miniature story, or a portrait, or a list.  The rhyme scheme and stanza breaks (if any) often determine the structure of the thoughts.

     In English there are two principal kinds of sonnet: the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or English).  They are characterized by different rhyme schemes and different organizing principles.

     The Petrarchan sonnet has a two-part structure; the break between octave and sestet is called the volta or turning point.  It rhymes abbaabba in its first eight lines and variously in the last six: cdcdcd or cdedee or ccdccd or cddcdd or cdecde or cddcee.

     The Shakespearean sonnet, named after William Shakespeare, rhymes ababcdcdefefgg.  Its structure is four-part, based on three quatrains and a couplet, although stanza breaks are optional.  The rhyme is easier, and there are several possible turning points (although the crisis is usually reached with stanza three or the final couplet, which often moralizes or generalizes).

     The rubai (Persian, “quatrain”) is a four-line stanza rhymed aaba; usually an occasional poem, spontaneous and witty, but grounded in the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam. Rubaiyat is the plural form of rubai.

     Edward Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of 101 quatrains from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a twelfth-century work in Persian, is one of the most famous examples of a rubaiyat.

     The main problem for a modern reader, meanwhile, is that he or she encounters in Fakhruddin a poet with major interest in traditional poetic forms who, coming after the poetry of modernism, reverts to classic forms, high seriousness and the assumption that his readers are familiar with these poetics.  He is, of course, capable of tremendous variety.  The poet has had a resounding success with volumes of poetry; he writes lyrics of fluency, accommodating the idiom and syntax of speech to the singing voice.  Yet in all this he remains traditional; and these sonnets and rubai exhibit a poet grand, austere or tender, moving with impressive ease in difficult and even arcane metres.  In the sonnets he dazzles with the freedom of the basic form.  In Sonnet-1, for example, he addresses himself to his readers and expresses the way in which he is obliged to record his own mortality:

Words, words, and words, I write but to what end?
I write of life and death.  What do I know?
The world around me I may comprehend,
And know myself a little.  Even so,
Both rich and poor who, like me, stride this earth,
From vice and virtue offer no respite.
All compromise till they are of small worth,
Unwilling to divide the wrong from right!
The poet in me never is at ease.
I fear the weight of what I do not know.
I fear my sight, and what my mind foresee,
Fills me with terror.  Yes!  But, even so,
I am obliged, by what I am, to be
Recorder of my own mortality!

     The rich musicality of the sonnet form with its corresponding complexity frees the writer from the reproach of arid formalism.  Besides, Fakhruddin’s interest in the mechanics of expression is life, proceeding from a profoundly serious apprehension of the nature and function of poetry.  He has also, it should be remembered, a respectable affiliation: he is the great champion of poetry and writers throughout Indian and the rest of the world.

     We could surmise that Fakhruddin sees himself as living in a period of cultural decline in the use of language and the breakdown of poetic forms.  His response has been to reaffirm the cultural tradition; and he expresses the reason why he writes in Sonnet-30:

The poems I recite and write,
I choose for beauty all can see.
I wish to free that sudden light.
Beauty is honey-sweet, for me!
Where the beauty that I seek?
Is it for me, if it is lost?
The beauty of which I would speak
Cannot be bought at any cost.
To love, a lover must be loved,
Held by the hand in high esteem.
By loneliness what is improved?
Reality becomes a dream.
Let beauty shine!  And let this light
Be in each line I choose to write.

     Fakhruddin sees his conservatism as a solution, pointing the way to a future beyond the present crisis and reserved from disintegration.  Hence the creation of a substantial oeuvre embodying tradition, the insistence on formal definition being felt as a resource against dissolution.  The examples he offers illustrate an adherence to strict metrical patterns and strophes for the purpose of achieving energy and dynamic thrust.  Predominantly Shakespearean sonnets, they additionally preserve formality by observing a grand style in their diction, as we see in these lines from the beautiful love poem Sonnet-32:

You live for me to see I live for you.
Made for each other to make our love true
Mere love does not make life meaningful,
Mutual trust and work make life peaceful
Zeal for work earns all comfort and pleasure,

     The sonnets in The Sonnets & The Rubaiyat are presented as a vision of life as it should be lived, with love, passion and the creative urge envisioned as a compulsive quest against a background of fathomless eternity.  It is not dream, but reality that pervades this collection and keeps it on track.  Fakhruddin’s tone: observant, witty, self-appraising, is clear sighted and without illusion, but strangely reassuring in its ability to get to the core of life and love, and to place them among so much that is unknown.  In these lines from Sonnet-20 we see the poet frozen in time, waiting for the present sour time to pass and for God to give him some refreshment from his anguish:

Tomorrow, like today and yesterday
Life will surge forward like an endless breeze
Upon some artic waste: I left to freeze
As if a frozen statue of this may.

     Throughout the sonnets we have the enduring presence of Fakhruddin himself, with what might seem an optimistic approach to life, both recording and questioning, as if commuting between different impulses, in a life of constant passing through, pausing, consolidating, moving on.  He writes about what he knows, ranging from his writing, poems about despair, hurt and anger

My anger spreads all over, I go mad:
I do not know; nor know the good from bad,
Not right from wrong; nor recognise the true
Time and again, I feel that I am damned

to sonnets about his dreams, miracles and love.  Often, these more tender poems inspire some of his most striking images –

Sea without shore, the sun without moon,
The sky without stars, a rose without thorn,
Rain without thunder, an eve without morn?
Everything is well set in its own place.

     Fahkruddin’s approach to the sonnet is discreet.  Not in-your-face striving to be modern, but always trying things out – a different viewpoint, a new verbal strategy, but always with his own recognisable voice.

     The ambience of Fakhruddin’s rubai is that of a poetry of contradictions, of doubt and divisions, reflecting a contradictory reality and presenting to us the poet “caught” by the facts of his existence.  He has two great realities before him: the grandeur of language and its literature and the greatness of humanity to overcome all obstacles.  In No. 1, for example, we hear the poet express his controlled freedom as he no longer judges others:

That I no longer judge, and reason spins
A thousand tales, and therein each pair wins;
but woe expiation for their actions,
Lovers commit many uncalled for sins.

     Again in No. 3, we sense the passion of this poet and his need to hone his crafts: not only the craft of poetry, but the craft of love:

 

Listen to the sweet music of my heart,
Feel the touch with passion and be a part
of the same body and soul burning fire;
learn the craft of love since life is an art.

     The words the poet leaves behind him at his death will remain forever indelibly part of his reason for living in this world, as he writes in No. 7:

Words are icons of immortality,
Verses composed live as an entity
Of power, lead all from darkness to light,
Bards, through words, attain immortality.

     There is in the rubai a beautiful layering and metaphoric blending of seemingly different realms of experience that reveal an organic unity eluding the casual reader.  There is neither beginning nor end to these poems.  Understanding is, first and foremost: reading, going back and forth to gather up themes, topics, images and suggestions.  But always it allows the speaker to bring knowledge under control and to write about himself and his experiences:

 

Expanse of mind turns as vast as the sky,
When man gets enlightened with ecstasy;
The long search for the truth comes to an end,
The earth’s spin too is a great mystery.

     In the poet’s own opinion, his poetry gives us that organic quality that unifies artistic expression with all other walks of life.  In contrast, the rubai about love, as in 23:

Yes, our love is as true as honeydew,
our heart beats sync to form a song of love;
Words are symbols of deep-rooted pine trees,
Lovebirds exchange eyes and pledge to be true.

have a sincere approach to the joys and vicissitudes of relationships.

     As with many of the rubai in this collection a brief sample does not convey the muscular emotion of the language – the vibrancy, the depth of feeling that Fakhruddin builds up poem by poem.  The power of this collection is definitely in its slow accumulation of feeling.  One of the things I really liked in the book was the movement between personal and impersonal.  I also enjoyed the rhythms of the poems.  In 39 I found it impossible not to savour the rhythm of

My days will end that I do not know when,
Let me pen my burning thoughts until then
Moonshine kisses snow peaks, nightingale sings,
Flowers blossom in spring.  Zephyr is Zen.

A soothing and yet somehow sad poem, the beautiful images contrasting with the poet’s thoughts of death.

Fakhruddin has more to say for himself than a review will permit.  He knows that he has a moral obligation to himself and to his poetry and if he fails to live up to his poetic office as he conceives it, then he will have failed to live a full life.

     Thus it is not a simple creed that he gives us in these poems; he makes his admissions, backtracks, sidetracks, moves passionately from one theme to another.  Fakhruddin’s view of himself and his moral predicament comprehends the contradictions: it does not cancel them out, nor does it move to judgement.  The man in these poems moves in the mode of verbal music; the yes-and-no, the multi-fariousness of his soul and its experience is here: nothing annulled or reconciled but everything held in taut suspense in the flux of life.

BOOK REVIEW:

SHADES IN LIGHT (UMBRI IN LUMINA)
--- Haibun Anthology

Edited and published by Magdalena Dale, Ana Ruse and Laura Vaceanu, Editura Boldas, Constanta, Romania, 2008. ISBN 978-973-88626-4-7

Reviewed by Mohammed Fakhruddin (India)

     For the first time in my 26 years of poetry and poetics career, I received a rare book of bilingual poetry anthology, in Romanian and English, edited and published recently by three poets from Constanta, Romania. The title impressed me very much since I too had contributed one of my Haibun to the publishers in Romania last year.

     Haibun is one of the seven popular structured forms of Japanese classical poetry which is being written in some parts of the world today. Tanka, Haiku, Haibun, Renga, Sitigotyo, Senryo, and Zen poetry are most impressive forms of poetry. Simplicity, clarity, brevity of expression of thought through imagery plays a very important role while writing these verses. Words have to be carefully selected and syllable count is a must while composing this short three line verse called ‘Haiku’.

     The process of creating a haiku requires intense concentration on the chosen subject. The words, sound and meaning should sync to create an impact in the minds of the reader and at times inspire them to take haiku writing. The regular practice of creating haiku helps the writer compress the subject and express in a few words keeping the structure intact.

     The structure of Haiku in 5, 7, 5 syllables should not be dismantle at any cost while incorporating the substance as content in it. The writer or creator has to strike a balance between structure and content since one cannot exist without the other if at all HAIKU has to be created. In a nutshell, a haiku must have 17 syllables in all. After years of practice of haiku in 17 syllables, a poet feels like compressing the thought further and expressing it in less than 17 syllables. Such a verse is called “ZEN POETRY”, an offshoot of Haiku.

     Most of the poets the world over are writing short verses in free verse structural form and call them as ‘Haiku’ which is not. What all they write are verses but certainly not ‘Haiku’.  

     In brief, Haiku is a Japanese verse form that relies on brevity and simplicity to convey its' message. It is usually three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, and frequently includes natural images or themes. It is believed to have been first written in the seventeenth century and is based on a Zen philosophy of thought and the idea of perfection that excludes the extraneous. 

     In brief, Haibun is a sequence of Haiku written in first person and in present tense. The sequence of haiku may contain any number of haiku which, in totality, should look like a flower unfurling its petals gradually and finally bloom into a beautiful flower.

     When I received an invitation for an international Haibun Anthology, from Romania, I sent the following:

HAIBUN

Long walks I enjoy:
Ignite self-exploration;
Stars twinkle with joy.
           ***
The moon follows me,
As friend, wherever I go;
Learn to be carefree.
           ***

Cuckoo coo near,
Crickets creek, frogs roar at night;
Know not what’s fear.
           ***
I jump like a boy.
Sing aloud and fly in air;
Hop like frog with joy.
           ***
Soothing breeze from woods,
Soft moonlight, misty landscapes;
Blooming tulip buds.
           ***
Lush green fields display,
Wind-dance on tips of paddy;
Catch Nature at play.

           ***
It’s a joy to walk,
Watch, interact with Nature;
Have no one to talk.
***
Stay like an ocean –
Rich, vast, powerful and active;
Draw inspiration.

     The editors of the Anthology preferred to publish my Haibun, with Roman translation, in the following manner:

JOY TO WALK

Long walks I enjoy: Ignite self-exploration; Stars twinkle with joy.
The moon follows me, As friend, wherever I go; Learn to be carefree.
Cuckoo coo near, Crickets creek, frogs roar at night; Know not what’s fear.
I jump like a boy. Sing aloud and fly in air; Hop like frog with joy.

Soothing breeze from woods, Soft moonlight, misty landscapes;
Blooming tulip buds. Lush green fields display, Wind-dance on tips of paddy;
Catch Nature at play.

It’s a joy to walk,
Watch, interact with Nature;
Have no one to talk.

Stay like an ocean –
Rich, vast, powerful and active;
Draw inspiration.

 

     In all, there are 33 haibun published in this prestigious anthology, contributed by different poets from all over the world. For example, here is one reproduced for the information of our readers:

 

THE FIFTH GATE

By Mircea Teculescu – Campina -- Romania

     I pass from time to time by the old Telega salt mine; close by this corner conquered by nature, with its lake – oasis for those fishermen who randomly come there full of hope. Near the plain where a marble pedestal reminds people that Balcescu stopped there once to speak with the locals in ’48.

salty dwelling –
covered tracks
during winter or summer

     in a carefree weekend I found myself in Slanic Prahova. There was Unirea Saline: 210 meters depth, born through a descendent exploration, microclimate characterized by salty aerosols, high concentration in negative ions and constant temperature of 12 degrees CELSIUS. Arranged in a smart and interesting way, the salt mine never bores you.

reflecting crystal
shedded boots –
of water walls

     From a corner guareded by the minors’ boots and the rusted wagons, full of rudimentary carving tools, you quickly get to hallow rooms, where huge statues of Decebal, Traian, Mihai Eminescu throne solemnly. The setting of the present couldn’t erase the sickle and the hammer, remained carved somewhere on the far dome; it added though a cross on a salty hill, which sparkles always in the never-ending night of this place. Fragments of stairs, attached by the walls at different altitudes, watch from every corner the spaces we transcend. It’s almost impossible, here, where the history of thousands of anonyms overlaps with the history of great personalities, school history, not to remember of Petre Tutea and the volume which emerged from the discussions we had: “Between God and my people!” With optimism, as Origen says, “God loves us more than Satan hates us. Somewhere, not far away, Telega salt mine is remembered in the salty taste of the lakes, its very own tears.

museum made
in a salt mine
without season –
shredded boots
covered tracks

 

     There are 33 short and long articles, each of them containing some short verses, but certainly not Haiku, written both in Romanian and in English in this anthology, beautifully published with a photograph of nature on the cover under the tile “UMBRE IN LUMINA”,  “SHADES IN LIGHT” , Antologie de haibun, Haibun anthology which, I am sorry to say, is certainly not HAIBUN ANTHOLOGY in the real sense of the term!

I have been writing as well as teaching in my poetry workshops all the Japanese classical forms of poetry such as Tanka, Haiku, Renga, Sitigotyo, Haibun, Senryo and Zen poetry since 1995. As I have already pointed out earlier that Haibun has to be written as a Haiku Sequence containing any number of Haiku on a particular theme. To begin with, Haiku has to be written in 5,7,5 syllabic meter, in present tense and in first person and go on adding haiku after haiku while narrating a story, a scene or sequence and whatever you have as an inspiring or informative substance.

*

 

World Poetry Almanac 2008, World Poetry Almanac, P. O. Box 836, Ulaanbaatar 46, Mongolia.  ISBN 99929-1-582-X.  Under the patronage of ZhongKun Poetry Development Foundation; Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Hadaa Sandoo.

Reviewed by Patricia Prime

This important anthology is beautifully produced and illustrated with stunning photographs.  It contains poetry from 150 poets from 70 countries and areas.  The poetry of such luminaries as Dorothy Porter, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Derek Walcott, Tomas Transtromer, Carol Ann Duffy, Billy Collins and Robert Hass are to be found within its pages. This anthology is diverse in that it includes poets from the far-flung reaches of such countries as Georgia, Iceland, Iraq, Iran, Lithuania, Nepal and many more: countries whose poetry may not be familiar to many readers.

The selection is characterized by cultural diversity and a global point of view, where even personal and domestic moments are connected to larger events, and a willingness to challenge the centre, to write poetry recognizable as social discourse is met.  The editors are right to view pluralism in poetry as a sign of the times and to wish to highlight it in cultures which may marginalize the voices and achievements of a significant number of poets.

You may find that you’re fascinated by these poems.  What unites them is their verbal energy, and in several cases a humorous or ironic tone is employed.  Izet S.  Culli, Jose Muchnik, Tian Yuan are certainly masters of tone.  And another thing; behind the irony and the humour – there is also despair – not only as regards history and society – there is some doubt about identity itself, as we see in “Songs of Roaming In the City” -  a sequence of 30 poems by Luo Ying, with its parallels to T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”:

                3

                Not daring to gaze into the distance
                Hidden in sorrow behind the window of a skyscraper
                The wind repeatedly raises remote roads
                But the heart flees inwards layer by layer
                A sumptuous dressing gown cannot bar the cold frost
                Deeply drunk eyes can’t discern the direction
                A thorough soaking of rain will give me palpitations
                The foot-piercing thorns will cause me deep regrets
                Over the great desert alarm signals of smoke will
                leave me helpless
                And the bleakness of the wilds will make me panic
                Aah tall buildings
                Why do you hem me in so tight.

These poems push at the envelope of what it means to be human and, consequently, carry all our most ambivalent feelings about ourselves, our capabilities and our destiny.  Poetry promises and delivers greater understanding of and control over life, the universe and everything; the expertise involved in it and derived from it enables us to view the realities of life and take control of our destinies.  These poets from around the world dream of a final theory of everything and seek to expand our perception of the world and ourselves in it, and are closely bound up with the rediscovery of poetry’s plurality of form and discourse.  The answer is that a poet has the right to write about anything at all that registers experience – in other words – about anything and everything.  Including, of course, politics.  We are social, political animals and here are some of the strongest political poems I’ve read anywhere in recent decades.  For example, Kim, Jong-Seop’s poem “Toasting Bread” is stunning in its simplicity, yet harrowing in its truthfulness:

                I toast pieces of bread
                to kill my hunger, my desire,
                with a feeling of resistance
                as if facing the vast blue sea;
                the thick edges of bread being baked
                making me swallow the saliva in my
                mouth as if swallowing a sorrow
                locked in a narrow room of mine,
                I feel at last how big and rich
                freedom is, and the negotiation
                of pain and desire growing as if
                in an illicit connection;
                a piece of bread toasted that way
                I swallow like swallowing a bribe
                offered in its wiles unnoticed.

How startling are the words ‘kill my hunger,’ locked in a narrow room,’ ‘freedom, ‘pain’ and ‘bribe’ in the context of what we know about people fighting for their freedom, for food and for
their identities.

The editors, to do them justice, knew what they were doing when they began the collection with Partaw Naderi’s “I still Have Time.”  It looks as if the message that time is fleeting and one needs to make the most of every moment is getting through:

                It’s well past midnight
                I should get up to pray
                The mirrors of my honesty
                have long been filmed with dust

               

                I should get up
                I still have time
                My hands can yet discern
                a jug of water from a jug of wine

A short review of the World Poetry Almanac 2008 is going to be unfair because the book’s virtues are many and its weaknesses few.  It ends with the timely warning of Dennis Brutus’ poem “Somehow We Survive”:

                Somehow we survive
                And tenderness, frustrated does not wither
                Investigating searchlights rake
                Our naked unprotected contours;
                Over our heads the monolithic Decalogue
                Of fascist prohibition glowers
                And teeters for a catastrophic fall:
                Boots club on the peeling door.

                But somehow we survive

These lines are a random sample of the poems on offer.  This is a bright, readable, communicative collection which seems to prove that the art of poetry is of significant public concern.

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