{"id":292,"date":"2003-10-04T15:54:22","date_gmt":"2003-10-04T23:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/blogs\/?p=292"},"modified":"2003-10-04T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2003-10-04T23:54:22","slug":"106530794685344415","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/106530794685344415\/","title":{"rendered":"106530794685344415"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nNelly’s Poem by Etel Adnan
\nFrom the Lebanese Women’s Association<\/a> site<\/p>\n

I conclude this survey of Tammuzi poets with some lines from the Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan from her long poem “The Spring Flowers Own<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

I see heading East the pearl-colored
\nmarch of clouds
\nroses lend their blood to young
\nsoldiers drowning in the Tigris
\nflowers triumph
\nover the human race
\ntheir tragedies are
\nshort-lived
\ntheir agonies exude incense and myrrh
\nat the entrance of
\ntemples they are the
\nones to be eternally eternal. <\/p>\n

I envy their youth
\ntheir lucency their
\nquiddity
\nwe are the shadows and they,
\nour hosts. <\/p><\/div>\n

Adnan originally started writing in French and now writes in English. Her first poems were published in Shi’r as translations from French to Arabic in 1964, just as the Tammuzi poets were moving on and Shi’r was wrapping up. In many ways, Adnan embodies the dispersed identity and complex and sophisticated voice that the Tammuzi poets seemed to me to represent. She has essentially been an exile all her life which she said in an interview<\/a>, has affected her thusly:<\/p>\n

I was always an Arab, and have been like that not even as a Lebanese or a Syrian. I always felt like an Arab. It makes no difference to me. For example, I went to Morocco in 1966 and when I entered to the hotel and heard Umm Kalthum in the lobby, I said to myself: here is the Arab World. When it comes into expression, of course there is a problem because I went to French schools and my mother being Greek we did not speak Arabic at home. Children learn language at school and at home. I didn’t speak Arabic neither at home nor in the school. I grew up knowing French. I also speak Greek and Turkish, because my mother was Greek from Turkey and my father was an Arab in the Ottoman Empire. So, I knew these two languages, but I never learned them in school. So I don’t have a problem in identity like saying who am I? Because I feel I am an Arab, I am a woman, and I am a person in the 20th Century, and hopefully the 21st Century. But, when I write of course I have that question. For whom am I writing? For Americans I am an Arab. Arabs say why don’t you write in Arabic? So, we have to solve that problem through translations, and also I think the notion of identity should change. Identity is not a race. It is a culture and it is a commitment. I am committed to the Arab World and I am an Arab.<\/div>\n

I have collected 19 poems and two full books of poetry from the Tammuzi poets over the past few days. You can view them at the Parking Lot Wiki: Tammuzi poets collection<\/a>, where you can feel free to add more poems or poets if you find them. It’s a fascinating collection of poetry in English, giving a slice of Arab culture that is lost in the current cloudiness about good guys and bad guys. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nelly’s Poem by Etel Adnan From the Lebanese Women’s Association site I conclude this survey of Tammuzi poets with some lines from the Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan from her long poem “The Spring Flowers Own“: I see heading East the pearl-colored march of clouds roses lend their blood to young soldiers drowning in the Tigris flowers triumph over the human race their tragedies are short-lived their agonies exude incense and myrrh at the entrance of temples they are the ones to be eternally eternal. I envy their youth their lucency their quiddity we are the shadows and they, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-4I","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}