KILL THEM IN THE MORNING
—from Poets Respond
March 17, 2024
__________
Tishani Doshi: “Not sure there are any explanations. How must we be alone, how must we be together?” (web)
KILL THEM IN THE MORNING
—from Poets Respond
March 17, 2024
__________
Tishani Doshi: “Not sure there are any explanations. How must we be alone, how must we be together?” (web)
MANAGEMENT CHANGES RULES ABOUT THE DRESS CODE
—from Poets Respond
February 20, 2022
__________
Tishani Doshi: “This week I read how Muslim Indian women in the state of Karnataka were being denied entry to college because they were wearing hijabs. How they were being instructed to follow the university ‘dress code’ which previously seemed to have had no problem with the hijab. And I watched in awe, the video of one brave woman who stood up to a mob of right-wing Hindu hecklers. Meanwhile, in Surrey, UK, an upscale restaurant put out a dress code for female customers to wear sexy heels and bodycon dresses. In the midst of all this, I happened to see a beautiful folio from the Ramayana from the 1700s of the warrior Lakshmana picking elephant flowers to make a garland for Sugriva and even though a fair bit of that epic is about paternalistic protecting and control, I thought how tender. How far.” (web)
JEFF BEZOS GOES TO SPACE AND BECOMES A BHAKTI POET
“I! I! A terrible thing.
Run from it if you can.”
—Kabir
—from Poets Respond
November 2, 2021
__________
Tishani Doshi: “Jeff Bezos announced this week that his commercial space station venture ‘Orbital Reef’ will offer among other things an ‘optimal location for film-making in microgravity’ as well as a space hotel. According to this article, ‘The station will have large Earth-facing windows so that space tourists can take in the beauty of our planet and experience the thrill of weightlessness in complete comfort …’ The Bhakti poets knew a thing or two about connecting with the cosmos without actually relocating there, so I suppose this poem is wishful thinking.” (web)
THE COMEBACK OF SPEEDOS
—from Rattle #73, Fall 2021
Tribute to Indian Poets
__________
Tishani Doshi (from the conversation in this issue): “There’s something marvelous about the conciseness and smallness of poems. I love that they are small and yet very big, and that you can spend time with one poem and it can expand so much in you. There’s something about the distillation of the form that is allowed to say things in a way that we can’t do with other arts. There’s something mysterious about it. Nobody is able to define exactly what a poem is; nobody’s able to say what makes a poem good or not—these are still questions that are out for debate, and, in a way, I think they’re meaningless. If a poem touches you or moves you, it has the possibility of transformation, and I’m really interested in that. Of course, novels can do that, and dance is capable of those transformative moments, but a poem for me also reaches back to a tradition of orality, the spoken word, of putting something into existence just by speaking it, by naming it. There’s something ancient in that. There’s something powerful about incantation. I’m less interested in breaking down a poem than in the sense of a poem just washing over you and changing you somehow.” (web)
ROTTEN GRIEF
—from Rattle #73, Fall 2021
Tribute to Indian Poets
__________
Tishani Doshi (from the conversation in this issue): “There’s something marvelous about the conciseness and smallness of poems. I love that they are small and yet very big, and that you can spend time with one poem and it can expand so much in you. There’s something about the distillation of the form that is allowed to say things in a way that we can’t do with other arts. There’s something mysterious about it. Nobody is able to define exactly what a poem is; nobody’s able to say what makes a poem good or not—these are still questions that are out for debate, and, in a way, I think they’re meaningless. If a poem touches you or moves you, it has the possibility of transformation, and I’m really interested in that. Of course, novels can do that, and dance is capable of those transformative moments, but a poem for me also reaches back to a tradition of orality, the spoken word, of putting something into existence just by speaking it, by naming it. There’s something ancient in that. There’s something powerful about incantation. I’m less interested in breaking down a poem than in the sense of a poem just washing over you and changing you somehow.” (web)
AFTER A SHOOTING IN A MATERNITY CLINIC IN KABUL
—from Poets Respond
May 26, 2020
__________
Tishani Doshi: “We are going through all kinds of horror with corona but this is a different kind of horror.”
TREE OF LIFE
“Bengal men self-quarantine on tree to keep others safe”
—Hindustan Times
—from Poets Respond
April 19, 2020
__________
Tishani Doshi: “Seven migrant men in India were made to quarantine in a tree when they made the long journey back from the city to their village because their houses have no extra rooms. They seemed quite cheerful about it.” (web)