“Poetry is like bread” ghazal

In these days of quarantine, when a touch is a wave from six masked feet away, we turn again to language, to the essence of language, to the art of language, to poetry.

The “Poetry Is Like Bread” Ghazal is a collaborative poem created by a world of poets to nourish us all through the Pandemic and to envision the world After. We take our inspiration from Pablo Neruda: “On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread, it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast , incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.” This collaborative poem was created with the idea that each poet’s unique voice would join together as one, and that the result would be shared by all. There is no poetic form better suited to do this than the Ghazal.

“Poetry IS Like Bread” Ghazal.

If, as Neruda thought, poetry is like bread,
Then let it leaven this dark time and be my bread.  [ Christopher Merrill ]

Struggling (and losing) in this Antipoem, ghosted thread,
Spreading cool butter, sweet jam on homemade toasted bread. [ Bob Holman ]

No one waits to forgive the dead
don’t pardon the dirt, nor the psalm palms, this celebration of bread [ Mahogany L. Browne ]

Distracted by detonating deadlines and demonstrations,
I couldn’t meet your request for peaceful bread. [ Sandra Cisneros ]

The cops are out in force busting heads because another man is unjustly dead,
And even in a time of worry about viral things, it’s as darkly familiar as Wonder Bread. [ Rick Moody ]

Clinging to life, filled with dread, fed upon by swarms of the undead
Who eat my flesh, gnaw my bones, as if for them it’s holy bread [ Charles Bernstein ]

Avoid buying tasty bits of shy and endangered Pangolin to reduce the viral spread,
and keep an eye out for bat infested scientist who poisoned our daily bread. [ Janet Hamill ]

While the pantry grows empty, the imagination is fed,
Savoring the flavor of last week’s bread. [ Dana Gioia ]

Our mast shattered, our ship unpiloted,
we kneel, ask the storm for our daily bread. [ Marilyn Nelson ]

My children sit and ask what will happen next
and I tell them we will set the table, slice the bread. [ Idra Novey ]

Ancient grain persists in the dead air of new centuries,
it reaches ever upward to offer its lasting bread. [ Dante Micheaux ]

Isolated and exiled at home, I baked flattened bread —
I loafed and invoked poetry to sustain us, like bread. [ Edward Hirsch ]

Un platito de pan passed to me by homestead
mi pana, as if to say, with whom I break bread [ Karl Michael Iglesias ]

police fire / body drop / protest / fame distracts
bright light / fool's gold / souls sold / crumbs mold / never worth the bread [ Jive ]

Though the power-crazed crown shout its reverb red
For a heart's blue renown was the sweet word bred. [ Heather McHugh ]

The ink of Gestetner on your body and head
gave me the strength to share my bread. [ Andrei Codrescu ]

"All this lost time," she complained, "I'm bored dead."
"That one response," he answered. Kneading dough for bread. [ Forrest Gander ]

I'm glad am not of Covid 19, dead.
So I can drink my liquid bread. [ Bernadette Mayer ]

but Love waits in the green, where olive trees bend.
Love formed you from oil, mud, & rib. You began as bread [ Kiki Petrosino ]

The urge to knead until the need is shed
for human touch brings forth the softest bread. [ Nina Murray ]

In my mother tongue, the word "pain" is the translation for bread.
I weep for the children whose daily pain is the begging for bread. [ Laure-Anne Bosselaar ]

More to come.

The Ghazal

The ghazal (pronounced like “guzzle,” with the first sound like the “ch” in “chtuzpah”), an Arabic poetic form dating from around 700 CE, migrated into Persian in the 10th century, spread to South Asia, and now can be found all over the world. American poets like Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Robert Pinsky and Natasha Tretheway have written them, and the form was popularized in English by Agha Shahid Ali, who edited an important anthology, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. The elegiac ghazal chain written for Shahid as he lay dying in 2001 was the inspiration for this current poem.

The consistency that all English ghazals share with Arabic, Persian, and Urdu ghazals is that they are written in couplets (each verse is two lines), and there is no direct connection between the couplets. That’s a hard one to digest – how does a poem hang together if the verses are autonomous? Because of course the lines do, somehow, all “connect,” just not in the direct way that English poems usually proceed, word to word. It’s as if each ghazal couplet has a completely different angle on whatever it is we’re talking about. In this ghazal, all lines refract human resilience in a time of great dread. Which is why the radif is bread, as in these words of Pablo Neruda -- “On our earth, before writing was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars, and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.” 

The radif is another part of ghazals often written in English – the last word of each couplet is repeated in every verse.  That’s the radif, and in the first couplet this word often ends both lines. It’s this repetition, its surprising surprise and consistency, that anchors the ghazal. Some poets will rhyme the word(s) just before the radif, which mimics the qaifa (rhyme) that is a feature of ghazals in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, and other languages.

That the ghazal has moved and changed from culture to culture may inspire new ways to think of humanity uniting to form a global resilience, a global resistance. Here are words to heal, in a form we hope will push and pull you to define, from different angles, what this Plague is. From the invisible virus, the clarity of words, of poetry. Like bread.

EDITORS & PRODUCTION TEAM

PARTNERS

"Poetry is like Bread is a COVID-19 Rapid Response project funded by the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund for U.S. Alumni. The Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund for U.S. Alumni is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by Partners of the Americas."