This class was taught on May 26, 2019 at San Diego Writers, Ink at the Ink Spot.
This class was planned and created to counter the Islamaphobia and the hate and ignorance that is not my America
Cost: $60.00
The Heart of Islam: Harmony
Quotes: Shadab Zeest Hashmi: At the heart of Islamic spirituality is the principle of harmony: recognizing and honoring Divine power in everything around us, making a habit of seeking balance and being an active participant of the ever-flowing, ever-lit, larger oneness. It is an ideal most clearly expressed in Muslim architecture. Here is a photo from a morning at the Alhambra, in Spain. I love how the individual components— the structure, the water, the fragrance, the changing light, the flora and fauna, the movement and the stillness of the people present— are gently blended, synchronized parts of a beautiful whole.
Lu Chi-On Harmony: Each new composition assumes a special air, but only through trying many shapes & changes, learning the art of the subtle. Ideas seek harmonious existence, one among others, through language that is both beautiful & true. Sounds interlock and intermingle like the five colors of embroidery, each enhancing the others. Recognizing order is like opening a dam in a river. Not knowing is like grabbing the tail to direct the head of a dragon. When dark and light are poorly mixed, the result is always muddy.
Rumi (1207-1273): Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
Roald Dahl: And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it, A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it
Play: Bobby McFerrin – LIVE Improvisation at The Kennedy Center (7:24)
Alhambra – Granada, Andalusia, Spain in HD (Stop @ 3:24)
Rumi – My Soul is from Elsewhere (2:22)
Ana Vidovic plays Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega on a Jim Redgate classical guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjX-m4LkYk
Best Oud Instrumentals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RVT5wlYPsU
In My Life” Peter Sprague Solo Guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArwCPRnKuR4
Read Rumi, What Is The Soul; A Great Rose Tree; al Shustari, A Little Sheikh From the Land of Meknes; Imtiaz Dharker, Prayer; They’ll Say She Must Be From Another Country; Naomi Shihab Nye, The Words Under the Words; Kindness;Songbook; Mamoud Darwish; I Didn’t Apologize to the Well; Shihab Zeest Hasmi, Guantanamo.
Play: Guantanamo (2:48)
2nd Twenty 1:40 P.M. to 2:00 P.M. Write
Words can sound like a poem but….When I feel a sacredness in the room…This is the moment of the…In the middle of the market I could sing…In these times what prayer do I whisper…Sometimes I can’t comprehend…In my poem there are words under…I’ve known kindness…I didn’t apologize to…Someone gave me _____for memory…
Last Thirty 2:00 P.M. To 3:00 P.M. Read
The Poets of Islam: A Pen & Paper Love-In
Poem-Making With Jim Moreno – Parallel Voices To Islam
2nd 90 Min. 2:30-4:00 PM
Quotes:
N. Scott Momaday: We are not in danger of exceeding the boundaries of language, nor are we prisoners of language in any dire way. I am much more concerned with “my”place within the context of “my” language. This, I think, must be a principle of storytelling. And the storyteller’s place within the context of his language must include both a geographical and mythic frame of reference. Withing that frame of reference is the freedom of infinite possibility. The place of infinite possibility is where the storyteller belongs.
Hafez (1315-1390): (4 decades after the death of Rumi) Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere, Don’t always agree it’s real, Even with my feet upon it And the postman knowing my door My address is somewhere else.
Malala Yousafzai (Youngest Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace-17 years old): Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. Education is our basic right. Not just in the West; Islam too has given us this right. Islam says every girl and every boy should go to school. In the Quran it is written, God wants us to have knowledge. He wants us to know why the sky is blue and about oceans and stars. I know it’s a big struggle—around the world there are fifty-seven million children who are not in primary school, thirty-two million of them girls.
N. Scott Momaday: Language is the context of our experience. We know who we have been, who we are, and who we can be in the dimension of words, of language.
Play: “This We Have Now”-An interview with Coleman Barks (13:57-16:11)
Music To Write To:
Zen Meditation Music | Japanese Flute Music | Relax, Meditation, Sleep, Ambience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6HbU9Mpcmw
Chet Baker – Tenderly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6mfWun73vI&list=RDylXk1LBvIqU&index=11
Blue in Green by. Miles Davis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoPL7BExSQU
First Forty 2:30 P.M. To 3:10 P.M.
Read: Hafez, Several Time in the Last Week; N Scott Momaday, The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee; Theodore Roethke, In A Dark Time; Magic Box, Malala: The Flame Queen; Lizzie Wann, Rumi; Paisley Rekdal(Chinese-American),Telling the Wasps; W.S. Merwin, Thanks
Play:
“listening” poetry Rumi/Barks with Kim Rosen and Jami Sieber (3:05)
2nd Twenty 3:10 P.M. to 3:30 P.M. Write
Happiness is knocking on doors trying to find me… I am… I stand…; In these dark times…She is the flame of truth…My journey began when…When you died I told…When I see____I say thank you…
Last Thirty 3:30 P.M. To 4:00 P.M. Read
The Poets of Islam: A Pen & Paper Love-In
Poem-Making With Jim Moreno
Bibliography
1) Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shushtarī: Songs of Love and Devotion, Lourdes María Alvarez, 2009.
2) Baker of Tarifa, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Poetic Matrix Press, 2010.
3) Now, As You Awaken, Mamoud Darwish, Sardines Press, 2007.
4) Poesía andalusí, Manuel Francisco Reina, Editorial Edaf, 2007.
5) Postcards From God, Imitaz Dharker, Penguin India and Bloodaxe Books UK, 1994.
6) Ritual sufí andalusí, al-Shushtari, Omar Metioui, Eduardo Paniagua, Madrid Pneuma, 1998.
7) The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks, Harper 1, 2004.
8) The Glance: Songs of Soul-Meeting, Coleman Barks with Nevit Ergin, Penguin Compass, 1999.
9) The Man Made of Words, N. Scott Momaday, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1997.
10) The Minpins, Roald Dahl, Puffin Books, 2009.
11) The Odyssey, Homer, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., March 2000.
12) The Plum, Campbell McGrath, The Paris Review, Issue # 40 (Fall 1996).
13) Wen Fu: The Art of Writing, Lu Chi, Translated by Sam Hamil, Milkweed Editions, U.S.A, 2000.
14) Words Under the Words, Naomi Shihab Nye, The Eighth Mountain Press, 1994.
Quotes:
za’jal – Lebanese zajal is a semi-improvised, semi-sung or declaimed form of poetry in the colloquial Lebanese Arabic dialect. Its roots may be as ancient as Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, but various similar manifestations of zajal can be traced to 10th-12th-century Moorish Spain (Al-Andalus), and specifically to the colloquial poet Ibn Quzman(Cordoba, 1078-1160).The al Shustari poem above is an example of a zajal.
ghazal’ – The ghazal is a short poem consisting of rhyming couplets, called Sher or Bayt. Most ghazals have between seven and twelve shers. For a poem to be considered a true ghazal, it must have no fewer than five couplets. Almost all ghazals confine themselves to less than fifteen couplets
Lu Chi -On Revision: Looking back, search for the disharmonious image; anticipating what may come, prepare a smooth transition. Even with right reason, words sometimes clang, sometimes language flows, though the ideas themselves remain trivial. Know one from the other and the writing will be clearer; confuse the two and everything will suffer.
Rumi: Both light and shadow are the dance of Love. Love has no cause, it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets. Lover and loving are inseparable and timeless. Although I may try to describe love, when I experience it, I am speechless. Although I may try to write about love, I am rendered helpless. My pen breaks, and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where lover loving and loved are one. Every moment is made glorious by the light of Love.
Hafez: A Sufi mystic was a Persian poet who “lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy”. His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are often found in the homes of people in the Persian speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings. Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry or ghazals, that is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems.
complete the PayPal payment for the desired class to enroll. If you have more questions about a specific course please use the contact form or send me an email at jimmoreno95@gmail.com. After payment completion, you will be sent to the course page, where all the course materials will be given. Please be respectful of the amount of time and work that has gone into the creation of these courses as well as this website. We kindly ask that you do not share the content with others.