{"id":707,"date":"2015-05-12T19:02:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T19:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=707"},"modified":"2015-05-13T20:09:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T20:09:51","slug":"follow-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"FOLLOW, POET"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Composer Mohammed Fairouz<\/p>\n

It’s premature to relegate poetry to mausoleums or crypts. \u00a0In some places in the world, people cry, break down and weep to poetry. \u00a0They lose it. \u00a0It happens in well-worn caf\u00e9s in Middle Eastern cities like Cairo, Beirut and Marrakech when storytellers take the floor. \u00a0Same when\u00a0fakirs near Karachi entrance crowds with their Sufi recitations. As people cast off their certainties, they open themselves. \u00a0They inhale and exhale through their emotional pores.<\/p>\n

Would listeners of poetry in the US ever break down and cry? Probably not. \u00a0Their physical reactions would be more visceral, in your face, even violent. \u00a0That’s the language that curators and editors of poetry magazines use when describing their ideal experience.\u00a0\u00a0They want poetry to knock their socks off (mild); shake them to their core, be blown away, be torched and tornadoed, be changed forever. Emily Dickinson may have established the esteemed American tradition when she said, “If I feel physically that the top of my head were taken off, I know it’s poetry.”<\/p>\n

Composer Mohammed Fairouz reaches for the cleansing experience of poetry on his new album, Follow, Poet – <\/em>deep emotive feeling rather than a Poltergeist 360 degree rotation of your head. \u00a0His work is an imaginative crossroads of culture and convivencia. \u00a0The classical musician sets the moving, inquiring poems of W. H. Auden, sung by mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, to his percussive music. He records recitations of Seamus Heaney poems.<\/p>\n

His love of Irish poets is fascinating for an American with Arab roots born in 1985. \u00a0He is cosmopolitan. \u00a0Fairouz drops in “found material” like a rapper, lines about the arts from a riveting speech of John F. Kennedy: “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”<\/p>\n

Isn’t the poet one who journeys and carries his or her truth to others? \u00a0In this way, Fairouz composes a five-part ballet to honor Anwar Sadat, the man who had the courage to cross cultures and recognize Israel. Fairouz also crosses borders. \u00a0In previous work, Symphony #3, Poems and Prayers<\/em>, the composer began with Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and included lyrics by the Palestinian poets Fadwa Tuqan and Mahmoud Darwish, and Israeli poet Yehida Amichai. \u00a0He talks about his inclusive process in the following interview:\u00a0http:\/\/onbeing.org\/program\/transcript\/7517#main_content<\/a><\/p>\n

Fairouz closes his album with recitation of Auden’s journey from near cultural devastation to light, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats.”\u00a0\u00a0 The title comes from this stanza:<\/p>\n

Follow, poet, follow right<\/p>\n

To the bottom of the night,<\/p>\n

With your unconstraining voice<\/p>\n

Still persuade us to rejoice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Composer Mohammed Fairouz It’s premature to relegate poetry to mausoleums or crypts. \u00a0In some places in the world, people cry, break down and weep to poetry. \u00a0They lose it. \u00a0It happens in well-worn caf\u00e9s in Middle Eastern cities like Cairo, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,222,215,221,138,220,219],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-auden","tag-krista-tippett","tag-mohammed-fairouz","tag-on-being","tag-poetry","tag-seamus-heaney","tag-yeats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-bp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}