NYC

New York is so grand that I grant it could inspire at once joy and sorrow and every feeling in between.

But my spirit boasts mighty wings whenever I am there. As though the concrete skyscrapers had the vitality of Pacific mountains, my heart soars with every breath of New York.

In winter`s cold embrace or summer`s more cloying touch, still the city works her magic on me through the pavement, through the soles of my shoes, into my very bones.

She is like no other place.
Her beauty akin to no other face.
Yet she speaks to me
and sets my feet free
to wander her every street
and thrive on her life`s beat.

My words neither deny nor compete with Ashwin`s well-crafted vision. For I admit that despite my love of New York, I have never called her home. Who knows if too much time with her is possible? Who knows if such constant joy could not make all else seem too bland? So that my lighthearted-dreams would become too heavy for the still mortal air to carry.

Could it be that a person in such a place would forget to fly?

ashwin,
Ignore these jokers who are jealous of your brilliance.Let`s have some more of your magic on chowk;)
kingdom with no king....wah wah...

what the heck is this..........

did i get taken...well at least i didn`t get taken alone...my response was to ashwin...i didn`t even read urstruly`s post in it`s entirety...they have never been the easiest posts for me to read, given the fact that I`m not so smart! ;)
tahmed32...why thank you, such eloquent praise coming from one of my favorite chowkwallahs :-)...by the way, sameerJB is not one of my favorite chowkwallahs.

tahmed #14: I am jealous of Urstruly because he beats me by one whole inch in height but I bet he can not beat me in weight. By the way, ana_dobarah is not as smart as you think.

Ashwin: You wrote:
[you undermine that which poetry aims to achieve- namely an understanding of emotion, spirit, and all which cannot be packed neatly into the formulas and syntax of normal language. ]

Another friend of mine wrote the following about Urdu ghazal at another forum.
[first declare that the glance of one’s lover is like an arrow – then go one step further and declare that the lover is a hunter with bow-and arrow – then imagine all kinds of devastations that his arrows can create – their angles of flight –where they hit and what organ they pierce - then continue and keep on creating all kinds of new scenarios, etc ]

Do you see the extension of abstract, suggestive, impressionistic, metaphorical and imaginative into useless expression with no practical use except for the purpose of creating an art. That is fine but then we should read it just for the pleasure of reading a form of literature and not too much emphasis on the meaning.

An abstract thought can be presented in prose as easily as poetry without added pressure for rhyming and metering which could actually compromize the essence of abstract thought.

I am becoming more of a hamidm disciple here instead of sac`s, by reducing the importance of poetry in favor of prose even lowering my love for Faiz, Ghalib and Iqbal. With all due respect to Iqbal, when gulab jaman quoted one of his verse on `golden age of Islam` thread: `woh tumharay aaba thay magar tum kya ho` from jawab-e-shikwa, I felt bad. I felt bad because poetic contruction forced the wrong meaning for this verse. Iqbal is telling his generation that be like the Muslims during the golden age of Islam but he makes them not just past glorious Islamic empires, not just religious or political heritage, not cultural heritage but makes them ancestors (aaba). That is the weakness of poetry right there. In prose he or any other Islamists or even fundamentalist would have used virsa or some comparable term but not aaba - poetic construction forced him to rhyme.

shwin: i hasten to add that in claiming in his post #13 that he is 5 foot 1 inch tall, urstruly is pulling your leg. Just like he successfully pulled your leg when he claimed earlier on that a good english poem has no more than 3 words per line with one word being an interjection. Even ana_deborah, one of the nicest, smartest chowkies, got took. (This last sentence is good grammer, I am assured by Prof. Urstruly).
urstruly is in fact only 2 foot 3 inches tall, but wears platform shoes to appear 5 foot 1 inch tall. And then stands on a small stool to appear 6 feet tall. And while standing on the stool, he will sell the Brooklyn Bridge to anyone who thinks he is 5 foot 1 inch tall. Trust me. I am a respectable chowk poster and would not lie to you.

yaar # 10

That was a joke. I was just kidding. The truth of the matter is that I am a poetry-challenged person. I am that kind of person whom if brought in front of mona lisa, would appreciate more of its frame than the painting itself. I hardly understand poetry and cannot even remember the most famous urdu or punjabi couplets. Once I fell in love with a girl and wrote about 200 poems for her, some in english. At that time someone asked me to read a poem or a couplet from my collection and I ashamedly admit that I couldnt remeber one sigle couplet of my own poetry and I didn`t have my notebook with me. So I went home and decided to take a critical look at my own poetry and when I found lines like: ``tintinabulation of my heart`` and ``mustjab-ud-dawaat ho jaatay haiN log``; I decided to quit. That girl dumped me citing that I was fat and short but I know it was actually my poetry; who would call a 5 foot 1 desi male short haiN? .

sameerjb: good one. and imagine nyc with manhatten indians. the wolves and the bears would still roam free on manhatten island.

ashwin: good response. The most important element of any poem is the khyal, the spirit which i think you put across quite well...once upon a time it mattered to poets how many syllables, whether it was an alexandrine or something else, tortuous exercises given to determine how many syllables and whether the rhyme scheme is abba, abab or whatever. While such things amazingly added to the beauty of the poem, and probably still do for many, this is clearly not the only way to judge how good a poem is.
and if i may requote something one of our respected writers said to another one of our writer/poets: `critics are a dime a dozen, but writing is hard (work?)` (am typing from memory...often forget the joy of copying and pasting)
poetry is so subjective, you get the praises and you get the `i don`t get its` and `this is trash`. And this bird who fights every single day to keep her wings from getting clipped hopes that you will continue to write, and contribute here at Chowk. :-)
regards,
ana

Folks, thanks for the input/comments.

Urstruly- with all due respect for you poetry guidelines, as well as for your critique of my piece, how can you judge poetry or any other artistic medium with such mathematical criteria? Is there also such a rigid set of formulas for what constitutes a good melody (7 notes per measure, every first note must be and C or a G etc), a good novel, a good painting? Does everything have do be judged by criterion, or is there such a thing as subjectivity? By reducing poetry, and for that matter, any other artistic medium to such formulaic pronouncements, you undermine that which poetry aims to achieve- namely an understanding of emotion, spirit, and all which cannot be packed neatly into the formulas and syntax of normal language. Words that together create a meaning beyond the sum of their individual meanings. 1+1=10. Yes or no?

Maya`s rhythm. . .nice, ashwin. :)

Loved the last two lines (the most).

Ras

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I didn`t get it.

And this poem does not qualify as good poetry. The first criteria of a good english poem is that it must have no more than three words in one line and one of these words must be an article or interjection etc. like a, an, the, of, that, those etc. And the second criteria to judge good english poetry is that it has no more than 7 lines in total. This poem fails on both criterion.

....i like sameer`s poem :)..

nice.
and sameeroo... :-)

Very interesting.

This is good work. Interesting metaphors.

Good poem, Ashwin. Imagine if all 15 million were Muslims......no maya.........everybody prisoner of dream of hereafter.............15 million kings with kingdom.............15 millions free souls refusing to be prisoner to indoor plumbing............jihad against westchester and new jersey......takbeer

Imagine if all 15 million were cooking bhaji with heeng every evening.........15 million chewing paan and spitting all over............15 million livnig in peace with gods.......elephants, monkeys, cows.........and rats too................hare rama, hare rama

Imagine if NYC was part of Pakistan. Army establishment must have divided all manhattan, long island and westchester, leaving queens for officers lower than brigadier ranks and harlem and statten island for civilians.

Imagine if NYC was part of India. All the untouchables would have been forced to migrate to mississippi and alabama by now. All the avenues would have names like gandhi1-8 and all streets nehru1-233.

Imagine NYC was part of NWFP under MMA. Doli chaRdyaN maryaN Ranjhay cheekaN, mainu Afghanistan le challe babla laye challe vay.

Imagine if NYC was part of Bangladesh and no adult males on the streets...........everybody sitting on the warer fronts catching fishes. aai shala aikta bora bora rho macchi aidike aacchan.

Imagine a taxi driver asking a Tamil his last name and reaching at the destination before he could finsih telling his full last name, if NYC was to become part of Tamil Nadu.

Imagine if 15 millions were all Panjabis.................wahe guru ji ka khalsa, wahe guru ji ki fateh!!!!