Mohja Kahf

[genoveva]

Is anyone familiar with the poet Mohja Kahf? I picked up her 2003 compilation of poems titled E-mails From Scheherazad at the library as I was looking for something else...

Here's an excerpt:

E-mail from Scheherazad

Hi, babe. It's Scheherazad. I'm back
For the millennium and living in Hackensack,
New Jersey. I tell stories for a living.
You ask if there is a living in that.

You must remember: Where I come from,
Words are to die for. I saved the virgins
From beheading by the king, who was killing
Them to still the beast of doubt in him.

I told a story. He bagan to listen and I found
That story led to story. Powers unleashed, I wound
The thread around the pirn of night. A thousand days
Later, we got divorced. He'd settled down

& wanted a wife & not so much an artist.
I wanted publication. It was hardest,
Strangely, on my sister, Dunyazad. She
Was the one who nightly used to start it.

She and my ex do workshops now in schools
On art & conflict resolution. Narrative rules!
I teach creative writing at Montclair State,
And I'm on my seventh novel and book tour.

Shahrayar and I share custody of our little girl.
We split up amicably. I taught him to heal
His violent streak through stories, after all,
And he helped me uncover my true call.

[Scheherazade]

*vehemently denies having sent such emails!

:p

[genoveva]

Another:

So You Think You Know Scheherazad

So you think you know Scheherazad
So you think she tells you bedtime stories
that will please and soothe,
invents fairy cratures
who will grant you wishes

Scheherazad invents nothing
Scheherazad awakens
the demons under your bed
They were always there
She locks you in with them

And when you struggle to escape from them,
and when you run
to the very end of the corridor, you find
that it leads only to another corridor
And every door you open is a false door
And suddenly you find yourself in a room
within a room within a room within a room
and suddenly you find yourself forced to meet them,
the demons she unleashes,
the terrors that come from
within you and within her
And suddenly Scheherazad is nowehere to be found
but the stories she unlocked go on and on-

this is the power of the telling of a story-
And suddenly you find yourself
swimming through the sea to the Reef of Extremity,
flying to the Valley of all That Is Possible,
walking barefoot on a blade
over the Chasm of Flames,
landing in a field where you wrestle with Iblis,

whose form changes into your lover,
into Death, into knowledge, into God,
whose face changes into Scheherazad-

And suddenly you find yourself.

[jon1jt]

Hi, babe. It's Scheherazad. I'm back
For the millennium and living in Hackensack,
New Jersey.

Narrative rules!
I teach creative writing at Montclair State,
And I'm on my seventh novel and book tour.


Can I tell you that I live a couple towns over from Hackensack AND I graduated Montclair State U! "It's a small world after all..." :banana: