Current reading - Omar Sakr
Jun. 25th, 2023 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureIt's Wednesday somewhen.
Somewhere recently -- (searches) -- oh, on The Poetry Magazine podcast, the terrific June 20th episode on ""queer use, cynicism,and falling in love" -- I ran into the work of poet Omar Sakr and went to look for more of his writing.
This is from his essay "Tweets to a Queer Arab Poet," from the collection This Arab is Queer: an Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers, edited by Elias Jahshan. It's a numbered list -- like tweets, of course, but also like a religious text.
Queer use, also mentioned on the podcast, itself seems like a beautiful way of thinking. I would like to order that book (Sara Ahmed's What's the Use?) but cannot find it for impulse-buy prices. (The University library does not have it, though they do offer access to an e-book of Ahmed's Queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others (2006). The college library doesn't have it either, but they do have Complaint! (2021) and Living a Feminist Life (2017). But it's this idea of queer use, strange use, repurposing, beyond bricolage, that appeals to me.
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Somewhere recently -- (searches) -- oh, on The Poetry Magazine podcast, the terrific June 20th episode on ""queer use, cynicism,and falling in love" -- I ran into the work of poet Omar Sakr and went to look for more of his writing.
This is from his essay "Tweets to a Queer Arab Poet," from the collection This Arab is Queer: an Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers, edited by Elias Jahshan. It's a numbered list -- like tweets, of course, but also like a religious text.
- All things being equal, be a fox or an otter; the former for its cunning, its dashing color, and the latter for its softness, the ability to sleep in rivers holding onto each other, a lesson in holiness even the prophet Isa never learned.
- Do not mistake cynicism for criticism, or criticism for intelligence. Rid yourself of cynicism, which is self-loathing projected outward. It's an inability or unwillingness to account for one's actions and intentions without condemning yourself, and so you damn everyone.
Queer use, also mentioned on the podcast, itself seems like a beautiful way of thinking. I would like to order that book (Sara Ahmed's What's the Use?) but cannot find it for impulse-buy prices. (The University library does not have it, though they do offer access to an e-book of Ahmed's Queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others (2006). The college library doesn't have it either, but they do have Complaint! (2021) and Living a Feminist Life (2017). But it's this idea of queer use, strange use, repurposing, beyond bricolage, that appeals to me.
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