radiant fracture

It'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.

4. 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.
5. 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.

I like it a lot -- it's aphoristic, as you can see -- sometimes lyrical, often urgent. He quotes, and wrestles with, Ammo Adonis throughout, from An Introduction to Arab Poetics, so I have impulsively ordered that from a reputable online used bookstore. Which is the sort of thing a friendly corrective hand (antique-style pointer) can direct me to when I puzzle over why I am always broke, but I am just now convinced I need it. For research.

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.

{rf}