The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bliss in Triple Rhythm–A Toolbox for Poets: Nine Ways to Shape A Word Song: Shown in 300 Original Poems by Martin Bidney

Bliss in Triple Rhythm–A Toolbox for Poets: Nine Ways to Shape A Word Song: Shown in 300 Original Poems by Martin Bidney

https://www.amazon.com/Bliss-Triple-Rhythm-Toolbox-Poets/dp/1987402561

Mmartinbidney.org

This book of word songs in unexpected melodic patterns will surprise you by its equally unusual liveliness. I’m so eager to begin singing for you that, as you noticed, I’ve already written a prefatory poem in one of the varied kinds of triple rhythm units I’ll be illustrating (la LA la; weak STRONG weak; one TWO three; x/x). The strangest thing I’ll be doing in my collection is to bring about a resurrection of ancient stanza patterns embodying the musical structures I love. The uncustomary triple-rhythm stanza forms richly displayed will acquire a real if unlikely novelty by presenting tools so extremely old.

About the author
Martin Bidney, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University (NY), writes poetry books that are dialogues. In “Shakespair” he converses in Shakespearean sonnets with the 154 that the bisexual Bard himself wrote in the 1590s about his boyfriend and girlfriend. In “A Unifying Light” Martin converses with Qur’anic passages on the topic of Jews and Christians in the Qur’an and the Islamic virtues they embody. “East-West Poetry” shows Martin replying, in poems, to passages from both the Qur’an and Rumi. “Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance” offers 103 dialogues between Martin and Hafiz, the 14th century Persian pub poet he translates, a Muslim Sufi who was bisexual, like Shakespeare, and whom Germany’s greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, called his “twin” brother! (Martin translates Hafiz from the same version Goethe used.) In fact, Martin has also translated Goethe’s own “West-East Divan” (divan means “collection”) and wrote conversational reply poems to all of Goethe’s 240 lyrics. Martin’s dialogue book with the greatest Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, contains, on facing pages, the sonnets he wrote in response to the “Crimean Sonnets” he translated from Polish. In “Like a Fine Rug of Erivan” he translates 39 Pushkin poems from Russian and recites them on a CD. His wide-ranging fascination with revelatory writing stems from “Patterns of Epiphany,” where Martin pioneered a method of analysis he has since applied to over 20 authors.