The Giving: Poems of Hafiz, Rumi, Mira, Kabir, and St. John of the Cross
Kathleen Barker and Daniel Ladinsky. 60 minutes. Recorded privately at Windy Hill, SC, 2001.
CD review by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
I used to joke to friends that my idea of hell is being trapped in a room while someone is reading their poems. Well, now I have to modify that statement, because you can lock me in a room with Daniel Ladinsky and Kathy Barker anytime. Danny, as many of you know, is the author of three volumes of renderings of Hafiz. Kathy is his partner in life and in performance, and I have always found their poetry recitals at Meher Center to be utterly charming. The next best thing to hearing them in person is to put on this CD, dim the lights, and use their soft words as a cushion for your head (to borrow a phrase from one of the poems).
This recording is an informal, unedited presentation, not a polished commercial product but certainly not a shabby homemade one either. The recitations are accompanied by Kathy’s light-as-a-feather playing of dulcimer and guitar, and punctuated with Danny’s joyous laughter and asides ranging from the personal (“Doesn’t Kathy sound cute?”) to the explanatory (“Of course, Hafiz never used the word spitballs”). A couple of minuscule flubs do not detract from the recording; for me they add to its immediacy and good humor, a feeling of being right there having fun at a live performance piece.
At one point there is even an allusion to sales figures, which made me chuckle, but I hasten to add that the success of Danny’s work is a welcome thing, not only because a talented person deserves recognition, but also because his contribution is important. In the debate, sometimes angry, over the value of poetic “renderings” and “versions” versus “translations” by native speakers or Ph.D.s, we may fail to notice that a unique English-language art form is emerging—ghazal-inspired devotional poetry that sings into our own ears and speaks to our own experience and culture, awakening feelings and understandings that we never felt or understood before. Artists such as the poet Thomas Rain Crowe and Raine Eastman Gannett (singing Francis Brabazon’s ghazals, among other wonderful things) are also making their mark in this new territory. And at the same time, other talented people, such as Shahriar Shahriari, help us to appreciate what Hafiz means and sounds like to the Persian culture. It’s all one big wild party, and I say the more people who collapse drunk at it, the better.
But back to those two drunken beauties, Danny and Kathy. I enjoy their highly original style of reciting, a leisurely, rhythmic intonation that transports you into a sacred space, an altered consciousness, a place where the normal world doesn’t make a bit of sense. You have entered a crazy garden where a guy who calls himself Hafiz cavorts with Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai, and Saint John of the Cross, of all people. It is a place of romance, mystery, seductiveness, humor, surprise, and a touch of melancholy. Danny and Kathy take turns reciting the same poem, or sometimes she will repeat the line he just delivered, or maybe he will say it twice just because he likes it so much, or maybe she or he will do a poem alone. Together or individually, they do well in the contest of madness.
I like the very intimate quality of this CD. Hafiz’s poems themselves are known for their uncanny tendency to speak directly to the reader’s concerns. Something rather bizarre like that occurred when I listened to the poems. I had written down the first two sentences of this review and then settled down to play the CD. Somewhere in the midst of it, I was stunned to hear Hafiz-Danny intone: “May I speak to you like we are close and locked away together?” Weird!