PoetryPoetry

Rootsthe tradition

The autonomous sher, iham (two precise meanings at once), soz (yearning over arrival), the maqta (the poet signs the last couplet).

The ideawhat it values

The beloved does not arrive. The whole apparatus — the wound, the messenger, the wine, the moth at the flame — exists to hold the gap open, and a poem that closed it would have nothing left to say. Each couplet stands alone and can be lifted out whole, which is why the form travels so easily in speech and so badly in summary.

The groundin the Atlas

Writtenwhere the archive stands