Poetry in the morning

The Promise of a New Day

In the dawning face of the sun

Writers block comes to us all. One of the more successful ways I break through when I’m struggling with a poem, is to read other poets. Most of my poems begin as “notes” or phrases jotted down about artworks or photographs of mine.

Recently, I had been toying with a few jotted down phrases about by my own photograph (featured below). The way the sunbeams shoot across the sky seemed, to me like “towers of light” — so, I jotted that down. I had several rather poetic lines, but was struggling to pull them together into a coherent poem. Hoping to fire my poetic imagination, I turned to my little library for a book of poetry and happened to land on the Rubaiyat.

The Rubaiyat is a book of poetry by Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), the revered Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. Our first wedding anniversary together, I bought a 1956 illustrated special edition as a gift for my Persian husband, Hamid. The title page reads as follows:

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald
with paintings and decorations by Sarkis Katchadourian

The book’s illustrator was Sarkis Katchadourian (1886–1947), a renowned Armenian artist born in Iran. He was known for his recreations of the romantic frescoes in the old palaces of Isfahan. Hamid’s edition of the book…