Owed to Omar: Adventures with a Persian-style Quatrain–100 Original Poems with Blogatelles

A festival of rhythmic adventure in 100 original modern poems, this book is a tribute to the Persian poet and mathematician Omar (1048-1131), featured in Edward FitzGerald’s popular Victorian translation, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1889). A skeptical writer with a gift for singable verse, Omar wrote: “Some for the glories of This World; and some / Sigh, for the Prophet’s Paradise to come; / Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, / Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!” The hundred new poems I feature here are my own original uses and adaptions of the popular medieval stanza form I have “owed” to the example of Omar, a quatrain (four-liner) in iambs with an appealing rhyme pattern. I’ve altered that form in myriad ways, hybridizing it with countless other stanza forms ancient and modern. Every poem should be read aloud for greater pleasure. My “blogatelles” (French “bagatelle” means a light musical piece) are blogs written like keyboard improvisations, relating the poems to my altering interests and life events. I’ve been shaping new verses into a modern Omar-tribute collection throughout the nearly 17 years of my retoolment (not “retirement”). Seeing and hearing how art and daily living intertwine, you’ll be exploring the entertaining moods of senior poetry. I turned 78 in 2021.