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Home Sections A Poet's Corner Azerbaijan, The "Land of the Future," Is A "Poetry-In-Motion" Nation, Too
Azerbaijan, The "Land of the Future," Is A "Poetry-In-Motion" Nation, Too PDF Print E-mail
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Sections - A Poets' Corner
Written by Bobby M. Reyes   
Tuesday, 18 February 2020 11:56



By Bobby M. Reyes


T his journalist has long admired Azerbaijan as a secular Muslim-majority country. In fact, my admiration led me to write in 2017 this op-ed piece about how the world could bring permanent peace in troubled Islamic countries by adopting Azerbaijan as the "model country" in redeveloping and reinventing the Muslim World.

Here is the link to my column about the history and the coming perceived-and-suggested role in foreign affairs of Azerbaijan:

This Thursday, February 20th, the Consulate General of Azerbaijan and the UCLA Library will present a poetry-and-musical event called "Man, Universe and Love: The Poetry Performance of Imadeddin Nasimi." It should embellish my description of Azerbaijan as a "Poetry-In-Motion" nation.

The event will be held starting at 3:00 p.m. at the Main Conference Room of the UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library.

The event features Imadeddin Nasimi (1369-1417). He was the great Azerbaijani poet and eminent figure in the poetry and philosophical thought of the Orient -- from the Near East to the Middle East and even in the Far East.

Poet Nasimi was the founder of a school of philosophical poetry in the Azerbaijani language. Nasimi is considered the greatest Turkic-speaking poet and mystic, and the first master of the poetic Divan in the history of Turkic people. He wrote about 300 poems, including ghazals, qasidas ("lyrics"), and rubais ("quatrains"). His poems show that Nasimi had an encyclopedic grasp of the learning of his day. He was a propagator and leading theorist of Hurufism, a mystic pantheistic Sufi doctrine which emerged in Azerbaijan at the dawn of the 15th century. 

Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam preaching peace, tolerance and pluralism. Last year, Azerbaijan celebrated Poet Laureate Nasimi’s 650th birthday anniversary.

It may interest the friends of Azerbaijan to know that Azerbaijani Consul General Nasimi Aghayev was named after the great poet and intellectual. Consul General Aghayev is currently the dean of the Consular Corps in Los Angeles, CA. He is probably a budding poet, as poetry runs in his veins.

By the way, people should know what "poetry in motion" means. It refers often to someone or something that moves, or in my view, to a people that live, in a way that is very-graceful or very-beautiful.

It may interest my Azerbaijani friends to know also that my wife, Ceny de los Reyes-Reyes, is a great-granddaughter of Leona Florentino, the first poet of the Philippines. She was recognized as the preeminent poet of her time by the then-Spanish colonial government of the Philippines. Her son, Isabelo (Don Belong) de los Reyes, followed his mother's footsteps by becoming the county's Father of Filipino Folklore. Aside from writing several books and poetry in the Iberian tongue, he also translated the Bible from Spanish to the Ilocano language, as part of his work as the founder in 1902 of the Filipino Independent (Catholic) Church. Later Don Belong founded the Philippine Labor Movement and he was elected a member of the Philippine Commonwealth's Senate.

Thus, this Thursday's event should draw Southern California's poets, poetesses and descendants of "poetry-in-motion" movers and shakers. # # #


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Last Updated on Tuesday, 18 February 2020 12:56
 

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