[Carl Copeland]

Ok, what have I got to lose other than my dignity? Here’s the first stanza of a blank verse poem I published in a college magazine (it’s all I can remember off the top of my head). I shut myself up in my dorm room and obsessed over it for endless hours when I should have been studying. The first line is ok, and I still like “cry his far hurrah,” but the rest is trash. I was apparently playing with Islamic mysticism, about which I knew next to nothing. I got one or two polite compliments, but the abject failure of this poem put me off writing more for decades.

The stars reveal my caravanserai
On sands that skirt the howling dervish world.
I kneel composed as night rolls back and hear
A bright muezzin cry his far hurrah.