I call. You're stone.

a different kind of poetry - moving and fascinating article in great and unusual format, in poetry foundation:



"In Afghan culture, poetry is revered, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet — a landay — an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Usually in a village or a family one woman is more skilled at singing landays than others, yet men have no idea who she is. Much of an Afghan woman’s life involves a cloak-and-dagger dance around honor — a gap between who she seems to be and who she is. ... the subjects of landays are remixed like hip-hop, with old words swapped for newer, more relevant ones."

here's the whole article:
Poetry Foundation: Poetry of the Women of Afghanistan