Abstract

This essay stages a comparative reading of William Carlos Williams’s “Smell,” Rae Armantrout’s “The Way,” and Eve L. Ewing’s “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store” alongside selected passages from Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Masnavi-ye Ma‘navi. By situating the modernist, post-Language, and contemporary African American lyric within a Sufi framework of sensory perception, self-effacement, and attentiveness, the article highlights continuities in poetic thinking about the body’s senses across radically different traditions. I argue that these juxtapositions illuminate how poetry persistently returns to the nose, the clearing, and the market as loci of ethical and spiritual encounter.

1. Introduction

The Masnavi of Rūmī (1207–1273), often called “the Qur’an in Persian,” foregrounds the senses—smell, sight, hearing—as pathways to divine apprehension. Modern and contemporary American poets likewise dwell on the senses, though often with irony, fragmentation, or political urgency. This essay brings three poems from the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) syllabus—Williams’s “Smell,” Armantrout’s “The Way,” and Ewing’s “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store”—into dialogue with select Masnavi passages.

2. Williams’s “Smell” and the Ethics of the Nose

Williams apostrophizes his own nose:

“Must you taste everything? / Must you know everything? / Must you have a part in everything?”

The “bony nose” is both comic and grotesque, embodying indiscriminate desire.

Rūmī, by contrast, offers a moralized vision of smell:

  • Persian (Masnavi I:18):
    «چون که بویی برد و شکر آن نکرد / کفر نعمت آمد و بینیش خورد»
  • Translation:
    “When he has caught a scent and given no thanks for it, / ingratitude came and devoured his nose.”

Here smell is a divine gift requiring gratitude. Williams satirizes sensory excess; Rūmī spiritualizes it. Both locate identity in the nose, but diverge in ethical valence.

3. Armantrout’s “The Way” and the Moth’s Leap

Armantrout’s short lyric loops fragments of cultural detritus toward a sudden “clearing”:

“…here’s the small gasp of this clearing / come upon again.”

The form enacts productive disorientation, revealing a momentary way out of narrative.

Rūmī dramatizes the moth and candle (Masnavi III:188):

  • Persian:
    «همچو پروانه شرر را نور دید / احمقانه در فتاد از جان برید
    لیک شمع عشق چون آن شمع نیست / روشن اندر روشن اندر روشنیست»
  • Translation:
    “Like a moth that saw the flame as light, / foolishly it fell, giving its life. / Yet the Candle of Love is not like that flame: / it is brightness within brightness within brightness.”

Both Armantrout and Rūmī valorize surrender—whether to fragmentation or to divine love—as the condition of revelation.

4. Ewing’s Emmett Till and the Dignity of Scent

Ewing reimagines Emmett Till gently selecting plums in a grocery store:

“…lifting each plum to his eyes and turning it slowly… whistling softly.”

The poem restores dignity to Till’s presence, insisting on care in the midst of historical trauma.

Rūmī admonishes proper use of the senses (Masnavi IV:85):

  • Persian:
    «بو وظیفهٔ بینی آمد ای عتل / بوی گل بهر مشام است ای دلیر
    جای آن بو نیست این سوراخ زیر»
  • Translation:
    “Smell is the duty of the nose, O bold one. / The scent of the rose is for the nostril, O brave one— / not for the low hole beneath.”

Ewing’s poem honors attention to fruit as ethical witness; Rūmī insists that fragrance belongs to its proper faculty. Both elevate perception into moral responsibility.

5. Conclusion

Placing Rūmī beside these modern and contemporary poets reveals convergences in how poetry treats the senses. Williams ridicules the nose’s appetite, Rūmī sanctifies it; Armantrout clears a space of perception, Rūmī burns into divine brightness; Ewing restores the dignity of sensory care, Rūmī insists on the proper dignity of the senses. Across centuries, poetry persists in making the nose, the clearing, and the market stages for ethical and spiritual perception.

Notes

  1. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Masnavi-ye Ma‘navi, ed. Ganjoor.org, accessed September 2025.
  2. William Carlos Williams, “Smell.”
  3. Rae Armantrout, “The Way.”
  4. Eve L. Ewing, “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store.”

Bibliography

  • Armantrout, Rae. Versed. Wesleyan University Press, 2009.
  • Ewing, Eve L. 1919. Haymarket Books, 2019.
  • Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn. Masnavi-ye Ma‘navi. Ganjoor.org (Persian text).
  • Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn. The Masnavi I Ma’navi, trans. E.H. Whinfield. London, 1898.
  • Williams, William Carlos. Collected Poems, Vol. 1. New Directions, 1986.