Archive for March 8th, 2009
Free Style “Poetry”: The Lebanese kind (March 7, 2009)
A neighbor in Kunetra had published a poetry volume last year and is ready to publish another one. Sonia Ashkar Alam dedicated her first volume to me with expectation to review it on wordpress.com. I told her that I am no poet but she insisted on ground that any kind of dissemination is a god thing.
I selected one poem out of 33 simply because it is about a friend of mine and a relative who died in a bomb blast in the city of Antelias during the Lebanese civil war. Rasheed Ashkar was teaching chemistry in high schools.
The Man (to the soul of Rasheed Ashkar)
He vanished suddenly and never came back
Back hunched
Ending his journey
Leaving behind
Touches of blame, confused, and muddled.
Stretched on the mat of exhaustion
Here he is!
His spring is dreams
His autumn harvest
But his winter is cloudy.
God is his salvation.
Amid whiffs of sighs
Shouts of aches and lamentations
Resonate in fear
In flight
Bleeding
Chased away
By tears of regret
This is man
Looking up
Talking to the Creator
And the door of heaven
Opening up to welcome him
Note 1: Not directly related to this volume of poems I have to register a warning. There is this Free Style Poetry that has been around for over 40 years. The idea is to free the poet of classical Arabic stringent constraints in rime, rhythm and cadence and thus liberate imagination to smooth flow that permit to convey the full meaning of the emotions. I am no poet but I couldn’t help realizing that the first volume of the new authors is invariably a “poetry book”. As I read I never can figure out where the sentence starts and where it ends; sometimes I have the impression that Free Style is also about liberating authors of meaningful prose writing. The trick is to consider one word as a full sentence occupying an entire line; thus, ten words fill a page and two pages constitute a poem. A few use graphic designs shape and forms on the words accompanied with free hand drawings attached to every poem.
Note 2: I understand that most of us in the Arab world are no longer proficient in classical Arabic literature and that Arabic grammars were written by famous Persian linguists in order to aid Persians assimilating the proper Arabic language as spoken by the bedwins during the Arabic Empire. I understand that the stringent constraints for classical Arabic poetry are almost insurmountable in our present age. Nevertheless, Arabic prose is still accessible, with some hard work, and many have been writing in the slang of their State.
My question is: If the author is not ready to express his own emotional frailty and shortcomings then why write poetry? What’s wrong with writing short stories and personal experiences?
Drama: Here are the Choices
Posted on: March 8, 2009
Drama: Here are the Choices (March 9, 2009)
I forgot what the various definitions of Drama are. I am interested of stating mine; call it the Drama of Life or call it Adonis concept for Drama. Here it goes.
Step one: At every moment in life, you, the individual, regardless of race, origin, religious belief, or physical handicap, or mental handicap, or emotional handicap have alternatives.
At every instance you have got countable choices to select from. Some of you might create more than one, two or several choices to select from, depending on your potentials, hard work, reflection, and accumulated knowledge. You can opt to make life decisions as complex or as simple as you want; it is irrelevant to life; it goes on.
Step two: At every instance do not expect life to tell you the consequences of your choices.
Life is not interested in guiding your path, or taking you by the hand, or infusing knowledge to you, or answering your queries. If you cannot move or select unless you are fully aware of the consequences of your decisions, then you will be selecting default alternatives that you implicitly are inclined to follow.
Life does not care for your process of making decision; it goes on.
Life is telling you: You have got five senses, a brain, and alternatives to select from at every instance. Open your eyes and observe.
Clear your ears and listen. Smell, touch, and taste what nature is offering you. Discuss your head off or keep silent and listen it is your choice.
Reflect for yourself or follow instructions it is your choice. Read or let other read to you it is your choice. Learn or stay ignorant it is your choice. Venture, discover, investigate, or stay put on your land it is your choice. Whatever you do is totally irrelevant to me and it is of no concern to me.
Life is telling you: You were born with certain definite limitations structurally and genetically deal with it. You were born with much potential and capabilities deal with it.
At the end, whether you create binary alternatives, or several or none at every instance, the path you followed is unique and you are unique among the trillions of individual living or already dead.
Life is telling you: I have no instruction to give; I have no opinion to offer. Whatever set of values that are agreeable to you, implicitly or explicitly, it is your set of values and I am totally indifferent.
You may accept 100 values to select from, or fine tune every value and chose from a thousand values it is still completely none of my concern. You may agree with what your society pressure you or induce you to receive as the best set of moral values to guide you it is still your own choice; I am in no position to judge.
All that I know is that you were born unique and you will die unique; that is the best of recognition that I may lavish on you.
Adonis Diaries 