Middle Eastern Poetry

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that Middle Eastern poetry is often peppered with honest assessments of the physical and emotional turmoil of conflict. The writer discusses that poetry in the Middle East tends to be a voice of record, in stylistic descriptions of the conflicts of mind, body and spirit that demonstrate a life or many lives in the turmoil of conflict and change. The writer maintains that many Middle Eastern authors feel a fierce obligation to write not only about the joy and struggle of writing poetry but also the trails and conflicts of their nations and the people whom they have known and whom they have imagined to have been deeply affected by all. The writer concludes that in the works of Ozkan Mert (Turkish) Taha Muhammad Ali (Palastinian) Eliaz Cohen (Israeli) and Aharon Shabtai (Israeli) one can locate the human drama of living in strife as well as the pleasure of poetic expression, without any real difficulty and with a great sense of wonder that is expressed through poetry and the wondrous human mind.

From the Paper:

"Each of these writers are expressing the nature of self, the body of self and the nature of political and social upheaval, as it is expressive of the self and the whole. Each may be writing from an opposing side, but clearly their views are not opposing. Their voice is one that asks those who would choose to subvert them to listen to their voice as the voice of the individual seeking individual reconciliation in the face of conflict. The Middle Eastern conflict is a constant point of discussion in every arena, those offering solutions and those offering greater strife, and the words of these poets exemplify that the voice rarely heard is the voice of the people, the individual bodies and souls who live every day facing the results of conflict and the candor of legislative results.
"Ozkan Mert probably best exemplifies the passion and power of poetry, as a simple form that can convey a meaning beyond the nature of it length or even it s breath. Mert in his poem Whose on the Side of Poetry expresses the fear that some have of poetry, as a tool used by people to express the nature of strife, often when many wish that such strife not become public knowledge."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ali, Taha Muhammad "Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower" & "After We Die" Radical Teacher, Spring 2005 72 15 Retrieved November 10, 2007 from Academic Search Premier.
• Cohen, Eliaz Snow Retrieved Novemeber 10, 2007 from: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_ecohen.html
• Cooke, Miriam, and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, eds. Blood into Ink: South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.
• Karlinsky, Nahum. "California Dreaming: Adapting the "California Model" to the Jewish Citrus Industry in Palestine, 1917-1939." Israel Studies 5.1 (2000): 24-40.
• Ozkan Mert Whose on the Side of Poetry Retrieved Novemeber 10, 2007 from:http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/poetry/poems/ozkan_mert/index.html

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