Nazik al-Mala’ika (1923-), Buland al-Haydari
(1926–1996), and Abdul Wahab al-Bayaati
(1926-), among others, were experimenting with
new techniques in search of a language that
expressed their new vision of reality. Signifi-
cantly, all of these young poets were more or
less progressive in their political views. Despite
their nationalism, Marxism, or Communism,
they were united in their opposition to the status
quo in literature and life.
More than any of them, Yusuf has been
interested in quietness in poetry as well as in
politics. It seems that he believes that whispering
is more effective than declaiming, suggesting is
more convincing than stating, and portraying
the ordinary is more enduring than portraying
the extreme. Significantly, all three qualities are
essential parts of folklore and vernacular litera-
ture. In a poem published in 1971, appropriately
titled ‘‘Tanwima’’ (Nursery Song), Yusuf dem-
onstrates his mature experimentation with the
poetics of the ordinary...
The poetic diction is so simple that it is
almost colloquial in its idiom and the choice of
words. Any reader can relate to the poem; even
the illiterate listener would not find it difficult to
understand the general theme and the narrative
line. In order to capture the situation suggested
by the title, the speaker, a tired and sleepy young
mother, wearily sings to put her baby to sleep.
Similar to folkloric songs, the poem relies on the
magic created by repetition of words and
phrases. The repetition actuates the hypnotizing
rhythm, which is the most effective aspect of the
poem. The meaning of specific lines is vague and
elusive, even as obscure and unlimited as the
setting of the poem, the wilderness. The young
mother, weary and sleepy, glows in the middle of
the wilderness with yellow light intensified by the
yellow light coming from her restless baby,
whose face and hair are also yellow. The two
faces, the mother’s and the baby’s, circled with
yellow halos definitely evoke the Madonna, thus
elevating the ordinary scene to a mythical level.
No change happens in the situation until one star
falls, indicating the coming of the dawn: the
baby’s face changes from yellow to red. At this
point another speaker, apparently the poet,
intrudes to urge the young mother to sleep.
Actually, in this poem there are two nursery
songs being sung simultaneously: one by the
young mother to her baby and another by the
poet to the beautiful young mother in the
wilderness. The poem tries to capture the anxiety
of the anonymous young mother, lonely in the
middle of the dark universe. The experience is
not really unique; it is an ordinary every-night
experience. The poetry in it arises from the poet’s
ability to make the agony of the young mother
unique through imagery and rhythm. By both
repetition and austere minimalism, Yusuf cre-
ates what he later calls al-qasida al-mutaqashifa,
that is, the ascetic poem (Yusuf, ‘‘Letter,’’ 1994).
Because of the intensity of his language, its self-
consciousness, its playfulness, and its ultimate
defamiliarizing of the familiar, Yusuf’s poetry
would be the delight of the New Critic and the
Russian Formalist. In a crucial passage from his
Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine (1955),
Victor Erlich identifies the technique by which
the poet is able to transform ordinary language
into poetry:
If in informative ‘prose,’ a metaphor aims to
bring the subject closer to the audience or drive
a point home, in ‘poetry’ it serves as a means of
intensifying the intended aesthetic effect.
Rather than translating the unfamiliar into
the terms of the familiar, the poetic image
‘makes strange’ the habitual by presenting it
in a novel light, by placing it in unexpected
context. (150)
But like any good poetry, Yusuf’s poetry
both satisfies and disturbs poetic theory. As the
Russian Formalist would like to see, language in
Yusuf’s poetry becomes, like a child, happily
aware of itself. But when Yusuf liberates the
language and makes it self-conscious, he inad-
vertently gives voice to new, even revolutionary,
realities—realities that are relegated to the mar-
gins or made insignificant. As Derrida’s decon-
structionism has demonstrated—though poets
and writers are always ahead of philosophers—
to highlight the insignificant or the fringe or the
margin naturally threatens the center, which is
by definition a political act (Culler, 193–4).
Another poem titled ‘‘Ilhah’’ (Insistence)
written in 1956 utilizes techniques from folklore
and diction from the vernacular. These include
magical repetition of words and phrases, entrap-
ment of the vulnerable speaker/protagonist that
immediately appeals to the reader and entices his
or her identification, and the exposition of the
elemental level of the desire. An ordinary indi-
vidual, who seems to be a farmer or a shepherd,
desperately tries to cross the river to meet his
young wife, who is taking care of her sick father
on the other side of the river. The speaker, who isAmerica, America