the farmer, tries to beg a ride from a boat owner,
Salim al-Murzuq...
For the traditional school of poetry the
theme of this poem is unthinkable because of
its apparent vulgarity. But what is the source of
poetry in this experience? The conflict between
the speaker’s desperate desire to meet his wife
and Salim al-Murzuq’s desire to have sex with
him as the only acceptable price for taking him
on the boat seems both comic and sad. Again
this unfortunate moment is elevated to a memo-
rable folkloric level primarily by rhythm, repeti-
tion, and what might be called the
vernacularization of the standard Arabic.
Phrases such as ‘‘take my eye as a price,’’ ‘‘and
you are a man of courage,’’ and ‘‘she is pretty’’
are as close as the standard Arabic can be
brought to the southern Iraqi dialect. In the
twenty lean lines of the poems, the name Salim
al-Murzuq is repeated six times. Repetition of
words and phrases, which can be seen as symp-
toms of entrapment, is the only way to express
an elemental desperate desire, as is evident in the
repetitive lyrical intensity of African American
blues and spirituals. Also repetition gives the
poem a child-like quality. By making the speaker
repeat phrases and words, the poet captures his
child-like character and his vulnerability. Specif-
ically, the intensity of the desire expressed
through repetition lends the entire moment an
intimate lyricism—a prominent feature in most
of Yusuf’s poetry.
In both poems discussed above, ‘‘Tanwima’’
and ‘‘Ilhah,’’ the poet does not seem interested in
a closure: he captures the individual’s vulnerabil-
ity in a highly lyrical simple language, only to
leave it jarring in our imagination. It is in this
ability to depict the persistence and perseverance
of the vulnerable that Yusuf seems to whisper
and quietly celebrate the ordinary individual’s
heroism.
Further, by using vernacular or near-
vernacular yfulness of the popular rhythms and
the innocence of language (i.e. not traditional
standard Arabic, the official literary language),
Yusuf is able to construct near-folkloric song
poems.
In Yusuf’s near-vernacular poetic diction,
the narrator frequently indulges in intimate
play with words, like a child fascinated with
colorful balls. In this immersion in language,
meaning or theme becomes secondary, conced-
ing the foreground to the innocence of the
language that is just liberated from the tyranny
of rational thinking and suffocation of ideolo-
gies. Let us look at the function of language in
the following examples:
Do you remember? (When the action becomes
a memory, the question is immediately lost) O
sir, what a flavor does this evening have? In a
cabaret in Rabbat we saw the bottles empty
and the bottles were twenty, and empty in the
evening and empty are the women eyes and
empty are all those bottles (‘‘Hiwar ma’a al-
Akhdhar bin Yusuf’’), (A Dialogue with al-
Akhdar Bin Yusuf), (Al-’Amal al-Kamila, 101)
‘‘Empty’’ is repeated four times, and ‘‘bot-
tles,’’ three times. There is no logic or rhetorical
rationale to the repetition, but merely associa-
tion. On the sensory level the reader enjoys the
repetition of the words without having time to
think about their meaning. What the lines seem
to convey is a kind of verbal music that seduces
the emotions and suspends the reasoning. The
language’s capability to suspend reason and stir
emotion is usually best achieved in religious ser-
mons and in folklore, and in both traditions
meaning is subdued by rhythm and the magical
impact of language on the unconscious, as Lacan
has demonstrated in his analysis of the uncon-
scious as inseparable from language (Lacan,
147). More specifically, Robert Hass in ‘‘Listen-
ing and Making’’ has identified the naturally
subversive politics of rhythm:
Because rhythm has direct access to the uncon-
scious because it can hypnotize us, enter our
bodies and make us move, it is power. And
power is political. That is why rhythm is always
revolutionary ground. It is always the place
where the organic rises to abolish the mechan-
ical and where energy announces the abolition
of tradition. New rhythms are new perceptions.
(Hass, 147)
Another example of the poet’s gratuitous
play with words can be seen in a poem titled
‘‘Khatawat,’’ (Steps):
Of the mirrors of the gardens I can be sat-
isfied with the slim woman and the burning
thirst that I had and the meagerness that
became mine and the dialogue that naturally
harmonizes in a slender woman (Al-’Amal
al-Kamila, 91)
In the first line the word ‘‘mirrors’’ conjures
up ‘‘woman’’ primarily because of the sound
affinity between the two words: in Arabic ‘‘mir-
rors’’ is marayah and ‘‘woman’’ is mar’ah. Log-
ically there is no connection between the two
words, but linguistically linkage makes solidAmerica, America