Poetic Literature

William Butler Yeats interests in the supernatural were always an important element in his poetic inspiration, in particular in his approach to symbolism. For him symbols were more than a poetic tool, tapping into a vast reservoir of collective experience, which he termed at various stages the Great Memory, Anima Mundi (the World Soul), and the Record, none of which is, however, quite the same as the other. Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical system that emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events have been preordained, particularly in descriptions of situations of human and divine interaction. By using images of chaos, disorder, and war, Yeats engaged in an understated commentary on the political situations of his day where a sense of cultural crisis and conflict seeps through his poems.

In “Leda and the Swan,” Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus and Leda to comment on fate and historical inevitability: Zeus disguises himself as a swan to rape the unsuspecting Leda. In this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it possesses a divine power that violates Leda and initiates the dire consequences of war and devastation depicted in the final lines. By rendering a well-known poetic symbol as violent and terrifying rather than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic conventions, an act of literary modernism, and adds to the power of the poem.

Salman Rushdie: "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights"
Inspired by the traditional “wonder tales” of the East, Rushdie’s novel is about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s world, a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.

The central character of Rushdie’s new novel, is a Bombay-born gardener, now lonely and aging, living in an unfamiliar city New York. This isn’t the wish fulfillment of a flying dream; it threatens his livelihood and brings the increasing hostility of strangers. “Why do you imagine I consider my condition an improvement? he wanted to cry out. Why, when it has ­ruined my life and I fear it may bring about my early death?”. He is doubly uprooted, separated both from the earth itself and the Indian birthplace that he loved. “He wished he had never become detached from the place he was born, wished his feet had remained planted on that beloved ground, wished he could have been happy all his life in those childhood streets, and grown into an old man there and known every paving stone, every betel-nut vendor’s story, every boy selling pirated novels at traffic lights.”

Contemporary sophistication declares that peace is boring, moderation is blah, happy is sappy. Defying sophistry, Rushdie imagines a contented people, but only by depriving them of dreams. No visions, no nightmares. Their sleep is empty darkness. The implication is that our human gift of imagining can’t exist without the hatred, anger and aggressiveness that lead to such human behaviours as warfare, conscious cruelty and deliberate destruction. To imply that only our dark jinn inside can give us dreams and visions may be one way of admitting the essential balance between the creative and the destructive within us.

Ali Azimi - Pishdaramad
My troubles aren't due to misfotune, nor sadness,
Nor is it because my clothes or shelter are lacking,
Neither due to lack of electricity, water or bread,
It is the loss of solitude's charm
I hope one day this ordeal is resolved.
Wish I could become wind so to play with your hair,
Or become words entering your ears,
Become an idea so to gain access to your thoughts,
Or become a Benz under your feet,
Become money in your pockets for you to carry,
Or become dust so to enter your lungs.
I know, you have a myriad of admirers in queue,
They all love and highly think of you,
And that warm persona of yours!
I come at times close just to become distant and stray,
I may end up dead if this continues, I fear
I wish to become a current and his your gaze,
Become a tear just to touch and roll down your face,
Or a ringlet - touching your slender shoulders,
Or wind and play with your hair,
A cigar so to touch your lips,
Or become its smoke so to be absorbed in your lungs,
O fortune! Come to my rescue as my restplace is cold with her absence

"How much life can you live in the fourth quarter, not knowing when the game might end?"

“What will I remember as I die?” For most of us the answer is, of course, nothing; we can’t remember much, even now. But this is the existential question that drives Ian Brown to keep a diary as he hits the Big 6-0. Suddenly panicked by the idea of time running out, he figures he had better starting paying better attention: “If you take the trouble to write down the details,” he writes, “you get a second chance to live it.”

Ian Brown, author of "Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?"