The collected poems of the poet and novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah have been published in Beirut in three volumes. These volumes comprise his collections published between 1980, beginning with his collection “Horses on the Outskirts of the City,” and 2017, the year of his collection “Love is Evil.”<\/p>\n
During this extended period, Nasrallah’s work has undergone numerous transformations in its diverse aesthetic and intellectual choices. These range from the standard-length poem to the very short poem, to which he dedicated four collections, and from the biographical and epic poems to the operatic work. It is noteworthy that his work draws upon narrative techniques from fiction, cinema, photography, painting, philosophy, and other artistic, intellectual, and existential concerns. Several prominent Arab critics address these aspects in their studies of Nasrallah’s work, which form the introductions to the three volumes. These studies were written by critics from Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq.<\/p>\n
In his introduction to the first volume, Dr. Ihsan Abbas writes: \u201cI would be exceeding the bounds of natural ambition if I claimed to be able to write a precise critical study of Ibrahim Nasrallah\u2019s collected poems\u2014one that would satisfy both the reader and myself. Ibrahim traversed numerous stages, charting a course for the development of his poetry that included both extensions and turns. A work like this demands meticulous naming of these stages and defining the characteristics of each.<\/p>\n
There is something missing that I am searching for but cannot find (at present): sufficient time to fully grasp this vast collection.<\/p>\n
With Ibrahim Nasrallah, the short poem took on a new dimension when it was dedicated to a complete volume, without this being due to any weariness with the long poem, which he mastered in works such as ‘Nu\u2019man Regains His Color,’ ‘The River Boy\u2026 and the General,’ and others. Furthermore, his transition between poetry and the novel demonstrates that the length of the form does not hinder his creativity.\u201d The poem “The Banner of the Heart” is a powerful expression of defiance against death. If we trace Ibrahim’s journey, we observe his constant striving for evolution and his commitment to presenting something different in each collection. He reaches a point where he no longer wishes to move forward\u2014for example, as in “The River Boy… and the General”\u2014and suddenly breaks the pen he used to write “The River Boy…” and begins “Storms of the Heart” or “Wilderness of Fever,” in a narrative endeavor that is among the most sophisticated in the world.<\/p>\n
This is Ibrahim Nasrallah, perhaps the most unique voice of his generation. He achieved an artistic miracle in his engagement with modern imagery\u2014his own imagery\u2014and modern language\u2014his own language.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim Nasrallah is a remarkable phenomenon in modern Arabic poetry, a new universe, a unique poetics that fills a space as vast as physical and spiritual exile. The critic Dr. Salah Fadl wrote the introduction to the second volume, in which he states: \u201cIbrahim Nasrallah\u2019s work represents a continuous, astonishing, and beautiful surprise for me. The first thing that struck me most when I immersed myself in reading his complete works is his ability, from the outset, to create new poetic realities, to craft an imagination whose parallel is utterly unparalleled in any previous poem.<\/p>\n
We witness a kind of aesthetic outpouring in the universe, through a comprehensive artistic system, which is the poet\u2019s means of igniting this world. At that point, the discourse of poetry transcends its exclusivity, its brevity, and its singularity, becoming civil rather than military, expansive in its nobility and diverse in its poetics, and intensely rare, vibrant, and beautiful.\u201d Ibrahim Nasrallah is a poet who restores much of our confidence that our poets today are not treading dead-end creative paths that narrow the scope of poetry and limit its readership. Rather, with his immense experimental energy, he is capable of creating new artistic forms. This is not the place to delve into his narrative achievements in fiction, nor his visual art creations, as these are merely manifestations of this energy. A poem written by such a poet now could not have been written twenty years ago, for it encompasses all the aesthetic achievements of the past two decades. All of this is reinforced by a rich repertoire of forms that embody new poetic truths, making his texts open to experimentation and harmonious in their overall, comprehensive harmony. Hence, we have the right to be optimistic about the future of Arabic poetry as it emerges from this creative and fertile ground of Ibrahim’s poems, where his poetry represents a qualitative achievement, and his experience confirms that a poet can innovate greatly and remain a poet connected to the entirety of the aesthetic achievements of all the arts.<\/p>\n
The foreword to the third volume was written by the poet Dr. Ali Jaafar Al-Alaq, who states: \u201cAs we approach Ibrahim Nasrallah\u2019s poetic experience, we must bear in mind that he is also a novelist\u2026 This intertwining of narrative and poetry remains perhaps even more pronounced in Ibrahim Nasrallah\u2019s poems, due to the juxtaposition of these two faculties within the same individual\u2014I mean poetry and narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This collection of poems reflects a profound human experience that blends national and personal concerns, where feelings of love and longing intersect with issues of identity and existence, all expressed in a dense poetic style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[895,940,2470,921],"product_tag":[1252,2728,1108,1086],"class_list":{"0":"post-25430","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-resistance-literature","7":"product_cat-arabic-literature","8":"product_cat-poetry","9":"product_cat-literary-texts","10":"product_tag-feelings","11":"product_tag-literature","12":"product_tag-palestine","13":"product_tag-poetry","14":"pa_book-author-ibrahim-nasrallah","16":"first","17":"onbackorder","18":"sale","19":"shipping-taxable","20":"purchasable","21":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/25430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=25430"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=25430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}