Language as Power: Construction of Social Reality on Riffat Abbas Poetry "A Dream on the Intersection of Past and Future"

The poetic approach to constructing social reality is a significant source of reflection on the livedexperience of voiceless ordinary men and women. Poetic expression becomes a source of power andresistance expressed through language. Social reality expressed in poetry constructs a vision of historybeyond time. The civilizational heritage of Multan dates back to the time of Rag Ved. The City's richesattracted many conquerors, subdued but never defeated. As Poet himself is the product of land andculture, Riffat Abbas's poetry expresses all the imprints that land has carved on his Cognition. His poetryrepresents the phenomena of continuity and preservation of cultural heritage in the face of all historicalupheavals. The paper aims to analyze the social reality constructed in Riffat Abbas's poetry opting forthe method of discourse analysis given by Mitchel Foucault to study the progressive trends on socialattributes, societal relations, and socio-political system.

Poéticas em arte sonora: entrevista com Paulo Nenflidio

Paulo Nenflidio, in his biographic note, presents himself as an artist who works at the intersection between art, science and technology. A multiple and inventive artist, his works comprise sculptures, installations, objects, instruments and drawings in which sound, electronics, movement, construction, invention, randomness, physics, control, automatons, and workaround come together as elements of artistic expression. Paulo Nenflidio holds a degree in Fine Arts from the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo and is an electronics technician graduated from the Lauro Gomes Technical School in São Bernardo do Campo. Born in São Bernardo do Campo, the artist maintains his studio in this city. In this interview, we seek to deepen our study about the poetics of Paulo Nenflidio's works. How his creative trajectory developed, conceptual inspirations that guided the development of his creative processes and his artistic research, as well as the role of sound and silence as forms of poetic expression are issues addressed in this conversation. This interview was conducted by email, between the 20th and 24th of July 2021.

The Singing Poets – The Influence of Folksongs on Modern Arab Poets in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Twentieth-century Arab poets undertook a search for alternative means of poetic expression that went beyond experimentation at the stylistic and formal level. The result was a violent rebellion against the traditional qa??da form in the mid-1940s, an urgent striving for freedom and breaking free from accepted forms. One of the rebellion’s manifestations consisted of a renewed interest in folklore, especially folksongs, as a source of inspiration. Early on, folksongs became a fundamental pillar of Arab Modernism; most of the poets of the first half of the twentieth century were, in fact, affected to differing degrees by the folksong style. Ultimately the present study shows that folk literature in general, and folksongs in particular, are a critical source of inspiration for Arab poets, one which has enabled them to forge a link between their art and their public.

Reflections on Identity in Memoirs of Writers With Aphasia: Lessons Learned on the Path Toward Recovery

Personal stories provide insight into the experience of illness as it intersects with one’s identity. Prior studies by the first author examined identity as manifested in personal accounts of U.S. World War II veterans with and without dementia. The current study examines identity as revealed through written memoirs of middle-aged and older adults who have aphasia, from a cross-section of North American, European, and Australian cultures. The abrupt onset of stroke and associated aphasia, and the subsequent path toward re-engagement in life with an often-chronic communicative impairment, provide a unique window into the nature and evolution of the identity of the writer. The written modality offers an opportunity for reflective formulation that is not afforded to the memoir-writers in their verbal expression. Nineteen memoirs and biographical accounts of individuals with aphasia from a range of primarily individualistic cultures were examined for content reflective of the identity of the author, focused on post-stroke phases of restitution and quest. Primary authors were people with aphasia or rarely their close family member. Some were professional editors, poets or authors. Gender and life backgrounds were varietal. Manifestations of personal identity, its reinforcement, and its evolution were evidenced in: the provision of lessons learned from living with aphasia; content of letters exchanged with friends; engagement with family in life and recovery; fictional and poetic expression; spiritual insight; renewed or altered occupational pursuits; and comments on facing one’s mortality. Findings hold implications for the cross-cultural practice of narrative medicine with the older adult population.

The Role of Literary Artists in Environmental Movements: Minamata Disease and Michiko Ishimure

By offering new fantasies, perspectives and representations, artists have the power to make people aware of social issues and inspire them to action. This paper describes how artists can offer a vision of environmental resistance by employing fantasy and using tools of poetic expression for communities affected by environmental destruction. This paper employs a case study methodology to examine the Minamata disease victims’ movement in Japan through the lens of environmental justice. As part of this movement, writer Michiko Ishimure created a fantasy called Mouhitotsu-no-konoyo, based in a mythical world and featuring the moral relationships that the people of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, had embraced before modernisation. I will show the importance of this fantasy for the movement, analysing it from two perspectives: those of ningenteki-dori (the human principle) and the invisible fantasy about the mythical world. Ishimure’s fantasy offers a moral message to prevent further environmental harm.

‘For “feather” read “father”’: Death and Possibility in Paul Muldoon’s Paternal Elegies

Focused on Muldoon's father elegies written between his debut collection New Weather and Hay, the present essay argues that these poems evoke paternal death as the founding moment of poetic expression. Only when the father figure has passed away is the space for poetic expression implicitly made available to the son, so that the elegies from ‘The Waking Father’ all the way to ‘The Bangle (Slight Return)’ seek to reimagine the father figure as a poetic construct open to reinterpretation beyond the confines of his factual existence. In effect, the poem, as a locus of unconstrained revision of the self, becomes a consoling act that works only insofar as the poem manages to elude closure.

Paulo Leminski e a expressão poética da “várzea” / Paulo Leminski and the poetic expression of the “floodplain”

Resumo: Este artigo analisa como Paulo Leminski forjou uma expressão poética da “várzea” para a sua poesia, visando tornar a sua obra criativa acessível ao público mediano. A “várzea” é uma palavra utilizada pelo poeta, e consta nas suas cartas e poemas. Trata-se de uma referência ao que está à margem da cultura erudita. Consideramos que os recursos que favorecem a comunicação com o leitor horizontal, a exemplo dos jogos paronomásticos e sonoros, a brevidade e a coloquialidade, tão presentes na dicção leminskiana, fazem parte do que o poeta concebeu como “várzea” poética. Para tecermos nossa análise, nos debruçamos sobre poemas, ensaios críticos, e, também, sobre as epístolas enviadas ao amigo Bonvicino. As cartas guardam um diálogo teórico-crítico que lança luz sobre o entendimento e o encaminhamento que Leminski concedeu a sua poesia.Palavras-chave: Paulo Leminski; poesia; comunicação; leitor.Abstract: This article analyses how Paulo Leminski forged a poetic expression of the “floodplain” for his poetry, aiming to make his creative work accessible for the ordinary public. The “floodplain” is a word used by the poet, and appears in his letters and poems. It is a reference to what is on the outside of erudite culture. We consider that the resources that promote communication with the horizontal reader, such as paronomasia and sound games, brevity and colloquiality, so present in Leminski’s diction, are part of what the poet conceived as poetic “floodplain”. To weave our analysis, we focus on poems, critical essays, and also on the epistles sent to his friend Bonvicino. The letters contain a theoretical-critical dialogue that sheds light on the understanding and direction that Leminski gave to his poetry.Keywords: Paulo Leminski; poetry; communication; reader.

A. Blok and poetic strategies of postmodernism

Анализируется поэзия А. Блока, ее взаимосвязь с реалистическими, семантическими и перфомативными аспектами творчества русских постмодернистов. Тексты рассматриваются как способ мотивирования поэтических знаков в постмодернистской традиции. Они позволяют контекстуализировать модели выразительности в авангардистской поэзии и выделить основные парадигмы в ее трактовке, адаптировать художественные приемы и поиски нового языка. Отдельное вимание уделяется особенностям поэтического высказывания и ее взаимодействию с пространством стиха. Интерес акцентируется на диалектике разрушительных и созидательных сил в деконструктивизме наследия Вс. Некрасова, Д. Пригова, Т. Кибирова и др. Обсуждается актуальная проблема для теории современной поэзии: что стало с постмодерном как языком описания эпохи в XXI столетии. Особое внимание уделяется преемственности новых концепций с предыдущей культурной традицией в негативной и позитивной версиях. Тема особенно актуализируется благодаря выраженному стремлению представить тексты А.Блока и постмодернистской поэзии как культурное выражение новейшего времени. An analysis is made of the poetry of A. Blok, its relationship with the realistic, semantic and performance aspects of the work of Russian postmodernists. Texts are explored as a way to motivate poetic signs in the postmodern tradition. They make it possible to contextualize models of expressiveness in avant-garde poetry and highlight the main paradigms in its interpretation, adapt artistic techniques and searches for a new language. An attention is paid to the peculiarities of the poetic expression and its interaction with the space of the verse. The interest is focused on the dialectic of destructive and creative forces in the deconstruction of the legacy of Vs. Nekrasov, D. Prigov, T. Kibirov, etc. The paper discusses the actual problem for the theory of modern poetry: what has become with the postmodern as the language of describing the era in the 21st century. Particular attention is paid to the continuity of new concepts with the previous cultural tradition in negative and positive versions. The theme is especially actualized due to the expressed desire to present the texts of A. Blok and postmodern poetry as a cultural expression of modern times.

Breaking the News: Max Jacob’s Le Cornet à dés (1917)

The recurring pastiches of journalistic writing in Max Jacob’s seminal collection are more complex than they initially appear—critical, not merely of this discourse’s supposed objectivity, but of the assumption that the transmission of valid, valuable news is ever really sought in the first place. The indiscretions of sensationalist, and even fallacious news items appear far less surprising when we acknowledge, along with Jacob, that the esthetic pleasure orienting poetic expression – which is dependent, precisely, on a certain distortion of truthful communication – is what the public expects from its news sources as well, if unconsciously. By identifying the texts in this collection that reference topics and discursive tropes of Belle Époque journalism (and its often indistinguishable sibling, le roman feuilleton), we find that the poet simultaneously draws on the “attractive force” of such writing, drawing his reader into its intrigue, while continually disrupting any stable referential function, through linguistic play. While Jacob is hardly an engaged artist, by laying bare the ultimately unsatisfying quick fix of headline news, reconstituting the latter as an objet d’art, he reminds us of an important truth after all: the most rewarding esthetic experiences are at once more transparent – fiction acknowledged as such – and more resistant to understanding.

Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of Philosophy

The review discusses four recent books and collections that approach in different ways the role of aesthetics in Nietzsche’s work, both as a question of poetic expression and as the shaping of sensibility. They testify to a deepening interest in the processes through which he forged his unique style. This involves micro-analyses of the composition of Nietzsche’s writings from the raw material of his notebooks. It also involves biographical and material contexts, as in Tobias Brucker’s monograph on the composition of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Instead of accepting the dichotomy between a Dichterphilosoph and a philosopher for whom style was merely an instrument for formulating truths, these books display in different ways how in the case of Nietzsche this dichotomy breaks down and gives way to a widened concept of philosophical writing that includes many different genres. Other works by Nietzsche discussed are Zarathustra and The Gay Science, and also Ecce Homo. Nietzsche seduced with his art, but he also saw through the art of seduction as practiced by the artist, opting for a position beyond the conventional split between poetics and philosophy.