“Composing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.”
– Robert Frost
Similar to Muhammad al-Maghout, Saleh Zamanan combines poetry and theater, as if he were combining two hearts inclined towards rebellion and mischief by nature. Together, as al-Maghout once described, they “ignite fires in the world from their small chamber.” Besides his writing chamber, the poetic world in which Zamanan’s pen wanders is far from narrow and small. Reading his work, you feel as if you’re walking on the roof of the vast world, listening to the spirit of eternity, the murmurs of rainy forests, the chants of deep-rooted shepherds, and the myths of fertility and perpetuity. In this aspect specifically, the uniqueness of this poetic voice and its remarkable distinctiveness among other poetic voices in Saudi Arabia become evident. It’s as if this work of al-aed min Abīh (Returning from his Father) draws from a different poetic source than the prevailing streams of poetry.
Yet, this privilege does not stem from the fact that he writes poetry in the form of free verse. Many poets write free verse, some succeed, and some fail, but in both cases, they remain within the boundaries of expected success or failure. The biggest and most obvious pitfall of free verse is its stereotyping of expression, as there is no apparent rhythm that numbs the recipient with its high pitch and distracts them – to some extent – from delicately listening to the inner tones of the text, as happens in metered poetry. With free verse, you listen to the voice of the singer alone, without the accompaniment of musical instruments, and you witness a “tennis without a net,” as Robert Frost put it.
How did Saleh Zamanan’s text manage to escape the conventional, stereotyping of expressions, and the predictability that characterize most writings classified as free verse?
There are several stylistic phenomena that can offer some explanation for this creative uniqueness in Saleh Zamanan’s texts. I say “can” because I know that these phenomena, which critics strive to capture, are ultimately part of the necessities of poetic expression, and we can find evidence of them in other poets’ works as well. The most accurate interpretation of this uniqueness lies not just in the presence of these stylistic phenomena, but in the specific way in which they interact and combine together to produce the unique poetic imprint of the creator. Hence, we cannot overlook citing some texts from the poet’s two collections: al-aed min Abīh (Returning from his Father) and a’atal al-dhahīra (Afternoon Hurdles). Through these texts alone, we can discern the particular manner in which these stylistic phenomena interact within Saleh Zamanan’s work. The most prominent of these phenomena include: the theatricalization of the poetic text, the lines depicting everyday occurrences, the personification of objects, vibrant pictorial descriptions, the pastoral tone in narrative, the dense presence of childhood, and the spirit of friendship.
1- Theatricalization of the poetic text:
The phenomenon of “theatricalization” in poetry is the phenomenon most closely associated with the creative duality in Saleh Zamanan’s work. This playwright (both returning to and departing from poetry) remained, throughout his poetic journey, faithful to both its pictorial scene and the astonishing precision of linguistic structure. In the poem almīnaa (The Port), for instance, you’ll notice this theatrical design of the poetic scene: the curtain rises on the lighthouse at the port, suffering from “the weight of the stone and the hardness of the salt at its base,” and every time it opens its luminous eye onto the paths of returning ships, it believes that it is “the sea owl of the seas.” What is the next theatrical character prepared to enter this scene? It’s “that ship guided by the lighthouse,” drawing closer to the front of the stage to narrate to the audience how it hates its eternal journey devoid of trees and suffers from seasickness. Then it docks at the harbor, where they tie it up like a pack animal. It looks around, wishing it were a seagull. However, the seagull – now soaring at the top of the stage – is “the most sorrowful in the port, thinking that the lighthouse is its tormenting god and the ship’s sail its first mother.” Can the audience hear the roar now? Indeed, it’s the sea, its waves brushing against the edge of the stage, appearing in its tranquil, contented stillness, embracing the wind’s kicks like a hermit tamed to solitude’s stage “defeated before the beginning, happy, at ease in the eternity of blue.”
As for the truly remarkable text in its astonishing ability to harness theatrical potential to construct a dazzling poetic narrative, it is the poem mīlad al-dhahīra: al’ajūz (The Birth of Noon: The Old Woman.) In this text, Saleh Zamanan brings together all the distinctive poetic elements for which he is known. In addition to theatricalizing the text, the poet personifies this virtual and gelatinous being, which we commonly refer to as time, in the face of a familiar daily phenomenon: the heaviness and intense heat of noon, along with the boredom and weariness it brings. Zamanan then proceeds to craft a complete myth to present his poetic interpretation of this familiar phenomenon. He opens the text with this majestic and mythical preamble: “When time was alone in eternity, not remembering its birth nor comprehending the end of the riddle, it pondered… then it called out to its immense essence, and created its beings from it, and sat upon the thrones of the first voids, saying: ‘O you who are subordinate… I am the followed, come hasten towards me, and choose your times.'” The poet then, with captivating theatrical engineering, depicts a race of Dawn, Morning, Noon, Afternoon, and Night in their daily pursuit of claiming their times, which they rightfully occupy after running the race track with the determination, effort, and speed required, and obedient compliance with this immense, followed being. Only that old woman, slouched at the end of the path, indifferent to her surroundings, made time eagerly await her arrival. And when she finally arrived, she didn’t bother to look at him with the respect and admiration he expected: “It was a quick and passing glance, which angered him and caused him to clench his hand until it sweated and the first day flowed from it. He spoke to the old woman for the last time: ‘Be Noon,’ he said to her, and he thrust her among the youthful times, and left without asking about her, or advising her well… Since then, she remained as she was: hot, mysterious, condemned, and the weariness, fatigue, and multitude of people became the hurdles of noon.”
Saleh Zamanan’s compassion here for the “Old Noon” who did not show the required compliance to earn the favor of time reminds me of the compassion expressed by the poet Dalal Jazi towards the wandering wind in her text: “Why does the wind kick metal cans?” Both evoke a sense of discomfort with what we recoil from and flee from its intensity: “the blaze of noon and the onslaught of the fierce wind.” Perhaps, deep down, they both wish – like us – that they could change their place on the map of destinies. Both express that lukewarm laxity and apparent indifference are not reassuring signs of submission and lethargy; they may indeed be the veiled face of rebellion and revolution.
2- Depiction of everyday events:
Saleh Zamanan doesn’t settle for mere descriptions of ordinary daily occurrences, such as the heaviness of noon. Instead, his portrayal extends to encompass some social phenomena. In his text “Where do the Mountains Disappear?”, he attempts to offer his own explanation for the phenomenon of men’s tendency towards concealing their emotions and their reluctance to express weakness. He finds nothing but this mythical interpretation, which is not devoid of humor in its linking and strangeness in its reasoning: “This land used to be filled with mountains, but some of them suddenly began to disappear. This is why plains were formed, and deserts took over their spaces… Mountains since ancient times were stuffed into throats: the throats of boys who were silenced and prevented from crying, in the squares and in front of women.” Therefore, the man grows suffocated by the mountain stuffed in his throat, and “when he speaks, words do not come out of his lips, but commit suicide from the heads of mountains!”
In this unique style of depicting events that transcend time and place, Saleh Zamanan rediscovers familiar phenomena in life, such as why some days seem long and weigh heavily on the soul. In his text al-ayyam al-tawīla (The Long Days), he tries to answer this question, recalling the deep past of the earth, and evoking – in the manner of Carl Jung – the collective unconscious whose higher models have come down to us from the memory of ancestors: “They are the long days, in which the sorrows of forgotten ancestors are resurrected… in which the earth remembers that it is a giant grave.”
And why does the poet’s heart leap every time he sees a woman in distress? To answer this, Zamanan once again turns to mythology, drawing inspiration in walīmat al-qarasina (Pirate Banquet) from what Greek mythology portrays about Hera, the wife of the king of the gods, Zeus, with her bold personality that the Greeks consider the protector of women: “The distressed women are the daughters of Hera, they come to life before dawn, and are born near the lakes… Whoever loves them sleeps on the right side of the bed, and may not master the slow rhythm dance, but he is forever happy.”
The beginnings of things also have their myths, and thus he says in zaman al-harb (Time of War): “All times pass, and settle in the vaults of infinite history, since the goddess Chaos opened its lock, with her formless hand, then swallowed the key.” And to allegorize the meaning of hospitality, it’s not a problem to invent a river myth that brings the fragrance of Latin forests to the deserts of Najd, as he says in al-qabu al-maksīki (Mexican Cellar): “In ancient times, drowsiness struck the lord of the northern rivers, so he launched a fierce raid on the night, to make it hospitable and long, whenever the trees land on his river country.”
Perhaps now it would be appropriate to provide an interpretation for the prevalence of the phenomenon of lines in Salah Zamanan’s work. We may attribute this phenomenon to two reasons: firstly, the prevailing pastoral tone in his poetry, which we will discuss in detail later, and secondly, the poet’s constant tendency towards elevating meaning and his preference for expressions and images with broad absolute connotations. Thus, linguistically, the term al-abad (forever) recurs frequently in his texts, with all its implications of extension, expansiveness, and infinity. Zamanan’s characteristic of expansiveness extends even to the nature of the “ideal reader” to whom he addresses his writing: “To you, the absent nothingness whom I do not know: I write to you alone!” The ideal reader for Salah Zamanan is an elevated being beyond imagination, ungraspable, and inaccessible. He is a suitable reader for a poet imbued with transcendent myth, liberated – even in his name – from being confined to a single time or a restricted vision.
3- Personification of objects:
Salah Zamanan personifies the objects around him, expanding the breadth of the world and listening to the silent murmurs of the inanimate beings. This deepens his own sense of existence and ours with him. In the poem Huzn al-qitarat (The Sadness of Trains,) the poet brushes off the dust of stagnation from this iron structure, transforming it into a living creature with flesh and blood, crawling on its burning belly with its feet amputated, appearing engulfed in its solitary anguish amidst the crowds: “Oh, the cruelty! Hundreds of people ride it every day, yet no one thinks to massage its back.” In mihnat al-wujūd (The Trial of Existence), he evokes the dearest wish that could cross the mind of a frozen statue: to be able, even just once, to turn around, to see the other side of the view, to experience “life in another place,” as Kundera suggests, or as Zamanan says, “A sculpture… Its eternal wish: to look back at the opposite direction.”
Thus, the comforting images of things unfold in Zamanan’s poetry. We listen with him to the murmurs of “the bridge and the river” about their mutual suffering, and we sense the weariness of the water repeating itself endlessly in the swirl of the fountain, and the tragedy of the fresh river as it completes its long journey to finally pour into the sea, only to be struck by salinity. We join him in contemplating the stages of life that the hideous scarecrow lived until it decides to shed its terrifying cloak and volunteer to support the back of the defenseless victim, becoming a celestial field for the crucified. We hold our breath as we see the streetlights racing behind “the hunted,” while laughter in the impoverished neighborhood reaches our ears, stumbling between fear and calamity, “but it occurs as if it were freeing prisoners of the world.”
4- Vibrant pictorial scenes:
In tandem with personification, the texts of Saleh Zamanan are enriched with vibrant pictorial scenes full of implication: about the fiery price of writing: “I know my fingers are wax, and writing is my devastating loss, but I was born in the south,” and about the darkness beneath the eye of the friend: “I know it, it’s a coal mine, and the prisoner workers in it will come out one day, they will become a party, and chaos will fill your happy face,” and about Kafka’s short night where “no snoring is heard anymore, since they cut the village’s braid while it slept,” and about the boys’ whispers, as they think about the neighbors’ daughters: “How did clouds suddenly grow in their chests?” and about the solitude’s loneliness and the loss of direction: “That day’s era passed by me, it didn’t pay attention to me, to the extent that even my shadow didn’t stretch, I stared at it reproachfully as if blaming the departing, then I put my hand in the form of a cup, poured darkness into it, and … drank it in one gulp.”
These pictorial scenes sometimes reach the narrative saturation point, as in texts like marathon al-khaiba (Marathon of Disappointment), hatha giabak (This is your Absence), al-gazala al-hajaryia (The Stone Deer), as if the poet is concerned with documenting every human scene he sees before him and recording every sigh of life. The imagery deepens in some paintings until it turns into a pure portrait of a non-repeated human model, rich in the finest features and nuances, as in the text kahl fi tanja (Middle-aged Man in Tangier).
Facing the reality of demise linked with the tragedy of loss, Saleh Zamanan can only contemplate, in the manner of Abu al-Tayyib: “And I calm down, while thoughts wander within me.” From this contemplation on this transcendent reality, portrayals and images pour forth. He speaks of “the will of the deceased grandfather” as he embarks on the beginning of the long journey in his eternal stroll. He prepares himself in marathon al-khaiba (Marathon of Disappointment) for the final hour of absence: “I will wave a southern wave, comb the wind with my fingers, and I won’t look back. My back turned towards the farms and the waters; I’ll shout to every southerner in the distance: Take me to you!”. The poet returns once again to this distressing subject: how will he face the final hour of departure? Or as he expresses it: what will he write as instructions in his youngest son’s notebook before he mounts his horse towards the distant hills, where no sound breaks the silence except for “neighing in the void,” and this text will be cited when discussing the pastoral tone in narration.
The poet’s portrayals of death and nothingness seem never-ending, and he does not deceive himself, admitting from the outset with “the triumph of nothingness” from the very first moments of the battle: “In the dawn of the defeat of children, when they lost a girl who struggled to breathe, and did not return to the playground again… nothingness triumphed, and defeat became apparent to us, when our dead stood, in its majestic queue.” With this constant evocation of defeat, the texts and portrayals continue, recording “the popular dirges,” while narrating the story of “a tree in Lorca’s skull,” then he finds it pleasant to imagine the contrasting thoughts of “the inhabitants of the morgue refrigerator,” even in his text 23 yanayir (January 23), where he recalls his birthday, he never stops gazing incessantly towards the end: “But, my birthday, you pale, withered one, I also know that I will die on a late summer night, and you will not be buried with me, but you will sleep deeply, like a young polar bear cub.”
As for the most mournful and detailed portrayal among all of the poet’s portrayals of death, it is the text kma law anhu rah lishiraa alhadaya (As if he went to buy gifts), which he wrote in mourning for his father. In it, vivid images pour like raindrops, depicting the pain of loss and the story of the departed: “From the barracks of existence, my father retired early, he did not age like all fathers, those who stopped dressing their wives, and could not dance with them on holidays… Instead, he left quickly in the splendor of the anthem, and amidst the jests of friends, as if he went to buy gifts, and before the crutch became proud of his grip, he went on his eternal stroll.”
After that, the text continues with sequential portrayals of the father’s life: about his insomnia at night when he used to say: “Sleep is farther than Sana’a,” about his tender stories during his extended journey with his camel (Imran) and his gun (Al-Ashram), about the coffee that brewed in pots to ease his headache, and about the bitterness of life after his departure, about the celestial balcony that leads only to him: “Every time I opened the window, I looked at you, and I knew where the rain was, that bright star is not Suhail al-Yamani, it is your gaze gazing down at me.”
From this abundance came the title of the collection: al-aed min Abīh (Returning from his Father), which the poet dedicated to his father, along with the promise of eternal remembrance: “And forever, this rock will remain in my throat… I will not forgive the hasty departure, nor will I dislodge it. It will stay here between the head and the heart, where all texts and poems huddle behind it, searching for the lost wisdom of mourning, or finding a path leading towards the void.” The subsequent texts will fulfill this promise, and the memory of the father will reappear through them anew. In his next collection, he writes in alwatan laysa fi jaib albintal (Homeland is not in the pocket of trousers): “And I know this darkness under my eyes, I know it, it’s a burnt field, and I will cry as long as I live waiting for my father’s return, and the grass, and the Arabian balsam tree.”
5- Pastoral tone in narrative:
Pessoa once said, “The fields are greener in their description, than in their actual greenness.” This is how the scenes of untouched nature appear in the texts of Saleh Zamanan. As you read, you are transported along with his pastoral descriptions to the plains of the savannas, the valleys of Tihamah, or the highlands of Tibet. This transition is not only spatial but also temporal. The soothing poetic yarn weaves into you like a pastoral chant deeply rooted in tradition, like the melodies of the shepherds as they roam the pastures of ancient times. For instance, he begins a poem titled tahdīq alhayāt aljahitha (Life’s stare) with this signed pastoral description: “The transparent villager who ran in his youth tirelessly, fulfilling promises to the clouds and meadows, conversing with goats as if they were old friends, will grow silently, and his village will grow to become a new neighborhood on the edge of the ruthless city.”
When Zamanan attempts to console the “melancholic poet,” anxious about losing his poetic identity and early chant as he gropes his way towards creative adventure and different experimentation, what comes to his mind to offer this solace? Nothing but to weave a pastoral tale far from symbolism, where African herds of buffalo roam, and lurking in its folds are leaping lions ready for prey. He says at the beginning of the text Awtān al-qasāed wal jawamīs (Homelands of Poems and Buffaloes): “African buffaloes, as the drought intensifies, turn their water holes into dry pits, where lions lurk, waiting to quench the thirst of the young who have not yet learned patience. However, the buffaloes leave their beloved homelands and migrate towards distant springs. The herd knows it’s a tough journey, and it also knows it will inform the new young ones born in the migration about how to find the way back home. It will tell them the story of the thirsty dead, saying to them: Those dead on the way are not victims of the harsh journey; they are the necessary sorrow, and on the traces of their bones, we will return to the first home.”
And as things appear to you in the darkness of night or in the mist of dreams, these breathtaking pastoral scenes creep into you, extracted from the fields of eternity. Like a vision coming from beyond nature, such as sahīl fi al-adam (Neighing in the Void): “Early one day before the children go to school, someday… I will die, I will cough a lot before death, and I will write in the notebook of the youngest before the night: O owners of the pictures in my wallet, graze your sheep on my pillow, feed them with my mint crop, for I will not drink tea after today, and beware! Do not tie my horse in the stables, let it escape to the distant slopes, where it will be devoured by wolves, and it will die with me, I will mount it and cross the void, towards my mother’s dreams in spring.”
It’s as if Saleh Zamanan understood this pastoral key to his treasure chest of poetry, for he wrote an entire text affirming this primal call that seizes his essence whenever the night of imagination descends, and the moon of speech rises, and the instinct of poetry howls. He says in jidni ayuha alqamar (Find me, O Moon): “In the darkest depths of me, an ancient and primitive place, where the rituals of myth are held, inhabited by the primitive human, he strikes me with his stone hammer, every time the night falls on my city, I hear the echo of his anger in my bones: return, return to the forest of childhood, bring the green songs, return to the girls and the jest, for I go out every night like a werewolf, and I cross this fading darkness, I roam the body of illusion naked, throwing a handful of my fragments to a hungry cat, I listen carefully to the sound of its chewing, and I look to the sky every moment: Find me, O Moon, Find me, O Moon.”
6- The dense presence of childhood:
Saleh Zamanan wanders in the valleys of poetry, and wherever he goes, images of childhood and memories of youth cascade upon him, responding to that pastoral call within him: “Return, return to the forest of childhood, bring the green songs, return to the girls and the jest.” Sometimes he recalls “the dreams of a gentle child, who decided to raise ponds and trees,” and at other times he remembers how “he used to run in his youth tirelessly, making promises to the clouds and the meadows,” and at other times, the wild adventures of youth come rushing to his imagination: “We were the tribe of children who threatened the neighborhood’s peace with laughter, invading the orchards without hesitation, and assigning names to the days.”
With the gardens of childhood, “every detail is on the mind,” and therefore, whenever his eyes gaze upwards, he sees “the children’s kites,” and it’s enough that a few old features come before him for him to discover his ability to fly. When his birthday passes, it stops him, recalling their shared joy: “You were more handsome in your childhood, every time you looked at my mother and she smiled, a butterfly landed on your shoulder, and every time you heard my father sing, a feather grew on your arm.”
However, these childhood memories themselves are also capable of plunging him into rituals of loneliness and the panic of pursuit when he is besieged by the feeling of orphanhood and loss in the fading days: “All this happened because you searched through family photos, while isolated and defenseless, you found a child who never resembled you, bearing your quadruple name, sitting between your mother and father.”
Among the deep sighs of childhood, he will recall that distant day heavy with significance, when “the specter of nothingness emerged at dawn, in the defeat of children, when they lost a girl struggling to breathe, who never returned to the playground again.” For the sorrow of these children, he will reject the logic of warfare and wars, rebuking those who engage in them: “How miserable you soldiers are! You did not take your children to school in the morning, but instead you went to distant children to prevent them from going with their fathers.”
Among the portrayals of childhood, two stand out, where the poet has prolonged the breath of recollection. The first, in al-tofān (The Deluge), depicts the reveries of a solitary child amidst the wilderness with tales and imaginary worlds. Meanwhile, the second portrayal tells a popular legend believed by many in their childhood, but the poetic escalation elevates its atmosphere to a distant level of contemplative paradoxes: “We cast our milk teeth in vain against the sun, we went towards noon, and said in a language lacking a smile: “Bring a deer’s tooth!’ Then we grew up, my friend, and realized that deer never laugh, but breed fear in the plains, and since that day we have not relied on docile herds.”
7- Spirit of friendship:
In his text 23 yanayir (January 23), the poet wrote: “Friends do not turn into poems, either friends or a severe loss.” However, the poetic reality of Saleh Zamanan proves that friends do indeed turn into poems. Often, he writes a text portraying the human condition of a friend, or he confides in them with his thoughts, then dedicates the text to them when it is published. Hence, his collections include various texts with dedicatory phrases. He also dedicated his collection a’atal al-dhahīra (Afternoon Hurdles) to a friend, saying: “To the one who taught us that friendship is tolerance and forgiveness, and that companions are miracles.” In his unique way of imagining the unimaginable and anticipating the unseen, he presents a complete text in the same collection filled with longing, anticipation, and waiting, titled ila sadīq lam altaqih baa’d (To a Friend I Have Not Yet Met)!
His language rises in poems dedicated to friends, sometimes contemplating: “This darkness beneath your eyes, my friend, I know it, it’s a coal mine, and the prisoner workers in it will come out one day, they will become a party, and chaos will fill your happy face.”
Thus, poetry becomes, in the hands of Saleh Zamanan, a form of eternal tribute to friendship: “We honored friendship, sacrificed ourselves for it, and believed that a friend is a weapon and a homeland.” This distilled summary is echoed by the master of the northern rivers as he sends his legendary wisdom towards water and homes: “Friends are like trees.”
This truth will be realized, albeit belatedly, by the boy obsessed with the treasures of the southern lands hidden beneath the stone of the stone deer, when the petrified deer breaks free from its rocky coffin before his eyes and flees towards the pastures in Wadi Guweij, the boy finally discovers his buried and descended self, “from the lineage of fire and moon, where lands are precious and vast, and a friend is a veil and a shoulder.”
And then, I find nothing more fitting to conclude this winding tour through the gardens of Saleh Zamanan than a bouquet of memories carefully selected by another Southerner: Amal Dunqul. Through this bouquet, we can evoke some keys to these diverse poetic worlds. Dunqul says: “This family portrait: my father was sitting, I was standing, my hands hanging, a kick from a horse, leaving a scar on my forehead, teaching the heart to beware. I remember my blood flowing, I remember my father dying, bleeding, I remember the road to his grave, I remember my two-year-old little sister, I don’t even remember the road to her sunken grave. Was the little boy me? Or was it someone else?… -Do you want a bit of patience? -No, the Southerner, sir, desires to be what he was not, desires to meet two: reality, and the absent faces.”
T1707
