Of prose poetry in Urdu
By Syed Afsar Sajid
Books: ‘Kahani ek shaher ki’ by Dr. Jawaz Jafri
‘Samaey ka dhara’ & ‘Dar-e-imkaN pay dastak’ by Yusuf Khalid
Prose poetry is a literary form that combines elements of prose and poetry to create a unique narrative voice and style. It appears as standard prose, without line breaks, but utilizes poetic devices like imagery, metaphor, rhythm, and compression to create a lyrical effect blending features of prose and poetry. The genre originated in 19th-century France with the works of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarme. It was influenced by the symbolist and modernist trends in literature which tended to break away from tradition and seek newer avenues of expression.
In the early 20th-century, the form gained currency in English with writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein. Surrealism and post-modernism further expanded its boundaries. Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, and many others latterly consolidated this literary genre with their contributions.
In Urdu, prose poetry or ‘nasri nazm’ is purported to have begun with Sajjad Zaheer, and subsequently crafted, among others, by Meeraji, Ahmad Hamesh, Wazir Agha, Kishwar Naheed, M. Salim ur Rahman, Shehryar, Balraj Komal, Nida Faazli, Sarwat Hussain, Mubarak Ahmad, Raees Farogh, and Qamar Jamil.
Today the genre is being vigorously pursued and practised by a good number of Urdu poets across the globe. The instant review is intended to highlight the work of two well-known practitioners of prose poetry named Dr. Jawaz Jafri (Lahore) and Prof. Yusuf Khalid (Sargodha).
‘Kahani ek shaher ki’ (‘the tale of a city’)
In this book, Dr. Jawaz Jafri has incorporated two of his long poems, one bearing the aforesaid title whereas the second designated as ‘Sarguzasht’ (a self-descriptive narration) besides three miscellaneous poems under the caption ‘Adhuri katha’ (an incomplete story). The long poem ‘Kahani ek shaher ki’ seems to have been designed as an epic (akin to ‘shaher ashob’ in Urdu) comprising 17 cantos (parts).
The city camouflaged in the verbiage of the poem is no other than the historic city of Lahore. The rise and fall of the city is narrated in an allegorical style; the tone of the poem is monologic and its tenor melancholic. The internal rhythm of the lines tends to reflect the poet’s command of the technical delicacies of the genre (of prose poetry).
Dr. Shahid Ashraf, an eminent poet-educationist, has written an exhaustive scholarly foreword to the book that explicates its contextual, thematic and artistic intent and import. The protagonist of the poem is the poet himself who, meandering across the course of history, peeps into the mythical past of Lahore shrouded in the transcendental mysteries of time and space. Stream of consciousness is the impelling force that moves the tale in a pendulous, crisscross fashion. The titles of the cantos crisply sum up their respective themes and quintessential meanings.
‘Sarguzasht’ consists of 6 cantos. It is a mosaic as it were, of the life and work of prophets prior to the emergence of Islam. The poem revolves round the perennial concourse of religion, love, and politics. And finally, ‘Adhuri katha’ is a miscellany of 3 poems with self-speaking topics. Given the metaphysical enormity of the texture of the poems, the book is doubtless a valuable addition to the extant repository of prose poetry in Urdu.
‘Samaey ka dhara’ (‘the stream of time’) and ‘Dar-e-Imkan Pay Dastak’ (‘Tapping a possibility’)
Prof. Yusuf Khalid has authored the two anthologies (published in 2022 and 2024) comprising prose poems numbering 44+43 respectively. He is a veteran poet, fully initiated in the finer nuances of the genre of prose poetry.
Dr. Sikander Hayat Mekan has contributed an engaging preface to the first book ‘Samaey ka dhara’ (dedicated to an esteemed cultural and literary figure Dr. Sughra Sadaf) which is a symbolic phrase denoting the fleeting flow of time and its archetypal macrocasm embracing eternity.
The poems touch a variety of themes like fear, dream versus reality, the phenomenon of ‘possibility’ as an admitted fact of life, meaninglessness, the force of evolution, facelessness, self-awareness, hope and despair, longing and fulfilment, and the like.
According to Dr. Mekan, Yusuf Khalid has thoughtfully chosen prose poetry as a new avenue of his creative urge which lends a meaningful diversity to his poetic work reflecting simplicity, freshness, an apt grasp of the human psyche, and a deep perception of the zeitgeist (the spirit of the age).
The second book ‘Dar-e-imkaN pay dastak’ comprises its author’s prologue spelling out the why’s, how’s, and when’s of his fecundity as a composer of prose poems. Considered opinions of distinguished litterateurs like Dr. Tariq Hashmi, Dr. Yunus Khayal, Dr. Nazar Abid, and Dr. Sumera Akbar have been cited by the author in regards to his art as a prose poet.
They concur on and commend Yusuf Khalid’s versatility and excellence as a literary artist. Like his first book, in the instant book too the author adumbrates his vacillation between hope and despair, success and failure, light and darkness, love and separation etc.
Most of the poems in the collection are laced with an affirmatory accent pronouncing sensorially on human nature and its diverse manifestations. The poet seems to be overly conscious of the constraints of time and space and their eventual impact on the idea of ‘possibility’ which is the watchword of many a poem in the anthology.
Subjects like stray reflections, self-forgetfulness, pain of homelessness, the flux of life, light and beauty, echo from a doorless dome, the consuming ordeal of writing a poem, retrogress, and the genesis of a tale tend to suffuse the poems with an aroma of beauty and truth characteristic of genuine literature. The poem ‘Nabgha-e-asr’ is intended to pay a deservingly rich tribute to the renowned Urdu critic, inshaiya-nigar and poet of our times, Dr. Wazir Agha.
