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Dalit literature is the articulation of protest and anger against the injustice and social exclusion the Dalits are subjected to in the caste-ridden, hierarchical society of India. The Dalit authors and critics argue that it is this protest and anger, a new literary strategy which can build the aesthetics of Dalit literature. Dalit literature, however, is yet to form a conceptual standard on which the Dalits can represent and universalise their experience of pain. Many Dalit poets have attempted to build a distinctive aesthetics through poetry. But poetry essentially related to emotion seems inadequate to build a conceptual framework which is essentially an intellectual phenomenon. Though Dalit writers resist the Sanskritised aesthetics of mainstream literature by using their own language, registers and idioms, they nonetheless partake of the mainstream aesthetics when they articulate themselves in poetry. Gopal Guru (2012) claims, "Poetry helps the Dalit in making connections through metaphors but not through concepts" (p. 23). My paper, however, will argue that as Dalit experience is at the centre of a distinct Dalit aesthetics, Dalit poetry based on rich experience can contribute to build a new aesthetics for Dalit literature. My paper will refer to a number of Bengali Dalit poets whose poetry can serve to build a separate aesthetics through poetic rendering of their distinct Dalit experience, conforming at the same time to many principles of mainstream aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the foremost and prolific English poets from India. He has carved a distinct niche for himself; a tranquil poetic voice that sets him apart from his contemporaries. His poetry is replete with different portrayals of women - as wives, lovers, prostitutes, village women, teenage girls, city-bred women and these depictions have very profound metaphorical evocations. His intriguing portrayals of women often transcend beyond the confines of conventional Indian cultural standards and societal frameworks. Through the delineation of women, Mahapatra's poetry focuses primarily on the social and cultural conditions of Orissa where he had lived. This paper aims to explore how women are depicted and represented in a few of Jayanta Mahapatra's poems. The primary objective of this study is to analyse how Mahapatra portrayed women, from representing pure innocence and tradition to encompassing challenging and intricate modern experiences and gendered identity. This study closely examines the sociocultural background, gender roles, and feminist perspectives that are present in Mahapatra's poetic descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In Li Bai's poems, the term yao or medicine is frequently employed as an idea-image. The meaning of yao can be further divided into four distinct types, each corresponding to its functions in different contexts. It represents the elixir found on Penglai Island, having the power to elevate a person to immortality; the elixir stolen from the Queen Mother of the West by Heng'E; the immortal herbs pounded by the Jade Rabbit; and the medicine used for treating diseases. In addition, Li Bai's poems also contain elixir liquid (danye 丹液), potable gold (jinye 金液), and other substances referred to as yao. Unlike specific terms like "cinnabar", these names are more general in nature. The medicines, their names, and the general terms in poems carry different emotional implications, e.g., his admiration for immortality, and a means to criticize his own time, to express his aspirations and lamentation over the passage of time. The "Yao" also serves as a symbol of healing and nourishment, especially in the context of friendship. All these points deserve to be meticulously explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The romantics in the Wes t are paying close attention to Eas tern mys tical literature and poets such as Hafiz, Rumi, and Sa'adi. The intellectual similarities of Goethe, the great German poet in the 19th century, with Ibn-al-'Arabī, an Islamic mys tic and philosopher, and the common characteris tics of the beloved in Goethe's Wes t-Eas tern Divan and Ibn 'Arabī's Tarjoman Al-Ashwaq, have made some call them "spiritual brothers". The purpose of this s tudy is to explain the role of earthly love in human spiritual transcendence in the lyric poems of two great Arab and German poets. This research, using content analysis method and the approach of the American school of comparative literature, examines the characteris tics of the two beloveds in Ibn-al-'Arabī's and Goethe's work, namely, Nizam and Marianne(Zulikha,) and how this earthly love has become the basis for transcendental love for the two poets. The results of this comparison show that although there is no mention of Goethe's acquaintance with Ibn' Arabi in the former's biography, there are similarities in issues such as unity of exis tence, transcendental love, and the union of the lover and beloved. For the two poets, love is the ladder for their spiritual excellence. In the eyes of the two poets, love turns any plurality into unity and reveals the beloved in different shapes and forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines contemporary Israeli poetry by post-Soviet Jews who migrated to Israel after the collapse of the USSR. Complicating the dominant assessment of post-Soviet literature in Israel as an isolated and “ghettoized” phenomenon, an analysis of the poetry by Soviet-born, Hebrew-language poets Rita Kogan, Alex Rif, and Arik Eber reveals the strong influence of Hebrew literature in general, and of the Mizrahi poets of Ars Poetika in particular. Through close textual analysis and interviews with Rif, Kogan, and Eber, the article demonstrates how their verse has adopted and adapted the dominant building blocks of Ars Poetika—resistance to Ashkenazi hegemony, protest against exclusion and discrimination, and embrace of one’s own culture and identity— to the situation of Russian-speaking Jews in Israel. Ultimately, the chapter shows how the cultural affinity with poets of Ars Poetika allows post-Soviet immigrants to both construct themselves as part of the Israeli-Jewish population and at the same time express their post-Soviet particularity, thereby bringing into relief the two halves of the poets’ hyphenated Russian-Israeli cultural identities. Reflecting on this cultural cross-pollination, the chapter concludes by reading the poetry of Rif, Kogan, and Eber as part and parcel of contemporary Israeli literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review of: Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations, Adeena Karasick (2023) New Orleans, LA: Lavender Ink, 106 pp., ISBN 978-1-95692-112-0, p/bk, $25.95 Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus, Adeena Karasick (2023) New Orleans, LA: Lavender Ink, 96 pp., ISBN 978-1-95692-113-7, h/bk, $28.95 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karen Solie's poetry redefines the ways in which language problematizes contemporary issues such as climate change, the nature of our physical environments, the conception of agency, the politics of gender, and our understanding of the increasingly divergent social orders we inhabit. This article focuses on Solie's early poetry and her first book, Short Haul Engine. It aims to explore her aesthetic values and to identify some of the prominent motifs and concerns that animate her work. Solie is interested in thinking about the particular conditions and consequences of decisions made, paths taken, relationships begun and broken. But she is also interested in critique as an epistemological form of inquiry: how do we know what we think we know, and what factors account for that knowing? One aesthetic principle uniting many of the poems is the identification of absence as a key to desire – the need to explore desire as a means of accessing what is beautiful through what is lost, absent. Paradoxically, language does not always provide a means of accessing experience; it often gets in the way, turning the person behind the words into a creature of imprecision – the "near miss" of accurate description becoming a central problem in the poetry itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hasht-Behesht is one of Amirkhosrow's five Masnavids written in response to Nezami's Haft-Peikar. By examining the similes in this poem, we found that the similes used by the poet were mostly concepts related to human and his belongings. Since this story has seven main structures and many palaces are described in these masnavi; Therefore, these places are topic. Nature and abstract concepts are sometimes used as image. images included nature, objects, cosmos bodies and animals are highest frequency. In terms of being sensory and intellectual, the highest frequency was related to sensory to sensory similes. In terms of extensive simile, the analogies of explicit similitude and brief were more used. The poet has used eloquent similes and similes addition in his stories. In terms of being singular and binding, singular to singular similes are more frequent than others. Beautiful compound similes can also be seen in this story. In evaluating the simile, we came to the conclusion that the similes in this masnavi are mostly singular, reality and non-allegorical. We also examined the combination of simile with other imagery and it was found that simile is combined with rhetorics such as simile, metaphor, allusion, allusineness and mythological concepts and added to the elegance and beauty of similes. In the end, we also pointed out the similes and novel and beautiful combinations used by Amir Khosro in this stoty. Amir Khosro has used almost all types of similes in this poem, and this shows the breadth of the poet's imagination and his ability to create images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]