Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Thirteen, The Poet As Feminist by Dave Jaffe

          The Poet As Feminist - by Dave Jaffe


    The young woman stood firm in her beliefs even though her parents poured scorn on her. They were both poets and they mocked their daughter's new poem that was written in free verse.
     Yet Nazik Al- Malaika didn't give in. "Say whatever you wish to say," said the young 20 -something woman to her father. "I am confident that my poem will change the map of Arab poetry."
    Nazik al-Malaika was right. Her poem did change Arab poetry. Up until the early 20th century, nearly all Arab poets wrote poems in a classical style that dated back to the 7th century, 1400 years ago. Yet al-Malaika changed Arab poetry. In 1947 she heard over the radio, news of the terrible disease of cholera. It was sweeping through Egypt killing thousands of people.
    Al-Malaika wrote a poem about this disease and its effects in Egypt and ushered Arab poetry into the modern age. Al-Malaika faced some brutal criticism for what she had done. Arab countries back then were often frozen in their traditional ways, and Iraq where al- Malaika was living, was a very
conservative country.
     And worse yet, al-Malaika was a woman in a time when Arab women were severely repressed. Men literally ruled the roost back then and dominated Iraqi society. Others claimed that al-Malaika wasn't the first Arab poet to write free verse. According to some, a male poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab had written poetry in a free verse form, a year or two before al-Malaika had turned out her free verse poem.
    Yet whatever the truth was, al-Malaika had forged a new path for Arab poets and Arab women. As someone said about her, "She closed the door behind her, after the whole world ignored her." Al-Malaika was an educated woman. She got an M.A. in literature in Wisconsin in the United States. Then she studied music and learned to play Arab musical instruments. She called for women to stand up and free themselves from the oppression and stagnant life of the Arab world.
     She wrote a memoir of her life and in the Arab world of the 1960's. This too was an amazing thing for an Arab woman to do.
     Al-Malaika, like many rebels, paid a price for her struggles for social justice. In 1967, she went back to writing poetry in a traditional way. She married and had one son. Yet at one time she helped set up a group of women who said they would remain single.
     In later life she became a recluse and avoided most people. She and her family fled Iraq when the Baath political party came to power. The family moved to Kuwait. Yet in 1990, she and her family moved to Egypt after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
     She died in Egypt in her 80's. She is remembered as a brave pioneer of women's rights.
     "Why do we fear words," she wrote in her poem 'Love Song For Words'.
     "When they have rose-palmed hands
     Fragrant , passing gently over cheeks and glasses
     of heartening wine sipped one summer by thirsty lips?"