Daily Excerpt: Damascus amid the War (M. Imady) - Commentary

 


excerpt from Damascus amid the War (M. Imady) -- 

           

Commentary

 

In Muna Imady’s writing we witness a kind of devolution from poetry that was filled with vivid imagery and striking metaphors to that which was made to

carry words of the brutality of war. Stripped of Muna’s imaginative, powerful, evocative language, her poetry becomes savagely direct, honest to the point of shocking readers with its transformation.

 

The world of Muna’s early poetry has become broken, brutalized, burned, and bombed. With it, Muna’s heart is broken; her imagination has been filled with

what is dark and laden with grief. The simplicity of most of the war poems, when compared with those of her pre-war output give readers a stark reminder of

the effects of war in ways that the news cannot. War breaks people and it transforms artistry into something it was never meant to be, painting a picture in words of the way the human spirit can be crushed, the way poetry becomes reportage. The poetry that has become harshly real, and suffocated, leaves no breath of space for imagination or metaphor.


It is her storytelling, the prose between her poems where we find humanity and the art of storytelling that grabs the attention of readers. Characters are real—relatives,

friends, neighbors—who suffer huge losses and live lives of fear and dread. Like Goya’s unforgettable images, readers must face the trauma, grief, and devastation Muna witnesses, day after day. When readers are surprised by a powerful metaphor there is hope that this artist’s heart will not have been broken beyond all mending but continue to discover her voice in the void.

 

Elaine Imady, the author of Road to Damascus and Muna’s mother, introduces the final set of poems, “Hearts.” These powerful poems are prescient and her mother’s introduction and description of Muna’s final days needs no better preface.

 

Geri Henderson, Ph.D.


 For more posts about Muna and her books, click HERE.


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