Not long ago, a popular journal of mindfulness published an article Emotional Health is the New Sexy. In the language of mindfulness, being emotionally healthy is about being stable and composed after a lot of years of not having been so. As a result, trying to be emotionally controlled becomes a process, a process of healing, for it is not until one’s personality is shattered to pieces that one realises that it is to be built again. One must be careful about this process, lest people infuse their negative energy into you once again. Self-actualization, automatically, also comes into play because it is a realization of one’s own feelings and emotions that stop others from moulding them according to their own wants.
It is this state of healing, of self-actualization that seems to be have been attained by the Pakistani-American poet Simoneel Czar when she places the following poem as a threshold to her book of poetry titled SLAP: Not Your Ordinary Punchline:
With no punchlines
My poetry slaps
And to that, the world
Gasps!
The verses speak of how the poetess has grown not physically strong, but mentally strong, whose words now exude a whole new confidence, suggesting that she can now speak for herself. The proof, of course, is the book which has a single-coloured title that comes forward as equally plain and straightforward as the stance of the poetess.
The rest of the poems in the book describe how healing has been procured; by tolerating, by forgiving, by ignoring, by not letting betrayals hurt the personality but by learning from them and turning them into flowers that spread fragrance and reflect colour, no matter how many harsh seasons their stems might have borne. A pictorial presentation of this is given through the writer’s own illustrations.
At certain points in the book, it seems that along with personal healing that comes with patience and faith, both in one’s self and God, Czar also believes in the natural healing of pains and circumstances. In some of her poems, she points at the phenomenon of Karma and the act of surrendering before God, and after having loved humans a lot, passing on that love to God with a hope that it won’t go wasted this time. This gives a mystical touch to the book as well, and it is no wonder then that the ideas of Sufis are also reflected in Czar’s poetry, especially when she says;
Every wound
Every crack
Every bruise
Is a place where you
Fill yourself with light
A reason to heal
And make things bright
The fact that Divine Loves comes into being and calmness and peace arrive only after one has experienced intense pain at the hands of fellow humans seems to become validated as a result. We see that the poetess, although in a state of composure, has her days of weaknesses and in those days, she recalls her previous painful experiences, making their way into the book as poems recurring in between verses based on wisdom and maturity:
I understand
I had no control
Over what or how I felt
These verses are placed right after the poem Keep Walking giving authenticity to the oft-quoted line that healing is not linear.
Some of the poems in the book such as The Divine Feminine and Which Witch? reflect certain realisations not only at a personal level, but at a level on which the speaker could feel the pain of all women who have been subjected to betrayals and cruelties of men in patriarchal societies. As a result, her faith in strength and recovery becomes a consideration for the women who have left the world, and a torch to pass on to the women who are yet to be born in a world dominated by males.
How every action and every passing moment has been keenly observed and turned into a lesson is something that is visible in the way the book has been designed and its content arranged. The 197 poems are one hundred and ninety seven different moments, or feelings, the acceptance and nurturing of which has resulted in a new personality. The new personality is the refreshing book itself. The structure of the poems is open and the verses are free, reflecting not only a being who is not ready to restrict herself to society’s impositions anymore, but also a mind that understands how life is not regular, coherent and a smooth stream. Regular patterns or perfect rhyme schemes have mostly suggested minds moving in a single dimension, but the author of SLAP has accepted life as it is; raw, irregular and not at all perfectly rhymed at any point, and shapes this idea in the form of her poems’ composition.
The titles, or the punchlines, are at the end of every poem, typed in bold letters. While this is a whole new way of giving titles to poems, it also complements the theme of the book: having reached a certain stage after trials, reflecting upon things and naming them either as Reminders or A whole new world after going through a complete process. They also reflect a personality that now understands things as they were. The titles at the end are a representation of a later understanding, or to put it more positively, wisdom achieved after years of pain.
SLAP is a book that can be read in one go; so simple yet gripping are the poems in it. The theme of the book, collectively built by all the poems, is so universal and far-reaching that it can attract youngsters who are betrayed, elders who are done with their sacrifices, mystics who have had their fill of human relations and now wish to reach out to God, alchemists who have complete faith in beautiful transformations, and feminists who can no longer stand the atrocities of this patriarchal world. The book is a catharsis, not only of the person who has penned it, but also for the ones who are living in the modern times plagued by disloyalty, hypocrisy and ruthlessness and who are looking forward to good days. Such people will be able to relate themselves to the book and through it, be given hope that things will turn out fine if they make certain positive attributes a part of their personalities.
The book came out in 2018 by The House of Romanov Publishers, New York in strategic partnership with Daastan Publications, Pakistan. Edited by Kiran Ashraf and printed by Fine Books Printers, Lahore, the book has been illustrated by the author herself.
It is this state of healing, of self-actualization that seems to be have been attained by the Pakistani-American poet Simoneel Czar when she places the following poem as a threshold to her book of poetry titled SLAP: Not Your Ordinary Punchline:
With no punchlines
My poetry slaps
And to that, the world
Gasps!
The verses speak of how the poetess has grown not physically strong, but mentally strong, whose words now exude a whole new confidence, suggesting that she can now speak for herself. The proof, of course, is the book which has a single-coloured title that comes forward as equally plain and straightforward as the stance of the poetess.
The rest of the poems in the book describe how healing has been procured; by tolerating, by forgiving, by ignoring, by not letting betrayals hurt the personality but by learning from them and turning them into flowers that spread fragrance and reflect colour, no matter how many harsh seasons their stems might have borne. A pictorial presentation of this is given through the writer’s own illustrations.
At certain points in the book, it seems that along with personal healing that comes with patience and faith, both in one’s self and God, Czar also believes in the natural healing of pains and circumstances. In some of her poems, she points at the phenomenon of Karma and the act of surrendering before God, and after having loved humans a lot, passing on that love to God with a hope that it won’t go wasted this time. This gives a mystical touch to the book as well, and it is no wonder then that the ideas of Sufis are also reflected in Czar’s poetry, especially when she says;
Every wound
Every crack
Every bruise
Is a place where you
Fill yourself with light
A reason to heal
And make things bright
The fact that Divine Loves comes into being and calmness and peace arrive only after one has experienced intense pain at the hands of fellow humans seems to become validated as a result. We see that the poetess, although in a state of composure, has her days of weaknesses and in those days, she recalls her previous painful experiences, making their way into the book as poems recurring in between verses based on wisdom and maturity:
I understand
I had no control
Over what or how I felt
These verses are placed right after the poem Keep Walking giving authenticity to the oft-quoted line that healing is not linear.
Some of the poems in the book such as The Divine Feminine and Which Witch? reflect certain realisations not only at a personal level, but at a level on which the speaker could feel the pain of all women who have been subjected to betrayals and cruelties of men in patriarchal societies. As a result, her faith in strength and recovery becomes a consideration for the women who have left the world, and a torch to pass on to the women who are yet to be born in a world dominated by males.
How every action and every passing moment has been keenly observed and turned into a lesson is something that is visible in the way the book has been designed and its content arranged. The 197 poems are one hundred and ninety seven different moments, or feelings, the acceptance and nurturing of which has resulted in a new personality. The new personality is the refreshing book itself. The structure of the poems is open and the verses are free, reflecting not only a being who is not ready to restrict herself to society’s impositions anymore, but also a mind that understands how life is not regular, coherent and a smooth stream. Regular patterns or perfect rhyme schemes have mostly suggested minds moving in a single dimension, but the author of SLAP has accepted life as it is; raw, irregular and not at all perfectly rhymed at any point, and shapes this idea in the form of her poems’ composition.
The titles, or the punchlines, are at the end of every poem, typed in bold letters. While this is a whole new way of giving titles to poems, it also complements the theme of the book: having reached a certain stage after trials, reflecting upon things and naming them either as Reminders or A whole new world after going through a complete process. They also reflect a personality that now understands things as they were. The titles at the end are a representation of a later understanding, or to put it more positively, wisdom achieved after years of pain.
SLAP is a book that can be read in one go; so simple yet gripping are the poems in it. The theme of the book, collectively built by all the poems, is so universal and far-reaching that it can attract youngsters who are betrayed, elders who are done with their sacrifices, mystics who have had their fill of human relations and now wish to reach out to God, alchemists who have complete faith in beautiful transformations, and feminists who can no longer stand the atrocities of this patriarchal world. The book is a catharsis, not only of the person who has penned it, but also for the ones who are living in the modern times plagued by disloyalty, hypocrisy and ruthlessness and who are looking forward to good days. Such people will be able to relate themselves to the book and through it, be given hope that things will turn out fine if they make certain positive attributes a part of their personalities.
The book came out in 2018 by The House of Romanov Publishers, New York in strategic partnership with Daastan Publications, Pakistan. Edited by Kiran Ashraf and printed by Fine Books Printers, Lahore, the book has been illustrated by the author herself.