Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani is a poet born in Syria Damascus. ("Nizar Qabbani - Nizar Qabbani Biography - Poem Hunter"). He was schooled in Damascus and studied law in Damascus University. He started writing poems as a college student. For most of his life, he worked as a diplomat and finally went into publishing ("Nizar Qabbani - Nizar Qabbani Biography - Poem Hunter"). Most of his works are mostly romantic poems based on love and praise women. Nizar died of a heart attack in 1998.
The poem, a ‘School of Love,' is a lyric since it conveys emotional expressions of love. The persona expresses the impact that the love he had found had on him. The poem is loaded with emotions that come with love and turmoil that love often puts those who experience it. The poem is a stark reminder of my falling in love with my girlfriend Anwar from Kuwait. The love we shared was so deep that often it caused ‘pain' from worrying about the other person and wondering what the future holds. Qabanni uses a mournful tone, repetition, and imagery to bring forth the theme of love.
Mournful Tone
The poem uses a mournful tone to bring out the theme of love by conveying the different emotional conflicts that lovers experience. The tone is brought out by the poet through the use of emotional expressions which portray deep though and internal conflict caused by the love. An example is “Your love taught me how to grieve, / And for centuries, I needed a woman to make me grieve,” which shows the grieving that lovers go through when overcome with love and worry. The persona also says that “Your love showed me the sadness city, / Which I have never entered ere you;” this expresses the sadness that love often breeds.
Repetition
The poet carefully incorporates repetition to emphasize the grip that this love had on him and the depth of his feelings in the relationship; developing further the theme of love. The repetition is also used by the poet to enumerate the many different ways in which the love had influenced him. Repetition is seen in the lines “It taught me how to drink coffee a thousand times every night, / it taught me how to visit doctors and ask soothsayers, / It taught me to go out to scan the streets.” It emphasizes the big role that love has played in changing the persona’s life. The repletion stresses the significance of love and expounds on the theme of love.
Imagery
Imagery is used extensively in the poem to further the theme of love by stressing the status in which the persona was before he found love, and how the love has impacted his life. An example is the lines "To make me cry on her shoulders like a bird, /I needed a woman to collect my pieces like broken glass." Here the poet emphasizes how helpful love was to the persona, stating that it helped him to collect his pieces, and he found a shoulder to lean on. The two similes paint a clear picture of the persona's disposition for the audience, making the theme of love clearer.
The poem is an emotional rendition of a man’s love for his lover, elaborating on the changes that love brought into his life. The poet successfully brings out the theme of love using imagery, mournful tone, and repetition to show that love is impactful.
Works Cited
"Nizar Qabbani - Nizar Qabbani Biography - Poem Hunter". Poemhunter.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
