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A review by thebookishelf
Thoughts Alight Poetry by Kawtar Elmrabti
5.0
It is one of the mysteries of the human mind that nothing can be thought without eliciting a feeling, and nothing can be felt without eliciting a thought; and that moods and beliefs, so apparently separate, are really deeply intertwined. Without this deep bond between concept and affect, poetry would hardly be possible, seeing as it plays on the hidden cords that stretch between our sensory, cognitive, and emotional worlds, finding strange harmonies in disparate sources, revealing hitherto unimagined connections in our inner architecture. And since love—and its dark twin, loss—resides at the center of this poetry book, poet Kawtar Elmrabti has much to work with.
Thoughts Alight by Kawtar Elmrabti evokes romance and revolution in my consciousness, a riot of metaphors impregnated with sui generis imagery, an intense celebration of love and beauty, a flood of high emotions that assails my senses and then dulls them. Everything else blacks out and I’m transported to a world I have never seen before – and it's beautiful, it is magnificent, it is dancing with the joy of love, hope, self conception, and meditative thoughts!
There are very few poets who so brilliantly marries nature's metaphors of earth, sea, wind, trees, moon, stars with the enchanting anatomy of the beloved. Every line testifies to poet Kawtar Elmrabti's unique way of perceiving nature; she likens the beloved to nature, her beloved becomes nature. As you might expect of youthful love poetry, this book is full of ardor, of lust, of desperation, and of the deepest tenderness. The sky is pulled apart, the sea is drained, the stars are rearranged, the forests are uprooted, and the world itself is bent into new shapes in poet's attempt to express her heart.
I took my time reading this, choosing to savor the succulent, vivid, tactile words. I must say, these poems are luscious! I feel their imagery as much as visualize it.
It is hard to make selections from this book; every poem is a work of wonder. Instead of copying many full-length poems, I am sampling some lines to show the luxuriant quality of imagery and the thunderous motion of her poems, the finesse of her thought, and the intensity of her style. Below is one of my favourite poems from the collection Thoughts Alight by Kawtar Elmrabti:
Thoughts Alight by Kawtar Elmrabti evokes romance and revolution in my consciousness, a riot of metaphors impregnated with sui generis imagery, an intense celebration of love and beauty, a flood of high emotions that assails my senses and then dulls them. Everything else blacks out and I’m transported to a world I have never seen before – and it's beautiful, it is magnificent, it is dancing with the joy of love, hope, self conception, and meditative thoughts!
There are very few poets who so brilliantly marries nature's metaphors of earth, sea, wind, trees, moon, stars with the enchanting anatomy of the beloved. Every line testifies to poet Kawtar Elmrabti's unique way of perceiving nature; she likens the beloved to nature, her beloved becomes nature. As you might expect of youthful love poetry, this book is full of ardor, of lust, of desperation, and of the deepest tenderness. The sky is pulled apart, the sea is drained, the stars are rearranged, the forests are uprooted, and the world itself is bent into new shapes in poet's attempt to express her heart.
I took my time reading this, choosing to savor the succulent, vivid, tactile words. I must say, these poems are luscious! I feel their imagery as much as visualize it.
It is hard to make selections from this book; every poem is a work of wonder. Instead of copying many full-length poems, I am sampling some lines to show the luxuriant quality of imagery and the thunderous motion of her poems, the finesse of her thought, and the intensity of her style. Below is one of my favourite poems from the collection Thoughts Alight by Kawtar Elmrabti:
An Afterglow
Loving whispers
Bodies intertwined like tangled wires
I find the place to lay my head
As our freckles align like constellations
Pressed against your skin
Entangled limbs
As to where you and I begin
You woke my sleeping senses
And warmed me to the bone
Together we move as one
In the splendid moment
I see moonlight dancing in your eyes
Together in the afterglow
Locked in love’s sweet embrace
You’re the starlight
In between my midnight eyes
Our Love’s ballet
Crowned with splendor
Afterglow lover’s blush
Passionate blood rush
I lose myself in your beam
Our fingers lock like magnets
Blending into one
I’m yours and you’re mine
Your skin, the canvas
My fingertips, the paintbrush
Every touch, every glide upon it
Create a mark unlike any other
Writing our tale
Lulling you into dreams with my fingers
Waking you when sunlight creeps up the sheets
Our hearts and breaths in sync
Laying in the afterglow
Longing to paint our lives
In splendid memories
Days filled with bliss and passion
Sun shining on our tangled silhouettes
Our Love’s ballet, an endless glow