Symphonies of a Lifetime

By Eman Abid

Symphonies of a Lifetime
Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5

“Symphonies of Life is a wonderful spiritual undertaking that provides food for the soul. When reading Abid, I hear echoes of both the Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and Rumi. Her poems are truly a monument to the region and one of the region’s richer gifts of culture to the world” (Cory Lowell Grewell, PhD, assistant professor of English, American University in Dubai).

“Her work is, indeed, about the symphonies of life composed every day, by the high-born and the humble of this world. Each human composition is made of moments of deep contemplation, times of simple pleasure, or points where we find ourselves between a rock and hard place. These very moments are the stuff of life, and Eman’s work brings us into the midst of it and shows us the subtle, transformative power of philosophic observation” (Sandra K. Alexander, American University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, August 2013).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jul 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543746006

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Eman Abid.

ISBN:                Softcover                        978-1-5437-4520-7

                          eBook                            978-1-5437-4600-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Contents

Author’s Page

Mind

No Promises

Rain

Watch

Free

Some

Symphony of a Warrior’s Heart

Fashion

Lost

Happiness

Stop

Plan

Stage

Poverty

Fire

Past, Present, and Future

Rush

Afraid

Doubts

Wings

Masquerade

Treasure

My Space

Dreams

Free Fall

Regrets

Time

Beauty

Not Every Question

Sweets and Candies

Where?

Still

A Perfect Day

Fear

Part

A Business World

Thread

Roses

Hope

Drowning

Sacrifice

Wind

Consequence

Laughter

Woman

Change

Healing

Control

Game

Road

Lies Are Day; Truth Is night

Same

Bulb

The End? Or the Beginning?

Joy

Stars

Sugar

The Elusive Search for Words

Dreams of Grandeur

Pain

Greed

End

Swept Away

Hide

Face It All

Desperation

Forgiveness

Slow

Hunger

Home

Stay with Me

Promises

Ice

Victory

Security

Don’t Go

Keep Looking for Winter

Do You Have What It Takes?

Memories

Tell Me

Don’t Look Back

Passion

Poison

This Fire Runs Deep

You Were Never Gone

Flee

Hope in a bottle

One Step Closer

End of a War

I’ve Come Back for You.

Don’t look at me –

Who am I?

Ostracized

These Scars Run Deep

A Wondrous Life

I Can’t Let You Go

Wake up

Meant to fall…

Allies

Don’t Pretend to Know Me.

Do You Remember?

Last hour of Peace

Descent

In The Corner Of My Heart

Peace

Stand Alone

Ocean at the Door.

Let it Burn

Friendship

Not Alone

Go…and Come Back

Games

Walk

A Perfect Secret

Pretense

A World Won Back

Step Into The Light

A Perfect World

The World Has Left You Behind.

The Stars That Made War

The Cold Has Taken Over

The Sky

Dear Mother

Dear Dad

Dear Brother

Forest

This Bold Journey

Bridge of Time

The Shadows Left Behind

Trust

These Empty Words

Remorse

Not Forgiven, But for Forgotten

Close Your Eyes

Let the Walls Come Down

Kindness

Future

Where I Belong …

About the Author & the Book

Happy Birthday Mom!

Author’s Page

Eman Abid has been writing since she was 8 years old. She wrote her first poem ‘Mother’ at the age of 10, and completed her first novel at 12. After graduating from The International School of Choueifat-Dubai, she was awarded a scholarship from Sorbonne University. However, in order to concentrate on her writing, Eman Abid stayed in Dubai. She achieved a degree in Business Management from The American University in Dubai (AUD) along with a certificate of Cinema Director and Line Producer from The Hollywood Film Institute from Dubai as well. Currently, Eman is working on her Symphonies of life trilogy, a collection of poems, and getting her novels and short stories ready for publication.

Some of her upcoming novels include a series of books based around a young man’s journey into a world he cannot understand, yet cannot escape.

The titles for the series are as thus:

Road to Dynasty

Under the Bridge


No Exit


The Higher Road

Some other novels include the following titles:

Shadow


The Violin player

I dedicate this book to

my mother, Samina Iffat

Thank you note

I would like begin by thanking God for all that he has given me. I would also like to thank my family, especially my mother. I wouldn’t be a writer today, or even a decent human being if it hadn’t been for my family’s love, support and guidance. To have any one of those things is an asset. To have all three is a blessing. I’d also like to thank my friends who have always been there for me.

There are many more people I haven’t quite mentioned here. What can I say? They are playing the music and it’s time for me to exit this proverbial stage. Or in other words, I have run out of page.

With Love,

Eman Abid

Symphonies of a Lifetime: A Collection of Poems

by Eman Abid

PageTurner Press and Media

Reviewed by Michael Radon

"A promise is the closest thing to trust.

It is the only thing that stands tall when everything else begins to rust"

This collection of poetry assembles over 100 selections that deal with the themes of personal conflict, struggling relationships, and the difficulty of dealing with depression and related emotions. Each poem is designed to stir the emotions of the reader with evocative imagery that exhilarates combined with the kind of emotional turbulence that virtually every person can relate to. With so many different selections to choose from, these poems provide multiple perspectives on universal situations, while always inspiring the possibility to overcome and to have hope that things will get better.

Whether consumed slowly or digested all at once, this volume is sure to inspire its audience and awaken them to the introspective perspective and how that shapes the way we all approach our feelings. One of the greatest strengths of poetry as a medium is its ability to make the most of vocabulary to express the most private of thoughts and emotions. The author of this collection uses that strength to great effect, using carefully selected word choices to create the greatest impact in the reader’s mind. While the language is definitely powerful and striking, it does not make the poems too complicated to read without a reference guide. A standard rhyme scheme is used during the majority of these selections, giving a strong sense of structure from beginning to end and helping the author to make good use of their inspiration while writing in a way that makes every new poem feel fresh and unique. Reading through this volume requires the audience to make a personal journey through the poet’s heart and experiences, but those who appreciate poetry as an art form seek out and relish opportunities such as this one.

©2017 All Rights Reserved • The US Review of Books

This review was written by a professional book reviewer with no guarantee that it would receive a positive rating. Some authors pay a small fee to have a book reviewed, while others do not. All reviews are approximately half summary and half criticism. The US Review of Books is dedicated to providing fair and honest coverage to all books.

Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5

Symphonies of Life is a wonderful spiritual undertaking that provides food for the soul.

Eman Abid’s new volume of poetry, Symphonies of Life, avoids the pitfalls of linguistic obscurity through simple, direct, and comprehensible language. Abid’s themes are immanent and transcendent, escaping the gravitational pull of mundane concerns. Her primary topic is that of spiritual light.

Hailing from the United Arab Emirates, Abid isn’t afraid to confront controversial subjects, like the morality or immorality of prescribed dress codes. In her poem titled Fashion, she writes: It differs from person to person / Nation to nation. She goes on to describe the many attributes of fashion as if it were a person. In the end, she comes to the conclusion that fashion should be accepted for what it is—a means of personal expression. And although cultural differences in fashion abound, harmony can be reached.

Later, in Woman, Abid addresses the place and status of women in society. She compares women to water, asserting their preciosity, logic, and wisdom. She then states that women are capable of ascending any barrier placed in their way. Words such as these demonstrate her courage and clarity of thought.

Abid’s language, although direct and simple, utilizes a variety of metrical devices, primarily iambic and anapestic. Assonance and consonance form the majority of her poems, and every now and again alliteration is employed. Such instances are delightfully emphatic, allowing Abid to make her point. Overall, her verse contains a consistent and distinct rhyme scheme.

Altering stanza lengths are occasionally distracting, but for the most part Abid appears to have a good ear for flow and an eye for form. Couplets, triplets and quatrains predominate. And she eschews interlocking stanzas, which enhances the simplicity of her verse.

The visual presentation of the poems in Symphonies of Life is free of any artificial placement, and, as already mentioned, Abid’s diction avoids the use of rhetorical devices. It’s obvious that she prefers direct presentation, utilizing tone as her primary exploratory device.

The prize of the collection is No Promises, a poem that discusses the emotional ramifications of love and one’s personal submission to the concept of love. Reminiscent of the Apostle Paul’s wonderful dissertation on the same subject, it presents love as a battle of conflicting emotions and needs.

In the end, Symphonies of Life is a wonderful spiritual undertaking that provides food for the soul.

Reviewed by Randy Radic

August 11, 2015

Eman Abid’s poems achieve something not much poetry written in English in recent years does: they are very, very readable. It would be silly to call a book of poetry a page turner, but I find myself, upon finishing one of these poems, wanting to go on to the next one.

Abid’s rhythms and use of rhyme – both internal and end rhyme – give these poems a very contemporary sound, and yet at the same point the diction, the figures and symbolism, and the deep moral tones impart an undercurrent of aesthetic wisdom that ties this poem to a poetic tradition that goes back years and years. Poems like Some and Freefall, for example, illustrate the easy conversational parallelism of nascent urban oral poetry, while poems like The Road to Heaven impart to us in a new vernacular the proverbial wisdom of ages past. When reading Abid, I hear echoes of both the Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and Rumi.

Another thing that Abid does in this volume, and again something poetry in English has not done nearly so well, in my estimation, for some time is speak coherently and meaningfully to her culture. The poem Fashion, for example, asks us to think complexly about the morality of fashion, and the approach is not the simple, clichéd denunciation of materialism we might expect. There is room for the morals of aesthetics, and the whole ethical context is grounded in the extremely complex moral universe that is the contemporary city. This volume contains many poems that tackle similar instantiations of modernization, and in my mind, this is perhaps her signature contribution to both contemporary poetry in English and to twenty-first century culture.

To me, Abid’s poetic images and morals show the marks of being formed in the crucible of the emerging city of Dubai, the textbook instance of rapid modernization and globalization, and she wonderfully engages the challenges to traditional regional mores and ways of life that the city presents. Many of these poems have implications well beyond Dubai for modern societies that have moved so far from their roots, but only Dubai, a city whose rise to ultra- modernism and economic wealth has happened so rapidly, could give birth to the rich juxtaposition of the deep traditionalism and chic couture of our Eman Abid’s poetry. Her poems are truly a monument to the region and one of the region’s richer gifts of culture to the world.

Cory Lowell Grewell, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of English

American University in Dubai

‘A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.’ - W. H. Auden

The work of Eman Abid is replete with the language of hopefulness, aspiration and wonder, and with an obvious love for the endless possibilities of life itself. It has been said that all philosophy begins in wonder and thus, much of Eman’s work has a truly philosophical quality. The subjects of the mind, the heart, fear, life’s very purpose, and a myriad of other unfathomable human experiences all find expression in her poems. Whether considering the connections between time and the secrets of life in Wind, or the differences between the courageous and the weak in Some, her work takes everyday human experiences and observations and shows them in their truest, most meaningful aspects. As we find in the poem No Promises, hers is a world about the paradoxical liberation and difficulty of devotion. Hers is a world where the mundane objects of life come alive, as we find in the poem Bulb – a piece that conveys the humility of the mundane and the overlooked. Hers is poetry about decision making and about the struggle to become ‘fully oneself’ in a world where half-heartedness often gets one by. The poem The Road to Heaven abounds with references to our daily challenge to ‘do good’ and ‘do no harm’, and a warning that although life is a gift, it is also a test. Hers is a world, as seen in Symphony of a Warrior’s Heart, where love and peace are met by obligation. Her work is, indeed, about the symphonies of life composed every day, by the high-born and the humble of this world. Each human composition is made of moments of deep contemplation, times of simple pleasure, or points where we find ourselves between a rock and hard place. These very moments are the stuff of life, and Eman’s work brings us into the midst of it and shows us the subtle, transformative power of philosophic observation.

Sandra K. Alexander

American University in Dubai

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Editor’s Notes

Dear Eman,

Greetings!

Firstly, I wish to congratulate you for you’re just about to give birth to another soulful work! Kudos! Secondly, you must know that there is not much of work to do with your poems, only minor mechanics issues. Lastly, consider only what you think is best for you from this feedback. Here we go:

Your works really justify your objective, i.e., to merge the two compilations, thus having Symphonies of a Lifetime. The impending anthology would really capture the heart of every reader as each piece mirrors the universal emotion of anyone at any time or season. One strength that this anthology possesses, is its visceral description of every subject in your poems. Another potent characteristic is the centrality of the images depicted, not a single poem misses this trait. Moreover, the persona is clearly identified in every work such as clarity of the persona, although confronted with different burdens that is to creatively shed light on different themes and subjects, becomes your identity-marker all throughout the poems.

Density and Intensity

These have been clearly achieved