Ekphrases: Book One

By Saad Ali and Dr. Nikolaos Karfakis

About the Book


Book One of Ekphrases is the third book of poetry by Saad Ali. It’s the first installment in his anthology of ekphrases.

On this occasion, the poems are born out of Ali’s interpretations of the artworks (paintings) of various Western (European and American) artists—from past and present. The poems are not merely descriptions or elaborations of the themes, messages, subjects and objects of and in the paintings, but rather his poetic discourse is much more engaging in that it is an embodiment of the stories within stories of human stories—manifesting as the consequence of an interaction between (the minds of) a philosopher-poet and an artist.

Also, the main components of Ali’s poetic discourse i.e. contemplation and satire become prominent—embodying reflections on the fundamental questions of why, what, how, when, where, and who vis-à-vis existence and being (in general) and, more specifically, the human condition(s). Here, the instances of the phenomena of love, hate, fear, courage, nostalgia, remorse, redemption et cetera have been invoked—even at the subjective level.

As always, the book is an invitation to all for both an individual and a collective contemplative and reflective odyssey. So that we may be able to interpret and comprehend the intricacies and niceties of existence and human life in a better (and/or different) way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728398167

Saad Ali

SAAD ALI (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) is an existential philosopher–poet. He has been educated and brought up in Pakistan and the UK. He earned his BSc and MSc in Management from University of Leicester, UK. By profession, Ali is a consultant (marketing, communications and research), educator, and lecturer/trainer/mentor by profession. Ali possesses a broader world view, which is a result of his experiences gained from having lived in a variety of cultural settings such as Asia, Europe, Middle East and Australasia. The cogs of his existential machinery are oiled by the muses of arts. He was embraced by the muses (of poetry) in his infancy—at the raw age of 12. The main components of his poetic discourse include: contemplation and satire. Some of his influences include: Vayasa, Homer, Ovid, Saadi, Rumi, Ghalib, Nietzsche and Tagore—to name a few. Previously, he has authored three books of poetry i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (2019) and Ekphrases: Book One (2020). He is a regular contributor at The Ekphrastic Review—a premium journal for ekphrastic verse and prose. His current projects include: translating the poetry of Bulleh Shah (Sufi poet), Allama Muhammad Iqbal (philosopher poet) and Faiz Ahmad Faiz (philosopher poet) from the Punjabi, Urdu and Farsi (Persian) languages into the English language. He is fond of travelling by train and exploring cities/towns on foot. He is fond of learning different languages. In particular, he appreciates the Persian, Chinese and Greek cuisines. His favourite sport is putting his gray matter to test at chess. To know more about Ali and his work, please visit his website at https://www.saadalipoetry.com, or his Personal Blog on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/owlofpines.

Book preview

© 2020 Saad Ali. All rights reserved.

Front Cover Art is called Infinite Dialectical Flow (colour pencil drawing) © 2019 and is utilised with the consent of the artists, Jaffar Ali, from Sydney, Australia.

Book Design by Saad Ali

Cover Design by Saad Ali

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  01/31/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9815-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9816-7 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Dr. Nikolaos Karfakis (PhD)

Preamble

Ekphrases

Book One

Genesis

Garden of Eden

The Forbidden Fruit: Temptation and Desire

Love, Hate, Fear and Courage

Granules of Moments

Irony

Truth

Forms and Frames

Freedom and Slavery

Origins and Roots

Paradigm

Transcendences and Transitions

Transparent and Opaque

Doorway to Soul

Window Dressing

Ocean, Fish and Boat

Owl and Ulu

Phillies

Estrangement

The Boy

House of God

Om Shanti Om

Innocence

Girl and White Dove

Girl and Purple Oyster

Friendship

Human Being

The Doll

Heart of Heart

Lullaby

Awake and Asleep

Record on Repeat

And

Solitude

Discontent

Humanity

About the Author

About the Book

For my parents,

Anwar Ul Haq and Memoona Anwar

—The Strongest

&

For all —

storytellers, painters and poets

of Earth

Flux is existence.

— Heraclitus

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,

Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East

or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

…

only that

breath breathing human being.*

— Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi

(Rumi)

*  Barks, C. (2004) The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition.

Harper One: New York. p. 32002E

Acknowledgments

I am forever grateful to my family i.e. parents (Anwar Ul Haq and Memoona Anwar) and brothers (Umair Bin Anwar and Asim Ali) for their moral support.

To my mentor, the late Paul Ashworth, I will remain forever indebted. During the early hours of my philosophical/intellectual-infancy, you helped me see beyond the cliché of the half-full, half-empty glass. This horrific void that your absence has created—in my existence—is awfully-intolerable.

I am grateful to many friends—from across the globe—for their encouragements and moral support: Nabila Gul, Cameron Batmanghlich, George Kokkinidis, George Patsiaouras, Nikolaos Karfakis, Anoop Bhogal, Arun Nair, Farooq Malik, Imran Raja, Faizan Tirmizi, Sukaina Fatima, Lubaba Batool, Rizwan Mushkor, Sidra Rizwan, Shakaib Khan, Timothy Malik, Muhammad Sarim, Qasim Puri, Ayesha Saghir, Kaukab Jamal, Saima Naz, Zonaira Chaudhry, Maraam Pasha, Qayyum Khosa and many more.

Many thanks to my maternal uncle, Jaffar Ali, for introducing me to Amin Rehman, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Toronto, Canada. The exchanges of thoughts and ideas with you, Amin, has always been a source of great pleasure and inspiration. Thank you for allowing me to interact with your works.

Many thanks to my father, Brigadier (Retd) Anwar Ul Haq, for introducing me to Ejaz Rahim, Senior Civil Servant and Poet, from Islamabad, Pakistan. Ejaz, I extend