From a cursory perusal of the book, there appears to be a marked evolution in her art in the period intervening between 1990 and 2016
‘The difficulty with prose poetry is that if it is not handled imaginatively, it would eventually deform itself into a statement – as platitudinous as the daily medium of speech.’
Kulliyat-e-Najma Mansoor
Author: Najma Mansoor
Publisher: Book Corner, Jhelum
Pages: 412; Price: Rs.800/-
Aqwal-e-ZarriN ka Encyclopedia
Compiler: Najma Mansoor
Publisher: Book Corner, Jhelum
Pages: 565; Price: Rs.600/-
Najma Mansoor composes prose poetry in Urdu. She is based in Sargodha, which is also the native place of her eminent mentor Dr Wazir Agha. Starting her literary career in the year 1990 under his tutelage, she has gradually groomed herself into a reliable practitioner of the genre (prose poetry). Apart from poetry, she has also excelled herself as a critic, compiler (editor) and anthologist, with some seventeen publications in Urdu and English to her credit.
This review is intended to cover her two recent publications in poetry and prose respectively.
Kulliyat
It is a collection of her five verse publications viz., Maey, Sapnay aur AnkheN (‘Me, dreams and eyes’ – 1990), Muhabbat KyuN NahiN Kartay (‘Why, love you not?’ – 1992), Agar NazmoN kay Par Hotay (‘Would that poems had wings!’ – 1998), Tum (‘You’–2001), and Geeli Seeli NazmaiN (‘Wet and damp poems’ – 2016). From a cursory perusal of the book, there appears to be a marked evolution in her art in the period intervening between 1990 and 2016.
Reviewing her first publication in the year 1991, this scribe observed:
‘The book contains 48 (prose) poems on various topics. The HCF (highest common factor) of the themes of these pieces is self-exploration. In fact they constitute a long monologue in continuum – singularly narcissistic in tone. The imagery is mostly sensuous with connotations of the abstract that lead to a dialectical appraisement of the poet’s dilemma with little simulation to obscurity.
‘Najma Mansoor’s creativity draws on her powerful urge for what Wazir Agha calls, emancipation. The difficulty with prose poetry is that if it is not handled imaginatively, it would eventually deform itself into a statement – as platitudinous as the daily medium of speech. In this book, too, one finds enough of such statements which could be condoned keeping in view the fact that it is the poet’s maiden attempt.’ The poet in Najma Mansoor seems to have partly surmounted this ‘difficulty’ over the passage of time with concentration and application.
Whereas Dr. Wazir Agha penned the preface to the first of the pentagonal publications namelyMaey, Sapnay aur AnkheN, Prof. Ghulam Jilani Asghar, Azhar Javed and Farhat Abbas Shah subscribed their considered views on her art and person vis-à-vis the second publication titledMuhabbat KyuN NahiN Kartay which contains 89 prose poems of varying length. The work is focused on love as a primordial human sentiment bifurcated into the temporal (spatial) and the spiritual (transcendental).
‘Najma Mansoor, in his opinion, has gradually learnt to refurbish her diction with not only textual diversity but also a palpable internal rhythm which characterizes genuine poetry.’
Ghulam Jilani Asghar thinks that a veritable prose poem tends to recreate, and thereby rediscover, the aesthetic elan of a word. Najma Mansoor, in his opinion, has gradually learnt to refurbish her diction with not only textual diversity but also a palpable internal rhythm which characterizes genuine poetry. The poems in this part seem to unfold the poet’s (or her persona’s) loneliness and loss arising from the fateful phenomenon of non-fulfilment. The monologist here appears more to be in love with love itself than with any of its earthly incarnations.
The third portion of the book titled Agar NazmoN kay Par Hotay consists of 71 poems voicing their composer’s variegated moods immersed in melancholy, distress and self-alienation culminating into an unknown fear that she might be divested of the dream girl dwelling within her as a phantasmagorical poem if ever the Muse ceased to move and inspire her imagination.
In the reverse seriatim, the second division of the book named Tum is comprised of 62 piecesof prose poetry preceded by an apt foreword written by noted scholar and critic Nasir Abbas Nayyar.
Nayyar has dwelt on the triangular attributes of Najma Manssor’s poetics terming them as conversation, monologue/soliloquy, and dialogue. He also thinks that there are multiple ‘narrattees’ in her poems like the loved one, the poet’s own alter-ego, and the phenomena of nature and contemporaneity. The poems titled YuNhi aik din, Maut ko phaNsi dainay say pahlay, and Sham aur Muhabbat included in this part, would amply seem to represent these staple themes.
The opening part of the book titled Geeli Seeli NazmaiN, containing 42 poems, is the author’s latest publication. Here, as one would discern, she is at her best in terms of content, diction, and style. There is also a marked deviation in some of these poems from the egocentric world of ‘I’ and ‘me’ to the harsh, unpalatable realities of the external world we live in. Nazm mujhay likhti hai, Atishbazi ka khail khailnay walo, Andha sach, Khuda kaun say aasmaan par rahta hai, and Aik zindagi ki doosri bar maut indicate the substance of her thought and feeling here.
By and large the diction of these poems is all too simple to deconstruct a meaning other than what is intended and explicit. But its subliminal implications do tend to invest it with an aura of sensory impressions corresponding to the manifest overtones of the individual poems. The kinesthetic reverberations of the internal rhythm of the lines lend them a buoyant poetic vigour and felicity.
Introductory flaps from litterateurs of the calibre of Dr Wazir Agha, Dr Anwar Sadeed, Iftikhar Arif, Shabnam Shakil, Dr Salim Agha Qizilbash, Dr Manazir Ashiq Harganvi, R.D. Sharma Taseer, Prof Yusuf Khalid, and Azra Asghar serve to illuminate various aspects of the poet’s person and art.
Aqwal-e-ZarriN
This book is a vast compendium of inspirational famous quotes, maxims, adages, proverbs, aphorisms and excerpts drawn from both divine and existential sources. It is a commendable effort meant to highlight the quintessence of religious, ethical and human values for the common good of humanity. The major sources of these sayings (aqwal) are the Holy Quran, the Ahadith-e Mubarka of Holy Prophet of Islam Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa (SAW), golden sayings of earlier Prophets (AS), quotes from Sohaba Karaam (RA) and Ahl-e-Ba’it (RA), and a host of leading Muslim saints and mystics, besides a cross-section of religious, social, political, intellectual, literary, and academic celebrities from all over the world.
The length of the sentences embodying the gist of the golden quotes, in the book does not normally exceed beyond two lines. Mostly these are one-liners: pithy, terse and epigrammatic, loaded with spiritual enlightenment, wisdom and insight. The basic theme underlying the contents of the book is the discrimination between vice and virtue and a resolute stress on imbibing spiritual values of faith, piety, justice, truth, and honesty as espoused by Islam.
The book is an almanac of knowledge, inspiration, and spirituality wherefore its worth and value as a reference book can hardly be overemphasized.
