Pluviophile, by Yusuf Saad, reviewed by Mahy Arafa
Yusuf Saadi's Pluviophile, published by prestigious Canadian-based publisher Nightwood, is the author's debut poetry collection. The collection can be described as a symphony of beautiful, harmonious words and lines put together to create an inspiring, nature-influenced masterpiece. Yusuf Saadi has maternal Indian-Arabic roots and resides in Montreal. The collection is divided into three sections and consists dominantly of sonnets and prose poems embracing internal rhymes, imagery, and deep-rooted symbolism.
Each poem is almost musical in its expressions and implementations of recurring themes and words inspired by Saadi's Indian-Arabic heritage. Pluviophile meaning "rain lover," symbolizes the cleanliness, purity, and holiness water creates once it touches the body, which in Islam is a priority. Before every prayer, ablution is mandatory in order to be cleansed before speaking to God. This is one example of the implementation of the poet's culture mentioned above, which gives the collection uniqueness and originality. In this context, each poem cleansed me of dark thoughts and anxiety through impactful, calm, and relaxing language. Rain is also an essential earthly element that plays a role in life, change, and nature.
Images of space, the moon, nature, and rain are recurring in the collection of sonnets, gazals, and prose poems. He is very skillful with the use of rhyme and masters the language perfectly. For instance, in the poem "Root Canal," the rhymes of "croon" with "paan" and "love" and "home" are elusive and refined but demonstrate Saadi's impressive ability to play with language. The poem's title reflects pain, nostalgia, and loss as the speaker describes his root connection to his mother's tongue and his attachment to his home. These two poetic lines, in particular, read very flowingly and beautifully. "In my mother's tongue I love / you intimates I want you as my home." Most poems play with the language concerning themes of pain, beauty, loss, and nostalgia combined with imagery of nature, art, the moon, or space and time.
"Glossary of Air" is an exceptional poem as the poet manipulates structure and form instead of language:
Never Perhaps language feels
unreal because we hold onto words
but touch them
The blank spaces between the poetic lines create a slow-paced, relaxing experience and dramatic breaks at specific moments. It flows in a frenzy of emotions and powerful harmony. This creates a connection with the reader and a bond between the human consciousness and the poem.
"Painting a February Sky" is by far the most beautiful and impactful poem. Saadi creates a symphony of beauty, moon, nature, and space, flowing in powerful language, profound imagery, and poetic metaphors.
"On this palette, will mixing black and violet
uncover the nameless colour
tipping over the horizon, grief entering
sky's consciousness, dark-plum wine
spilled and bleeding from
the other sides of the canvas?"
My body lured to marvel
at its secondary colours, to trace
this page's primary words. When I mix
this much love with drops of despair,
do I create heartbreak, inertia?
Do I arrive at what I'm becoming? Words,
like colours, have gravity, they exert pull,
break in each other's wakes.
Isn't all matter subject to gravity?
Yes, but not like this. The way words pull
you
into me, like faith stirred by desire.
To gather art to its primary source—search
for what has no name. Look up: mystery,
distance, beauty mix alchemically
to unveil this exact shade
of moon."
This poem explores themes of mystery, ambiguity, the supernatural, and nature. The poem exudes darkness and beauty at the same time while expressing appreciation for the entities of nature and space and how if these specific elements fuse, along with colors and faith, they "unveil a shade of moon." Once again, Saadi connects to his heritage by combining the moon, faith, mystery, and the unknown, all symbols of Islam. Saadi wants the reader to dig deep for interpretation and revisit the poem time after time. Like the mystery and depth of the universe, each time readers read the poem, they discover something new beyond the surface. The interpretations for this poem are spacial and almost infinite, directly correlating with the universe, the supernatural, and nature as an entity. The words "black," "violet," "love," "despair," "heartbreak," "inertia," "faith," "mystery," "distance," "beauty," and finally, "moon" are all italicized which creates a fixation on them deepening the impact of language on the reader.
The collection creates a certain closeness and bond to the reader through the experiences and ambiguity of events described in each poem. The tone is tender, the language is soft-spoken, and the themes revolve around the universe and all its layers, mysterious and unexplored areas. Simultaneously some of the most powerful emotions are embraced, combined with images of faith, creating the beauty this poetry collection exudes. It fuses the peaceful, tender, and relaxing elements of nature, space, and the moon, with hard-felt feelings of grief, love, desire, and faith through skillful manipulation of language, impactful use of imagery, and masterful metaphors.
Pluviophile by Yusuf Saadi. Published 2020