Discovery of Existential Paralysis, Death, and Resolve in Autoethnographic Poetry of Taufiq Rafat through Poundian Image: A Study of Poetic Therapy

Abstract

Poetry therapy is a very useful technique tocope with extremely unbearable emotional experiencesin the lives of poets by manoeuvring autoethnographicpoems as a form of self-therapy. It engages a process ofself-disclosure to transform the developmental changestaking place in the affective domain of humans to bringemotional equilibrium. The poetic techniques ofconjuring subjective images in superposition withobjective metaphors – Poundian Image – imply theexistential themes of loss, death, dread,meaninglessness, void, resolve, etc., to relate theotherwise inarticulable emotional states. This paperseeks to investigate Taufiq Rafat's autoethnographicpoems about loss and death in his family from hisanthology Half Moon: Poems (1979-1983) to discoverhis existential thematic dimensions – fear of death,existential paralysis, the journey towards death,existential resolve through spiritual relief, andeverlasting memories – to come to term with theultimate reality of death using Ezra Pound'stheorization of Poundian image. Moreover, the studyalso takes into account the use of ethnographic poemsas self-therapy.