Experimental Ruminations / Ali Znaidi - Book Review

The Prologue to renowned Tunisian poet Ali Znaidi’s Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012), which consists of two lines from Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing, suitably sets the tone for the poems, including a number of sonnets, that are contained in this chapbook: “I followed the course / from chaos to art”. That the current work is, most clearly, a work of art, can be seen in the great care that is taken by Znaidi in presenting the poems, both sequentially, within the book as a whole, and structurally, in terms of each individual poem.

From emptiness emerges “full dream”, as the first sonnet in the five that start this chapbook proclaims. The sonnets, although not in traditional sonnet form, but written in free verse, as many of Znaidi’s poems are, nevertheless have the intent of sonnets, in that they focus on conveying an overwhelming emotion, which is, essentially, based on a paradox that is implicit in the human predicament.  The poet’s brave and confrontational approach to life can be seen in the climax to Sonnet 2, where he welcomes the daylight that follows on “the murk of the night”.

Znaidi’s sensitiveness to the deeper workings of an artist’s mind are voiced in his third sonnet, which compares smashed butterfly corpses adorning the walls, mural-like, as a result of the insects having lost their way during a solar eclipse, to a canvas that might astound even Salvador Dali. The greyness and bleakness of life to an individual who longs for the greenness and freshness of the prairie is heightened by Znaidi’s repetition of “grey” in Sonnet 4, where the monotony of the landscape is only alleviated by the inner eye of the imagination.

The poet’s appreciation of the vulnerability of the downtrodden is expressed through the startling juxtaposition of “giraffe people” with “The little snail / [that] doesn’t like to be trodden”. His urgent appeal to “autograph lovers” to “Please, think of little snails!” is striking in its poignancy. That Znaidi is at home with elements of domesticity can be seen in his “A Sonnet for a Clothesline”, where a preoccupation with a clothesline embodies his concern with the linearity of life’s progression over the fluttering transience of “[b]eautiful sparrows”.

The grittiness and depth of Znaidi’s grasp on the fundamental wellsprings of life (which he holds in common with Leonard Cohen, so little wonder for his appreciation of the singer-songwriter, as evidenced in the Prologue) is conveyed in terms of “an endless orgasmic trembling / of lust” in “A Dying Lust”. The elemental nature of things stripped bare of the need to conform to the stifling demands of a society that is concerned more with external show than inward emotions and feelings is revealed in the personified encounter between clothing and the body in “against suffocation theory”. A riveting contrast between maturity, in the form of spent passion, and the lightness and fleeting happiness of youthful fancy can be seen in “Snow Is Made up of Aphrodite’s Teeth”. 

The seriousness of “A S/tar”, which reflects how the world besmirches that which is essentially refined and noble, is alleviated by the relative levity of “Stainless Wit in Every / Direction”, which is an ironical reflection on the questionable uniformity of structure that an electronic networking medium, such as Twitter, has on the multifariousness of messages that it relays. Znaidi’s delight in playing with words can also be seen in “A”, where homophones are bandied around with glee. That the poet has a penchant for experimenting with poetic form as well as with poetic diction can be seen in his use of “A Little Haibun”.

The political undertones of “a new kind of brew”, in his awareness of the presence of “infusion+fermentation”, show that his interests are anything but ephemeral. The immediacy of the visual imagery that permeates Znaidi’s work is explored in the many aspects of the colour blue that he evokes in “a blue composite”. In addition, the fecundity of the poet’s sensual awareness of the body corporeal once more comes to the fore in “Ease is a Pair of Stockings Torn Away”.

Ali Znaidi, a Tunisian secondary school teacher of English, lives in Redeyef, Tunisia, and has had many of his poems published in a wide range of magazines and journals worldwide. In addition to Experimental Ruminations, Znaidi has published three other chapbooks: Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and Taste of the Edge (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014). His collection of flash fiction, titled Green Cemetery (Moment Publications, 2014), is of landmark importance, as it is the first Tunisian flash fiction collection to be originally written and published in the English language. The diversity of his interests and the fundamental universality of his concerns make him a poet to be reckoned with on an international front.