Western poetic ideals have been transmitted to the poetic work of South Asian poets.

The poet Adrian A Husain in his introduction to “The Far Thing” - an anthology of poems by Pakistani poets, says

‘Maki Kureshi had a death wish like Sylvia Plath’s’. (Hussain)  Maki does seem influenced by Sylvia Plath, as she also does - as I will try to establish - by Emily Dickinson.     Having the constraints of writing a short essay, I propose to focus on, primarily explore and explicate on, Pakistani poet Maki Kureshi’s work.  Nonetheless, for giving this essay some depth, I will try to draw out her similarities and differences with another poet, Taufiq Rafat, who is also influenced by Western poetic style.     

Maki Kureshi and Taufiq Rafat are two Pakistani poets whose work is pre-occupied with death, just as was Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath.  Maki has a persistent concern with stark violence, death, and the other, whereas Taufiq Rafat’s concern with death is somewhat subtle, sentimental and personal. 

Maki Kureshi has a very vivid imagination.  The play of light in “Day”, where

 “A day lyric as old Persian glass that snares the light’s intrigue.” (Qureshi) is erudite and very clever.  In comparison, Taufiq Rafat uses simple language, like William Wordsworth, and is concerned with lay-persons - not the elite - and is closer to nature, much like the English Romantic poets. 

‘Poet of the East, especially Taufiq Rafat audaciously dedicated his individual poems
to Wordsworth’. (Roberts) Curiously, unlike the Romantics, Taufiq does not dwell too much in the past, or discuss his ailments as does Maki Kureshi.  In the latter case, interestingly, Maki is like Sylvia Plath, the American poet, discussing the ailm.30ents. 

Maki Kureshi is brutal in her honesty, telling us as it is.  She is very upfront and hands on.  Here Maki has W. H. Auden’s unflinching quality, a brutal candour.  She does not flinch in the confrontation with horror, much like the American poet Emily Dickinson.  Whereas Taufiq Rafat converts his brother’s death in “Poems for a Younger Brother” beautifully, ironically, with a springtime-onset analogy - an attempt to give an aesthetic effect - Maki does not feel necessary to do so.  She sees it as it is.  Maki does not dilute or lyricize, much as Emily Dickinson does not. 

Cancer with Taufiq has the aesthetic dimension.  Also, Taufiq Rafat uses the imagery of Spring in “springtime” (4) as a prop, or for aesthetic effect, like the English Romantics.  Maki Kureshi does not use or need to use aesthetic buffers or props.  “Brother, you were good ground” rhymes too predictably, too exact with “sound” (8), set to metrical arrangement, as William Wordsworth had advocated.  Also the effect of the word “good” is too soft, soggy, soft-centered, unlike Modernist poet Maki Kureshi. 

In Indestructable “who kissed them” (9) is soft sentimentality - which is absent in Maki’s work - that takes away from the poem and should have been left out.  This is a kind of sentimentality that Maki Kureshi will not endorse.  The only exception to this “Maki-rule”, an anomaly, is her rather emotive concern with life, and death, like Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath.  Maki assures herself of carrying on with the business of living through her grandson in “For my Grandson”.  Here she says “This is our final opportunity / to survive.  It is my future you will reconstruct”. 

Maki’s encounter with death is much more powerful.  She spells it out.  She does not believe in making aesthetic matter - poetry - out of it.  She is fascinated by violence.  Just like Emily Dickinson, the noticeable themes in Maki’s poetry are of violence in nature, in human beings and in religion.  An image of brutalisation in nature when the “crow / lifts an assassin beak that stabs and stabs” - like Emily Dickinson’s bird that bites the worm in half - is juxtaposed with an image of violence in religion in the assassination of the Caliph Hazrat Umar invoked by “I think of Omar / absorbed in the quietude of prayer”.  In these two lines stabbings, Omar and prayer bring forth the new meaning. 

Moreover, Maki Kureshi is working by association where the crow image eventually leads onto the chamelion, when the stabbings bring death both to the human and the reptile.  This crow clearly reminds one of Emily Dickinson’s bird in her “A Bird came down the Walk”.  Maki dares to transgress into territory that Taufiq Rafat avoids or cannot - laying the blame somewhere on the Almighty.  God is a crow with scissors for Maki Kureshi, which is no more than a transmutation of Emily Dickinson’s Death as the “King”.  Taufiq Rafat is just not that cynical.  He celebrates nature like the English Romantics. 

With “God’s name shatters the air”, Maki invokes God the destroyer, and the destructive principle.  There are echoes here of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath’s preoccupation with the Destroyer God.  There is certainly this violence within the Maki Kureshi universe when “scissors” find themselves right beside “God” and “dies”, when the “beak’s scissors” are juxtaposed with “as God’s repeated name dies on the air.” 

Taufiq Rafat’s “Kingfisher” is also about violence.  The bird’s “plunge to kill” is no less than (once again) Emily Dickinson bird’s.  “The “beak is home” in Kingfisher is like the crow’s “assassin beak” in Maki’s “Day” and of course, Emily Dickinson’s bird in  “A bird came down the Walk”.  The Kingfisher’s “beak is home” in “Kingfisher” just like the crow’s “assassin beak” in Maki’s “Day” - death poised, and pointing below, as it nearly always does in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. 

In Maki Kureshi’s work there are prototypical tactile images, e.g., the tomato in “Kittens”.  She experiences this like James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus (in “A Portrait”), i.e., for the first time.  There is no given Classical imagery handed-down, or archetypal truths or formula to follow.  It is Modernism at work here whereas there appears an adherence to English Romantic ideals in Taufiq Rafat’s work.  In “Kittens”, stepping onto a soft kitten, the foot sensing that low resistance from a conceding tomato is clearly communicated in one forseeable stepping onto a kitten abandoned in the bazaar. 

Western poetic ideals, in my opinion, have clearly been transmitted to the poetic work of South Asian poets.  I have tried to establish this above, in the case of two Pakistani poets - Maki Kureshi and Taufiq Rafat - given the constraints of writing a short essay.