Kaveh Akbar`s Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017) and Spirituality by Rumi PDF

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Kaveh Akbar`s Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017) and Spirituality by Rumi Monir Gholamzadeh Bazarbash Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017), as a highly-acclaimed collection of poetry by the Iranian-American Kaveh Akbar, discloses the experimentation of the speaker-poet with addiction and its belonging distresses....

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Kaveh Akbar`s Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017) and Spirituality by Rumi Monir Gholamzadeh Bazarbash

Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017), as a highly-acclaimed collection of poetry by the Iranian-American Kaveh Akbar, discloses the experimentation of the speaker-poet with addiction and its belonging distresses. However, despite its entanglement with a matter of miserable anguish, a deeply-seated spirit of life exists throughout the collection that renders the work no less spiritual than Rumi`s poetical output. The references Akbar makes on God, the prophets, and human needs, like thirstiness and the body, can likewise be noted as prevalent motifs in Rumi. The present article aims to pinpoint that in the same way that Rumi`s greatest oeuvre is called a “Quran in Farsi”, Kaveh Akbar`s English collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf can be considered as the magnum opus of the modern age in trying to free the poet from excessive worldliness and stress the singularity of human being in the pursuit of truth in life. The idea of soberness as an articulation of otherworldliness accentuated by both poets along with the underlying purgatory turn and search in the world of meaning can be discussed to render these two seemingly widely-divergent works to have strong ties with each other. Accordingly, the pursuit of a shared spiritual predisposition overwhelmingly surmounts the centuries of age difference between the works of these two poets. Furthermore, Akbar`s development of a defamiliarized language in English and also interpolating Persian statements between poetic lines can also be noted as a unique experimentation in the English poetry. Keywords: Kaveh Akbar, poetry, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Spirituality, Rumi...