Fifth: the poet

05Fifth: the poet

• Mahmoud Hassan Ismail (1910–1977): an Egyptian poet.
• In his early phase his poetry was shaped by his rural upbringing and his love of the countryside, as appears in his diwan "Songs of the Cottage", by which he became known — he was called "the poet of the cottage".
• His poetic personality emerged very early, and he contributed to varifying the metres and the music of Arabic verse.
• His images are marked by range in metaphor, the layering of borrowed images, and often strangeness; the effect of that is softened by the strength of his feeling and the heat of his emotion.
• Many diwans were published for him; the most famous: "Songs of the Cottage", "Thus I Sing", "At a Bow's Two Lengths (Qab Qawsayn)" and "The River of Truth", from which this text was chosen.