Jamil Dari’s poetry anthology I Have No Wings emanates from the poet’s long experience living with poems and their realms. Dari tries to plant a point of light in a long dark tunnel even if the feelings supporting the desire for cultivation are more utopian than realistic. He believes the word has no meaning in a time of oppression, and any poem that looks for mere applause borders on the insignificant.

This collection includes short, intense texts that hint and explicate at the same time. The poems are earthly texts expressing their desire to fly, but they cannot even float. In a way, these poems are similar to Dari, who is bound by reality with a thousand restrictions. The feeling of helplessness in making a poem seems an oasis for tired people or a weapon defending the oppressed. As this kind of helplessness generates great oppression, how can poetry extinguish the fire of anger from a poet’s soul?

The poetry in this volume seeks a response to being wingless yet trying to fly. The problem lies in getting so used to the inability to fly and so overcome by the feeling of helplessness that these emotions lead to one’s death as a poet.

As the critic Ahmad Farraj Al-Ajmi says in his introduction to this collection, Jamil Dari, the Seventy-Year-Old Poet, begins a new journey in which poetic maturity, high energy and devotion to writing are combined. He is trying to rebuild his perceptions of the world, people, values and poetry. Dari’s poetic experience is as illuminating as it is spellbinding.