“Metaphor in Selected Poems by Yahia Lababidi”

Abstract

This study examines the extensive use of metaphor in the poetry collection entitled Balancing Acts (2016) by Yahia Lababidi (1973), Egyptian Lebanese American poet, philosopher and aphorist . Lababidi’s use of metaphors seems to be the key to his poetry. In Balancing Acts, the poet’s obsession with Egypt is revealed. Besides, his poems express the dilemma of an immigrant poet experiencing a split identity, homesickness, a conflict between selfexpression and self-suppression, and the struggle between an ideal, spiritual existence and the reality of life in the US. While referring to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s definition of conceptual metaphor, this study will also allude to Martin Gannon’s notion of cultural metaphor, Michael Kimmel’s views about metaphor clusters, Zoltan Kövecses’ emotion concepts (2014), as well as Edward Buzila’s evaluation of the power of metaphor. Significantly, Lababidi’s use of metaphor will be analyzed in terms of Tina Krennmayr’s “bottom-up approach” in such a way as to focus on Lababidi’s cultural and universal metaphors in his attempt to reach out to his fellow humans.