The multi-talented Egyptian poet Salah Abdel Sabour, together with myriad of Arab fellows, laid the foundations for a new style of Arab poetry, depicting their own experiences in a creative manner, developing a new technique of dramatic monologue. Born in May, 1931 in Zagazig, northeastern Egypt, Abdel Sabour showed great enthusiasm for poetry, but he "mainly discovered himself as a poet, only after reading Eliot's Selected Poems" as he mentioned in his "My Poetical Experience". Influenced by T.S. Eliot's poetic language, Abdel Sabour deserted the traditional Arab poetic style of Taf'ila, adopting free verse, which was mainly built on the drama of ordinary everyday life through revealing common human thematic interests and concerns of modern life. In his "A Journey into Night", composed in 1954, Abdel Sabour depicts a departure from traditional Arabic poetry through the use of pessimistic colors, the notions of despair and agony and the deep feeling of idleness which reflect the universality of sorrow. In "A Journey into Night", we meet a young man going through a terrible experience whose reasons remained unveiled, wishing only his sleepless nights that irritate his mind would come to an end. Likewise, Eliot's protagonist in his "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" wanders streets at midnight imagining the lamps as "beating drums" as "through the spaces of the dark/midnight shakes the memory". Deserting the limited experience of the romanticist poets prior to his day, Abdel Sabour has showed great interest in the poor and oppressed. Abdel Sabour portrayed the sorrows, anxieties, loneliness, sterility, misery and poverty of the Egyptian countryside's people, as an example of the whole Arab world countryside's people. In "Abi" (My Father), Abdel Sabour elaborates his own experience which dramatizes the collective tragedies of the Egyptian villagers. "A dog snapped at my brother / while he was tending the flock in the field/ We wept/ When he called out / O Father". Abdel Sabour's use of slang expressions related to modern life is closely linked to Eliot's views on life and human experiences. In collections like "The People of my Country" and "Hanging Zahran", Abdel Sabour uses realistic common words like those used in Eliot's "Hollow Men". Intersexuality has been a major common part in both Abdel Sabour and Eliot's poetry. In his "Melody", Abdel Sabour says to his woman neighbor, "My neighbor! I am not a prince/ No, I'm not a comedian/ in the palace of the prince. This goes in line with what Eliot says in his "The Love Song of J. Alfred Plufrock" when he says "No, I am not Prince Hamlet/ nor was meant to be". Abdel Sabour's death was as dramatic as his poetry and life were. The late poet's wife said he died a day after a seething discussion with the Egyptian poet Ahmed Abdel Moety Higazy during which the latter accused him of betraying his nationalist beliefs and seeking to reach a cultural normalization with the Israeli enemy, accusations that allegedly led to his death.
