Daud Kamal digs out the deeper states of reality by the careful and precise use of words—a

quality that he shares with the Modernist poet, Eliot and Ezra Pound. Vivid images—often
disjointed at the surface level—which do not offer comments, present the real form of the world,
given not in philosophical contemplation but in intuition. His poetic genius is a disinterested or
detached power that unearths the world ‘as in itself it really is’. This makes Daud Kamal’s poetry
a realization of that ultimate flux or reality which is the hallmark of Henry Bergson’s philosophy.
This paper, therefore, uses Victre Shklovsky’s technique of ‘defamiliarization’ as a conceptual
framework to identify how Daud Kamal arrives at the intuitive grasp of reality by striping
language of traditional and automated connotations, for the common meanings of words in
language are derivative of utilitarain and practical acts, which are not disinterested. To place
oneself within reality itself, the practical use of language has to be worked against beccuase the
practical is a hurdle in the way of perceiving the true reality by means of intuition. His poetic
mechanism is simple: He marely removes the veil without making any effort for the revelation of
reality, it is just there in the immediate moment.

No image can repleace the intuition of duration, but many diverse images, borrowed from very
different order of things, may, by the convergence of their action, direct consciousness to the
preccise point where there is a certain intuition to be seized. By choosing images as dissimlar as
possible, we shall prevent any one of them from usurping the place of the intuition it is intended
to call up, since it would then be driven away at once by its rivals. (Bergson 16)

But a true empiricim is that which proposes to get as near to the orifinal itself as possible, to
search deeply into its life, and so, by a kind of intellectual auscultattion,to feel the throbbings of
its soul; and this true empiricism is true metaphysics. (Bergson)

we do not see them [objects] in their entirety but rather recognize them by their main
characteristics. We see the object as though it were enveloped in a sack. We know what it is by
its configuration, but we see only its silhouette. The object, perceived thus in the manner of prose
perception, fades and does not leave even a first impression; ultimately even the essence of what
it was is forgotten. (Art as Technique)

And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the
stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they
are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the
difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and
must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.
(Art as Technique)
An image is not a permanent referent for those mutable complexities of life which are revealed through
it, its purpose is not to make us perceive meaning, but to create a special perception of the object - it
creates a vision of the object instead of serving as a means for knowing it…

In my case, however, the image always comes first; ideas and feelings are of secondary
importance. As you must have noticed, my poetry does not carry any message. I am neither a
philosopher nor a moralist. 72 Interview

Things are not always what they seem and a poet should, I think, make the heroic attempt now
and then to break the barriers of space and time. 73

It should reveal to man the primordial relationship he has to the earth. Ibid

The poetic task for Daud Kamal is to uncover the truth of the objects he presents a vision of, by
revealing them in a form that is not automated or traditional. In his interview with Tariq Rehman,
he says: “Every poem for me is a new adventure, a deeper plunge into the sea of my identity. If
and when my poems start becoming monotonous, I will stop writing.” (Ibid) Newness or
originality in poetry is achieved This ‘defamiliarization’ is made possible by an attitude of
detachment from and disinterestedness in the practical and utilitarian connotations of language.