The Power of Language as Metaphor: An Exegesis of Ali Jimale Ahmed’s Poem “The Word”

This study presents a theoretical analysis of “The Word,” a poem by Ali Jimale Ahmed, a prolific thinker who is, in addition to being an academician, also a highly regarded poet, literary critic, culturologist, essayist, novelist, and a polyglot whose literary production draws on African, Western, and Arabian/Middle Eastern knowledgebases in their classical, medieval, and contemporary eras. Using English as his chosen medium of communication, and controverting the familiar rhythms, metric structures, alliterated sounds, and rhymes known for the poetry recited in his native Somali tongue, the poet Ahmed explores in this sonnet a terra incognita path of problematizing the function as well as limitations of language, rekindling the essential debate over language on the one hand, and use of poetic language on the other, in his unique style of versal discourse in “the word”.