A Comparative Study of Poverty in the Poetry of Abdul Wahab Bayati and Iraj Mirza

Abdul Wahab Bayati, Iraqi contemporary poet, and Iraj Mirza, Iranian poet of the Constitutionalism, lived in a society drowned in poverty and desperation, and with people suffering from lack of security, governor's oppression, inefficiency in management, and inattention to people's circumstances. The two poets, having common social concerns, employed their poems to express people's pains and sufferings and focused on the problem of poverty in society and its consequences. Pointing to the causes of poverty and its manifestations, they spoke of the ways of confronting and eradicating it. In this paper, using the content analysis method, we tried to study comparatively the phenomenon of poverty and its most important causes and manifestations in A. Bayati and I. Mirza's poetry. Studying their poetry in this respect shows that the two poets considered governors and lack of social awareness as causes of poverty, and workers, farmers, orphans, and wanderers as its manifestations in the society; also, they invited people to struggle against oppressors, and asked governors to change conditions in order to eradicate poverty.