Deconstruction and Imagery through Deviation in the Poems of Hushang Ebtehaj

Deviation is one of the defamiliarization techniques that the poet uses to enrich his poems with creative images and concepts. In this technique, the text deviates the rules governing the standard language to create foregrounding in literary texts. Ebtehaj is one of the contemporary poets who have used this technique frequently in his poems. This study tries to analyze Ebtehaj’s poems using a descriptive survey research method within a structuralist framework based on Leech’s deviation pattern which includes eight types of deviation in order to reveal the beauty and salience of his poems. The analyzed poems in this study were selected randomly from Ebtehaj’s Tasiyan book. The result showed that Ebtehaj has utilized all eight types of deviation, but semantic deviation ranks first among all types. The use of other types of deviations and the consequences are also analyzed in this study. By these deviations, Ebtehaj states his ideas with common words in a creative and unconventional style. Besides, the preposing of verb has high frequency among other types of grammatical deviation. Using this technique, he has put more weight on the action rather than the actor.