servitude. The murdered lover, the bard, summons all martyrs and poets, in
a confluence of voices that defy death and erosion.
the bard floating on the water,
the heavy-stepping river dragging him
from folk to folk, year to year
(Ibid. 28)The occasion is used to mourn an all-encompassing death of life and culture
that has resulted from oppression, usurpation, and bloodshed. As repression
becomes the norm, little is left for language to say, and “... between the mask
and the symbols’ endurance,” there is little meaningful space (Ibid. 30). The
“land of despots” becomes a shriveled carpet, and language turns wooden,
emptied of life and meaning.
The flesh of dictionaries
drips off their frail spines.
The verb’s corpse is divulged
in the wood formula of coffins,
and the noun harbors the void’s bitter cold;
significance irrevocably divorced
from allusion and sense,
grammar trades around its terms;
speech remains a distance of sand
throughout which dummies and invading armies stand posted.
(Ibid. 30)This interplay between the historical, the political, and the cultural is not alien
to the mawwmland popular singing in general. Targeting the pervasive penetra-
tion into life and culture of a hegemonic ideology, its control of media and means
of communication, and its ultimate loss of vitality and spontaneity, the bard
invigorates poetry by reconnecting it to traditional lore with its resistance to fos-
silization and death. Similar to the ballad tradition in its multiplevoicing, this
form is appropriatory in nature, and is therefore capable of harboring a number
of genres and voices. Its space and freedom allow further dissent and resistance.
On many occasions, modern poetic engagements are often in dialogue with
other deviational poetics. They use the time-honored metric systems freely
and avoid stock images in keeping with a penchant for freedom. They find in
the Baghdadi Kmn Kmn, the Shi‘lta‘mzl(singular: ta‘ziyah), and other poetic
modes possible means to invigorate their poetics. Building on the mourning
lyrics, usually recited in memory of the martyrdom of Immm >usayn,^55 these
create a poetic mode of great poignancy and lyrical resonance. For the Kmn
Kmnwe may quote the following story from the Arabian Nights, to understand
the love and longing associations that dominate modern poetry whenever the
POETIC DIALOGIZATION