Repetition, and address to an implied or real listener, along with images
of struggle and martyrdom, emplace such a poem nicely in ta‘ziyahpoetry. In
ta‘ziyah, al-Husayan’s sister is usually addressed, and the mourning poetry
focuses on his determination to fight and on the wounds of martyrs prior to
their death. Both the Kmn Kmnand ta‘ziyahare strongly present in popular
culture and operate with power on structures of feeling. Along with other
modes that are suited to processions, assemblies, and street performance, both
address and influence an audience. Both expand the scope of poetry and
endow it with lyricism, and also involve it in multivoicing. Due to this con-
fluence, the poem becomes a meeting space for unmerged voices and con-
sciousnesses. Both Kmn Kmnand ta‘ziyahmeet the demand for a nonelitist
poetics that can cope with populist ideologies since the 1950s. Almost every
poet, especially in Iraq, came under the impact of these modes in one way or
another, and the popularity of some poets grew in part due to this multifaceted
correspondence.
Prosimetrum and revisionist poeticsA tenth dialogic strategy relates to prosimetrum, as the practice involves
poetry in active dialogue with other genres. The fusion of the old and the
new, the past and the present, takes many textual forms. To present a
panoramic view of postmodernity and the means by which recapitulations of
generic overlapping build on modernity poetics, the fusion of forms, I will
offer two examples. The first relates to the use of AbnNuwms’ (d. 813)
poetry in modern narrative, as the case is in Mawsim al-hijrah ilmal-shamml
(1967; Season of Migration to the North, 1969) by the Sudanese novelist
al-Yayyib Xmli.. It uses tradition as presented and manipulated in postcolo-
nial writing. This example parodies the prosimetrum practice as much as it
debunks Orientalism as a frame of reference.^66 Its mechanisms of parody and
mimicry place it within the heart of modernist and postmodernist experi-
mentations. Embedding exoticism as an offshoot of Orientalized practices, its
captivating images of an East of rapture and sensuality, al-Yayyib Xmli.
implants AbnNuwms’ poetry into his narrative to parody the Orientalist
discourse and its markers of a dormant but sensual East. The ‘Abbmsid
AbnNuwms was the boon companion of the Caliph al-Amln (d. 813), and his
poetry was so popular as to invite scribes to add to it whatever they deemed
of the same temper. Known for his celebrations of wine and sexual love at
large, he was reputed as the most defiant of orthodoxy and behavioral codes of
his age. Yet he was also the subject of many treatises that defended the right
of poetry to go beyond social and cultural strictures. The specific reliance on
AbnNuwms in al-Yayyib Xmli.’s novel also intensifies a revisionist poetics,
for wine acts on the mind and the whole scene,^67 and offers a carnivalesque
occasion that allows lies, abuses, and free exchange enough space, exceeding
hierarchical constraints. The Sudanese protagonist in London and the
POETIC DIALOGIZATION