Jmhillritual and ceremonial forms to buttress the authority of the Prophet
and the nascent Islamic state by identifying them with the authoritative
models of the past” (Ibid. 69). True as this case is, the supplicant poem offers
poetry the chance to re-establish itself within Islamic rule. Both need each
other, and the poem acted then as an apologia to atone for early confusion
regarding the message of Islam. Its pioneering conversional poetic set the
tone for further examples, but it was also the witness for change from the
ongoing tripartite structure to the dipartite that the writer justified in
Gaster’s seasonal ritual pattern of Emptying (mortification and purgation)
and Filling (invigoration and jubilation) (Ibid. 74). Although the three
genre-determined components continue to be the “evocative bearers of political
and religious legitimacy,” as the writer argues (Ibid. 80), the seasonal pattern
is more congenial to a later period when the panegyric took a more urgent
role in the politics of legitimacy. In both cases, the ode applies its tradition-
honored themes and motifs without lapsing into the past as a mere imitative
practice. The writer invests a lot of comparative poetics in this respect to
lucidly pass her idea that “each panegyric ode is a particular embodiment or
exemplar” (Ibid. 83), for each applies the generic characteristics along with
traditional residual in order to recreate the past to “confirm the present”
(Ibid. 83). Deploying therefore the poetics of ancient and Islamic literatures,
this book is not occupied with politics that basically works outside the canon
and its orbit of response, a point that I deal with later.
Suzanne P. Stetkevych rightly notices the appearance of the “group ra.ll”
in Umayyad poetry (Ibid. 100), as a transition toward the madl.as the real
purpose of the panegyric. Here Gaster’s seasonal structure proves pertinent as
the panegyric moves from chaos and crisis toward reintegration and jubilation.
The more the panegyric is driven by urgency the less patient is the poem with
its transitions. It is no wonder that later panegyrics give way not only to a
bipartite structure, but also to a monopartite one (pp. 143–44). This later
development, with its disregard for the opening is not an easy and smooth
handover, and the writer devotes many pages to AbnTammmm’s well known
celebratory “The Sword is More Veracious” (pp. 156–67) in Poetics of Islamic
Legitimacy. With clustered images of rape to speak of the conquered city, the
poem may have its built-in structure to substitute the naslbopening of the
ancient ode. Yet, the poem remains classical in its imagery and celebration.
AbnTammmm was a pioneer in innovation, to be sure, and the author of
Poetics of Islamic Legitimacyhas already explained his role in the change that
overtook the language of poetry. This innovatory stance did not undermine
the basic qaxldahstructure, nor was it meant to be. Indeed, one of the many
omissions in the modernist critique especially that of Adnnls, is this
unrestrained celebration of innovation as a constant. Without due search for
the more challenging practices since the emergence of both the wine poem
and the zuhd(ascetic) poetry, as an amalgam of technical and thematic
experimentationbeyond the tripartite or dipartite structure as a normative
CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS