future.^19 The poem shows the pitfalls of imitation and overblown rhetoric
when engaging issues of modernity and progress. In sum, openings that
invest the pre-Islamic or Islamic poem with a generic identity may lose effec-
tiveness, whenever the postclassical poet is under no constraints of allegiance
to a living authority. The same is also true whenever the classical form is used
in full or in part to accommodate a subject of a prosaic or oratory nature.
However, present identifications of political or ideological allegiance inten-
tionally deviate from the norm, not only because of their secular predilection,
but also because ideology makes a different demand on poetry.
Mediatory poeticsIt may be worthwhile to cite al-Jawmhirl’s poem, already mentioned in
Chapter 3, as an example of mediatory poetics. His use of the opening and
his feminization of al-Macarrl’s abode Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘mmn attest to his sub-
ordination to a powerful generic presence of significant cultural grounding.
Yet other structural components become his inroads into a number of tradi-
tions. Informed by a present commitment to innovation and radicalization of
social and political life, these inroads serve as mediatory channels between
subordination to ancient authority and susceptibility to a modern temper.
Aware of the challenge of the modern, but disappointed at the attack on
the classical ode, al-Jawmhirl discusses the applicability of the classical
form to modern times. To argue the case in poetry he retrieves ancestral
polemical poetics to debate current innovations and their critical orienta-
tions. In this case, his poem has a purpose of its own that sets it within
mediatory poetics.
It is different, however, from other negotiatory examples with imitative
openings whose sole aim is to ignite memory and therefore set the poetic
space for a monopartite ode, like Ibn Zaydnn’s (d. 1070) “Saqmal-ghaythn
aylml al-a.ibbati” (May God Bless the Ruined Abode of the Loved Ones
with Rain).
Between mediational and reversal poetics, modern poetry may bring into
its intertext the ancient tradition and the poetics of allegiance, not only to
question them through a configuration of textual sites, but also to identify
with and search for meaning amid so many significations, old and new. Three
examples are worth noting here, one by al-Baymtl, in which he recalls the title
of the most majestic pre-Islamic classical odes (the Mu‘allaqmt, which tradition
claims were written in gold and suspended from the walls of Ka‘bah) for his
short free verse poems. He deliberately opens up the form to accommodate
modernist responses to life and love, as in “Aisha’s Mad Lover”:
A bird’s song
Woke me in the middle of the night
I followed the birdCONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS