whole record and scene indicates an emerging consciousness in search for
meaning amid the old and the new, the desert and the city.
Engagements and invalidations
These poetic sites cannot develop a reversal poetics, as basically appropriating
the canons to question or undermine them, without signs of referentiality and
shared registers with audiences. Texts aspire to relate to potential audiences
who can identify with a register or recognize a shared code. All the more so
when texts deploy conventional openings and familiar grounds to involve their
audience in reciprocity. Under the constraints and promises of modernity, such
a deployment may fall short of the goal as set in a poetics of allegiance, but it
may situate its new poetic within acceptable norms nevertheless. As mediatory
sites, poems in this negotiatory space between the ancient and the modern
build up their position in anxiety and tension. Their discursive ground runs
the risk of collision and rift that needs another lyrical flow to compensate for
the rugged surface of competing registers. On many occasions, the poet is
aware of the tension between the inherited legacy and the impulse of moder-
nity. Release is not an easy matter, as the remains of tradition are deeply rooted
in memory. Perhaps, the Egyptian Mu.ammad ‘AflflMayar offers a good
example of the workings of memory on the poetic site. In “Ambiguous Terms,”
written in 1979, the poet is not after merging traditional divining and fortune-
telling with allusions to Qur’mnic verses on retribution, punishment, or reward.
But rather, the poem sets the scene for poetic creation. Its supplication for a
poetic spark works slowly and smoothly within traditional lore, with its rich
presence in memory, as it fuses with the Qur’mnic and the tribal. The creative
process moves among these registers, rites and oaths:
for I hear the rhymed oath, the hard covenant,
while the river has the face of the quarry
amid the desert’s mirages
(Quartet of Joy, 1997, 41)The poetic process cannot dislodge the presence of the traditional qaxldah,
but it can work with it toward the moment of epiphany:
The tribe possesses ashen fires...
from the fire substance there is nothing but blood embers
in the ash of memory;
the hospitability rite: aromas of tharida,
coffee, and cardamom
clank in the qaxlda’sremains...
(Ibid. 40)CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS