Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

a lineage that fights exploitation and misuse, while suffering persecution and
pain. Words and action blend, and sacrifice and lyricism broaden the text,
endow it with the historical and the immediate, the narrative and the
metaphorical.

You, the face of ‘Ammmr Ibn Ymsir, like rivers

Creating the smile of the pine woods...

You, the face of ‘Ammmr Ibn Ymsir,

The face of every ancient vagabond

Your people take to the pavements of al-Rashld Street [in Baghdad]

And address poetry to forests and rivers

We read what we write to the snow

Can one read one’s death?

And sell his voice to the desert?

Salt waters burnt the blossoms of our fields

Venomous serpents confiscated every plant

You, the face of ‘Ammmr Ibn Ymsir,

A vein in you holds every minute captive

Not a moment dares to resist attraction

If hours sail into it

They are free from form.^21

The poet draws on the companion through a juxtaposed structure whereby
the face recalls the redemptive power of poetry to a situation of loss, agony,
rupture, and confusion. The moment is one of discontinuity, and recollection
acts on the moment to emphasize another historical discontinuity that belies
claims of totality. Written in the 1960s, the poem is an endeavor to recall his-
tory as a fragmented narrative to revitalize a scene of sterility and failure. This
poem, along with many others, also attests to an acute sense of rupture and
division. Historical consciousness becomes a burden, as poets are drawn to the
margins that enable them to identify with martyrs against centers of power.
The emerging voice is no less out of joint than his world for passing through
this ordeal of historical retrieval.

Parody, erotica, and women’s bodies

Another poetic strategy may be an amalgam of signatures, parody, and anxiety
of authorship. At times, the polyphonic text invests the other’s voice, not as
direct quotes and insertions, but as a functional poetics with an impact on
the speaker, the ephebe. The latter is torn between real attachments to
the immediate precursor, the impact of his normative poetics on the
ephebe’s amatory lyrics, and the latter’s maturing consciousness, its seeming
independence from this influence, and its culminating endorsement, in

POETIC DIALOGIZATION