Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

troublesome career, chasing the poet away as the modern outcast. Qmsim

addmd writes:

Wherever I go I am tracked down by rapacious predators

My tent is ravaged, and my people’s languages celebrate my end.^29

Again, he has Yarafah in mind, as the latter says:

The oppression of a kinsman is more painful to a man

Then the blow of a sharpened sword of Indian iron.^30

Juxtaposition and conversational poetics

Along with the previous strategies, there is, fourth, the use of juxtaposition
and conversational poetics. This poetic strategy has evolved as one of the most
effective subversive strategies. By giving voice to the downtrodden or the
outcast, in Miltonic fashion, or through manipulation of Qur’mnic dialogues,
poets debate current issues on the ground. In “Death-in-Between:
A Dialogue,” which I have cited in Chapter 1, the Egyptian poet ‘Abd al-
Xabnr lets the “humble voice” argue the case for justice and redemption in
terms of the original sin. Adam is the humble man who asks for protection.
The poet cites full passages from the Qur’mn to be answered by the humble
Adam in a beseeching tone, whose concluding words address Eve:

Be thou my help and succor

As I face the Lord; O hide me, take me, enwrap me, and shroud me!

Don’t let me be lost,

Now my certainty is lost!^31

Other passages are not as conciliatory, for juxtaposition means to question the
human condition through Qur’mnic and Biblical narratives. On the other
hand, poets resort to imaginary conversation with people, relatives and their
like, as al-Baymtldoes in “Qaxldatmn ilmwaladl‘All” (“Two Poems to My Son
Ali”) in his collection Sifr al-fuqr wa al-thawrah(The Book of Poverty and
Revolution; Beirut, 1965), to escape the agony of separation while he was in
exile during the 1960s. He also justifies positions and attitudes. In these
pieces, the speaker draws on traditional lore to evoke its opposite, the loss of
promise and hope.

My sad moon

the sea is dead; its dark waves engulfed the sails of Sinbad.

His sons no longer shriek with the gulls, “He’s returned,”

nor do they hear the hoarse echo of their call.

POETIC DIALOGIZATION