celebrations and processions or assemblies, and a great deal of poetic
appropriation takes place in keeping with needs and demands. The public with
its platforms is the new patron. The popularity of certain meters among the
public may attest to this appropriation process which has its bearing on mod-
ern poetry, too. The dominant classical meters, and their variables,^58 are not the
same for modern poetry. In the latter, as Moreh concludes, the rajazcomes first
in terms of recurrence, then kmmil, ramal,mutaqmrib,mutadmrik,sarl‘,khaflf,
hazaj,wmfir, and basly.^59 Mounah Khouri suggests the following: “... of the six-
teen traditional meters, only seven (Kmmil, Ramal, Hazaj, Rajaz, Mutqmrib,
Khaflf, and Wmfir), which are based on the repetition of a single taf‘llah, could
be used by the free verse poets.”^60 The recurrent mode has a metric mixture
which has some of its traces in Qur’mnic and poetic styles, too.^61
The same order does not apply to popular and ‘mmmiyyahpoetry. The order
of recurrence is as follows in Iraqi ‘mmmiyyahpoetry, for instance: mujtath,
sarl‘, basly, rajaz, mutadmrik, hazaj, and ramal.^62 Although the ta‘ziyahmakes
extensive use of Arabic prosody and leans heavily on early elegies, it has also
its modern recapitulations, especially the rhythmic manipulation of political
and social issues to reach large audiences and involve wider participation in
processions. It has therefore an appeal of its own. Its impact is present in a
number of ways: (1) the intensity of mourning as a general climate, especially
in the poetry of al-Baymtland al-Sayymb; (2) the use of repetitive formulas,
phrases, content, and meter; (3) the change in meter within single poems,
although the basic meters are the mujtathfirst and then hazaj; (4) attention
to topography; (5) the tendency to enumeration of names, events, and details;
(6) and the propensity to dramatization; (7) and the extensive use of water and
blood imagery.^63 Although younger and less secularized generations are more
attuned to such modes and patterns, we still find in al-Baymtl’s Sifr al-fuqr wa
al-thawrah(The Book of Poverty and Revolution) some of these characteris-
tics.^64 As an example of hazaj, al-Sammmn cites al-Baymti’s “Al-Rajul alladhl
kmna yughannl” (The Man Who Has Been Singing), from his Ash‘mr flal-manfm
(Poems in Exile 1957):
At the gates of Tehran we saw him
We saw him
Singing.
We thought him Omar al-Khayyam, sister,
On his forehead an open deep scar,
Singing,
With red eyes
Like a dawn; in his right hand
A loaf of bread
A Koran
A grenade in his right hand
Singing, Omar al-Khayyam, sister.^65POETIC DIALOGIZATION