xixACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea behind this book began in the early 1990s, when, in 1993, I was
invited to Jordan to offer a lecture on foreign echoes in the poetry of the Iraqi
poet ‘Abd al-Wahhmb al-Baymtl, included in the Poetry Festival proceedings
in 1994 (Amman: MADN). The Egyptian journal Fuxnland its editor Jmbir
‘Uxfnr asked for a contribution in 1996, which I titled, “Marjiciyymt naqd
al-shicr al-cArablal-.adlth flal-khamslnmt” (Critical referents of modern
Arabic poetry in the 1950s), Fuxnl15, 3 (Fall 1996), pp. 34–61. The article
elicited Adnnls’ enthusiastic response, when he was at Princeton as a Visiting
Professor. Other lectures on Arabic poetic tradition took place in Morocco
under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Bayt al-shi‘r (The Poetry
House) and its director, the poet, Mu.ammad Bennls. To him, to Adnnls,
to Jmbir ‘Uxfnr, and to the Jarash Festival organizers goes my greatest
appreciation and gratitude.
Yet, if these lectures and contributions helped to initiate the idea behind
this book, invited lectures at American schools helped to synthesize its whole
argument. I thank the MELAC faculty at Indiana University in Bloomington
and especially its chair and director for many years, Professor Suzanne
P. Stetkevych, who invited me for series of lectures in 1998; and the Center
for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University and its director, my friend,
Professor Eric Davis, for a reception and very well attended evening lecture
in September 1998. For other lectures, my thanks go to Professor Nazif
Shahrani, the director of MELAC at Indiana for a “The Wadie Jwaideh
Memorial Lecture in Arabic and Islamic Studies,” Indiana University,
November 12, 2003. Also, sincere gratitude is due to my colleague and
friend Professor Isabella Camera D’Afflitto for series of lectures at the Napoli
Oriental University, Italy, between 1998–2003, covering modernist poetics.
In an earlier form some of these ideas appeared in articles in English, but
they underwent serious revisions here to fit its overall argument and thesis.
To the editors and publishers of Journal of Arabic Literatureand English Studies
in Canadagoes my appreciation and gratitude. The feedback and the mate-
rial made available by my friend and colleague Professor Salih Altoma from
Indiana University made this undertaking much easier. I should specifically