The elegiac motifs of the opening section in the qas??da serve to establish a point of contact, both literary and emotional between the poet and his audience. This opening signal is what announces the qas??da and what launches it on a symbolic and psychological level. Recent scholars have spoken of the “oracular” nature of the abandoned campsite where the poet is able to evoke his poetic voice. However it is not just a matter of igniting emotions or memories. It is also more than just finding a way to mark the beginning of the poetic act; it is a matter of pointing to poetic craft and specifying genre. The implicit significance of the scene of the abandoned campsite to the poetic act is one that both the poet and his audience are aware of. This is how the convention of the elegiac prelude in the Arabic qas??da becomes a convention, carrying emotional and literary associations that function on a level that is a metonymic and allusive rather than narrative or sequential. This paper aims to look at Abbasid qas??da openings and examine the way Abbasid poets like Bashsh?r, Ab? Tamm?m and Al-Mutanabb? reflected upon the convention of the elegiac prelude. They closely examined the motifs of loss, ruin, and memory in this opening section, manipulating them in a manner that explains their function in the archetypal qas??da. They replaced common motifs with new ones that could still serve the same purpose thus uncovering the underlying psychological and symbolic connection between the sections of a qas??da. In other words, the Abbasid poets revealed the poetic function of the elegiac prelude in initiating the poetic act, deliberately employing traditional nas?b motifs in their openings but at the same time explaining them, transforming them and commenting on their function. Although not openly meta-poetic, this process of revision and interpretation is still motivated by what I would call a meta-poetic approach to tradition. Muh?dath poets are no longer writing within the poetic tradition, but rather trying to step outside that tradition to reflect upon it and change it.