This study examines a poem by the pre-Islamic poet al-Muraqqish al-A?ghar (d. ca. 570) and its associated khabar, or anecdote. The poem is the 56th ode in the Mufa??aliyy?t, which is an anthology of ancient Arab poetry compiled by al-Mufa??al al-?abb? (d.ca. 786). An anecdote pertaining to this poem is also found in the anthology. The poem consists of 22 lines and expresses the poet’s love for a woman named Fatimah, and his regret and shame for what he did to her. The main goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the poem and its anecdote to determine the function of the anecdote regarding the interpretation of the poem. The anecdote, which provides the poet’s biographical information and the occasion for which the poem was composed, is inserted before the poem, as is the case with many other poems in the anthology. I will examine why the anecdote is included, why it was done in this way, and how its presence affects our understanding of the poem. For theoretical tools, I mainly use reader-response criticism, as in the works of Hans Robert Yauss and Iser Wolfgang, and also Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of “horizon.” Their undestanding of the reader’s role in the activity of reading can serve to clarify the function of the anecdote in the interpretation of the poem, because the critical reading of the poem seems to suggest a need for the anecdote. While the anecdote may allow the reader to envision a particular situation that this poem once described, we must remember that the anecdote was also inserted by a different author. As such, reading it along with the poem may add one dimension to the poem’s interpretation, but it may also limit other possible meanings. The poem may stand by itself to demonstrate its own inherent literary and aesthetic qualities, and may have been intended to do so. Thus, the compiler’s addition of the anecdote can be taken as an imposed influence that tends to direct interpretation in only one way, while the poet may have wished to allow wider possibilities.