At their inception, the free verse poem and the prose poem in Arabic were motivated and inspired by non-Arabic influences, primarily English and French. Nevertheless, they developed into distinctly Arabic forms, where the foreign influences were selectively and rather haphazardly engaged and where the Arabic labels, prose poem (qas??dat al-nathr) and free verse poem (qas??dat al-taf??la) did not align with their French or English counterparts. This paper will place the Syrian poet Muh?ammad al-M?gh?t’s (1934-2006) poetic intervention in the context of 20th century Arabic modernism, focusing especially on his unique position among the proponents of the free verse poem and the prose poem and on his contribution to the debates around the modern Arabic poetic forms, particularly the prose poem. When al-Magh?t’s first poetry collection Huzn f? daw’ al-qamar (Sorrow in the Moonlight) was published in 1959 by the press of Shi?r journal, it was received as an anomaly. Although considered by many to be the pioneer of the prose poem in Arabic, al-M?gh?t intentionally distanced himself from the avid theorizing for the prose poem in which many of the Shi’r poets were engaged. He evaded labels and categorizations, and intentionally avoided subscribing to a poetic agenda or even using the term prose poem to describe his work. He wrote poems that were free of meter and rhyme but that played off of the conventions of the classical qas??da. This paper will examine al-M?gh?t’s deliberate recoil from theory and the significance of his “verse-less” poetry in the context of Arabic modernist poetics.

In a volume entitled al-Hub?? ‘al? al-y?bisa (1997) the Iraqi poet, translator, and publisher Khalid al-Ma‘ali (b. 1956) writes of what transpires where “Your shelter disappeared behind a cloud,” and where there is nothing left to and from language but its exposure to the finitude of the sorts of beings that we are. But with this exposure, language is no longer confined to what takes place with it when the poet uses language as an instrument to convey thought, but where language, itself, becomes displaced from the communicative function to which it is conscripted in the disciplines for literary reading. A short poem entitled “Arrival?” (Wu??l?), schools us in this displacement: “When my life had passed/ And the years had been lost/ Like birds in the sky/ I leaned my saddle bag against memory’s wall/ I travelled there a long while/ I ended up with my uncertainties/ At the crossing, where I had left/ I signal with two hands.” Like the poetic subject figured here, language ceases to be something that is to have arrived, finally, at its end. It is not only that this arrival is held an abeyance, but that, finally, when the end of the poem arrives, it splits in two and divides: “I signal with two hands.” This signaling becomes a way of describing what happens with language in poetic statement: it indicates not once but twice, with two hands. The whole body that is promised in relation to language—the body of which these hands would be parts—is not affirmed through this signaling, but is displaced and discombobulated there. The end of language is not the affirmation of the being that utters it, and whose body is promised in the poem, but only the coming apart of language into pieces, its signaling in two directions at once. This paper takes the interpretation of language in this poem to read al-Ma‘ali’s poetic corpus as an investigation of and series of experiments with language, as an intensification of a reflection on language, and it does so by reading this poetry in relation to one of the many acts of poetic translation with which al-Ma‘ali has been engaged: the translation of the poetry and prose of Paul Celan from German into Arabic, in a collected volume entitled Sama‘tu man yaq?l (1999).

Al-Ittij?h al-Mu??kis (The Opposite Direction) is a study of comparative poetics that takes the major innovations in Arabic poetic praxis and theory of 20th century—al-shi?r al-?urr /qa??dat al-taf??lah and qa??dat al-nathr—as a starting point for the interrogation and conceptualization of the opposite phenomenon—the self-imposed prosodic restrictions in Al-Luz?miyy?t (Compulsories) of the celebrated blind skeptic Syrian poet, Ab? al-?Al?? al-Ma?arr? (d. 449/1058). 20th century Arabic poetry exhibits an ever-intensifying rebellion against classical political and cultural norms through the progressive loosening or rejection of classical poetic conventions. The early-mid 20th century Romantics retained the monorhyme and mono-meter of the classical qasida, but called for a radical simplification of poetic diction and abandonment of conventional motifs and thematic structures. The Arab al-shi?r al-?urr poets allowed for varied length of the metrical line and of rhyme, thereby creating a distinctively Arabic form of Modern verse, prosodically different from Western Free Verse. The Post-Modernists disavowed even the loosened rhyme and meter of al-shi?r al-?urr/qa??dat al-taf??lah form to call for the qa??dat al-nathr (in effect largely like Western Free Verse) with no sustained or required rhyme or meter, printed either en vers or, less often, en bloc. In the 21st century, Arab poets have all but erased the boundaries between poetry and prose. The present paper intends to examine the political and aesthetic dimensions of this “liberation” of Modern Arabic poetry from the constraints of classical Arabic prosody and on that basis to explore the opposite phenomenon in al-Ma?arr?’s poetry. Al-Ma?arr? observed the prosodic requirements of monorhyme and mono-meter in the qasidas of his youthful and worldly first diwan, Saq? al-Zand. However, in his mature second collection, which is the product of the period of his ascetic seclusion, he expresses his rejection of tradition—and of society--by intensifying the prosodic requirements, specifically by creating a diwan of about 1600 alphabetically ordered short pieces, double-rhymed in all the letters of the alphabet and with all four possible vowel endings. What might al-Ma?arr?’s radical withdrawal INTO an intensified prosody tell us about Modernist and Post-Modernist Arab poets’ increasingly radical withdrawal FROM classical Arabic prosody?

Prolific, refined poets usually posit a daunting pressure on scholars, translators, and serious readers alike. Sal?m Barak?t (b. 1951) is a prominent Syrian poet, novelist, and essayist of Kurdish descent who is mostly overlooked or briefly mentioned in discussions of modern Arabic poetry due to three main reasons; first and foremost, his poetic practice is burdened with nuanced, raw, incomprehensible, and subversive language; second, his heightened use of anthropomorphic elements creates a sense of uneasiness; last, his non-Arab descent clouds his language with the music of his distant Kurdish heritage. Barak?t’s language renders him a misfit within established Arabic poetics and estranges him from modern Arabic poets as he toys with language and form and rejects the label of modernism as a discontinuation with the bygone age altogether. This paper examines Barak?t’s poetic practice through his relentless unlearning and abuse of language as a means for disrupting the poetic form. To this purpose, this paper is used as a space to translate a poem titled “al-?a?al” (Partridge) and textually analyze it within the context of its d?w?n biš-šib?k th?tih?, bi-th-tha??lib allat? taq?d ar-r?? (With the Nets Themselves, With the Foxes that Lead the Wind, 1987). This poem exhibits Barak?t’s mastery of prosimetrum, free verse and prose poem alike, and is thus representative of Barak?t’s poetic practice. This paper will also make use of an essay by Barak?t titled “madh?hib al-ma?n?” (Destinations of Meaning) in which he presents his clear cut commentary on poetic practices. This essay will be tied with the analysis of the poem in question to show how Barak?t’s project, in theory and in practice, centers on the disparaging, the wounding, and the destabilizing of the simple, obvious language.