Classical Poetry

Pre-Islamic and Golden Islamic Era Material:

Highly Stylized

Strict Meters to be Kept

Heavy with Archaic language

Long (often indirect to the point)

Quasidah (very popular, shorter ~100 lines, often romantic)

“Linguistics mastery but meaning is often ‘stilted and contrived’”

Main Themes – Honor, nostalgia, praise of someone, eulogy of someone, mockery of enemy tribe, love, wine.

First impulse to change rigid poetic forms was by Abu Nuwas (757-815 AD) but “way before his time” and although a few copied him, his ideas to change poetry didn’t “take”.

Neoclassical Poetry

Innovators – Hafiz Ibrahim (1871-1932) Egypt

Ahmad Shawgi (1868-1932) Egypt

*Changed subject/content more than form.

Neoclassicism turned into Romanticism in the early 1900’s = [Romantic Realism]

Ibrahim al-Mazini (1890-1949)

‘Abd al-Rahman Shukri (1886-1958)

*innovative subject matter (social issues)

*innovative rhymes (almost song-like)

Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)

*translations from west and modernization, for example T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” had a strong effect on modern Arab poets.

*Change poetic needs and expectations

Modern Poetry

First example either from Egypt or Iraq around 1947.

It approved of a person’s (writer’s) inner discoveries, promoted freedom and authenticity of speech. [Again, done largely through journals, for example Shi’r in 1957 and al-Adab in 1952.

Poems may still have rhyme though it may be internal and vary from line to line.

Now the poem in Arabic can take really any form, any shape, be rhymed prose, long or short (very short), tone, and touch on any topic.

There is a renewed interest in using dialects in poetry to affect “emotional realism”.

Poet has always had a role in society: 1) Tribal Recorder

2) Entertainer

3) Political Barometer

Middle Eastern poetry almost always has a social or political message (little is written for purely aesthetic reasons).

Modern poetry spoke of these often sensitive subjects through reconstituted symbol, myth, allusion, folklore, archetype