Arabic Poems

Foreword

Arabic poetry is as vast as it is deep, encompassing all manner of poetic expression from Morocco to Iraq and spanning more than fifteen centuries. In its early stages it formed part of an oral tradition, and there were systematic and collective efforts to transmit it to later generations. Poetry not only entertained and delighted, it also served to memorialize individuals, communities and events. When scholars and scribes of the second and third Islamic centuries (ninth and tenth centuries, ce) began to record this inheritance in writing, it served as an important foundation forknowledge. Even today,it has pride of place in the public domain, engaging the elites and the masses in equal measure, albeit in different registers.

This anthology attempts to capture the breadth and depth of the Arabic poetic legacy through its inclusion of pieces composed from pre-Islamic times through to the twenty-first century. It does not claim to offer a representative sampling, however. Instead, in an effort to lend coherence to the anthology and to appeal to the lay reader, I have selected poems reflecting sentiments of desire or longing, poems whose most immediate meanings transcend the limitations of time and space. Such expressions of yearning occur in a wide variety of genres. In addition to straight- forward love poetry, or ghazal, we find mystical poems and elegies. The nostalgic stance of the heroic odes, including the celebrated Mu'allaqat, with their contemplation of the beloved’s abandoned campsite and their emphasis on cycles of death and rebirth, famine and feasting, leave the poetic persona and reader alike aching for the spring rains. Al-Shanfara’s ‘L-Poem’, ostensibly a poem of rejection which subverts tribal values, strikes one as a portrait of a terribly lonely person longing for companionship and family. The ancient genre of ‘longing for homelands’ (al-hanin ila alawtan), represented here by the ‘Song of Maisuna’, finds echoes in the selections of the exiled modern poets. Some of the pieces in the anthology read as expressions of sheer delight, or as an appreciation of everyday affairs, while others, particularly among the modern selections, express an anti-nostalgic and deeply felt yearning for change. It is hoped that the reader will find these poems diverting, moving and provocative.

Marlé Hammond

Note:
Pre-modern Arabic poems were not given titles. The titles for these selections have either been assigned by the translators or drawn from the wording of the poem (usually the opening verse).