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An anthology of modern Arabic poetry
This bilingual anthology is the first attempt to present a substantial collection of contemporary Arabic poetry in the English language. It acquaints the English-speaking reader with the modern development of one of the world's major poetic traditions, and affords insight into the contemporary cultural situation of the Arab peoples.
English translations of Arabic poetry have suffered from aspirations to geographic completeness of representation and excessive concern with the Neo-Classicist school. The present anthology regards poetic quality as the primary criterion of selection and displays an emphatic interest in the poets of free verse. It presents three successive generations--the Syro-Americans, the Egyptian modernist, and the poets of free-verse movement--linked together by a progressive shift from emphasis on form to emphasis on content and form a relatively detached portrayal of the outside world to a concern with the expression of individual experience. Numerous contemporary poets make their first appearance in English, some of them having written pieces specially for this anthology.
It is hoped that the bilingual character of the anthology will suit it for use by students of Arabic literature. At the same time, the book is intended for a wider readership with general poetic and literary interests. An important criterion in composing the anthology was the viability of a poem, in its English translation, as a piece of literature as well as the excellence of its Arabic original; if the translators have been successful in applying this criterion, the anthology should afford much aesthetic pleasure. The work should be of considerable interest also to students of comparative literature, as it demonstrates the influence on modern Arab letters of several Western poets, notably Eliot, Yeats, and Pound.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
English translations of Arabic poetry have suffered from aspirations to geographic completeness of representation and excessive concern with the Neo-Classicist school. The present anthology regards poetic quality as the primary criterion of selection and displays an emphatic interest in the poets of free verse. It presents three successive generations--the Syro-Americans, the Egyptian modernist, and the poets of free-verse movement--linked together by a progressive shift from emphasis on form to emphasis on content and form a relatively detached portrayal of the outside world to a concern with the expression of individual experience. Numerous contemporary poets make their first appearance in English, some of them having written pieces specially for this anthology.
It is hoped that the bilingual character of the anthology will suit it for use by students of Arabic literature. At the same time, the book is intended for a wider readership with general poetic and literary interests. An important criterion in composing the anthology was the viability of a poem, in its English translation, as a piece of literature as well as the excellence of its Arabic original; if the translators have been successful in applying this criterion, the anthology should afford much aesthetic pleasure. The work should be of considerable interest also to students of comparative literature, as it demonstrates the influence on modern Arab letters of several Western poets, notably Eliot, Yeats, and Pound.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
- GenresPoetryMiddle East
252 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Hamid Algar
56 books33 followersHamid Algar began his studies of Arabic, Persian and Islamic Civilzation at Cambridge in 1959. After graduating, he spent a lengthy and fruitful period of travel in Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan before returning to Cambridge in 1963 and completing his doctorate there two years later. He has been teaching in the Department of Near Eastern Studies since 1965, providing a wide range of instruction in the fields of Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish literature and offering lecture courses on various aspects of Islamic religion and culture. His research interests center on Shi’ism in Iran and Sufism in the Persian and Persian-influenced world, with particular emphasis on the Naqshbandi order. His copious writings have been published in an array of languages additional to English: French, German, Russian, Italian, Bosnian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Malay/Indonesian. He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tehran.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 2, 2018
"Live with me, nourish me
Fill my soul with fire
And pulse through my veins."
- Harun Hashim al Rashid
"What are we doing with our love,
When our eyes and our mouth are full of frost and dust ?"
- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, from “In The Deserts Of Exile”
"We are like children who weep when the star hides behind the cloud."
- Lewis ‘Awad, from “Kiriyalayson”
"If only we
If only
If only we, and the cruelty of “if only”
O my enchantress if we prefaced our words with wishes
But we
O the cruelty of “but we”."
- Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, from “Dreams of the Ancient Knight”
"I was a book to you, and you to me,
And on the shelf of thousand tomes."
- Tawfiq Sayigh, from “Poem 22”
"Tonight … tonight, o beloved
My eyes were with the clouds"
- Muhammad al-Fayturi, from “Sad Saturday Night”
Fill my soul with fire
And pulse through my veins."
- Harun Hashim al Rashid
"What are we doing with our love,
When our eyes and our mouth are full of frost and dust ?"
- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, from “In The Deserts Of Exile”
"We are like children who weep when the star hides behind the cloud."
- Lewis ‘Awad, from “Kiriyalayson”
"If only we
If only
If only we, and the cruelty of “if only”
O my enchantress if we prefaced our words with wishes
But we
O the cruelty of “but we”."
- Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, from “Dreams of the Ancient Knight”
"I was a book to you, and you to me,
And on the shelf of thousand tomes."
- Tawfiq Sayigh, from “Poem 22”
"Tonight … tonight, o beloved
My eyes were with the clouds"
- Muhammad al-Fayturi, from “Sad Saturday Night”
May 8, 2023
Very nice collection with a variety of different styles and authors, nice translation.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews