{"id":3213,"date":"2011-01-30T12:29:46","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T08:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=3213"},"modified":"2011-01-30T13:23:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T09:23:11","slug":"a-message-for-arab-poets-stick-to-the-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/a-message-for-arab-poets-stick-to-the-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"A Message for Arab Poets: Stick to the Poetry!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You\u2019ll have to forgive John Donatich\u2019s hagiographic essay<\/a> about the Syrian poet Adonis, which just appeared in The Front Table, <\/em>since Donatich is\u2014after all\u2014the director of Yale University Press, and thus is flogging Adonis\u2019s wonderful new book.<\/p>\n

The book is<\/em> wonderful, and I have a review of it coming out sometime-ish in The Kenyon Review<\/em>. (Or it already appeared? I\u2019m not always good at keeping track of these things.)<\/p>\n

I, like Donatich, recommend that you acquire and read the collection Adonis: Selected Poems<\/em>, translated and assembled by the accomplished poet Khaled Mattawa. Donatich says that he\u2019s sent off a \u201ccarton\u201d of the books to the Swedish Academy, and I say: Bully for him. But that doesn\u2019t mean I suggest you swallow Adonis\u2019s political opinions about \u201cthe Arab World\u201d any more than I suggest you swallow Martin Amis\u2019s. My goodness, I don\u2019t suggest that you swallow mine, either.<\/p>\n

Some of Donatich\u2019s description of the collection is a bit odd, such as, \u201cAt heart, Adonis\u2019 poems have great heart.\u201d At heart, some of Adonis\u2019s poems are exceptionally cold; but brilliantly cold. Glitteringly cold. Many of Adonis\u2019s poems are outside of \u201cheart\u201d; many of them climb to exceptionally airless and chilly places, making for an incredible ride. Anyhow, if I want heart, I can read some Dickens.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s all fine. These were the words that came to me in the email promo and made me snort:<\/p>\n

A champion of secular democracy, Adonis has been critical of organized and fundamental religion. He describes himself as \u201camong those who seek the ills of the Arabs in their own history, not outside of it.\u201d He believes that the vast majority of Arab societies is not teeming with violent resentment but actually living with great apathy, oppressed by an obscurantism, based on an archaic interpretation of life and religion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what exactly he means by \u201cin their own history, not outside of it,\u201d and whether colonialism, for instance, is supposed to have occurred \u201coutside\u201d of Arab history. But as for the great apathy, I would direct Mr. Ali Ahmad Said Asbar\u2019s attention to the wonderful bravery being shown on the Tunisian and Egyptian streets and the tremendous (justified) fears that have been overcome.<\/p>\n

However, in the end, I don\u2019t think it matters what Adonis thinks about \u201cthe Arab world.\u201d His poems, for me, can stand alone. But I do think we Anglos accept any Arab \u201cself-criticism\u201d with an astonishing degree of\u2026heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M.LYNX-QUALEY: According to Syrian poet, Adonis, the Arab world is affected by a great ‘apathy’ – surely a criticism that can be brought no longer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,5],"tags":[18300,18291,18322],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}