Sana’a: a prose poem [Archives:2006/943/Opinion]
By: Abdulbari Taher
Sana'a hosted the Arab young poets festival which attracted scores of young poets and poetesses from many an Arab country.
The poets and poetesses of the “open text” dominated the event.
Throughout a week, the city that had hosted in 2005 (the year of Sana'a as the Arab Culture Capital) the First Prose Poem Meeting, saw last week an awesome presence of the more modern poem.
Indubitably Sana'a is characterized by an adventurous spirit and openness on the new poetics which some classicalists regard as taboo to flout the common and time old traditions. The event was throbbing with poems: classical, metric, etc. but the prose poem dethroned all of them.
In Yemen, the 70s were the time when the prose poem was really born. The list of proponents includes Mohammed An'am Ghaleb, Abdul-Rahman Fakhri, Abdul-Wadood Saif, Al-Qirshi Abdul-Raheem Sallam, Nabilah Al-Zubair, Hassan Al-Lawzi, Mohammed Al-Massah, Mahmoud Al-Haj, Abdul-Latif Al-Rabee', Abdul-Karim Al-Razihi, Hassan Al-Wareeth, Abdullah Qadhi, Shawqi Shafeeq, Zain Al-Saqqaf, Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim, and Abdul-Karim Al-Hanaki.
Sana'a always comes late. Yet this time it took the initiative to establish an annually regular center for prose poem which expresses modernism within modernism. Although it gives a dilated birth to this poetic genre, it has given it an ample space in the published poetry collections and literary magazines and supplements.
It is true that the metric poem may be a sister to the prose poem. Both grew in one poetry magazine in Beirut. Yet, the metric poem displaced the classic Arab poem as a topper and made marvelous victories in public life and on university campuses as well as other influential circles. Its criticism prevailed while the prose poem was in the shadow, some sort of an elite commodity, something appealing to mentalities with modernism, openness to the new and broadmindedness. It is remarkable that the prose poem suffers paucity of effective critics.
During the festival, preeminent critic Kamal Abu Deeb, who is a respectable academic critic with Arab and international reputation, was honored.
He and his friend and life companion, late critic Edward Said were two brilliant figures. The celebrated Abu Deeb had a profound influence in his perusal and criticism of the Pre-Islam poem in his “The Controversy of Concealment and Transfiguration, “Convincing Viewpoints,” and “One Thousand Nights and Two Nights in the Criticism of Novel.”
He also translated “Orientalism,” authored by Edward Said. This book is one of the intellectual and dialogical works on the orientalist European thought. Edward Said smashd the myth of the duality of the orient and the occident. He refuted the stereotype image of the Arabic in the colonizing European mindset.
The translation of Abu Deeb was a creative work to the marrow. The celebration and establishment of the modern poem festival is a nationalist intellectual and creative work.
Besieged by tribesmen heavily strapped with arms and hit with illiteracy and ruled by deterioration and prevalent ignorance, Sana'a opens its heart to the flowers of the most modern poetic experience and breaks its semi endless siege and overcome the manacles of stupid traditions which rulers try to perpetuate it and make it sacred.
Many people cannot fathom the importance of Sana'a connecting to modernism, thought and poetry. The moral wall struck around it since the dark ages of imamate and gloomy wars makes grand any act of opening a window.
We already know that modernism in the Arab world is besieged and crippled particularly in Yemen. Despite the marks of modernism, urbanism and civilization, Yemen is still living the pre-State eras. The political tribe is still enjoying an unlimited influence in all aspects of life.
It is appalling to imagine that modern poetry or hosting modern poetry is the last sign of advancement and the victory of the new.
The Arab governance even in the most totalitarian and dictator states allow some sort of literary modernism. However, modernism in its general sense – in terms of society, culture, and building up a new democratic state and a robust economy based on industrialization – is something very difficult and needs unspeakable efforts.
Abdulbari Taher is a Yemeni Journalist and the former chairman of Yemeni Journalists Syndicate.
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[archive-e:943-v:14-y:2006-d:2006-05-04-p:opinion]
