Redeeming Prose
Redeeming Prose
This chapter examines the condition of prose in contemporary Arabic poetry, focusing on poets whose sounds are no longer tonally measured verse, but poetry that is a dream. The narratives of poets such as Hussein al-Barghouti, Hilmi Salim, 'A'isha al-Mughrabi, Hussein Muhanna, and Izz al-Din al-Manasra focus on conditions and consequences of this dream. Their contemporary prose poetry was underlain by both prayer (salaa) and dream (hulm). This chapter explores how poets of highly secular sensibilities produce a seemingly otherworldly poetry, and how “the dream” of poets, their poems, underlie and undermine the secular to which they aspire. In the dreams generated by prose poets, measuring sound becomes completely obsolete and an “ordinary” public borders on irrelevance. The chapter concludes by analyzing how faith in the Palestinian revolution disappeared in Palestinian poetry, along with faith that poetry could affect anything outside poetry.
Keywords: prose poetry, Arabic poetry, Palestinian poetry, poets, Hussein al-Barghouti, Hilmi Salim, 'A'isha al-Mughrabi, Hussein Muhanna, Izz al-Din al-Manasra, sound
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