Where poets are superstars

Posted by Dave Bonta on April 17, 2007 (last modified at 10:16 pm, 4/17/07)

I’ve always said to anyone who would listen that we English speakers could stand to emulate Arabs in their respect for the written and spoken word. Actually, most other cultures give poets and other intellectuals more respect than they get in the Anglophone world, but this story from PRI demonstrates the unusually strong appeal of poetry in the Arabian peninsula.

Filed in Poets and poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.Print Print

9 Responses to Where poets are superstars

  1. Laura says:
    April 17, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    Very interesting, and I agree, hard to imagine here.

    I’m sure it’s some bias on my part or that I’ve never learned a word of any arabic language, but I can’t hear even the suggestion of poetry in their languages – the sounds are just so harsh to my romantically-trained ear.

    Reply
  2. Dave says:
    April 17, 2007 at 10:13 pm

    Harsh? Really? I wouldn’t call that an example of bias; it’s just your impression – but it’s not mine! This kind of thing is really subjective. I was shocked when the esteemed Language Hat opined several months ago that he didn’t find the Spanish language particularly well suited to poety – and he’s fluent in Spanish. (I suspect you’d take exception to that, too.)

    Reply
  3. beth says:
    April 18, 2007 at 10:58 am

    And my impression – having heard Arabic poetry recited by my father-in-law a lot through my life – is that it is far more suited to poetry than English!

    Reply
  4. David Harmon says:
    April 18, 2007 at 11:03 am

    Poetry is one of the Old Magics, universal to humanity. I wouldn’t say Anglophones in general are anti-poet, but yeah, there are different levels of public support between different cultures. America has a problem with overcommercialization, such that if something can’t be sold en masse, then it has trouble finding “affordable” forums. Probably we’ve sublimated a lot of poetic impulse into the music industry, basically because music has a Mass Produced Media Cartel to keep it selling. Of course rap etc. represents a stubborn resurgence of spoken-word poetry….

    Reply
  5. beth says:
    April 18, 2007 at 11:08 am

    Now that I’ve listened to the recorded story…it’s interesting how the tribal loyalties still influence the voting! But Laura, the poetry snatches heard here don’t sound anything like the recited poetry I’ve heard from my family or, say, the poet Adonis. Some of it may be the Gulf accent, but it also sounded like the poets in the contest were shouting in a sort of rap-emulation that definitely emphasized the less mellifluous aspects of the language.

    Reply
  6. Dave says:
    April 18, 2007 at 11:28 am

    David – We may not be anti-poet, exactly, but poetry has I think been regarded as something essentially ornamental for a very long time. The loss of generally agreed-upon public standards for what constitutes effective poetry (metrical forms and end-rhyme, to start with) may have had something to do with the decline of poetry’s centrality in modern culture, too, as well as the rise of mass-produced pop culture, as you suggest. Yes, song and rap lyrics partly fill the basic human hunger for intensified and rhythmic language. I can’t say more on this subject without launching into a 2000-word lecture, so I’ll stop there!

    beth – Thanks for your reactions. There may well be a difference between poetry in the Gulf and in the Levant – something to ask your FIL about, I guess. The only thing I’ve read in this connection is an anthropological study of poetry performance in Yemen, which I’ve mentioned here before – Peaks of Yemen I Summon. Considering how often they use poetry as a substitute for, or incitement to, armed conflict there, the more aggressive style you’re hearing might well be endemic, I’m thinking. Or else it was just a really good fit with the global hip-hop aesthetic, and some of the younger performers have adapted their style to reflect that.

    Reply
  7. the mistress of time, tra la! says:
    April 18, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    I would enjoy that 2000-word lecture, honest! Maybe by the time I get back?

    Reply
  8. Dave says:
    April 18, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    I don’t think so. Today’s post weighed in at almost 1700 words, and it strikes me as about twice as long as a good blog post should be.

    Reply
  9. Laura says:
    April 19, 2007 at 1:03 am

    I think, Beth, that it’s mostly just that the sounds are so unfamiliar to my ear. A father-in-law reciting poetry would probably do wonders to change that impression.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

URLs are converted to links, and three or more links in one comment will cause it to be sent to the moderation queue. Constructive criticism is always welcome. You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

  • Smorgasblog

    • Metaphors for the Moon
      Early marriage is a wetland, a marsh
      of co-mingling reeds, breeding birds.

    • Cleaning My Attic
      Cast-iron Royal, weighty and not regal at all but seriously proletarian, ostensibly portable in your anonymous black case: my secret unmusical instrument, which I lugged to cafes before they were wireless or even wired...

    • Clumps and Voids
      The program description, however, devolves into the fey. "The lingam (or linga) is a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, and a dispute about its meaning has been going on for many centuries." When a phallus is tagged with the museum label of "cylindrical votary object," I lose hope that the speaker will be introduced as Professor Wendy Doniger: don of dongs.

    • botanizing
      On calm days, the soil swirls and rises in isolated twisters. On a windy day when the wheat is being harvested — a day like today — the soil lifts like a yellow curtain, obliterating the sky.

    • The Twitching Line
      My uncle, gutting a fish:
      removing the fins from either side,
      tipping the knife below

      the little anus, pointing the tail-
      end away, slitting it to the gills,
      then plunging in a hand

      to scoop the organs out, soft
      and scarlet as a litter of kittens.

    • The Ordinary and the Wild
      I had a dream the other night about a tall machine, like a crane or an android giraffe, lanky with angles of metal that reach up to the sky when they should somehow be digging. When I woke I felt taller for a moment, and also deeper, as if the soles of my feet had met up with some spilled honey or errant tar while I walked in my sleep.

    • Busily Seeking... Continual Change
      So the mountain was steep? I threw a couple of windbreakers, yogurts and miscellaneous snacks (really, whatever I could lay my hands on at the last minute), wallet, phone, bottles of water--yes, just the things I thought to grab into a new REI bright yellow daypack--and off we went. That was it. Toss things in a bag and go.

    • Chatoyance
      And on the other side, what I
      set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
      a crease scored in bent blades of grass
      where I forgot the wall stood,
      my footsteps blurring as the
      grass unbends.

    • Velveteen Rabbi
      There are trade-offs: in the womb we knew perfect intimacy, but couldn't meet. Now we are separate, which is at once the source of loneliness (especially for him, I'm guessing) and the source of our ability to connect.

    • Will Buckingham
      My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing -- different from the previous lesson, in fact -- and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 -- an auspicious number in China.

  • Read more (Archives)

    Subscribe to Smorgasblog

  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
    — Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.

`