Comprised of leading international scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry incorporates political, cultural, and theoretical paradigms that help place poetic projects in their socio-political contexts as well as illuminate connections across the continuum of the Arabic tradition. This volume grounds itself in the present moment and, from it, examines the Arabic poetic tradition’s transformations through readings, re-readings, translations, reformulation, and co-optation as they appear in subsequent poetic projects. Furthermore, this collection aims to deconstruct the artificial modern/pre-modern divide and to present the Arabic poetic practice as live and urgent, shaped by the experiences and challenges of the twenty-first century and at the same time in constant conversation with its long tradition. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry actively seeks to destabilize binaries, such as that of East-West in contributions that shed light on the Arabic tradition’s active interactions with other Middle Eastern traditions such as Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew and on South-South ideological and poetic networks of solidarity that informed poetic currents across the modern Middle East. This volume will be ideal for scholars and professional readers of Arabic, Middle Eastern Literature and comparative literature as well as non-specialists interested in poetry and in the present moment of Arabic poetry.

Although Salim Barakat is one of the most renowned and respected contemporary writers in Arabic letters, he remains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This first collection of his poetry in English, representing every stage of his career, remedies that startling omission. Come, Take a Gentle Stab features selections from his most acclaimed works of poetry, including excerpts from his book-length poems, rendered into an English that captures the exultation of language for which he is famous. A Kurdish-Syrian man, Barakat chose to write in Arabic, the language of cultural and political hegemony that has marginalized his people. Like Paul Celan, he mastered the language of the oppressor to such an extent that the course of the language itself has been compelled to bend to his will. Barakat pushes Arabic to a point just beyond its linguistic limits, stretching those limits. He resists coherence, but never destroys it, pulling back before the final blow. What results is a figurative abstraction of struggle, as alive as the struggle itself. And always beneath the surface of this roiling water one can glimpse the deep currents of ancient Kurdish culture.

Huda J. Fakhreddine explores the 'new genre' of the Arabic prose poem as a poetic practice and a critical lens. This poetic form gave rise to a profound, contentious and continuing debate about Arabic poetry: its definition, its limits and its relation to its readers. Fakhreddine examines the history of the prose poem, its claims of autonomy and distance from its socio-political context, and the anxiety and scandal it generated.

First published in Arabic in 1996, exactly 20 years ago, Lighthouse for the Drowning was met with high acclaim, praised for its unique poetic voice and its strong relationship and dialogue with the Arabic poetic tradition. Fakhreddine is one of the major Lebanese names in Modern Arabic Poetry, and is considered one of the second generation poets of the modernist movement in the Arab world. His major literary accomplishment is the establishment of a new poetic voice to bridge foreign, Modernist values with Classic Arabic tradition. Fakhreddine's PhD dissertation was supervised by Adonis, a major Arab poet, and one of the first theorizers of the Arab modernist movement. Fakhreddine is one of the modern Arab poets who constantly evokes the classical tradition of Arabic poetry and tries to remain in dialogue with it. Arabic poetry, throughout history and to this day, is the brightest space in Arab life and culture, both in mainstream culture and in margins. Renowned Arab poets have always been symbols for liberation, open-mindedness, and progress, standing against stagnation, fanaticism, and bigotry. Arabic poetry has always been the source of modernization and renewal in Arab culture. With it, language is renewed, as well as rhetoric, thought, and cultural values.

Born in 1953 in the small village of Sultaniyeh in south Lebanon, Jawdat Fakhreddine is considered one of the most prominent members of the second generation of modernist Arab poets. Influenced by a childhood bond with nature, the southern landscape of his village, and early readings of classical Arabic poetry, Fakhreddine’s poems bring into conversation modern preoccupations and the Arab poetic tradition. These twenty poems, translated by Fakhreddine’s daughter, Huda, along with translator Roger Allen, form an intimate dialogue between poet and reader, exploring such personal terrain as marriage, fatherhood, and the loss of a parent. Using simple, elegant language, Fakhreddine maintains subtle tensions within these poems, transforming the mundane, the domestic, and the everyday into poetic linguistic events.