Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics articles from January 1 2001

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics archives from January 1 2001

The lyrical phenomenon.(summary of articles appearing in particular issue of Alif Journal)
January 1, 2001... This issue of Alif explores the lyrical drive in its myriad manifestations: its formal presence in poems, epics and songs: and its informal dissemination in narratives, philosophy, painting, calligraphy, music and even in broken and discarded...

Arms full of things: Souq Al-Imam Al-Shafei at the Southern Cemetery.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The stock--padlocks without keys, limbs of broken plastic dolls, half a pair of earrings, used ketchup bottles, an anonymous photo album filled with family photos--of many of the stalls at Souq Al-Imam Al-Shafei, located in the City of the...

Signifying the blues.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The essay offers a philosophical examination of the blues, a uniquely powerful and influential twentieth-century musical genre. The examination is undertaken chiefly with reference to the works of Theodor Adorno, Angela Davis and Martin...

Poem as song: the role of the lyric audience.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article examines the phenomenon of lyric formalism--the view that poems wholly contain their meaning--from cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. It argues that the view presenting lyrics as pure self-contained expressions, not addressed...

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.(lyricism in works of poet T.S. Eliot)
January 1, 2001... The article examines the nature of Eliot's lyricism, having first suggested that all lyricism is "an expression of desire, a reaching out for an unattainable fulfilment." It takes note of the fact that although Eliot has written lyric lines of...

Robert Browning's "Dramatic Lyrics": contribution to a genre.
January 1, 2001... The article attempts an investigation into Robert Browning's collection "Dramatic Lyrics" with the purpose of linking the poet's endeavor to his concept of poetic genre, particularly in relation to the ideas of the lyrical and the dramatic. As...

Alexandria in Cavafy, Durrell, and Tsirkas.
January 1, 2001... Among the several ways of looking at Alexandria, one is represented by Edmund Keeley's critical book, Cavafy's Alexandria, which condemns the city as "squalid." Another approach, even less generous and far less literal, is that of Lawrence...

Moving tropes: new modernist travels with Virginia Woolf.
January 1, 2001... The article concentrates on one of Virginia Woolf's profoundly lyrial novels, Mrs. Dallowav, to question the dominant acceptance of Woolf's British rootedness and lack of wanderlust. Through a close reading and analysis of pertinent passages,...

La poesie en Egypte aujourd'hui: etat des lieux d'un champ "en crise".(summary of poety crisis in Egypt, including discussion of amudi, amiyya and fusha poetry)
January 1, 2001... Perhaps the only consensus Egyptian poets and critics can reach today--given the different orientations and generations present--is the description of the poetic field in terms of a crisis. The article does not attempt to analyze the dimensions...

Ghayn: divagations on a letter in motion.(Arabic letter ghayn in love poetry)
January 1, 2001... Fascination with the alphabet as an aesthetic construct begins with children, but sometimes it expires with them too. If adult readers remember the hypnotic appeal which the letters once exerted, their sounds and their shapes, the alphabet can...

A Chapter in South African verse: interview with Jeremy Cronin.(Interview)
January 1, 2001... Jeremy Cronin, a South African poet and politician who spent years in prison and exile, is presently a member of parliament and the deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party. The interview probes into his poetics and...

Towards a poetics of dispersal: an encounter with Anna Boghiguian.
January 1, 2001... In the interview with artist Anna Boghiguian, the interviewer attempts to explore the relation the artist holds to the world around her in terms of both her lived experience and her methodology. The introduction by the interviewer as well as...

Siwa door, Barry Iverson, February 1998.
January 1, 2001... Mounted on my wall as hunters sometimes mount catches wrestled up from depths of rivers is this door from Siwa -- Tom Lamont The Lyrical Phenomenon This issue of Alif explores the lyrical drive in its myriad...

Arms full of things: Souq Al-Imam Al-Shafei at the Southern Cemetery.(Poem)
January 1, 2001... The stock--padlocks without keys, limbs of broken plastic dolls, half a pair of earrings, used ketchup bottles, an anonymous photo album filled with family photos--of many of the stalls at Souq Al-Imam Al-Shafei, located in the City of the...

Friday Market in the City of the Dead.(Poem)(Short Story)
January 1, 2001... Friday Market in the City of the Dead I am drawn to places offering what people have thrown out, discarded, left behind, or have simply forgotten to remember, objects which for some long outdistanced purposes:...

Signifying the blues.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... Pain gives of its healing power Where we least expect it. Heidegger, "The Thinker as Poet" The blues is a feeling--something out there, that can come upon you, that can come "falling down like rain." The blues is also music, striking...

Poem as song: the role of the lyric audience.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article examines the phenomenon of lyric formalism--the view that poems wholly contain their meaning--from cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. It argues that the view presenting lyrics as pure self-contained expressions, not addressed...

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article examines the nature of Eliot's lyricism, having first suggested that all lyricism is "an expression of desire, a reaching out for an unattainable fulfilment." It takes note of the fact that although Eliot has written lyric lines of...

Robert Browning's "Dramatic Lyrics": Contribution to a Genre.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article attempts an investigation into Robert Browning's collection "Dramatic Lyrics" with the purpose of linking the poet's endeavor to his concept of poetic genre, particularly in relation to the ideas of the lyrical and the dramatic. As...

Alexandria in Cavafy, Durrell, and Tsirkas.(Constantine Cavafy; Lawrence Durrell; Stratis Tsirkas)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... Among the several ways of looking at Alexandria, one is represented by Edmund Keeley's critical book, Cavafy's Alexandria, which condemns the city as "squalid." Another approach, even less generous and far less literal, is that of Lawrence...

Moving Tropes: New Modernist Travels With Virginia Woolf.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article concentrates on one of Virginia Woolf's profoundly lyrial novels, Mrs. Dalloway, to question the dominant acceptance of Woolf's British rootedness and lack of wanderlust. Through a close reading and analysis of pertinent passages,...

La poesie en Egypte aujourd'hui: etat des lieux d'un champ "en crise".(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... Perhaps the only consensus Egyptian poets and critics can reach today--given the different orientations and generations present--is the description of the poetic field in terms of a crisis. The article does not attempt to analyze the dimensions...

Ghayn: divagations on a letter in motion.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... Fascination with the alphabet as an aesthetic construct begins with children, but sometimes it expires with them too. If adult readers remember the hypnotic appeal which the letters once exerted, their sounds and their shapes, the alphabet can...

A Chapter in South African Verse: interview with Jeremy Cronin.(Interview)
January 1, 2001... Jeremy Cronin, a South African poet and politician who spent years in prison and exile, is presently a member of parliament and the deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party. The interview probes into his poetics and...

Three Reasons For A Mixed, Umrabulo, Round-The-Corner Poetry. (Appendix *).(Poem)
January 1, 2001... i. A poem is meant to stand upon its own Like a Grecian urn in some colonial museum, The object of a contemplation (Thou still unravish'd bride...) that obscures: The mud of its production; The...

Joe Slovo's Favourite Joke.(Poem)
January 1, 2001... `It's Cuba, you know, 1959. The guerrilla forces have just taken power, and there is a hurried meeting of the leadership in the newly liberated Havana. Afterwards, shaking his head, a bewildered Che Guevara takes his friend aside: `Comrade...

Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Babang (A Person Is A Person Because Of Other People).(Poem)
January 1, 2001... By holding my mirror out of the window I see Clear to the end of the passage There's a person down there. A prisoner polishing a doorhandle. In the mirror I see him see My face in the mirror, I see the fingertips...

Towards a poetics of dispersal: an encounter with Anna Boghiguian.(Interview)
January 1, 2001... In the interview with artist Anna Boghiguian, the interviewer attempts to explore the relation the artist holds to the world around her in terms of both her lived experience and her methodology. The introduction by the interviewer as well as...

The strategy of absence in the poetry of Saadi Youssef.(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2001... The article sets out to analyze absence as a poetic strategy in the works of the contemporary Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, whose poetic corpus gives the illusion of direct signification. However, the poems themselves question such directness and...

The poetics of memory and dialectics of presence: a hermeneutic reading of Qushayri's `Ayniyya.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The article's starting point is the impact of the change affecting the classical Arab poet in the move from the pre-Islamic age to the Islamic one. The article analyzes the 'Ayniyya poem of Al-Simma Al-Qushayri as a literary focus point...

The poetics of calligraphy: an interview with Mouneer Al-Shaa`rani.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... In the interview, Mouneer Al-Shaa`rani--artist, calligrapher and book-designer--traces his trajectory in the world of aesthetics from his early training in Damascus by the leading calligrapher of Syria to his study of Graphic Design and his...

Aesthetics of the new novel: epistemological rupture and anti-lyrical poetics.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The article offers a theoretical reading of the most recent transformations in the Arabic narrative discourse, taking Egyptian novels written by the so-called 1990s generation as its field of study. Its main assumption is that the novels...

Najm and Sheikh Imam: the rise and decline of political song in Egypt.(Brief Article)(Abstract)
January 1, 2001... The article focuses on the artistic and innovative aspects that were produced by the Egyptian political and musical duo, the colloquial poet Ahmed Fouad Najm and his friend Sheikh Imam Eissa, the composer and singer. This duo constituted a very...

Poetic immersion: Mutanabbi's descriptive imagery.(Brief Article)(Abstract)
January 1, 2001... The article addresses descriptive imagery in the poetry of the leading classical Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi using stylistic analysis and interpretive reading. This poetic immersion breaks away the descriptive motifs from their specific occasions...

Contemporary aspects of Abu Tammam's poetry.(Brief Article)(Abstract)
January 1, 2001... There are ruptures as well as continuities between the old and the new in Arabic poetry. The medieval Arab poet Abu Tammam represents a radical change in Arab poetics and his innovations preserve him as a contemporary in thought and...

Grammatico-Rhetorical relations: an approach to poetic imagery.(Abstract)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The article is based on the insights made by the medieval Arab critic Abdul-Qahir al-Jurjani in his theory of syntax in its relation to structural significance and poetic imagery. The article applies the theoretical framework to a poem by a...

From Majnun Layla to Le fou d'Elsa: a study in intertextuality and literary space.(Abstract)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The article treats intertextuality in Aragon's lyrical poem Le fou d'Elsa written in 1963, and justly considered as one of the great masterpieces of lyrical writing of all times. The poet tackles in his 450-page poem the fall of the Andalusian...