Poetry as a commodity

    Violence is no longer confined to the streets and social media web sites. Neither are Bombs and gunpowder limited to the open fronts in the countries of the Arab revolutions: Violence is also squeezing into texts, writings, and particularly poetry. Thus, poetry has been pushed to the realm of violence and has become part of its general scenery. The Lebanese civil war forced Lebanese poet Abbas Beydoun to hang his pen for seven years. War’s mayhem and madness makes poetry tense, reckless and devoid of meditation. Poetry, however, breaks the rules and issues pertaining to its writing are not taken for granted. Iraqi poet Muhammad Madhloum, for instance, wrote poetry while driving a tank during the Iraq-Iran war, likening his life to a widow. But if writing does not cease with violence and war, it shouldn’t aspire to identify or keep up with them, but rather to condemn them. But a young Syrian man comes out of the ashes to write on New Year’s Eve: “I shall give you an explosive belt” and his lover gives him “an explosion in the Somariya garage or in the southern district. Meanwhile, God gives both of them “a blind mortar shell.” This kind of poetry is by no means the exception; it is regularly written nowadays.