"I Write Poetry, That is, I am Dying Now": Poet-Reader Relationship in the Writings of Modernist Arab Poets

The article investigates the ways in which the awareness regarding the role of the reader is reflected in the works of modernist Arab poets. In both neoclassical Arabic poetry and in romantic Arabic poetry, the reader was generally regarded by the poet as a passive recipient of the poem, an "eavesdropper" that even when he sometimes glimpses, the spotlight does not focus on him in an active role. In modernist poetry, however, we discover a radical shift in the perception of the reader. He becomes the originator of meaning. The modernist poet is acutely aware of the essential role of the reader in creating the "final meaning" of the poem and poignantly gives voice to this awareness.