Book excerpt: "This study presents an Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry from 1945 to 1984, selected and translated into English, containing poems by thirty-five poets who represent diverse regions of the Arab world. A critical introduction was designed to provide the Western reader with a brief overview of the literary, cultural, and political factors which have shaped the modernist movement in Arabic poetry of the past four decades. The "new poetry" is discussed in terms of form, the expansion of mythological interest which provided a common ground for the talents of the influential "Tammuzi poets," and the relations between politics and poetry. Theories of Arabic poetic modernism have been examined with reference to modernist movements in the West which have both inspired and repelled Arabs in the search for a contemporary poetic form and idiom." --