Sinopsis

In James Warren’s new translation of The Complete Poems of Al-Mutanabbi, we launch into the Arab world of the 10th century A.D. where “thistle-juice bedecked” camels with “feet dyed green with saltbush stain” roam across the desert carrying the poet to his next patron, whom he will praise to the stars—as long as he gets paid properly.

With its epic scope divided into three volumes containing all 287 poems, Warren’s rhyming rendition captures the energy and wit of the famed poet Al-Mutanabbi, known to his friends as Abu al-Tayyib, whom King Abdullah II of Jordan called “the Arab Shakespeare.” Some of the poems, rarely before translated into English, are short, occasional pieces on incidents at court, while others, rather better known, are qasidas, extended rhapsodies on desert campsites and their lovely but out-of-bounds women, fearsome desert journeys, and the military prowess and personal virtues of the princes who controlled the cities in the declining years of the Abbasid empire, periodically fighting both each other and the Byzantine Christians.

Warren’s is the first English version in rhyming couplets in a variety of strictly defined meters that seek to emulate the energetic, image-driven texture of the rhymed and highly structured original: “To the West stood the sea with its waters immense; / To the East stood a sea of war-horses intense.”

Warren’s swift and flexible rhythms offer a vibrant window into a long-vanished world. While honoring the original Arabic’s classical elegance and often dense and intricate phrasing, he has sought also to capture Al-Mutanabbi’s grandiose bravado and vitality and his often poignant views on what matters in life. As Warren comments in his “Translator’s Note,” in the world of Arabic poetry, great poems were “akin to a string of pearls—one exquisite line following another,” and in his passionate retelling, we soar alongside a poet who devours the world with open heart and mind and whose “eyes graze beauty’s tender field.”

Altogether, The Complete Poems of Al-Mutanabbi is a monumental undertaking and accomplishment.