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Introduction to Arab Poetics

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If I were teaching a class in contemporary American poetics, I would require every student to own and study a copy of this book. There is nothing Adonis says about Arabic poetics across the centuries that cannot be transferred to the history of thought about English poetry. I was stunned by the relevance of his comments to my own experience of English poetry since the 7th century, right down to the various ideas that have contended with each other throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Add to that the fact that he is both systematic and eloquent and you have a keeper for your library, to sit on the shelf next to Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Sidney, Coleridge/Wordsworth, and all the rest.