"Peaks of Yemen I summon" : poetry as cultural practice in a North Yemeni tribe

In this first full-scale ethnographic study of Yemeni tribal poetry, Steven Caton reveals an astonishingly rich folkloric system where poetry is both a creation of art and a political and social act. Almost always spoken or chanted, Yemeni tribal poetry is cast in an idiom considered colloquial and "ungrammatical," yet admired for its wit and spontaneity. In Yemeni society, the poet has power over people. By eloquence the poet can stir or, if his poetic talents are truly outstanding, motivate an audience to do his bidding. Yemeni tribesmen think, in fact, that poetry's transformative effect is too essential not to use for pressing public issues. Drawing on his three years of field research in North Yemen, Caton illustrates the significance of poetry in Yemeni society by analyzing three verse genres and their use in weddings, war mediations, and political discourse on the state. Moreover, Caton provides the first anthropology of poetics. Challenging Western cultural assumptions that political poetry can rarely rise above doggerel, Caton develops a model of poetry as cultural practice. To compose a poem is to construct oneself as a peacemaker, as a warrior, as a Muslim. Thus the poet engages in constitutive social practice. Because of its highly interdisciplinary approach, this book will interest a wide range of readers including anthropologists, linguists, folklorists, literary critics, and scholars of Middle Eastern society, language, and culture. Frontmatter List of Illustrations (page ix) Acknowledgments (page xi) A Note on Transcription (page xv) PART I. Background 1. Doing an Ethnography of Poetry (page 3) 2. Gabyilah: Ideologies of Tribalism, Language, and Poetry (page 25) 3. The Social Production of Poetry (page 50) PART II. The System of Poetic Genres 4. The Bālah: Poem as Play (page 79) 5. The Poetic Construction of Shelf (page 109) 6. The Zāmil: Between Performance and Text-Utterance (page 127) 7. Power, Poetry, and Persuasion (page 155) 8. The Qaṣīdah: Individual Talent and the Cultural Tradition (page 180) 9. Tribal Ideology, the State, and Communicative Practices (page 216) CONCLUSION: Poetry as Cultural Practice (page 249) APPENDIXES A. Yemeni Tribal Arabic Phonology (page 271) B. A Linguistic Theory of Meter (page 274) C. Transcription of the Sample Bālah Poem (page 286) D. Transcription of the Sample Bālah Development Section (page 290) E. Transcription of al-Gharsi's Poem (page 293) F. Transcription of aṣ-Ṣūfī's Poem (page 295) G. Transcription of al-Maʿlah's Poem (page 299) Notes (page 305) Bibliography (page 329) Index (page 345) Offering an ethnographic study of Yemeni tribal poetry, this book reveals a rich folkloric system where poetry is both a creation of art and a political and social act. It illustrates the significance of poetry in Yemeni society by analyzing three verse genres and their use in weddings, war mediations, and political discourse on the state. One of the lasting memories of my childhood is an incident that occurred at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.