Revolt Against the Sun

 Revolt Against the Sun.  Iraqi female poet and is considered by many to be one of the most influential contemporary Iraqi poets.  Arabic literature and culture. It is a key resource for students and teachers of Arabic and world literature, as well as for readers interested in discovering an alternative narrative of modern Arab culture. hough Revolt Against the Sun, for example, might seem like a typically Romantic meditation on the beauty of the night, the stars, and the power of poetic inspiration,  but in this superb book the poet’s use of political terminology (thawrah, “revolution,” tamarrud, “revolt,” etc.) that in outstanding writing and her insistent, almost defiant tone ask that we read her assumption of the elegiac, nocturnal, and melancholic position (stereotypical for women poets in the Arabic tradition) as a distinctly political act. Spanning from the 1940s until the 1970s and reflecting the arc from romantic to politically committed poetry, the collection is organized chronologically, with a few poems selected from each Mala'ika book, including Night Lover (1947), Shrapnel and Ash (1949), At the Bottom of the Wave (1957), The Moon Tree (1968), For Prayer and Revolution (1978), The Sea Changes Its Colors (1977)., A pioneer of free verse poetry, over the course of a four-decade career, she would publish prolifically and carved out a space for herself between old and new, tradition and innovation.