On Desert Tracings

This is a fine collection of largely pre-Islamic poetry — Dhu al-Rumma did live after the coming of Islam, and Michael Sells notes that he’s often considered the “Seal” of the classical poets, the one who closed the age for good. I can’t judge the translation, since I don’t know the Arabic well enough, but the poems stand well on their own and are quite beautiful. Almost all of them turn on the desert and a sense of longing, and though we tend to picture the desert as dead, here it seems to teem with life. There’s love and longing, wine songs, boasting, and travel — these elements seem almost compulsory; they’re what make the qasida work.

It’s a short book; I read it in two brief sittings, and I wish it had included more poems, which would have fleshed it out. The two most famous here are among the Muʿallaqat, said to have hung from the Kaʿaba after a poetry competition. There were five other Muʿallaqat, and I wish those were here too.