The Poetics of Experimentation in the Poetic Devices A Study of Kadhim Al-Hajjaj's Experience

Abstract

Experimentation is synonymous with modernism, innovation, breaking new ground and change but it acquires its importance from having great effectiveness as it is the most daring to go into new spaces. Experimentation is not limited to a particular epoch because each poetic period; experimentation is what gives the literary discourse its modernity and otherwise the literary discourse would be repeated and exhausted. This paper is a study of experimentation in the poetic works of the Iraqi poet Khadim AL-Hajaj (1942- ), published by Dar Sutoor 2017. It attempts to explore his style and techniques such as experimenting with the formal structure of the text which is the most outstanding aspect of experimentation in his poetry. One of his poetic forms is the narrative structure where the poem is like a story though it is written in verse. Al-Hajjaj does not employ music and metre in a conventional way; he combines more than one metre in his poetic texts and uses both the traditional metrical foot (taf'ila) and the prose poem, he even uses the classical line of verse ('Amudi) within the modern free verse poem exploiting all the musical potentialities to produce his poetic discourse. His other innovative features include the dedications and the titles. As for the content, his experimentation includes defamiliarization which is not his invention but he employed it in a particular way to make it part of his poetic discourse. The paper ends with a conclusion which sums up the results of the study.