This is the first study to examine the Arabic translations of a number of major modern poems in the English language, in particular T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. With case studies dedicated to the Arab translators who were themselves modernist poets, including Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Saadi Yusuf, the author brings a reading of the translations as literary works in their own right. Revealing why the Arab modernists were drawn to these poems through situational context, Ghareeb Iskander shows that the influence exerted by the English originals stems from the creative manner in which the Arab poet-translators converted them into their own language.

This is the first study to examine the Arabic translations of a number of major modern poems in the English language, in particular T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. With case studies dedicated to the Arab translators who were themselves modernist poets, including Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Saadi Yusuf, Ghareeb Iskander brings a reading of the translations as literary works in their own right.

Revealing why the Arab modernists were drawn to these poems through situational context, Iskander shows that the influence exerted by the English originals stems from the creative manner in which the Arab poet-translators converted them into their own language.

Ghareeb Iskander's English Poetry and Modern Arabic Verse is an erudite and insightful journey into the creative process, a methodic study of how translations of mainly Eliot and Whitman by major Arab poets guided their hands and led them to inaugurate a new poetics in Modern Arabic poetry. A valuable reference work for students of translation theory and Arabic poetry.