Metapoetry between East and West: 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and the Western composers of metapoetry - A study in analogies

This study argues that the Iraqi poet 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (1926-1999) composed a group of poems that belong to metapoetry, that originated in the West, during the second decade of the twentieth century. To achieve its objective, the study falls into two parts. The first one functions as a background for the study's claim that some of al-Bayati's poems are actually metapoetic because it investigates the poetics, the themes, and the literary devices of Western metapoetry as they manifest themselves in the works of such poets as W B. Yeats (1865-1939), Wallace Stevens (1879-1957), and Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). The second part turns to examples from al-Bayati's work and compares some of his poems to the poems of Yeats and Tsvetaeva, with a special emphasis on the analogies between Stevens' "The Man with the Blue Guitar" and al-Bayati's "The Nightmare," both of which invoke Pablo Picasso's painting "'The Old Blue Guitarist" to explore their metapoetical concerns.