La Poesie En Egypte Aujourd'hui: Etat Des Lieux D'un Champ "En Crise" (Summary of Poety Crisis in Egypt, Including Discussion of Amudi, Amiyya and Fusha Poetry‪)‬

Perhaps the only consensus Egyptian poets and critics can reach today--given the different orientations and generations present--is the description of the poetic field in terms of a crisis. The article does not attempt to analyze the dimensions of such a crisis; rather it attempts to map the varied trends in poetic activity in contemporary Egypt. Inasmuch as the struggle in this arena revolves around what deserves to be called poetry most studies, if not all, whether written by poets or critics tend to concentrate on a specific poetic current, dismissing the rest. This article approaches various poetic currents from the perspective of literary sociology, thus it follows in its categorizations the most widely recognized criterion, namely that of form. It sets out to delineate the reasons behind the ongoing popularity of traditional metrical ('amudi) poetry, then moves on to draw the outlines of the critically dominant trends in free verse and finally the efforts of the generations of the 1970s and after to go beyond them. A short history of dialectical ('amiyya) poetry is also traced as a parallel, often neglected, to that of poetry in the literary idiom (fusha). **********