ABSTRACT
This chapter offers readings of five modern and contemporary Arabic poems, all deploying the pre-Islamic myth of Zarqāʾ al-Yamāma as a means to express dismay and urgency over the denial of the truth of apparent threats to the community at risk in the poem. The poets, ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Manāṣira, Amal Dunqul, Thurayyā ʿUrayyiḍ, Nūr al-Din ʿAzīza, and Ḥanān Shāhīn, span the Arab World and several generations, yet all deploy and customize the Zarqāʾ myth as a powerful tool to address contemporary crises, exemplifying the productivity of the myth in Arabic cultural expression to this day.
