a weapon

“The New Arabic Poetic Verse movement started in Baghdad in 1948,” says Frangieh. “Poets began talking about social and national themes. Poetry contributed a great deal to the independence of Arab states between the two World Wars, just as it helped spread a new consciousness in the late nineteenth century in the effort to get rid of the Ottoman Empire. In the battle of social and political change, poetry is a weapon.”

Bassam Frangieh, professor of Arabic at Yale University

from Of Poets, Prophets, and Politics