Shakespeare Adapted by Contemporary Arab-American Poets: Two Modes of Cultural Interaction

Adaptation is a literary technique which encompasses dialogic interactions between cultures. It can best echo the principles of multiculturalism through omitting cultural spaces and permitting a Self/Other dialogue. This technique is a postmodernist practice of intertextuality that intersects with Harold Bloom‟s paradigm of creative influence. This paper focuses on selected poems by the contemporary Arab-American poet Samuel Hazo in his poetry collection The Song of the Horse which examines his adaptation of William Shakespeare in a way that indicates his assimilative identity as an American citizen of bicultural origins. It also highlights Philip Metres‟s adaptation of the Shakespearean sonnet in his poem “Compline” from his book Sand Opera. The paper argues that Hazo‟s influence by Shakespeare can best illustrate Harold Bloom‟s paradigm of Daemonization which shows that the poet‟s influence by canonical literature is indicated in his attempt to maintain a counter-sublime to that of the precursor‟s sublime. Unlike Hazo, Metres proposes a matured being of hyphenated identity which seeks to break with the established norms of the canon experiencing Bloom‟s paradigm of Tessera. His adaptation can best echo the multicultural discourse of the „salad bowl.’