Humanistic Approaches to City in Arabic and Persian Contemporary Poetry

Since it came to being, the “City” has had wide relation with modern man, both as a friend and as an enemy. In turn, modern man has had different approaches toward the city which have been mirrored in contemporary poetry. This article takes the example of Arabic and Persian poetry to investigate the human relations to nature, social problems and values in the cities. Meanwhile it studies the Utopia as pictured in these poems to describe one aspect of the city’s presence in poetry. The article concludes that citizens adopt a paradoxical behavior: from one side they explicitly complain about the glittering of the cities and tend to get rid of them; from the other side they continue to live in cities and if possible to change it in the direction of their goals and ideals.