This ethnographic research aims to examine aspects of challenging power by contemporary Arab poets, especially Palestinian. The analysis focuses on the resurrection of ancient myths in modem Arabic poetry and on a classical conception of power within such emergence, according to which winning is also a form of losing. Based in Ramallah of the West Bank for 12 months, I will pursue ethnographic interviews and participant observations of poets and their audiences as well as archival sources. This study will additionally offer a critical assessment of the power concept as commonly used in the social sciences. It will also explore what Arab poets find troubling about modernity in Western and Arab societies, especially surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict.