This dissertation defines the mukhaḍram poem by considering the structural developments and transmutations of three dominant Arabic poetic modes in the early years of Islam: the prototypical ode (qaṣīdah), the elegy (marthiyyah), and the war song (ḥamāsiyyah). I reject the typical understanding of the mukhaḍram poem as thematically proto-Islamic and instead explore the phenomenon of khaḍramah through the varied and oppositional ways poets navigate ruptures of affective temporality in poetic form and structure. I take the original generation of mukhaḍram poets as a case study and frame my analysis between two affective temporalities: the looming eschatological presentism of Quranic revelation and an evanescing pre-Islamic past, also known as the Jāhiliyyah/Islam divide. The various ways mukhaḍram poets negotiate their orientation toward temporal rupture through structural innovation reflects the importance of poetic expression during catastrophic change and revolution. Through structural analysis and close reading, informed by structural poetics and theories of emotion and affect, I argue that the mukhaḍram poem, across its various genres and modes, is described by its manipulation of poetic structures that exploit theme, motif, and device. The mukhaḍramūn disrupt, invert, and reverse poetic conventions, shaping the experience of temporality and emotional upheaval into a discernible structure of feeling in the poem. This theory of khaḍramah charts new possibilities of comparative analysis between other moments of liminality in Arabic literary history.