poetry and poetics, but it also contains powerful
and universally accessible poems.
The Libyan translator, Khaled Mattawa, is
himself an Anglophone poet who has authored a
fascinating collection,Ismailia Eclipse. He has
also translated other Iraqi poetry, including
Hatif Janabi’sQuestions and Their Retinueand
Fadhil Al-Azzawi’sIn Every Well a Joseph Is
Weeping. Khaled Mattawa was educated in
Libya, Egypt, and the United States. He teaches
creative writing in the Department of English at
the University of Texas at Austin. This collec-
tion is published in the prestigious Lannan
Translation Series by an independent, non-
profit, publisher. The translator’s 14-page intro-
duction is a brilliant critical essay that introdu-
ces the poet and his poetics while avoiding the
pitfalls of academic jargon. The notes at the end
of the book are short and to the point; they help
explain the allusions in the poems as well as the
places and proper names, thus contextualising
the poems. Poetic traces of past moments reel
and converge to sketch the quest of an Iraqi poet
for that elusive dream of happiness for his people
and freedom for his homeland.
The most successful poems in the collection
are the shorter ones. The longer ones use a vari-
ety of strategies to extend the lyric outpouring:
narrative strategy or cyclical structure. Saadi
Youssef’s poetry is written in thetaf’ilamode,
akin tovers libre, which has dominated new
poetry since the metrical revolution that was
initiated in Iraq in the late 1940s. What consti-
tutes the distinctive feature of Saadi’s poetics is
his avoidance of rhetorical flares and ornate
diction, so typical of Arabic poetry. His poetics
is based on figures of thought rather than figures
of speech, on surprising while understating,
rather than moving his readers by resorting to
hyperbole. His voice is fresh and strives after the
right word and the precise image. His thorough
grounding in classical poetry allows him to be in
touch with the works of the past while able to
branch out into new venues. In an interview with
critic Majid Al-Samirra’i, the poet expressed his
attitude towards innovation and tradition: ‘‘I
consider the poetic tradition to be a root that
should not be cut. The Arabic word is not
abstract, though it has a potential for abstrac-
tion. I use traditional artistic values in a new
way, a way that is related to this age. Formal
opposition, which is revealed in antithesis
(tibaq), may be developed into dialectical oppo-
sition, just as comparison by simile may be trans-
formed into expression by images.’’ Saadi’s
attitude to tradition is critical but not hostile;
his poetics is that of transformation, not rupture.
Many of his poems are autobiographical
fragments presented in lyrical flashes. Having
been detained, he presents the experience of cap-
tivity in his short poem ‘‘In Their Hands’’
(1956)...
This short poem condenses the political phi-
losophy of the poet, which can be paraphrased as
when you are repressed (thrown and roughly
handled) think of the noble cause (Basra). The
poet’s city is a synecdoche for the homeland, and
the homeland is associated with ‘‘sun, bread, and
love’’. The diction is made up of everyday
vocabulary and familiar words (rib, blue, night,
sing, etc.). The poetic effect comes from the syn-
tactical play in the poem: the move from ‘‘think
of Basra’’ to ‘‘think with Basra.’’ Basra changes
from being an object to becoming a subject, and
thus it is implicitly personified. By resorting to
the concrete, the poet points to the abstract.
Another short poem that represents the poet’s
social philosophy, is condensed in ‘‘Attention’’
(1993), where he distinguishes between two types
of people—those to recall and those to dismiss
from memory. The perfect balance between the
first stanza and the second, between the state-
ment and the imagery, captures the symbolic
economy in Saadi’s poetics...
The subtle music and internal rhythms of
Saadi’s poetry are delicately rendered by the
translator as in the finale of a poem entitled
‘‘Spanish Plaza’’ (1965)...
Saadi’s poetry avoids declamation and
resounding statements. It is as if the poet is
engaged in an intimate conversation and we—
as readers—overhear him. Even his political
poems have a subdued tone. They do not lend
themselves to recital on a platform, nor can hisHAVING LIVED IN MORE THAN [A] DOZENCITIES IN THE ARAB WORLD AND EUROPE WITHOUT
SETTLING ANYWHERE PERMANENTLY, SAADI EXEM-
PLIFIES THE EXILIC CONDITION.’’
America, America