recalls another and is linked to it, ‘‘We turn in the
earth the way a shepherd wraps his cloak around
him.’’ In another long poem, written in 1995 and
addressing the US which led the war against Iraq in
1991, entitled ‘‘America, America’’, Saadi uses dif-
ferent voices in his polyphonic poem. The words of
an Iraqi poetic persona is juxtaposed to the song
by an American soldier, probably an African-
American as his lyric is entitled ‘‘Blues’’. The
soldier longs to go back to his home town, Sac-
ramento, and suggests his unhappiness with the
war and his anxiety as a stranger in a country
that is not his.
The Iraqi voice wonders whether it is his
identity that has made him a target: ‘‘But I am
not American./ Is that enough for the Phantom
pilot to turn me back to the Stone Age?’’ The
poem sarcastically uses the refrain, ‘‘God save
America,/My home, sweet home!’’
...The title of this rich collection,Without
an Alphabet, Without a Face, is taken from a
verse line in a poem entitled ‘‘The Ends of the
African North’’ (1971). It focuses on the image
of a child weeping, the violation of innocence
that has become a recurring motif in the age of
global imperialism:
In the neighbourhoods of Tunis and their win-
ter cafe ́s
at the gates of Africa’s spread thighs
I saw a girl weep
without an alphabet, without a face.
Snow was falling and a girl wept under it.
The richness and accessibility, as well as the
breadth and depth, of this collection turn this
book into a work for all seasons and for all
readers.
Source:Ferial J. Ghazoul, ‘‘Spiral of Iraqi Memory,’’
inAl-Ahram Weekly On-line, No. 634, April 17–23,
2003, 7 pp.
Saadi A. Simawe
In the following excerpt, Simawe demonstrates
the way that Youssef uses southern Iraqi vernac-
ular within traditional Arabic poetic forms.
When Irish poet seamus Justin Heaney was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995,
the Academy praised him for ‘‘works of lyrical
beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday
life and the living past’’ (Schlessinger 93).
Though having no power to grant a Nobel
Prize, many critics, students of literature, and
general readers have noted with fascination the
magical power of Sa’di Yusuf’s unassuming,
short, and subtle poems that exalt the heroism
and the epical perseverance of everyday life in
the Arab World, particularly in Iraq where the
very act of surviving with some form of dignity
becomes in itself heroic. Yusuf’s poetry since the
early 1950s has become an epic song of survival
in the face of both fascism and Western
intervention.
A major aspect of Yusuf’s poetry that has
been touched upon, but not sufficiently
explored, by critics is his remarkable blend of
standard Arabic (al-Lugha al-Fusha) with the
Iraqi vernacular (al-Lahja al-’Ammiyya). In
this essay I will argue that Yusuf’s talent for
‘‘poetization of the familiar and the quotidian,’’
as Ghazoul aptly put it (‘‘The Poetics of the
Political Poem,’’ 117), lies largely in his capabil-
ity of creating a poetic diction of his own—a
linguistic synthesis that blends al-Fusha and al-’
Ammiyya. Yusuf’s new poetic diction reflects
on the one hand his Marxist politics and on the
other his poetics. Though most of the time a
fellow traveler, his esthetics asserts itself with
occasional rebellion against the ideological dic-
tates of the Iraqi Communist Party. Yet his
loyalty to his esthetics and to the ordinary,
vulnerable individual never wavered throughout
his long journey.
Born in 1934 (the year the Iraqi Communist
Party was founded) in a village near Basra, Iraq,
Sa’di Yusuf began writing poetry when he was
about fifteen years old. Upon graduating from
high school, he went to Dar al-Mu’allimeen al-’
Allia in Baghdad (Higher Teachers’ Training
Institute), where he earned a B.A. in Arabic
with a teaching certificate. His life in Iraq,
from the early 1950s to 1964 and then from
1973 to 1978, was spent between teaching at
various high schools, working with progressiveA MAJOR ASPECT OF YUSUF’S POETRY THAT
HAS BEEN TOUCHED UPON, BUT NOT SUFFICIENTLY
EXPLORED, BY CRITICS IS HIS REMARKABLE BLEND OF
STANDARD ARABIC (AL-LUGHA AL-FUSHA) WITH THE
IRAQI VERNACULAR (AL-LAHJA AL-’AMMIYYA).’’America, America