or Communist journalism, and serving political
prison terms. Like the majority of Iraqi writers,
educators, and intellectuals, Yusuf was forced to
leave Iraq in 1978, when Saddam Hussein
assumed absolute power. After several years in
Algeria, Lebanon, and Yemen, Yusuf settled in
Damascus, Syria, where now he works as jour-
nalist with the Palestinians and with the Iraqi
opposition groups.
Since 1952, Yusuf has published more than
twenty volumes of poetry. He has also published
fiction, essays, and translated the Nineteenth
Century American poet Walt Whitman and con-
temporary Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa’Thionga,
as well as works by European authors. Yusuf
learned English and French on his own, taking
advantage of the periods of exile he was forced
into due to his involvement, like most Iraqi writ-
ers, with the Iraqi Communist Party since his
college years in Baghdad (probably even before
that when he was in Basra). Although he dem-
onstrated remarkable versatility in most literary
genres, Yusuf is primarily considered a towering
figure in Iraqi modernist poetry, Jama’at al-
Ruwwad (The Group of Pioneers) established
in the early 1950s.
From the beginning of his career Yusuf was
interested not only in registering the poetic glow
in the ordinary and the common, but also in
portraying the seemingly insignificant. The
majority of his characters are below even ordi-
nary people; they are the marginalized and on
the fringes of the society: children attempting to
survive their vulnerability, women caught in the
double plight of sexism and classism, the poorest
farmers and menial laborers. Scenes and
moments that inspire his best poetry are fre-
quently the invisible and the unnoticed. This
vision of the ordinary seems to account for
Yusuf’s language a language that suggests rather
than oppresses or stifles the poetry of the ordi-
nary. As many critics have observed, when we
read Yusuf’s poetry, we cannot help but notice
the closeness of his standard Arabic to the
vernacular.
In herModern Arabic Poetry(1987) poet
and critic Salma Khadia Jayyusi characterizes
Yusuf’s greatness as ‘‘his capacity to speak in
direct and simple yet highly poetic terms about
life’s constant routine and day-to-day experien-
ces, subjects which so many Arab poets shun’’
(480). Other critics point more specifically to
Yusuf’s talent for capturing the ordinary and
the obvious in a kaleidoscopic poetic medium.
‘‘It seems to me,’’ al-Saggar states, ‘‘that Sa’di is
keenly aware of his environment, and he deals
with it on the basis that it is a reality that
demands his recognition without imposing on it
any kind of logic that does not sound at any rate
apropos. He is a hunter of the first moment—
which is no doubt the essential stuff of poetry.
Once it is in his hand, he does not allow it to
escape by reflection and much analysis’’ (143).
More specifically, Ghazoul in her essay titled
‘‘Saadi Yusuf: Qasa’id Aqalu Samtan’’ focuses
on what she terms Yusuf’s ‘‘poetization of the
familiar and the quotidian’’ (23).
Textual evidence from Yusuf’s poetic work
supports the critics’ understanding of the crux of
his poetic vision and the source of his inspiration.
In one of his poems of 1976 titled ‘‘How Did al-
Akhdhar bin Yusuf Write His New Poem,’’
Yusuf, who had already made al-Akhdhar bin
Yusuf his poetic persona or double (Ghazoul,
‘‘The Poetics of the Political Poem,’’ 117) or a
mask (Abbas, 73–74) reflects on his own process
of writing:
Well, here is al-Akhdhar bin Yusuf facing a
problem more complicated than he initially
thought.
It’s true that when he writes the poem he
rarely thinks of its destiny. But usually writing
becomes easier when he can focus on a thing, a
moment, a vibration, a leaf of grass.
Whereas now he is in front of Ten Com-
mandments, he does not know which one he
should choose. More importantly: How to begin?
Endings are always open. And beginnings
are closed (Yusuf,al-’Amal al-Kamila, 62).
The Ten Commandments, arguably a meta-
phor for ideology, seem to block the poet’s vision
from focusing on one thing, whether human or
natural. Poetry flows naturally, Yusuf seems to
suggest, when it is free from rigid thought, when it
captures the rhythm within a scene or a moment.
Before the July Revolution of 1958, Yusuf’s
experiments with the vernacular by incorporat-
ing slang words and phrases and even sentences
in the standard Arabic were considered auda-
cious, even blasphemous by the mainstream crit-
ics. What made Yusuf’s experiments possible, it
seems to me, is the fact that he was one of a
group of young poets working independently to
break the traditional poetic styles, what is usu-
ally called ’Amud al-Sh’ir (the pillar of poetry).
Like Yusuf, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926–1964),America, America