Category Archives: Poetry

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #13

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 13th in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #13

Basra 7/13/1961

My Dear Brother Abdel Karim (al-Na’im),

I send you an Arab greeting.

It was good of you to write to me again especially after I lost, along with a number of papers and poems, your previous letter in which you mentioned your new address.

Regarding the campaign of “al-Adaab” against me, let me explain. About two years ago, Suheil Idris requested my approval to let Dar al-Adaab publish my poetry collection. I promised they could, and he was waiting for me to send him the drafts. However, I had no drafts except the poems that had been previously published in the journals “al-Adaab” and “Shi’r,” etc. Then the “Shi’r” journal volunteered to search for my poems and collect them. In the meantime, my collection, “Hymn of the Rain,” was published. All of this together with my decision to cease publishing in al-Adaab and limit my publishing only to “Shi’r” angered Suheil Idris. Furthermore, it is clear that Mr. (Elie Hawi) wanted – in his criticism – to prove that his brother, Khalil Hawi, was a better poet than I. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #13 →

A Rose for the Last Days

Lebanon, Poetry

by Rana al-Tonsi [Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon]

On one foot
like a humiliated beggar I limp
past all the swinging doors
and the flags that are taken down from their masts . . .
The sidewalk was never my friend
but it embraced me those times
when the crying was tough and bitter

In my country
soldiers go to a war
where they never fight
In every coffeehouse or square
under the feet of the sick, the sad and insane
you can glimpse the trace of a rose
thrown into the arms of nurses
in lonely rooms inhabited by wailing,
a rose drawn in blood. Continue reading A Rose for the Last Days →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #12

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the twelfth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #12

Baghdad 3/12/1960

My Dear Beloved, Adunis,

Your letter arrived a long time ago. I would have responded to it before now had it not been for the mid-year examinations and the numerous corrections of notebooks that accompany it. I work now as a lecturer and not as an employee in the secondary schools due to the dire need for English teachers. I am one of them.

It is kind of you to remember your brother who loves you immensely and who respects you greatly both as a person and a poet.

I am still of the same opinion concerning my trip to Lebanon. It will take place during the summer, God willing. Would I succeed in finding a job sufficient to sustain me, my wife and my child? I do not know. However, I am prepared to teach even if that is my least desirable wish. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #12 →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab:#11

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the eleventh in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #11

My Dear Adunis, (1)

First of all, I hope you will forgive me for writing to you on this kind of paper. It is all I have in the house right now since I have just returned from night school. Perhaps you will now understand the reason why I have been tardy in responding to your letter. Working day and night does not give me any time to write.

I received the final version of your poem. I notice that you have paid attention to what I wanted to alert you to concerning the earlier version of the poem: namely, the excess use of rhymed paragraphs among those that are written in prose. Your poem that was published in the latest issue of “Shi’r” was more successful in this regard. Haven’t you seen how the versifiers have exploited free verse? Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab:#11 →

Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak

Books You Should Read, Iraq War, Poetry, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (The University of Iowa Press, 2007) conveys the voices of men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. The collection is edited by Marc Falkoff, who has worked on behalf of many detainees from Yemen, and contains a preface by Flagg Miller, an anthropologist and professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis. Miller’s essay combines an overview of Muslim prison poetry throughout history to an analysis of the poems in the collection, and is entitled “Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry.” An afterward is written by Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American poet, novelist, and human rights activist who teaches at Duke University. Continue reading Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #10

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the tenth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #9

My Dear Brother Yusuf (al-Khal) (1)

I hope you and the rest of our brothers are well. I have a Lebanese friend, the Adunisian poet, Basim Shawqi al-Salmaan (2). He is currently unemployed. You know him well for he lived in your house for a few days last summer. He then moved to Adunis’ house. He also published many poems in your journal, “Shi’r:” “Jaikur and the City,” “The River and Death,” and “Christ after Crucifixion.”

He now intends to return to Lebanon. Will he be able, with your help, to obtain a job that allows him to adequately earn a living for himself, his wife, his sister, and his two children? He can work as an instructor of English or Arabic language. He can also work in journalism or do translations. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #10 →

A Royal Ransom for the Book of Kings

Iran, Miniatures, Poetry

Looking for the perfect Christmas or Eid present? Well, if you have little spare cash but love rare books, why not mortgage the farm and go for one of the most beautiful illustrated manuscripts of all time, The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasb Safavi in its Houghton manuscript form. This facsimile set of two volumes was edited by Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch in 1981 and published by the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. And it is available for only $1495.00 plus shipping. Here are the details and it can be ordered by clicking here:
Continue reading A Royal Ransom for the Book of Kings →

Arabia, A Poem from 1815

Islamophobia, Orientalism, Poetry

While reading old books on Arabia in Oxford’s Bodleian Library two summers ago, I came across a rare book indeed. I had the privilege of being the first person ever to read the book, as the folios were still uncut. Considering that the book was published in 1815 and soon thereafter entered the library, it might be readily assumed that it is a book not worth reading. In fact it proved to be a delight and a rarity. The book is called Arabia, A Poem and the author is a man named Johnson Grant. The author was an Oxford chap of St. John’s and is billed as the Domestic Chaplain to the Countess Dowager of Balcarres. No doubt the Countess enjoyed the work, although generations of Oxford students and scholars have somehow passed it by.

It is a rather long poem with extensive commentary. Not surprisingly, the Christian chaplain does not think Islam is the right religion. Continue reading Arabia, A Poem from 1815 →