Prologue : On poetry -- Sinan Antoon and Peter Money -- Prologue : On poetry -- Listening. Still life -- A difficult variation -- O nostalgia: my enemy -- The pagan's prayer -- The concerns of a man, 2000 BC -- The evening the game was over -- Don't say -- A neighbor -- The barbarians' village -- I saw my father -- Cloves -- Making love -- Tonight I imitate Pasolini -- The sun that never comes -- Free Iraqis -- I will wait -- A secret entrance to Fortezza -- The night of the icy lake -- The glance -- Nature -- The days -- No play -- Four sections on place -- Fulfillment -- Observing -- Seasons (4) -- Conversation -- Hamlet's balcony -- The balcony of the poor house -- Andes butterflies -- An abandoned shore -- Imru' al-Qays' grandson -- Mustafa the Egyptian -- Rock-solid time -- The homeless man and the squirrel -- Chess -- Light hallucination -- The Irish rose -- New Orleans -- The wretched of the heavens -- December -- The last Communist goes to heaven -- Bees visit me -- Heavy time -- Evening by the lake -- A desperate poem -- A fawn behind the fence -- A spring downpour -- Listening.
Summary:
"Saadi Youssef is considered one of the most important living Iraqi intellectuals and one of the country's greatest modern poets. From his exile in the suburbs of London, his writings have varied from angry invectives in essay forms attacking the US-led occupation of Iraq, to tender poems recollecting Iraq's shards from memory. His poetic eye peers into New Orleans after it is devastated by Hurricane Katrina; it observes a homeless man in New York speaking to a squirrel; it follows butterflies in Columbia [i.e. Colombia]. 'No more nostalgia,' Youssef has said. 'My country is everywhere'"--P. [4] of cover.
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