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by Soheil Najm (Editor), Sadek R. Mohammed (Translator)
Iraq's poets have suffered imprisonment, exile and death for the truths they have dared to tell. Poetry is not a luxury in Iraq, but a vital part of the struggle for the nation's future. This is poetry that is feared by tyrants and would-be tyrants.
Dan Veach, poet, founder and editor of The Atlanta Review
Mike Maggio, poet, author, deMOCKracy Little one flies and then lands.
What about those who are flying all the time?
This is what poetry is . . .
Imagine heavenly imprints that perish under the heavy attack of senseless forces. Imagine every day hopes that will never share the destiny of the Phoenix to be reborn. Iraqi poetry is like the sun light. Slowly, but surely it warms you up.
Sabahudin Hadzialic, poet, translator, editor Diogen pro culture magazine, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Iraq's painful recent history is vividly personalized in these lyrical poems. The love, hope, anger and despair of these poets bear messages we very much need to hear. What burns brightest among these poems is our common humanity.
Sam Hamill, poet, founder of Copper Canyon Press and Poets Against War What a marvelous compendium of contemporary poetry - a wide spectrum of Iraqi voices sing of tragedy and irony, love and helplessness. Everybody here is out of work, Adil Abdullah complains, asking, What vast shame will touch their souls in the morning / when they discover by its light / that what they ate yesterday / was the flesh of their sons? Ahmed Adam, killed in Baghdad in 2005, laments with bitter irony, I was late twenty years this morning Baqir Sahib asserts, I have no choice but to be / a wolf of words. Striving for some ray of hope, Husein Ali Yunis declares, now all of us are Don Quixotes.
These richly diverse poems offer intensely moving, often searing portraits of a legendary culture torn apart by the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, war against Iran and U.S. led invasions. Here is the deep heart and soul of a nation torn asunder yet somehow still observing, striving, celebrating.
David Radavich, poet, author of Middle-East Mezze
Number of Pages: 214
Dimensions: 0.45 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN
Illustrated: Yes
Publication Date: January 01, 2011
