Iraqi poetry today

Images of war, loss, emptiness, suffering, absence, and death pervade this volume, which includes the work of 40 Arab Iraqi poets, several Kurds, and one Jew writing in Hebrew. Most of the poetry seems to be from the 1980s and later, although Weissbort gives few dates (and no original sources), and all but five of the poets live in exile in the West. In this latter is regard, the editor stresses how important it is to the work of any Arab poet for it to be translated into English. With the exception of the Kurdish and Hebrew poems, a native speaker of Arabic and a native speaker of English collaborate on the translations in an attempt to preserve something of the spirit of the original in acceptable English. The editor does not provide the Arabic texts, which is unfortunate (and odd) because he makes much of changing form and style in Iraqi poetry, almost all of which is lost here. Most interesting is a long poem by Muzaffar al-Nawwab that exists as an hour-long performance on an audiocassette. Although such a volume has potential, the shortcomings mentioned above limit the volume's usefulness. ^BSumming Up: Not recommended for academic collections. W. L. Hanaway emeritus, University of Pennsylvania