| Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Transferring Life into Words
Chapter One: “I Walk with Everyone but Each
Step is Mine”
Chapter Two: Poet of His People: 1955–1963
Chapter Three: Exile, Homecoming, Exile: The
Aesthetics of Displacement
Chapter Four: War, Metapoetics and Minute
Realities: The Later Poetry
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“Ever since I began reading Sa’di Yusuf he has
become the one who appealed the most to my poetic taste. He is
one of our greatest poets. Poetry led him – or rather he
led poetry – to revolt against the transcendence of poetic
language and in its stead to create a new language: one characterized
by austerity and its core by the search for essence. In this way
poetry in his poems becomes life itself – life in all its
fullness and spontaneity.” Mahmud Darwish
“Dr. Huri has created a book that will
undoubtedly succeed in introducing Sa’di Yusuf, one of the
most prominent Arab poets of modern history, to the Western world.
He offers a truly comprehensive reading of Yusuf's entire body of
poetry and does so with intelligence, thoroughness, skill and enthusiasm.
The monograph deftly weaves together aspects of Yusuf’s tumultuous
biography with his achievements as a poet of the highest order,
while focusing on Yusuf’s persistent themes: the artist’s
perennial search for poetic and personal identities, the poet’s
role in society, the power of poetry as fortification against the
onslaught of time and much more. This deeply informed, highly readable
study is a cogent and thoughtful contribution to our understanding
of contemporary Arabic poetry and Iraqi poetry in exile.”
Dr. Shaker al-Nabulsi, Head of the Arab-American Academic Association
(Denver, Colorado) and the author of Palms Statures: A Study
of Sa‘di Yûsuf’s Poetry
“Sa’di Yusuf is one of the most prominent poets of modern
Iraq, a country that has produced some of the greatest Arab poets,
past and present. Yusuf’s poetry is highly individual and
distinctly original in its language and imagery. Grounded in scrupulous
and impeccable scholarship, Yair Huri’s excellent monograph
is the first attempt to discuss the life and works of Sa’di
Yusuf in their entirety. It is extremely impressive in being based
on profound and erudite familiarity with literary theory and, at
the same time, accessible to the general reader.” Sasson
Somekh, DPhil (Oxon), Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University
“In this intellectually rewarding volume of literary
criticism, Yair Huri introduces most effectively the poetry of Sa’idi
Yusuf, an Iraqi and justly renowned poet. Although Sa’idi
Yusuf is an Iraqi/Arab poet, his work of poetry knows no boundaries
as it plausibly displays humanistic values and universal trends
of feelings and ideas. Hence the prevailing proclivities of the
poetry by Sa’idi Yusuf, makes it remarkably worthy for literary
criticism that is fed and conditioned by aesthetic-artistic considerations
and ideological perspectives. The poetry of Sa’idi Yusuf also
exhibits some political tendencies.” Digest of Middle
East Studies |
