Without an Alphabet, without a Face: Selected Poems

This Iraq will reach the ends of the graveyard.
It will bury its sons in open country generation after generation,
and it will forgive its despot...
It will not be the Iraq that once held the name.—from "A Vision"

Living his life in exile—a series of forced departures from numerous countries—Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef also writes outside the long-standing forms of traditional Arabic poetry. In the words of Salma Khadra, a critic of Arabic poetry, "Youssef's poetry abounds with th…