Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems. - book review

Progressive, The, March, 2003 by Amanda Laughtland

By Saadi Youssef Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa Graywolf Press. 216 pages. $16.00.

Born near Basra, Iraq, in 1934, Saadi Youssef has published nearly forty books, but for most American readers, Without an Alphabet, Without a Face will likely serve as an introduction to the work of this skilled poet. Youssef writes lyric poems in which personal and sociopolitical life collide. The relatively large size of this collection works to Youssef's benefit as it allows the details to accrue and the different poems to function together as a diverse whole.

Though Youssef currently lives in London, his work continues to reveal a knowing perspective on life in Iraq. In a poem from 1995 called "America, America," he writes: "Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions: / whatever rises is a fort, / whatever spreads is a battlefield."

Translated by Khaled Mattawa, who also provides a fourteen-page introduction that balances critical assessment with biographical detail, the poems of Youssef remind us of the importance of listening to the thoughts of one individual, a rare opportunity in a time when dissenting voices are often drowned out in the clamor of news bites.