Books :: War Poetry

The Baghdad Blues by Sinan Antoon
Published by Harbor Mountain Press
“Baghdad Blues shares with war poetry, especially that of World War I, the sense of underlying shock and horror at the human cruelty and waste. But, Antoon’s poetry is more nightmarish. It starts with enormous schizophrenic intimations of a self caught between repression, fear, and resignation under a dictatorial role, to end up amid scenes of horror that have become the legacy of the 2003 invasion and occupation. Sinan Antoon’s Blues snatches its images from among metal, armor, deserted places, explosions, to build up an identity for an Iraqi soul in a world which is drifting fast into horror which Joseph Conrad-Kurtz’ cry cannot fathom or reach. As befitting the title, sound summons its power from everything in Iraq: from the dictatorial decrees and their demand for appreciative applause, to the air, sea, and land bombardments and explosions. The agonized soul has to cope up with these by its music, its beats of the heart as it perceives all from a hole somewhere, a hole that might offer a glimpse, perhaps of hope, that the poet calls Baghdad Blues.”
—Muhsin al-Musawi
Professor of Arabic Literature at Columbia University and Author of Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition and Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict