Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems
Born in 1934 in Basra, Iraq, Youssef has recently settled in London after a peripatetic adult existence. These poems drawn from his 30 books are organized by date and place of composition: Baghdad (1972-1979), Algeria (1980), Yemen (1981-1982), Beirut (1979- 1982), with later stops in Paris, Amman, Damascus, Berlin, Belgrade and Cairo. The poems work brilliantly through their differing times and places, pushing unflinching description through a steady determination to foment a more just world: "This watered wine/ awaits its moment,/ maybe in the lines of a song/ or in a narrow bed." Often, Youssef will address anonymous figures he comes across, creating a sense of fellowship and shared longings from the slightest of materials: "Think about it:/ Can we talk in a restaurant/ or find a river to dip our hands in?/ Or should we be content with breathing,/ or let ourselves be snuffed out with a question?" The Libyan-born Mattawa (Ismailia Eclipse) emigrated to the U.S. in 1979, and does an excellent job rendering the layered complexity of the poems. Mattawa's translations of Youssef's declarative iterations-"The room shivers/ from distant explosions./ The curtains shiver./ Then the heart shivers./ Why are you in the midst of all this shivering?"-create a center around which these poems move.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.