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Article: The politics and the poetics of Sa'di Yusuf: the use of the vernacular.(Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation)
- Article from:
- Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ)
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Association of Arab-American University Graduates. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When Irish poet seamus Justin Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, the Academy praised him for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday life and the living past" (Schlessinger 93).(1) Though having no power to grant a Nobel Prize, many critics, students of literature, and general readers have noted with fascination the magical power of Sa'di Yusuf's unassuming, short, and subtle poems that exalt the heroism and the epical perseverance of everyday life in the Arab World, particularly in Iraq where the very act of surviving with some form of dignity becomes in itself heroic. Yusuf's poetry since the early 1950s has become an epic ...