By Reuven Snir, Abdul Kader El Janabi, Roger Allen
ISBN-10: 0674726480
ISBN-13: 9780674726482
Baghdad: the town in Verse captures the essence of lifestyles lived in a single of the world's nice enduring metropolises. during this strange anthology, Reuven Snir bargains unique translations of greater than a hundred and seventy Arabic poems--most of them showing for the 1st time in English--which signify a cross-section of genres and kinds from the time of Baghdad's founding within the 8th century to the current day. the range of the fabled urban is mirrored within the Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, Kurdish, and Jewish poets featured right here, together with writers of significant renown and others whose paintings has survived yet whose names are misplaced to history.
Through the prism of those poems, readers glimpse many various Baghdads: the town outfitted on historical Sumerian ruins, the epicenter of Arab tradition and Islam's Golden Age lower than the enlightened rule of Harun al-Rashid, the bombed-out capital of Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, the yank career, and existence in a brand new yet risky Iraq. With poets as our publications, we stopover at bazaars, gardens, wine events, love scenes (worldly and mystical), brothels, prisons, and palaces. Startling contrasts turn out to be the daily cacophony of city lifestyles is juxtaposed with everlasting cycles of the Tigris, and hellish winds, mosquitoes, rain, floods, snow, and earthquakes are observed by means of somber reflections on invasions and different catastrophes.
Documenting the city's 1,250-year historical past, Baghdad: the town in Verse shows why poetry has been aptly known as the general public sign up of the Arabs.