Nostalgia, My Enemy by سعدي يوسف

Nostalgia, My Enemy Reviews

• 
  Mesut Bostancı

  I often get weirded out by the imagery in modern Arabic poetry. The stuff that gets pushed out there in anthologies and in the other places where I've have limited access to it, comes off like weird overblown high-school-girl imagery. Just take a look at a grave for New York by Adonis (although, to be fair, how can we ever know how much he was channelling Lorca in New York, which would pretty much let him off the hook.) I know this is my own fault for not looking deeper. But what you get usually is lazy literal translations of Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish. Stuff like this:
  
  On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
  
  Come on, tell me that doesn't sound like an 8th grader with black painted fingernails wrote that. I've only recently conceded that there is great touching Alltäglichkeit evoking Arabic poetry in reading Youssef Rakha's translations of Sargon Boulus. So this collection of Saadi Youssef's work came at a perfect time. It's beautiful. It's imagery is wild and uses bizarre archetypes but because the translation is able to place them in amongst the everyday feelings of quiet private poetry, it's authentic. Take this section from a poem describing his longing for Iraq:
  يا ما كنتُ آمُـلُ أن أرى وجه العراقِ ضحىً
  
  وأنْ أُرخي ضفائرَه المياهَ عليّ ،
  
  أنْ أُرضي عرائسَ مائهِ بالدمع مِـلْـحاً
  I so hoped to see Iraq’s face in the morning. To loosen water’s braids over me. To satisfy its mermaids with salty tears.
  
  Mermaids?!?! Yeah, mermaids. It's cool. It fits. It makes sense. And it's because the translation team of Sinan Antoon & Peter Money are so delicate with the imagery that they can make it fit. I thought a lot while reading these poems about Youssef's exile in England, and the influence of place on the imagery. Take the word mermaid for example. It immediately brings to my mind as a reader in America all of the Americana portrayals of mermaids. I just read a graphic novel about mermaids and steamboats on the Hudson in the 1800's and the image from the book was what I immediately thought of. But what does a mermaid look like to an Iraqi from Basra? Something more mythological and austere? A woodblock print from the Galland edition of 1001 night? Something from a novel by Jurji Zaydan (I'm not sure if he ever wrote about corsairs in the Gulf, I may be confusing him with Abdul Aziz al-Mahmoud)? Or would British literature have flooded Basra in the 40's when Youssef was growing up and flavored his imagination as per mermaids? This one image, this visual point de capiton, you see it's all very serious when you be so bold as to translate poetry. I mean, they could have even translated it literally as brides of the sea.
  But with all of these challenges, the translators pull off a book of poems that gives you perfectly Saadi Youssef, an isolated irrelevant (I only mean in the political sense, by which I only mean in the communist nostalgia sense) poet watching it rain outside his house in England.
• 
  Antonio Delgado

  There is a determinism related to where one is born. Youssef struggles to defy his self from his born condition. He does it in his travels’ experiences, in other’s eyes, and throughout similar experiences. But he does it to distance himself from politics and religious determinism. However, Montaigne is right when states that one cannot fully escape or detach from one’s past, or as Youssef adds, from one’s present and the inevitable days to come.
• 
  N

  Honestly it doesn't seem to rate this. Poetry in translation is super tricky because a lot of the beauty of poetry comes from the play with language, from the sly witticisms, and from the knowing of what words say what and how. A lot of the beauty of Youssef's poetry is lost in translation--to the point that they were simply words on a page, adrift with nuance and context.
• 
  Valarie

  I was excited to win this book as it combines two things I love independently – poetry and Middle Eastern culture.
  
  The majority of the poems are short (one pagers), which is my preferred length.
  
  Like any poetry collection, some of the poems are better than others - some absolutely wowed me, while others left me disappointed. Of course keep in mind this collection was translated from Arabic (a very poetic language), so despite how skilled the translators may be, it’s likely there were nuances lost in translation.
  
  What Saadi Youssef excels at is describing the beauty in seemingly simple observations – a spiderweb, peeling paint on a ceiling, a boat on the shore, a bee landing on his shirt, a homeless man feeding a squirrel. Convincing the reader of that beauty is really what makes a poet successful. Although not every poem affected me in this way, there were enough to convince me that Saadi Youssef is indeed a significant voice.
  
  Other standouts:
  • The title poem, Oh Nostalgia: My Enemy
  • Making Love
  • Listening
  
  
  
• 
  lisa

  Saadi Youssef is a powerful writer. Born in iraq, he now lives in London. His words convey the longing and pain of a man exiled form his homeland, hungry for peace, brokenhearted over the conditions of his people.
  His words are the words of a man who is able to tenderly articulate an ache, words that will make you wonder what is in the mind of the next quiet man you see across from you on the subway. He also writes of the beauty in the light, the bird's wing, the movement of water.
  
  I was very happy to receive a copy of this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway; what I read was an uncorrected proof. (Since I am beginning to learn Arabic, I admit to a slight disappointment when I realized that the volume did not include the Arabic text. I look forward, one day after much study, to reading his words in Arabic.)
• 
  David Williams

  A beautifully constructed collection. By turns serene and haunting, these poems are dense with image and emotion (as poems are wont to be, no?). One can feel the stagnation of life in 'Still Life', longing in 'O Nostalgia: My Enemy', and the frustration of recapitulation, repetition and routine in 'The Concerns of a Man, 2000 B.C.'. I had some ire-induced reflux while reading 'The Wretched of the Heavens'.
  While I have quite a rocky history with poetry (I am partial to prose) I do like to think I can at least spot a "good" poem when it smacks me in the face; I believe this little book has hit me about the brow so many times that I will be red for a week.
  
  Book received for free through Goodreads First Reads.
• 
  Erdahs

  Won as part of the Goodreads first reads program.
  
  Poetry is a particularly subjective art-form. Either you connect with it, or you don't. I wanted to like this collection, but ultimately it left me feeling cold. There was nothing that particularly spoke to me, no poems I'll feel compelled to return to. I do not expect that this will be the case for everyone however. Writing poetry is an intensely personal experience, so is reading it. I believe there are people out there to whom this collection will speak strongly. I simply wasn't one of them.
• 
  Matthew Metzdorf

  I won this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.
  
  Didn't know anything about this poet, but was very excited to win this book, and even more excited when I discovered that it was from Graywolf Press! This is an excellent book of poetry from a poet in exile, remembering with sadness the place that was--now overrun by war and tyranny and death squads. Often lyrical and sad, but above all important because of the fresh perspective and unique voice of Mr. Youssef.
  
  Thanks for the book Graywolf!
• 
  Zarín

  To say the imagery in this book is beautiful, or that it is moving is not enough. Go read Saadi Youssef's words. Iraq as he knew is long gone, Iraq as friends knew a decade ago is gone, but there is still that love and that longing only people who are forced from home can really feel and understand. It is not an overtly emotional book of poetry, but the resilience of humanity very prevalent in almost every page.
• 
  Hugo Rios-Cordero

  Me gusto el tema de la perdida que se plantea Youssef y si bien en su caso se refiere a su patria me parece que esta patria no es tanto un concepto politico sino algo muy personal mas allá de las fronteras.
• 
  Darren Mitton

  I would only waste words attempting to describe the beauty (and sadness) in this book of verse. I highly recommend it!
• 
  Connie Black

  enjoyed the majority of them, but some I just couldnt finish.