Seagull Books, paperback
Translated by the poet
Publication Date: October 4th, 2023
Publisher Marketing: A chilling poetic reflection on the world we have inherited and the destructions that made it. To confront time, pre-modern Arabic poems often began with the poet standing before the ruins, real and imagined, of a beloved's home. In Postcards from the Underworld, Sinan Antoon works in that tradition, observing the detritus of his home city, Baghdad, where he survived two wars--the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 and the First Gulf War of 1991--and which, after he left, he watched from afar being attacked during the US invasion in 2003. Violence is the source of creation in Antoon's poems, and nature, he shows us, is inundated with death. He is too grim to dream of renewal; the desolation he paints is so complete that death itself trespasses life and mothers weave shrouds for dead men still in their wombs. Composed in Arabic and translated into English by the poet himself, Postcards from the Underworld is a searing meditation on the destruction of humans, habitats, and homes.
