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.  Antoon†s poems confront violence and force us not to look away as he traces death†s haunting presence in the world. Nature offers consolation, and flowers and butterflies are the poet†s interlocutors, but they too cannot escape ruin. 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.
Biografie
Sinan Antoon, geboren 1967 als Sohn eines irakischen Vaters und einer amerikanischen Mutter, studierte englische und arabische Literatur sowie Arabistik. Lebt seit 1991 in den USA. Er veröffentlichte Gedichte und Essays auf Arabisch und Englisch in Zeitschriften der arabischen Welt, ausserdem die Gedichtsammlung "The Baghdad Blues". Daneben ist er als Übersetzer und Dokumentarfilmer ("About Baghdad") sowie als Assistenzprofessor an der New York University tätig. 2008/09 ist Antoon Fellow am Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
