Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab Complete poetic works

Author's name: Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab Publisher: Al-Rafidain for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2020 Literary classification: Poetry Book overview: Badr's poetic experience is unique and complex, and it gathers contradictory dualities… It has its dimensions, first represented by Badr's mental suffering, which is based on imagining things mentally, as in the world there are two sides, the absolute and the reality, love and death, the incident and the myth, and life is always a struggle between two poles. This is what appears in his poetry. Second, multiculturalism; Badr drew from different cultures, reading Arabic literature, Russian literature, and English language literature, and he embodied the opinions of the greatest Arab, English, and American poets. Third, diversity of social conditions. Badr grew up in a rural peasant environment, raised on its values and traditions, and moved to the city as a poor student. In the first stage, he was a Communist student and disagreed with the Communists, aligning with the Arab nationalists… and he was subjected to persecution… but he was connected to the countryside, its values, and its traditions, and he admired classical Arab heritage, as well as English literature at the same time… For all this, Badr's poetry combined some of the features of modern poetry and some of traditional poetry, and it reflected the rural popular spirit, as well as the spirit of an educated person imbued with liberal ideals from the intellectuals of developing countries. As a result, Badr's poetry was characterized by features and traits that reflected all of that. Ansi Al-Haj said about Badr that he was: “A tribal, folkloric, mythical, Anglo-Saxon, realistic, mournful, poetic, crying, flowing with the poetry of a wild inspiration, flowing with it until death.” And this is the most wonderful caricature-like depiction of Badr… Let’s turn the pages of his Diwan… and go with it between the lines… between the meanings far away… and his poems flow and flow until they fade away… and they expand instead of deepening… and their core becomes a circle… separated by his flowing poetic spirit… so Badr’s poem comes like a storm… its center moves… without its shards scattering.