Contributor

Sargon Boulus

Contributor

Sargon Boulus

Iraq

Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus (1944–2007) remains one of the Arab world’s best-known and influential contemporary poets. Born into an Iraqi Assyrian family and growing up in Al-Habbaniyah, Kirkuk, and Baghdad, he started publishing his own work in 1961, in the ground-breaking Shi’r [Poetry] magazine in Beirut....

After settling in San Francisco in the late 1960s, he began translating most of the major English-language modern poets, and many others, into Arabic, and dedicated his life to reading, writing, and translating poetry. He died in Berlin in October 2007.

Music in a Baghdad Alley

By Sargon Boulus

If you wish to sleep with me / In her dirt-filled arms

Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon

In Saadi Shirazi’s Garden (When He Was a Prisoner)

By Sargon Boulus

With my lips I can read / better than a blind man

Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon

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Sargon Boulus

Sargon Boulus

Articles by Sargon Boulus

Music in a Baghdad Alley

In Saadi Shirazi’s Garden (When He Was a Prisoner)