The poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, a towering figure in Arabic poetry and one of the most important Iraqi literary voices, influenced generations of poets in the twentieth century and continues to do so today. His complete poetic works have been published in a revised and expanded edition of six volumes, overseen by a group of leading Arab writers and academics. The Diwan of al-Jawahiri, which includes his finest poems and most important collections, was published by the General Cultural Affairs House as part of its important anthology of Arabic poetry. Al-Jawahiri's poetry, with its beginnings and ends, spread its wings over the entire poetic century, the century of the founding of the Iraqi state. The history of the modern Iraqi state is woven into his collected works. In these six parts, the history of the Arabs in general, and the history of Iraq in particular, are present. Portraits of political and social figures are painted within it: kings and presidents, ministers and martyrs, religious authorities and dignitaries, thinkers and poets, novelists and scholars, friends and relatives, representatives and revolutionaries, sheikhs and merchants. States and cities, rivers and seas, battles and fighting, revolutions and uprisings, coups and national days, armies and delegations, passions and desires are described. He adds: “All of this comes within the well-known themes of Arabic poetry—praise and satire, love and elegy, and others—tinged with irony and biting criticism, flattery and sycophancy, pride and vanity, weakness and despair, the pains of exile and the joys of home, and the intensity of the struggle.” And submission; it is Al-Jawahiri’s “isthmus,” the gathering place of the restless soul and the wandering spirit, which Al-Jawahiri inhabited in the “verses” of his poems.