Published Poetry Collections
About Author's Poetry
In his poetry, Saidi engages themes of love, faith, and the cyclical nature of history. His debut collection, Art in the City (2008), won the Poetry Society of Texas’s Eakin Memorial Book Publication Award. He is the author of the poetry collections The Color of Faith (2010) and Between A and Z (2014) and the short story collection The Garden of Milk and Wine (2012). His poetry has been featured in former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Saidi also cofounded the literary journal Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Poetry & Arts Magazine.
Saidi completed his medical fellowship in gynecology/oncology at the University of Texas at San Antonio and in 1986 founded an OB/GYN group practice in San Antonio, Texas. With Carla M. Zainie, he coauthored Female Sterilization: A Handbook for Women (1979). He lives in San Antonio.
From Poetry Foundation www.poetryfoundation.org
Poetry Foundation Publications:
At the Western Wall*
for Bill & Anne
I love you, God,
and I know you can do anything.
I pray and beg for mercy.
Please save my children
make them saints of God.
Oh, almighty God
please do something about my spouse.
Help him recover his bright mind
regain his humor, become active again
make him a saint of God.
Oh, my loving God, be kind to my daughter.
Her fiancé returned from a bloody war
impaired from the roadside bomb.
Please restore his body. Enable him
to walk, make him a saint of God.
God, I’m lonely and irrelevant
and confused―I long for love.
Please redeem my sanity
and award me happiness.
Make me a saint of God.
*Winner of the Iowa Poetry Society’s Annual Poetry Contest
Samuel’s Tears
Yesterday, my father disappeared into the woods
he hated the long journey through frozen prairies.
Our dwelling was charred by white men.
The flames entered my mother’s chest
she was too frail and couldn’t walk anymore.
My uncle pulled on my hand; the road was frozen
he said, “We are going to hunt buffalo.”
They planted Mom under the snow
she would grow and become an oak tree.
My father would climb it and would see me
hunting buffalo. My uncle can’t walk anymore.
He falls face down and disappears under
the cavalry horses. He will grow into a tree, too
he will see me hunting buffalo.
San Antonio Poet's Association First Place Winner
We Are Poets
A significant number of immigrants who have come
here to enjoy life and liberty and to pursue happiness
are not driving taxis: there in New York or here
in San Antonio. Some have become physicians,
some writers, and a very few poets:
Yes! “We think, therefore we live”
“we dream; therefore we exist.” Recalling our past,
we take our first step. Some cherish Rumi
and Khayam, and many read Shakespeare.
We search and struggle to find the right words
to describe our thoughts; and because
our vocabulary is small, we use dictionaries
and study words; we read our lines out loud,
albeit corrupted with accent; we write and rewrite;
we are perpetual students going to the academy ---
to the university without walls – to learn,
like engineers, how to construct lines.
We rehearse our verses aloud,
We hum and produce rhythm and rhyme.
In the end, when many hours have gone by,
like Buddhist monks
we blow away the light words and
what remains are only a few meaningful lines,
refined ideas, and a few poems:
the crux of our being, the heart of our mind.
Poetry Society of Texas First Place Annual Manuscript Winner 2007
Poetry Society of Texas Legacy Video featuring Mo H. Saidi:
