The contemporary Iraqi Poet, Sami Mahdi (b. 1941?), has published sixteen volumes of poetry since 1966. Although he is not canonized, he has a distinctive poetic voice. This paper focuses on Mahdi’s last two volumes of poetry, La Qamar Ba’d Haadha al-Masaa’ (No Moon after Tonight) (2008), and Abnaa’ Ininna (The Children of Ininna) (2009). The focal point of his poetic vision in these volumes shifted from an existentialist poetry, which is an expression of an individual consciousness in search of “authenticity” (as in his Asfaar Jadiidah (New Journeys) (1976) and al-As’ilah (The Questions) (1979)) to a poetry that deals with the traumas of the current war in his home country, Iraq. Two twin themes of a binary vision emerge in this poetry: first, resisting exile, and second, negotiating Iraqi Identity. The first secures continuity and prevents rupture in Iraqi cultural history, and the second reclaims and embraces the cultures and civilizations of ancient Iraq, Mesopotamia: Sumerian, Acadian, Assyrian and Babylonian. This paper merges two critical theories: Phenomenological Criticism of the Geneva School, especially that of Georges Poulet (e.g. in his book on Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Exploding Poetry). Mahdi’s poetry is viewed as an expression of an individual consciousness representing a unique vision which is epistemologically different from that of another poet. I “observe the writer’s perceiving mind to discover the patterns of perception embodied in his work, and to understand how patterns of perception coordinate with the formal patterns of the text” (Poulet). The other critical theory is essentially my own. I call it “Culturalist Theory,” a theory that pushes Phenomenological Criticism further to probe into the poet’s consciousness in order to discover the patterns of the creative engagement of his poetic vision with his culture. These patterns are amorphous, interpretive or critical culturalist poetics. Mahdi’s is interpretive. The paper concludes that Mahdi’s recent poetry is an “interpretive culturalist” poetry instigated by the traumas of the current war in his country, Iraq. The poet incorporates his culture in his vision, and engages with it to the point that it becomes part and parcel of his vision. He rejects exile from the homeland to avoid rupture with his cultural past and insure continuity with it, then reinterprets and redefines his Iraqi identity by enhancing it to include that cultural past.