This paper lays the groundwork for comparative study of Arabic and Persian poetic modernism, focusing on the work of modernist pioneers in Iraq and Iran. Though the modernist movements in each of these traditions share a number of features, including but not limited to innovations on the pre-modern system of Arabic prosody (ʿarūḍ) and a return to pre-Islamic myth—particularly myths of death and rebirth, there are no comprehensive comparative studies in English. By tracing modernist applications of death-rebirth myths through the poetry of the Iraqis Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and the Iranians Nīmā Yūshīj, Aḥmad Shāmlū, and Furūgh Farrukhzād, I make the case for a comparative analysis of Arabic and Persian modernisms. I link these poets’ development of form with the innovative content of their verse in order to show how, in each tradition, poetic modernism developed in the same way over the course of thirty years, from 1938-1968. As this paper is part of a larger project, I limit my analysis to these poets’ use of the Phoenix (quqnūs; al-ʿanqāʾ) and other bird imagery as a representation of their modernist vision. Beginning with Nīmā Yūshīj's 1938 poem “Quqnūs” (“The Phoenix”), I highlight the centrality of rebirth myths in Arabic and Persian modernist projects and in poetic modernism more generally. I then look to Nīmā's use of birds in a number of later poems as a central feature of his poetics. Continuing on to the later Arabic and Persian tradition, I analyze al-Sayyāb and al-Bayātī's incorporation of the Phoenix into their poetic projects, which they elaborated during a time of political upheaval in their home country of Iraq. I then return to Iran and Shāmlū's 1967 collection Quqnūs dar bārān (“Phoenix in the Rain”) to explore the further development of mythic themes following Nīmā. I continue this exploration in the poetry of Farrukhzād's later period, when she too found inspiration in myths of rebirth and bird imagery in particular. By tracing the presence of the Phoenix and other rebirth myths in these poets' works, I lay the groundwork for further comparative study of Iraqi and Iranian poetry in terms of both form (in their parallel developments of the ʿarūḍ system) and content (rebirth myths like that of the Phoenix serving as one of the central themes in either tradition).