Authors: Mahmoud Darwish
ISBN-13: 9780520237544, ISBN-10: 0520237544
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of California Press
Date Published: January 2003
Edition: 1st Edition
Mahmoud Darwish is the author of twenty books of poems, including Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (California, 1995), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), and Psalms (1994). He received the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. Munir Akash is editor of Jusoor, The Arab American Journal of Cultural Exchange, and coeditor of The Adam of Two Edens (2001) and Post Gibran: Anthropology of New Arab American Writing (2000). Carolyn Forché is Professor of English at George Mason University and author of The Angel of History (1994). Sinan Antoon is coeditor of Arab Studies Journal. Amira El-Zein is the author of Bedouin of Hell (1992) and The Book of Palm Trees (1973).
"These translations of Mahmoud Darwish's marvelous poems reveal the lifelong development of a major world poet. The book is a gift to other poets and lovers of poetry. It's also an important contribution to current and future discourse on culture and politics."Adrienne Rich, author of Fox: Poems, 1996-2000
"At this critical moment in world relations, cultural, creative projects feel more necessary than ever. Celebrate this most comprehensive gathering of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry ever translated into English. Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people, and the collaboration between translators Akash and Forché is a fine mingling of extraordinary talents. The style here is quintessential Darwishlyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegantand never anything less than freewhat he would dream for all his people."Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Fuel
As the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has observed, Palestine is a metaphor for the loss of Eden, for the sorrows of dispossession and exile, for the declining power of the Arab world in its dealings with the West. Mr. Darwish, who is widely considered the Palestinian national poet, has developed this metaphor to richly lyrical effect . . . . Like Yehuda Amichai, the Israeli poet he read in Hebrew as a young man, Mr. Darwish has given expression to his people's ordinary longings and desires.
Acknowledgments | ||
Introduction | ||
I Will Slog over This Road | 3 | |
Another Road in the Road | 4 | |
Were it Up to Me to Begin Again | 5 | |
On This Earth | 6 | |
I Belong There | 7 | |
Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place | 8 | |
Earth Presses against Us | 9 | |
We Journey towards a Home | 10 | |
We Travel Like All People | 11 | |
Athens Airport | 12 | |
I Talk Too Much | 13 | |
We Have the Right to Love Autumn | 14 | |
The Last Train Has Stopped | 15 | |
On the Slope, Higher Than the Sea, They Slept | 16 | |
He Embraces His Murderer | 17 | |
Winds Shift against Us | 18 | |
Neighing on the Slope | 19 | |
Other Barbarians Will Come | 20 | |
They Would Love to See Me Dead | 21 | |
When the Martyrs Go to Sleep | 22 | |
The Night There | 23 | |
We Went to Aden | 24 | |
Another Damascus in Damascus | 25 | |
The Flute Cried | 26 | |
In This Hymn | 27 | |
The Hoopoe | 31 | |
I See My Ghost Coming from Afar | 55 | |
A Cloud in My Hands | 58 | |
The Kindhearted Villagers | 61 | |
The Owl's Night | 63 | |
The Everlasting Indian Fig | 65 | |
The Lute of Ismael | 67 | |
The Strangers' Picnic | 71 | |
The Raven's Ink | 74 | |
Like the Letter "N" in the Qur'an | 77 | |
Ivory Combs | 79 | |
The Death of the Phoenix | 82 | |
Poetic Regulations | 85 | |
Excerpts from the Byzantine Odes of Abu Firas | 87 | |
The Dreamers Pass from One Sky to Another | 89 | |
A Rhyme for the Odes (Mu'allaqat) | 91 | |
Night That Overflows My Body | 94 | |
The Gypsy Woman Has a Tame Sky | 96 | |
We Were without a Present | 101 | |
Sonnet II | 105 | |
The Stranger Finds Himself in the Stranger | 106 | |
The Land of the Stranger, the Serene Land | 108 | |
Inanna's Milk | 110 | |
Who Am I, without Exile? | 113 | |
Lesson from the Kama Sutra | 115 | |
Mural | 119 | |
A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips | 165 | |
As Fate Would Have it | 169 | |
Four Personal Addresses | 179 | |
Glossary | 183 |