What Sparks Poetry: Philip Metres on "Qasida for Abdel Wahab Yousif"
"The qasida begins with human longing. The moderns didn’t invent it! It was in the human heart. This is the nasīb, which means 'fate,' the poet is in a nostalgic mood. Sometimes, pursuing the beloved, the poet will come upon the remains of a camp, the beloved’s caravan, causing a consideration of what has passed. If it begins with longing and its endless distances (thanks, Robert Hass), it doesn’t stay there, but rather moves into the trouble of the world." |
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"How do you say […]? The title of Fady Joudah’s new book of poems is made up of two square brackets enclosing an ellipsis, an image that suggests modification—someone else’s words swapped out for those of the writer or speaker—and omission. Printed in large font on the cover, it looks a bit like a hieroglyph (derived from a Greek word meaning “sacred carving”) or perhaps a sigil, a magical representation calling invisible things into the material world."
viaTHE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS |
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