By: Ghassan Zaqtan, Fady Joudah (Transcribed by)

Hardcover

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In this inspired translation of Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, Ghassan Zaqtan's tenth and most recent poetry collection, along with selected earlier poems, Fady Joudah brings to English-language readers the best workÿby one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. With these poems Zaqtan enters new terrain, illuminating the vision of what Arabic poetry in general and Palestinian poetry in particular are capable of. Departing from the lush aesthetics of such celebrated predecessors as Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis, Zaqtan's daily, delicate narrative, whirling catalogues,ÿand at times austere aesthetics represent a new trajectory, a significant leap for young Arabic poets today.

In his preface to the volume, Joudah analyzes and explores the poet's body of work. "Ghassan Zaqtan's poems, in their constant unfolding," Joudah writes, "invite us to enter them, exit them, map and unmap them, code and decode them, fill them up and empty them, with the living and nonliving, the animate and inanimate, toward a true freedom."

"In "Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, " [translator] Joudah seamlessly laces the poems together into one fragile assemblage in which themes and images emerge, fade, only to reemerge. No theme is more prevalent and so tightly stitched into the fabric of Zaqtan's poetry than death. Zaqtan's obsession with death is the foundation from which life is fostered."--Dina Omar, "Warscapes"
--Dina Omar "Warscapes "

ISBN: 9780300173161
ISBN-10: 0300173164
Series: Margellos World Republic of Letters
Audience: General
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 144
Published: 24th April 2012
Dimensions (cm): 21.0 x 16.2  x 1.744
Weight (kg): 0.294