"The first new poems I've liked for years . . .Unpredictable, savage, chaotic. There is something of Zbigniew Herbert in them, clever, abstract, musing stuff, but they are this year's model, an 'upgrade, ' as we would say, with terrifying bleakness in place of his periodic geniality." --Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement
"Mersal doesn't offer herself as a representative of her country, culture, or religion, and her feminism manifests not as a creed but as a tone, a disposition toward life and love. Her voice is so inviting, so familiar, so confiding that it's even easy to forget that these are translations: Creswell renders her as a perfect contemporary . . . To read The Threshold is to be heartened by poem after poem that exhibits the whole woman--heart and mind, candor and cunning." --Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books
"This selection, drawn from [Mersal's] first four books and nimbly translated from the Arabic, showcases the sweet, tough verve of her voice." --The New York Times Book Review
"Mersal's poems are many things--sensuous, cerebral, intimate, angry and disorientating. They provide food for thought and elicit laughter in the dark . . . [The Threshold is] a perfect entry point for readers new to her work." --Malcolm Forbes, The National
"Ravishing . . . Mersal's poems read like short stories; they are spare but resonant, full of charming misfits, and governed by chance." --Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, 4Columns
"Mersal's work is unafraid of its own promontories and edges . . . the poems read like missives of faith addressed to a shadowy, mirrored world of choices unmade and lives unlived, now assuming the force of a haunting." --Alex Tan, Asymptote
"In a voice both fluid and laser-focused, fierce and tenuous, unflinching and vulnerable, [Mersal] hews a path that is post-Arab-modernist, unsettling certainties about the ground from which an individual sees and speaks . . . The individual poems, and the collection itself, reflect Mersal's compassionate and ruthless exploration of a complicated journey through contemporary history and troubled geographies." --Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., Book Page
"The publication of Iman Mersal's The Threshold is a major literary event. Long recognized throughout the Arab world and in Europe, Mersal is one of the strongest confessional (or postconfessional) poets we now have, in any language: her poems are fueled by a mordant wit, sensual vibrancy, and feminist brio. Impatient with pieties--whether political, erotic, or poetic--she writes, like Louise Glueck, with emotional intensity and analytic coolness. This is poetry of earned and perfect pitch: the notations of an impassioned mind. I read The Threshold straight through; it will become a permanent companion." --Maureen N. McLane, author of More Anon
"Undeceived, ironic, daring, Iman Mersal's poems are animated by a singular sensibility. They deal candidly with real life--migration, dying parents, emotional entanglements--and discover general truths among the fine particulars. Robyn Creswell's translation is deft and subtle, and the Anglophone world is lucky to have it." --Nick Laird, author of Feel Free
