Two Poems for Truth by Ammiel Alcalay

14 March, 2021

 


Jamal Khashoggi by  Daniel Baxter , 2018 (courtesy of the artist).<

Jamal Khashoggi by Daniel Baxter, 2018 (courtesy of the artist).

from the ongoing series, Imperial Abhorrences (& Other Abominations)

 

 Ammiel Alcalay

 

                               Kashoggi or Kashog-ji?

 

From an American perspective
perhaps the most notable thing

about the case of the Saudi
journalist was that for two

straight days, no matter
where you turned, from

NPR to Fox or CNN
they all pronounced

his name Kashog-ji—
it was as if the NSA

had installed a
pronunciation

chip into the
collective

mind of
the MSM


Translation theory

  

Maybe some of these people who
think they can translate Hafez or
Rumi freely without even knowing
the language ought to try working
GITMO, like my friend Khaled,
where he couldn’t say a word
someone else hadn’t already said

<

 

Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s over 20 books include After Jews and Arabs, Memories of Our Future, a little history, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters, as well as CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books. His co-translation of Palestinian poet Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, is due out in early 2025. He received an American Book Award in for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost &amp; Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

GuantánamoHafezJamal Khashoggimainstream mediaNSARumi

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