{"id":35947,"date":"2025-01-24T14:22:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T12:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=35947"},"modified":"2025-08-19T15:42:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:42:13","slug":"no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/","title":{"rendered":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had intended my poetry to be a kind of salvation for me in my confrontation with the onslaught of a perpetually antagonistic world. When this confrontation failed, I tried convincing myself that surrendering to the world \u2014 being a scrap of paper floating downriver \u2014 was the only salvation available to me. But this proved impossible, too. \u2014Wadih Saadeh<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Horse at the Door<\/span><\/i>, poems <\/span>by <\/span>Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger
\nTenement Press<\/a>\u00a02024
\nISBN 9781917304023<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Alex Tan<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is a famous image of the Lebanese-Australian poet Wadih Saadeh selling his handwritten poems on Hamra Street in pre-civil war Beirut \u2014 what he calls, in an autobiographical prose poem, the \u201crefuge\u201d of \u201call the Arab dreams\u201d of the time. He sits cross-legged with a book spread open on his lap, turning an unconcerned glance toward the camera. Beside him lie stacks of his work, with a sign that reads: \u201cThe door of poetry has opened.\u201d Huda Fakhreddine, in <\/span>The Arabic Prose Poem<\/span><\/i>, begins her chapter on Saadeh with this anecdote to outline the unmediated relation that the poet sought with his readers, sidestepping traditional networks of publishing and marketing. Even today, Saadeh continues to make his poetry freely available on his Facebook page.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A Horse at the Door<\/em> is published by Tenement Press<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That openness might be surprising for a writer of his stature \u2014 Mahmoud Darwish called Saadeh\u2019s <\/span>Because of a Cloud, Most Probably<\/span><\/i> \u201cone of the most important collections of poetry\u201d he had read in recent years, and <\/span>Youssef Rakha<\/span><\/a> termed him \u201cvery arguably the greatest living Arabic poet.\u201d But his lack of ostentation makes perfect sense \u2014 and indeed appears all the more admirable \u2014 when juxtaposed with his writing, which is distinguished by its indifference toward the earthly and the ornamental, and by its restless refusal of fixity. Life and art correspond with a rare closeness: before settling in Australia as an \u00e9migr\u00e9, his life was one of perpetual wandering, through such cities as Beirut, Paris, London, and Nicosia. Even in the history of Arabic prose poetry, in which Saadeh occupies an essential place, he represents something of an outsider. In the fifties and sixties, his contemporaries Adonis and Unsi al-Hajj were penning oppositional treatises that self-consciously deviated from a tradition of sedimented poetic form \u2014 governed by fixed rules of meter and mono-rhyme that had remained virtually unchanged since their origination in the pre-Islamic era. Unlike them, Saadeh preferred to write as if unbound by that weight \u2014 as if already free. In this, he heeded the advice of his friend, the influential Iraqi poet Sargon Boulos, who once <\/span>wrote to him in a letter<\/span><\/a>, \u201cDon\u2019t be an intellectual who accumulates masks and reads famous writers (\u2026) Have you ever thought for a moment how amusing it is to \u2018be\u2019 something?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Given Saadeh\u2019s eminence in the Arabophone world, Tenement Press\u2019s publication of <\/span>A Horse at the Door<\/span><\/i> is long overdue. Ranged in this collection \u2014 or \u201cchronology,\u201d as the cover would have it \u2014 are intricately curated selections from Saadeh\u2019s three-decade-long oeuvre. Translated with exquisite attention by Robin Moger, whose grasp of a writer\u2019s idiom is always exceptionally attuned, the poems offer us glimpses into a mind whose preoccupations dwell in the evanescent and the gestural. They are a mix of brief, orphic riddles and protracted, meditative meanderings; through them Saadeh elaborates an iconographic universe all his own. The book is beautiful, too, as an object; several of the longer poems \u2014 including the famed \u201cSeat of a Passenger Who Left the Bus,\u201d which Youssef Rakha compares to Allen Ginsberg\u2019s \u201cHowl\u201d<\/span> \u2014 are typeset vertically, the words rising like smoke from the ground to the sky. The reader must rotate the book 90 degrees, effecting a shift in orientation for the lines to be legible, almost as if floating through a dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read in isolation, his shorter vignettes \u2014 often spanning no more than a handful of lines \u2014 appear as gnomic parables. Personas, almost always male, are seized in the midst of sitting on porches, departing from houses, clipping a sunbeam. Often, they are dead, awaiting discovery, \u201cvivid with blood and dust,\u201d yet somehow retaining a sentient alertness to the world. In Saadeh\u2019s metaphysics, it seems, death represents but a threshold, an entrance into another realm. It has a basis, perhaps, in Saadeh\u2019s own experience; when he was fourteen, he lost his father to a house fire, witnessing the charred corpse being borne away by mourners. \u201cToo young to lift the dead, I bore him, as they carried him, in my eyes,\u201d he writes. Is it guilt that compels the poet to return, later in life, to the wound of an originary trauma, and to death writ large? One narrator measures his own mortification: \u201cI am dead enough and I have the time to weave dreams. Dead enough to devise the life I want.\u201d A different kind of speaking becomes possible from beyond the grave, a roomy vantage point from which life itself, in all its incompletion, might be approached as the illusion it really is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps Saadeh\u2019s body of work sublimates, in textual form, the law of conservation: nothing can be created or destroyed, only rearranged in space and transfigured in shape. Bodies and objects in <\/span>A Horse at the Door<\/span><\/i>, susceptible to perpetual metamorphosis, manifest a primordial continuity with the natural world. A palm holding salt might have been an ocean in the past, its materiality mapped onto a more boundless geography. A man who touches a shoot he\u2019s planted has \u201csap run from his hand into its veins\u201d; \u201cleaves went from his eyes onto its branches,\u201d as if the act of care for another being has wrought a transformation of his substance into vegetable matter. Someone who drowns \u201cbecame a cloud\u201d and \u201cfell in drops,\u201d so that swimmers now \u201cswim in him.\u201d Indeed, many of the poems forge, from this enmeshment of past lives and reincarnations, an argument against being reckless or callous with the things in our proximity, lest they harbor the atoms of a beloved. Addressing himself as \u201cWadih,\u201d Saadeh issues injunctions to \u201cthrow nothing away (\u2026) The thing you throw may be a friend who wants to stay, may be a mouth that longs to speak with you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That shift from \u201ca friend\u201d to \u201ca mouth,\u201d from the whole to the part, enacts a disclosure of truth in the movement towards metonymy. <\/span>Clairvoyant of the small <\/span><\/i>\u2014 the epithet that W.G. Sebald lent to Swiss modernist Robert Walser \u2014 might be Saadeh\u2019s title. It is characteristic of his outlook that the fragmented, the minute, and the fallen refract something much more profound and integral than might any fantasy of prelapsarian unity. Entirety, as such, divulges itself most lucidly in its very disintegration, as in \u201cSomeone in the Ashes\u201d: \u201cAs they burned the body \/ he saw him, all of him, in the smoke (\u2026) and when those ashes had been a body \/ he had seen nothing.\u201d Loss becomes a precondition for vision. And this totality, fugitively apprehended, is not just a corporeal likeness \u2014 a Celanian assemblage of \u201ca hand, a mouth, an eye\u201d \u2014 but also an abbreviated biography, a life flashing before the eyes: from \u201cbeing born from his mother\u2019s womb\u201d to \u201chis figure lost \/ amid the laborers stampeding through the streets.\u201d If there is a revolutionary undertow to Saadeh\u2019s writing, it surges in snatches of memory and desire, indistinctly conjured.<\/span><\/p>\n

How poignant, too, that insight into a spontaneous formation of collectivity arises behind a smokescreen, emanating from the evaporation of flesh. Smoke \u2014 that most obfuscating of elements \u2014 turns into a privileged medium of clarity. It is precisely this gesture of Saadeh\u2019s that testifies to the dialectical inversions structuring his cosmology. Alongside smoke, dust, clouds, soil, and other amalgamations of particulate matter are elevated; in their fragility, their tendency toward dissipation, he locates a kind of endurance. \u201cFor me to be present in life, I must first be present in death,\u201d he once said in an <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a>. Shadows linger, ironically, as inscriptions of permanence, persisting beyond the departure of their person. Marilynne Robinson\u2019s sublime and melancholy <\/span>Housekeeping<\/span><\/i>, with its fixation on abandonment, comes to mind: \u201cBut if she lost me, I would become extraordinary by my vanishing.\u201d Such a philosophy of eternal passage marks, for the poet, a way to mourn and to hold on. It is, more fundamentally, a disavowal of the trappings that coordinate one\u2019s personhood within a matrix of worldly recognition: Saadeh\u2019s figures tend to be stripped of property and possession, name and nationhood, wandering without end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Robin Moger\u2019s perceptiveness toward Saadeh\u2019s dialectics is everywhere apparent in his acutely rendered translations, but one luminous moment shines through. From the poem \u201cOf Dust\u201d: \u201cThe earth is nothing like us. It is our antithesis; we are its debris.\u201d The original Arabic reads:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u0645\u0627 \u0643\u0627\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0631\u0636 \u0644\u0627 \u064a\u0634\u0628\u0647\u0646\u0627. \u0625\u0646\u0647 \u0646\u0642\u064a\u0636\u0646\u0627 \u0648\u0646\u062d\u0646 \u0623\u0646\u0642\u0627\u0636\u0647.<\/span><\/p>\n

The combination of <\/span>naq\u012b\u1e0d<\/span><\/i> (\u201cantithesis\u201d) and <\/span>anq\u0101\u1e0d<\/span><\/i> (\u201cdebris\u201d) in the same line recalls the paronomasia of classical Arabic poetry, in which words derived from the same root, sometimes with vastly differing meanings, are trotted out in proximity to one another. Here, <\/span>naq\u012b\u1e0d<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>anq\u0101\u1e0d<\/span><\/i> stem from the trilateral root <\/span>nq\u1e0d<\/span><\/i>, which carries the sense of destroying, annulling, and undoing. Moger has cleverly preserved the typographical rhyme by selecting the pair \u201cantithesis\u201d and \u201cdebris,\u201d even as the silent \u201cs\u201d at the end of \u201cdebris\u201d gives the lie to that sonic affinity, breaking the pact of association. Fractured between eye and ear, Moger\u2019s English undoes itself, almost like a metaphor for Saadeh\u2019s wider project.<\/span><\/p>\n

While much of Saadeh\u2019s oeuvre seems haloed by an air of universality \u2014 his later work, in particular, reads like thought experiments, staging grounds for distilled aphorisms and propositions \u2014 it is not without a politics. Sometimes, it is by means of these wavering images, hovering on the fringe of unreality, that the poems articulate a feeling of haunting unrest. In the longer poem, \u201cDead Moments,\u201d massing clouds are likened to \u201cthe breath of the migrants\u201d while horrific massacres rage on outside. Seldom does war enter directly into Saadeh\u2019s poetry, but here it is suffocatingly close; the names of the dead and wounded are enumerated on the radio, the specters of deceased friends hang on the windowpane, and dismembered limbs are scattered on the streets. As the first-person speaker wonders at his own intact body, unable to fathom his survival, the rest of the collection \u2014 with its proliferation of disembodied organs and wholenesses undone \u2014 is thrown into relief.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each subsequent attempt at reconstitution trails behind the literality of the carnage, the enormity of impossible mourning. \u201cHow great the span from rib to rib,\u201d one speaker laments, failing to congeal a friend dissolved in the water; another nameless being, whose pieces are scattered everywhere, tries \u201cin vain to gather his parts together.\u201d Through their splintering and damage, these creatures constitute a symptom of history\u2019s failures. \u201cWe walk carrying our bodies,\u201d writes Saadeh elsewhere in a more explicitly autobiographical poem about the Lebanese Civil War, \u201cin soft skins that survived the wars.\u201d As if to teach us what this means, yet another circuitous piece (composed a decade later) speculates, \u201cSometimes I have a feeling that humans live without a body (\u2026) when they despair of finding it, they die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Split between subjectivity and its embodiment, between interiority and the flesh that would enfold it, <\/span>A Horse at the Door<\/span><\/i> instead imbues individual hands, feet, and eyes with a brimming animacy. Against a backdrop where bodily integrity cannot be taken for granted \u2014 where maiming is a strategy calculated to incapacitate populations \u2014 he finds, in his own corporeal form, the potential for friendship and loyalty: \u201cFoot, so strangely devoted that it never parted company from me\u2026.\u201d Yet most distinctive in Saadeh\u2019s signature might be the tenderness and solidity he lends to their imprints: \u201cwords and breaths and glances\u201d can detach from their \u201cowners\u201d and assume autonomous afterlives of their own. Conversely, \u201cthose we look at enter our bodies through our eyes and become flesh and blood.\u201d Thus sense-impressions, incorporated into the self on a cellular scale, become a channel through which the poet recuperates the ancestral. Etel Adnan\u2019s line comes to mind: \u201cLove begins with the awareness of the curve of a back, the length of an eyebrow, the beginning of a smile.\u201d Elemental gestures of speaking and looking, Saadeh never ceases to remind us, are portals through which we receive the presence of another.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hospitality, then, might be one password to Saadeh\u2019s ciphers. He honors every encounter by bestowing a sensuous reality upon otherwise invisible properties, concepts, states of being (\u201che was breathing not the air \/ but their passing\u201d). He is obsessed with metaphors of space and spatiality, with the sites in which one might host these temporary inhabitants, whatever shape they take. Often, they are exhausted vagrants and sojourners, searching for a place in which to pause \u2014 to sit. The action of sitting, along with its complement walking, takes on an outsized importance in Saadeh\u2019s lexicon: \u201cWalk \/ and wait for the eye of one passing to look your way, that you might sit in it and rest.\u201d In a similar vein, he bemoans that \u201cglances have no place to be,\u201d that they may be \u201corphaned in the void.\u201d Everything hungers for a home, searches for the manner in which it can dwell in the world. Hearts are \u201cshores \/ on which lie souls sprawled and drowsing\u201d; the mind is a \u201cgarden\u201d that \u201cholds fruits\u201d; the breath might unfurl into a \u201croad.\u201d It is Saadeh\u2019s way of loving that which exceeds him, from the exposed nerve-ending of the self.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of <\/span>A Horse at the Door<\/span><\/i>, these architectures of shelter and itinerancy piece together a topography that, through the iterativeness of its images, accommodates and adjusts itself to the contours of the reader\u2019s mind. It might be the reader, in her absence and alterity, who is addressed when the poet writes, in the transcendent \u201cThe Beauty of Those Passing\u201d: \u201cThe most beautiful among us is the one who forsakes his presence, who leaves a clean space by vacating his seat, a beauty in the air by his voice\u2019s absence, a clarity in the soil left uncultivated. The most beautiful among us: the absent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If reading can be personified in the same way that gazing, breathing and passing-through are gifted with vitality, then it is our readership \u2014 that suspension of the self, that provisional voiding of identity and desire, that silence in which we might listen for the voices of the extinguished \u2014 it is our readership, above all, for which Saadeh\u2019s poetry prepares a seat, and opens a door.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon’s bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":637,"featured_media":35952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2656,34,51],"tags":[4195,3092,2315,2990,1369],"article-category":[4657],"article-type":[],"coauthors":[3789],"class_list":["post-35947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-books","category-poetry","category-tmr-weekly","tag-arabophone","tag-lebanese-writers","tag-life","tag-life-and-death","tag-poetry-in-translation","article-category-weekly"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door - The Markaz Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Markaz Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"996\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Alex Tan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Alex Tan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Alex Tan\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/0bbca8caee49378dced9e0ea419e7c13\"},\"headline\":\"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2456,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/01\\\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Arabophone\",\"Lebanese writers\",\"life\",\"life and death\",\"poetry in translation\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Book Reviews\",\"Books\",\"Poetry\",\"Weekly\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/\",\"name\":\"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door - The Markaz Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/01\\\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00\",\"description\":\"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/01\\\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/01\\\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg\",\"width\":1400,\"height\":996,\"caption\":\"Wadih Saadeh selling his poems on Hamra Street, Beirut (photo Haidar Abbas Abadi, 1968).\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Markaz Review\",\"description\":\"Literature and Arts from the Center of the World\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Markaz Review\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/08\\\/cropped-New-2023-TMR-Logo-500-pix.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/08\\\/cropped-New-2023-TMR-Logo-500-pix.jpg\",\"width\":473,\"height\":191,\"caption\":\"The Markaz Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\"}},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/0bbca8caee49378dced9e0ea419e7c13\",\"name\":\"Alex Tan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g8d96066b259a4ad4112ee119acaf4b05\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Alex Tan\"},\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldmarkaz\\\/author\\\/alextan\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door - The Markaz Review","description":"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door","og_description":"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.","og_url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/","og_site_name":"The Markaz Review","article_published_time":"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1400,"height":996,"url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Alex Tan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Alex Tan","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/"},"author":{"name":"Alex Tan","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#\/schema\/person\/0bbca8caee49378dced9e0ea419e7c13"},"headline":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door","datePublished":"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00","dateModified":"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/"},"wordCount":2456,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg","keywords":["Arabophone","Lebanese writers","life","life and death","poetry in translation"],"articleSection":["Book Reviews","Books","Poetry","Weekly"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/","url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/","name":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door - The Markaz Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg","datePublished":"2025-01-24T12:22:24+00:00","dateModified":"2025-08-19T13:42:13+00:00","description":"Alex Tan reviews the new chronology of poems from Lebanon's bard of war and exile, Wadih Saadeh, translated by Robin Moger.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wadih-Saadeh-selling-his-poems-on-Hamra-Street-Beirut-photo-Haidar-Abbas-Abadi-1968.jpg","width":1400,"height":996,"caption":"Wadih Saadeh selling his poems on Hamra Street, Beirut (photo Haidar Abbas Abadi, 1968)."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/no-place-to-be-on-wadih-saadehs-a-horse-at-the-door\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"No Place to Be: On Wadih Saadeh\u2019s A Horse at the Door"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#website","url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/","name":"The Markaz Review","description":"Literature and Arts from the Center of the World","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#organization","name":"The Markaz Review","url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/cropped-New-2023-TMR-Logo-500-pix.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/cropped-New-2023-TMR-Logo-500-pix.jpg","width":473,"height":191,"caption":"The Markaz Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/#\/schema\/person\/0bbca8caee49378dced9e0ea419e7c13","name":"Alex Tan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g8d96066b259a4ad4112ee119acaf4b05","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/882b71d5ce8faf352228f1a26fc5968365832630330ad31aab254703be9b6c61?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Alex Tan"},"url":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/author\/alextan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38943,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35947\/revisions\/38943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35947"},{"taxonomy":"article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-category?post=35947"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=35947"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=35947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}