Nowruz and The Sins of the New Day
Guest columnist Maha Tourbah considers the advent of the Spring Equinox, Zoroastrian Nowruz and hopes for peace.
poetry
“Gluttony” from Abbas Beydoun’s “Frankenstein’s Mirrors”
Lebanese poet-novelist Abbas Baydoun reflects in an autobiographical mode on the melancholy of language and existence, while contemplating sweets.
Three Poems of Love and Desire by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Three poems of love and desire, composed in Beirut during the darkest days of the civil war, and war within war, by exiled Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah.
Two Poems by Sophia Armen
L.A. Armenian poet and activist Sophia Armen is an American original.
L.A. Story: Poems from Laila Halaby
Poet and novelist Laila Halaby writes her Los Angeles experience in a cascade of words that indelibly capture moments and memories.
Etel Adnan’s Sun and Sea: In Remembrance
Art critic Arie Amaya-Akkermans summons the gods of art and poetry as he reviews the life work of the late polymath Etel Adnan, 1925-2021.
Poem: An Allegory for Our Times
Jenny Pollak, a poet in Australia, captures the unrelenting menace of a changing world.
The World Grows Blackthorn Walls
A new poem by Sholeh Wolpé from the forthcoming collection, Abacus of Loss, University of Arkansas Press 2022.
“I Advance in Defeat”, the Poems of Najwan Darwish
Reviewer Patrick James Dunagan on poetry that strives to cope with the anguish of Israel's decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian people.
Poetry Against the State
Gil Anidjar reviews A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs, and suggests that "our problem is that we have stopped listening to the poets."
Freedom is femininity: Faraj Bayrakdar
18 years in the making, this winter Upset Press will publish a new volume of poems by former Syrian political prisoner and cause célèbre Faraj Bayrakdar.
To Be or Not to Be, That is Not the Question
December 12, 2020 marks the 95th birthday of the revolutionary and controversial Iranian poet, translator, essayist, editor, encyclopedist, and cultural figure, Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000).
Poetic Exploration of Illness Conveys Trauma
I am waiting for the Tunisian American writer Leila Chatti to tell me, in her own words, in her debut collection of poetry, Deluge, about women in Islam, but she is telling me about blood instead.