So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005 (Arabic Edition) Review

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So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005 (Arabic Edition) ReviewThis Copper Canyon Press edition of Taha Muhammad Ali's poems is a greatly enhanced update of his earlier, Ibis Press "Never Mind" through which much of the wider reading public most likely first encountered this remarkable voice. The enhancements are significant, not the least of which is the Arabic/English en face presentation of the poems. The temptation to learn at least enough Arabic to get closer to the actual sound of Taha's poems is powerful. Even the wonderful introduction, by Israeli poet and translator Gabriel Levin is updated, adding, along with the additional poems, more pearls to the necklace.
The other translators, Peter Cole and Yahya Hijazi, complete a team of translators whose product illustrates the thesis of "Found In Translation", (another recent publication, from Toby Press, of Hebrew poetry, also introduced by Levin (establishing Levin as linchpin in this esoteric literary congregation of the very few humans who live in a truly multi-linguistic artistic arena)): poetry translated by poets able to enable monoglot readers to access the poetry itself, that which lies above and behind the forms. The translations by Cole, Hijazi, and Levin are of a quality with which readers of John Elwolde's incredible translation of "A History of the Hebrew Language" by Sa'enz-Badillos will be familiar; that is, themselves works of art.
The importance of this phenomenon cannot be allowed to go unnoticed: the Middle East in the voices of poets translated into English, thank God, by people who know the poets, speak, read, and write in their languages, and for whom English is a parent Tongue (Levin's father was the American writer Meyer Levin) may create the forum in which the people, whose voices they are, can hear and be heard.
"Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower"
In his life
he neither wrote nor read.
In his life he
didn't cut down a single tree,
didn't slit the throat
of a single calf.
In his life he did not speak
of the New York Times
behind its back,
didn't raise
his voice to a soul
except in his saying:
"Come in, please,
by God, you can't refuse."
_
Nevertheless -
his case is hopeless,
his situation
desperate.
His God-given rights are a grain of salt
tossed into the sea.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury:
about his enemies
my client knows not a thing.
And I can assure you,
were he to encounter
the entire crew
of the aircraft carrier Enterprise,
he'd serve them eggs
sunny-side up,
and labneh
fresh from the bag.
VII. 1973
Don't you yearn to hear these words in Arabic? Perhaps there will be a DVD.
A Palestinian is finally being heard who does not just speak for the silent majority but is one of them, and Israelis and Americans helped make it happen. Peter Cole traveled with Taha on tour. Gabriel Levin, who, and this cannot be overnoticed, is literate to the artistic level in English, French (his mother is the celebrated French writer Tereska Szwarc), and Hebrew. These are artists performing Nabokovian linguistic feats.
Readers! We are so lucky to be audience to this. "Come in, please, by God you can't refuse."
So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005 (Arabic Edition) Overview
"Taha Muhammad Ali speaks with an emotional forthrightness. . . . He has developed a style that seems both ancient and new, deceptively simple and movingly direct."—The Washington Post

Taha Muhammad Ali is a revered Palestinian poet whose work is driven by vivid imagination, disarming humor, and unflinching honesty. As a boy he was exiled from his hometown, but rather than turning to a protest poetry of black-and-white slogans to convey this loss, he has created art of the highest order. His poems portray experiences that range from catastrophe to splendor, each preserving an essential human dignity.

Neither music fame nor wealth, not even poetry itself, could provide consolation for life's brevity, or the fact that King Lear is a mere eighty pages long, and comes to an end,and for the thought that one might suffer greatlyon account of a rebellious child.

So What will include Arabic en face and introductions by co-translators Gabriel Levin and Peter Cole. Muhammad Ali will be one of the international poets featured at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, and he will embark on a reading tour of the United States in the fall of 2006.


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