Machine generated contents note: The idea of home. Amina -- I have a musical name -- The clot -- Those worthy of my friendship -- A night at the theater -- Solitude exercises -- Description of a migraine -- Respect for Marx -- It seems I inherit the dead -- A visit -- Some things escaped me -- The State -- Love -- The threshold -- Black fingers -- They tear down my family home -- Why did she come? -- Morning bell -- Cv -- A grave I'm about to dig -- A life -- I dreamt of you -- A gift from Mommy on your seventh birthday -- Sound counsel for girls and boys over forty -- Map store -- The curse of small creatures -- Raising a glass with an Arab nationalist -- Up in the air -- The employee -- A man decides to explain to me what love is -- An email from Osama al-Danasouri -- An essay on children's games -- Good night -- On either side of the door -- Evil -- A celebration -- The slave trade -- As if the world were missing a blue window -- The book of desire -- From the window -- The idea of home.
Summary:
"A selection of bracingly honest, wry, and luminous poetry from the award-winning Egyptian poet Iman Mersal. Iman Mersal is Egypt's--indeed, the Arab world's--great outsider poet. Over the past three decades, she has crafted a voice that is ferocious and tender, street-smart and vulnerable. Her early work captures the energies of Cairo's legendary literary boḧme, a home for "Lovers of cheap weed and awkward confessions / Anti-State agitators" and "People like me." These are poems of wit and rage, freaked by moments of sudden beauty, like "the smell of guava" mysteriously wafting through the City of the Dead. Other poems bear witness to agonizing loss and erotic temptation, "the breath of two bodies that never had enough time / and so took pleasure in their mounting terror." Mersal's most recent work illuminates the trials of displacement and migration, as well as the risks of crossing boundaries, personal and political, in literature and in life. The Threshold gathers poems from Mersal's first four collections of poetry: A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons (1995), Walking as Long as Possible (1997), Alternative Geography (2006), and Until I Give Up the Idea of Home (2013). Taken together, these works chart a poetic itinerary from defiance and antagonism to the establishment of a new, self-created sensibility. At their center is the poet: indefatigably intelligent, funny, flawed, and impossible to pin down. As she writes, "I'm pretty sure / my self-exposures / are for me to hide behind."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.