Concerto al-Quds Kūnshīrtū al-Quds

In this stunning volume about Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic), Syrian poet Adonis, who has been hailed as a founding voice in Arabic-language modernism, envisions the poem as a space for dialogue between traditions, nations, and historical milieux. Mattawa's careful English rendering preserves the integrity of Adonis's cosmopolitan influences, paying homage to the book's various inspirations. The voice of these poems bisects time and geography, revealing the convergences contained within each "flower," each "accusation," even the "nets that encircle" one's own steps. History is revealed as recursive, elliptical. "Time was busy filming the battle, turning it into a documentary," Adonis writes. The poems' documentarian approach records this battle-this collision of worldviews, aesthetics, and implicit assumptions about language, self, and reason. He invites readers to share the experience of encountering the other, see their selves as other, and recognize the transformations to which this awareness might give rise-re-imagining themselves, to carving space within the psyche for multiple ways of ordering the world, explaining its "dust," its "angels," and the missiles that "only target lovers homes." (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"Up there, up above,/ Look at her dangling from the sky's throat" opens this astonishing collection from Adonis, who has significantly shaped modern Arabic poetry. He offers a portrait both mythic and historical of Al-Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem; frequent references to the Qur'an and the Bible, among other sources, are clarified by excellent footnoting. The first shimmering vision of the city ("The wind reads the roses./ Perfume writes them") is interrupted by parenthetical citations to violence ("Terrorism. Kidnapping. Unknown Identity..."); in a city defined by time, "history arrived, invited by ash." And the book ends, "And Hell, in which sky do you reside/ and from which heaven will you descend?" Thus does Adonis capture in gorgeously singular language an eternal city now riven. -VERDICT Highly recommended. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.