Forest of noise Poems

The blistering and mournful second collection from Abu Toha (Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear) recounts the violence of the Israeli occupation that both he and past generations of his family have experienced in Gaza. In the book's epigraph, he declares his unbreakable connection to his homeland: "Every child in Gaza is me./ Every mother and father are me./ Every house is my heart./ Every tree is my leg." Abu Toha offers affecting firsthand accounts of life in a refugee camp ("a mother collects her daughter's/ flesh in a piggy bank") and of individuals listening to nearby explosions, powerless to protect themselves or their children. Even the wound over the decade-old loss of his brother is made newly fresh: "Now it's 2024 and the cemetery you were buried in was razed by/ Israeli bulldozers and tanks. How can I find you now?" Grief is palpable and seemingly endless, striking to the very core of the poet's identity: "I've personally lost three friends to war,/ a city to darkness, and a language to fear." Abu Toha eloquently captures the brutality and urgency of the present moment. (Oct.)

"No need for radio: / We are the news" says Palestinian poet and librarian Abu Toha, author of the National Book Critics Circle finalist Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear and founder of the Edward Said Library, an English-language public library whose Gaza City branch was recently destroyed. More than any news reporting, this heartbreaking collection makes vividly real the suffering in Gaza and what it's like to face huge, ongoing loss. Life is really the "slow death of survival," notes Abu Toha, adding "We no longer look for Palestine. / Our time is spent dying. / Soon, Palestine will search for us." Abu Toha can be plainspoken, then turn around with a stark, horrific image that drops like hot coals: "In Jabalia Camp, a mother collects her daughter's / flesh in a piggy bank, / hoping to buy her a plot / on a river in a faraway land." Yet what's pervasive (and most disturbing) is not the constant thrum of death but the sense of loss--of family, place, memories, continuity, home, and village, with the loss of the past meaning the loss of the future. VERDICT One mourns with Abu Tohu as he asks his dead brother, "Will my bones find you when I die?" Highly recommended.