Najwan Darwish

Usually I treat a collection of poetry, even by a single author, as an anthology: I dip in and out, reading a poem here or there, but not taking it in as a whole entity.

The painful beauty, the luminosity of these poems has been well addressed elsewhere, but something I particularly appreciated about this little book was how cohesive it was. I read it front to back, one poem after another, and never did I feel irritated or bored or as if the poet had just crammed in whatever he could from show more his scrap pile in order to make the collection long enough.

All of these are finely crafted, hard and honed, and they hang together beautifully as a collection. So glad I read this. show less

Usually I treat a collection of poetry, even by a single author, as an anthology: I dip in and out, reading a poem here or there, but not taking it in as a whole entity.

The painful beauty, the luminosity of these poems has been well addressed elsewhere, but something I particularly appreciated about this little book was how cohesive it was. I read it front to back, one poem after another, and never did I feel irritated or bored or as if the poet had just crammed in whatever he could from show more his scrap pile in order to make the collection long enough.

All of these are finely crafted, hard and honed, and they hang together beautifully as a collection. So glad I read this. show less

Not as good as the more well-known Darwish, but still worth reading. It's less lyrical, and more anrgy and polemical.

“and everything is lacking
but injustice”
– Najwan Darwish, To Cristo