Forest of Noise: Poems

Thank You NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

I had to rework this review so many times because this poetry collection had and still evokes so many conflicting emotions that it is hard to articulate properly. There is this strange marriage of brutality and vitality that continues throughout that is hard to encapsulate any emotion let alone one so immensely prominent as the sense of a neverending absence/loss of a culture and its people. You feel capsized by the endless deluge of despair, abject terror, destruction, and even hope. It is disarmingly gentle and melodic in its description of war, begging the question "Are you ok, truly ok?" And what would the proper response be anyway? All this is to say that it touched me deeply. The show more narrative thread feels like it was written in an ancient text describing a part of a time, a part of a country that no longer exists, like Mesopotamia or something, almost like a living artifact. But Palestine exists and so do its people.

Highly Recommend. show less

This is such a powerful collection, and Toha's care and nuance with each poem make it all the more striking and necessary. The poems are focused on Gaza, and on the art of existing in wartime. Unflinching and personal, the poems manage to confront the history of Gaza as well as the immediate genocide being lived through, and yet there is so much beauty to be had in this slim volume.

Transporting, powerful, necessary...there are many words I could use to describe this work, and yet none to reflect the heart and truth of it all.

Everyone should read this book.

Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha screams life through an examination of facing death. Abu Toha writes his heart onto the page and invites us all to join him. We come to feel like we know him and his family through his words and cheer for their wins while lamenting their losses. Forest of Noise feels like a meditation as well as a call-to-action to live more compassionate, connected lives. Forest of Noise examines the experiences of everyday life we can all relate to juxtaposed against experiences many of us cannot even fully imagine giving us just a small glimpse of life under occupation and bombardment.

As poetry, this is not good; as a portrait of life in a living hell, it is important. Consider my rating here as splitting the difference between those two perspectives.

Recommended by Maris K

A crushing, savage, heartbreaking collection of poems from a Palestinian from Gaza.

No need for radio:
We are the news.
(from "Younger Than War")

In the refugee camp,
where land is strewn with
debris, where air chokes with rage,
my harvest is yet to arrive,
my seeds only sprout on this page.
(from "My Grandfather's Well")

My books remain on the shelves as I left them last year,
but all the words have died.
(from "My Library")

First a brief introduction, cribbed from Wikipedia: Muṣʿab Abū Tūha; born 17 November 1992) is a Palestinian writer, poet, scholar, and librarian from the Gaza Strip. His debut book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (2022) won the Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Walcott Prize for Poetry.
‘Forest of Noise’ is unrelenting in its insistence on the local and domestic dimension of devastation, bereavement and suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Israeli airbome and ground attack. It’s always the particulars that hurt. Here in its entirety is a short poem from near the end of the collection.

Ramadan 2024
Around that show more dinner table, missing are the chairs
where my mother, my father,
and my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays,
and where my siblings and their kids
used to drink tea at sunset when they visited.
No one is here anymore. Not even the sunset
In the kitchen, the table is missing.
In the house the kitchen is missing.
In the house, the house is missing.

Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise show less

Life in Gaza. Read this. Digest it. Understand the genocide.