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Lena Khalaf
Tuffaha
IMEU
 Seated in an oversized chair on stage at a recent poetry
reading in Seattle, Taha Muhammad Ali’s appearance is that
of a slight and elderly man. He shares the stage with his
translator Peter Cole. Cole reads in English and Ali mouths
the Arabic words to his poems, alternately tapping his foot
or softly waving his hand to beat of the music that his
poems create. When he takes the microphone and begins to
read, he seems larger than life, a host warmly welcoming his
guests and offering them his poems.
“After we die,
and the weary hear
has lowered its final eyelid
on all the we’ve done,
and on all that we’ve longed for,
on all the we’ve dreamt of,
all we’ve desired
or felt,
hate will be
the first thing
to putrefy
within us.”
-- from Twigs
Ali is a self-educated poet. He earns his living selling
souvenirs in his shop in Nazareth. In his youth, he spent
nights studying classical Arabic poetry, as well as the
works of American and European poets.
He was born in the Palestinian village of Saffuriya, in rural
Galilee. Like 417 other Palestinian villages, Saffuriya was
attacked and destroyed by the Israeli army in the war of
1948, and Ali, aged 17, and his family became refugees. The
Ali family returned from exile in Lebanon a year later, and
resettled in Nazareth.
It is this formative experience, the traumatic loss of home,
homeland, and security that informs all of Ali’s moving and
beguilingly simple verse. Ali’s poetry is rich in imagery
inspired by Palestinian village life, and its language is
direct and accessible. Each of his poems is a rich amalgam
of sorrow, desolation, and hope, and even the most personal
reflection on age or love are lined with allusions to the
communal tragedy of Palestinian exile.
Saffuriya, the world that is lost, serves as the unnamed
source of images, and experiences for Ali’s poems. His
translator, Gabriel Levin, notes: “Saffuriya may have been
razed to the ground, but its mores, language, and landscape
remain paradigms of durable hope in the poet’s imagination.”
Far from being a collection of poems exclusively about
conflict, the poems in "So What" cover a full range of
themes including love, friendship, aging, and memory. The
lyrical quality of even the most sorrowful observations and
the richness of the language - combining a sparse classical
Arabic with the occasional colloquial phrase - are
complemented by a truly exquisite translation. The
translators have sacrificed none of the cadence or charm of
Ali’s voice, and they have rendered both the vivid images
and the spirit of the poems as authentically and artfully as
ever.
Taha Muhammad Ali’s poetry opens a window onto the
Palestinian experience, allowing us to see the lives of
people just like ourselves, navigating through ongoing
suffering with dignity and perseverance. What emerges is a
poetry that translator Peter Cole describes as “radically
human.” Poetry lovers everywhere will be enriched by this
collection.
So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971 – 2005 is available
online at
Amazon.com. |
