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Unfortunately, It Was Paradise -- Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish is the somewhat official poet laureate of Palestine, and his recent selected poems Unfortunately, It Was Paradise is a dynamic lyric voice full of wild imagery mixed with the fury of scripture. His voice is calm poverty in a storm of mideast chaos, a man who lived through and mourns the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but was himself inspired to write by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. With Israel currently shelling the entire state of Lebanon into the ashes of history, and nobody (read: America) really seeming to care, it seems an appropriate and unsettling book for the current geopolitical situation. Three hours of your time you won't regret having spent.

Labels: Recommended Reading