{"id":8094,"date":"2012-04-10T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T16:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8094"},"modified":"2012-04-10T16:22:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T20:22:13","slug":"ghassan-zaqtans-absence-in-albany-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/ghassan-zaqtans-absence-in-albany-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghassan Zaqtan’s Absence in Albany Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014> Just learned that today’s event has been cancelled! <\u2014<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>For anybody in Albany or surrounds, please go to the events at the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY Albany that should have featured Palestinain poet Ghassan Zaqtan (who cannot be there as the US State Department has refused to give him a visa) but that will feature his translator, Fady Joudah, today Tuesday, 10 April<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

4:15 p.m.<\/strong> Seminar | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
\n8:00 p.m.<\/strong> Reading | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus<\/p>\n

Fady Joudah will speak to Zaqtan’s poetry & no doubt to the disturbing fact of the poet’s absence, & read from\u00a0Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me,<\/em> Zaqtan’s\u00a0\u00a0latest volume of new & selected poems, recently published<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Yale University Press. My blurb for the book says this: “The poet\u2019s trade is exile, & a Palestinian poet\u2019s trade thus a double exile: Ghassan Zaqtan\u2019s work is exemplary in that its lyrical intensity simultaneously hides & foregrounds this quest\u2019s epic dimensions.”\u00a0Below, \u00a0one poem from the book:<\/p>\n

REMBERING SLEEP<\/p>\n

Her effigy is by the edge of sleep<\/p>\n

and besides this my only trick is that the land
\nbe seen or returned to its people
\nand that I shall think like a falcon . . .
\nor have I been saying this for twenty years,
\ngive or take, and here I am still
\nin the place still running
\nfree and mortgaged by presence!<\/p>\n

Just as al-Buhturi chose to imprison the wolf within his driving rhythm<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018He squatted and howled so I composed and agitated
\n’til he came a lightning followed by thunder\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

To the light of two wolves
\nI doze off<\/p>\n

then the garden
\nhowls behind the glass<\/p>\n

the fence howls<\/p>\n

and the birds howl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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