{"id":9959,"date":"2013-03-05T11:03:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T15:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9959"},"modified":"2013-03-05T11:03:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T15:03:29","slug":"tengours-exile-is-my-trade-reviewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/tengours-exile-is-my-trade-reviewed\/","title":{"rendered":"Tengour’s “Exile is my Trade” Reviewed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ExileTradeCover\"<\/a>Laurie Price’s<\/strong> review\u00a0on Amazon:<\/p>\n

<\/b>Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader,<\/em>\u00a0edited & translated by Pierre Joris (Black Widow Press Modern Poetry 2012) (Paperback)<\/b><\/p>\n

To this reader, Exile Is My Trade<\/em> turned out to be a truly surprising and affecting volume of poetry and essays to come out of North Africa. The writing is modern and free from cultural bias. It cuts through the cultural contexts that it occupies and fluidly connects forms of expression with consciousness.<\/p>\n

Syntactically challenging at times, the poems push past perspicacious \u2018knowingness\u2019 through what I\u2019ll call \u2018neuronal episodes.\u2019 The result is that the writing feels automatic \u2013 and magical. The magic in Tengour\u2019s writing feels coincidental and powerful, and therefore, authentic.<\/p>\n

These poems and essays \u2013 masterfully translated and edited by Pierre Joris, who reveals an uncanny precision in rendering them into English \u2013 are absolutely contemporary and timeless. Jumpcuts and enjambments surprise for how they push a line of thinking or wordplay forward, with echoes and traces of everything that led up to them still sort of intact.<\/p>\n

Here you can find history and cultural difference and a reflective matrix of things inner and outer that crosscut thousands of years \u2013 or a single moment in time \u2013 and hit home.<\/p>\n

from CAESURA, VI.f.:<\/p>\n

Indeed, at the end of his assiduous retreat to learn from the mouth of the stars and the wind, the one who alone has recognized his gift to say, comes to submit his offering to acknowledged judges.<\/p>\n

The mutism of the trace remains a required beginning. Everyone does what he can to keep the audience breathless.<\/p>\n

What is said belongs to convention: the painting of the loved one as well as the praise of the clan or the salacious confidences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the point? she says. All I hear is disarray and helplessness. An agony. Exile is sterile. Where is life?\u201d<\/p>\n

It is here.<\/p>\n

When the poem is said and the sentence falls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tengour is obviously aware of the kitschy, \u2018exotic\u2019 take on his origins from outside \u2013 and sense of ruin \u2013 from inside, and he addresses and cajoles that. In his deft management of all of that, he declares his place as an exile because of and in spite of that nomadic location, supplicating and damning that view while never losing sight of where there might still be to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laurie Price’s review\u00a0on Amazon: Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader,\u00a0edited & translated by Pierre Joris (Black Widow Press Modern Poetry 2012) (Paperback) To this reader, Exile Is My Trade turned out to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[849,11,42,64,90,91,103],"tags":[373],"class_list":["post-9959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algeria","category-arab-culture","category-essays","category-literature","category-poetics","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-habib-tengour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9959"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10025,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9959\/revisions\/10025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}