The Alchemist's Diary

by Hayan Charara

Poetry. THE ALCHEMIST'S DIARY is strong first collection featuring poems of family and Detroit's Arab-American community. Hayna Charara is a star -- follow him -- Naomi Shihab Nye. Sense and feeling...The ethics are true and tough -- Lawrence Joseph. Hayan Charara is the editor of Graffiti Rag.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strong in its observational and moral voice, but not particularly special in terms of language or technique. I sometimes find it hard to come to a thesis about a collection of poems. Poems in a book are usually more independent than, say, chapters in a novel. And if there are one or two stellar poems in a book, I’m very happy with that discovery even if the rest of the book is lackluster. But the poems in this book are very consistent in tone, topic, imagery, and perspective, all generally surrounding a particular slice of experience in Detroit. That makes for a strong sense of coherence in the book as a whole; it also made the poems start to feel somewhat redundant or repetitive as individual pieces. There were some strong poems (I liked “That’s All,” “Donutville USA,” and “Glenn Gould” in particular), and (as some other reviewers have noted), Charara has a good way of structuring his poems in a way that hits you as they end. Overall, this collection certainly will motivate me to check out Charara’s later work, but I’m not sure I’ll be coming back to this one much.

[tily]

“It is late, somewhere outside the walls someone's other half is alone, trying to sleep, or forget, or dying to remember.”

beautiful collection - I greatly enjoyed it!

[Tonya]

I also met Hayan. His poems end in such a powerful way and he seems so down-to-earth. I bought this and he signed it. Yay! I can't wait to read it.