The Neverfield: Poem

by Nathalie Handal

"The Neverfield is a work which insists on itself. It is poetry of a shining quality from a poet whose voice is sure and unafraid." –Lucille Clifton "The Neverfield poem is an epic journey, a passionate search for beauty and truth. If beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, the poems in this volume lead us once again to that realization. The Neverfield is an enchanting work, sharing with us a poet's true vision." –Rudolfo Anaya "Nathalie Handal's poems in her collection The Neverfield Poem are wide as breath, lyrically linked as an elegantly stiched Palestinian bodice, and dreamily, deeply evocative as the stories that never leave us from the first time we hear them." –Naomi Shihab Nye "Nathalie...does find her homeland and her self in the kingdom of the word, to which she longs and belongs." –World Literature "The Neverfield Poem ...unfolds, revealing a landscape as complex and as singular as breath." –Aljadid "the yellow branch kneeled in front of my crying feet,/ the field's elevating fingers seized the sunlight,/ nothing else existed but yellow/ yellow/ was I ever to see more?" –Excerpted from The Neverfield An emerging young talent in the field of poetry and culture, Nathalie Handal, a French-American poet of Palestinian descent, writes with great passion and eloquence on the subjects of displacement, diaspora, and the search for cross-cultural identity.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Arab world. Described as “a Renaissance figure,” Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Kumunyakaa writes, “This cosmopolitan voice belongs to the human family, and it luxuriates in crossing necessary borders.” Her most recent books include the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, which Alice Walker lauds as “poems of depth and weight and the sorrowing song of longing and resolve,” and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, which The New York Times says is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).” Handal is the editor of the groundbreaking classic The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award, and co-editor of the W.W. Norton landmark anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, both Academy of American Poets bestsellers. Her most recent plays have been produced at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Bush Theatre and Westminster Abbey, London. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares. Handal is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, winner of the 2011 Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature, and Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award, among other honors. She is a professor at Columbia University and part of the Low-Residency MFA Faculty at Sierra Nevada College.

She writes the literary travel column The City and the Writer for Words without Borders.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps I could have rewritten the scene,
but did I have the right to change
the handwriting of His scriptures...
I left... left
*
at times the birds stop
to find a hat
and wonder
if the breeze
is lonely...

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Neverfield is an energetically lyrical work by Nathalie Handal. She begins this book length poem, “Riding through the skies wearing different costumes.” An apparent parallel to her own life, for Nathalie Handal is a poet of the world who embraces her universal ties while still searching for the meaning of her roots.

In truth, The Neverfield could be any Palestinian or other person longing for meaning in their existence. There is such passion in these words.


“I felt you browsing through my mind… / and warned you that / the republic inside of you / might / tumble / down / your / chest… / warned you / not to go near the notebooks / piled up by the cup of tea / and the half-moon… / instead to go beside the clay sculpture / by the pinewood… / I heard the march of the patriots / you read the notebooks…/ stood in the middle / of dying and death”

Handal uses her craft well, spacing in the book accentuates her words, and she is a wordsmith of incredible gift or at minimum very learned ability.

Nathalie mimics the spirit of another Palestinian poet. The poet referred to as entering the world on the 13th day of March is Mahmoud Darwish. There is a real sense Darwish’s presence in her words which so beautifully seek to establish The Neverfield as both a place in one’s mind and a geographical place that can be found for real in a poet’s words.


This book is an easy read. It almost glides once started like a self propelled lawn mower pulling you along with little strain. This is a book I will return to often. A book I recommend.

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decades of riding through skies wearing different
costumes, landing in squares strange to the heart,
feeling like a misplaced light in a dying day, like a
phantom passing through
a village with no one to observe...

women
of that place
awoke day after day
polishing the fragmented lamps
and the invisible doorknobs,
sitting under the only almond tree
reciting a prophesy heavier than
the moon's mind...
losing their features
in their backyards
but owning a single coat
large enough to warm
the entire village...

on the thirteenth day of March
the birth of a poet,
the birth of new words
inside minds still unborn...
so we will prepare
prepare for all the suns
to gather around his poems

[Lisa Cole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will certainly have to look at the poem again to understand its full impact, but these are the things that struck me the most. I had some questions as well:

* The recurrence of the color yellow. This is probably is a reference to the author's "Neverfield" which I think is a metaphor for memory; the intertwining between the past and the future.

* The recurrence of various bird images.

* The speaker's search for "the poet" which I learned in the afterward by Lisa Subair Majaj is Mahmoud Darwish. Who is that?

* What is the significance of the poem being split into two parts. What were the author's motivations for separating the poem as she did?

* The speaker mentions the Sufis in the poem. The mystic Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz are the only prior exposure I have had to Arab poetry before now. Their tone and Handal's tone is definitely different but some elements are definitely similar. I'll have to read "The Neverfield" again to be more specific about this.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Handal's book-length poem on her literal and psychic exile from Palestine is ambitious and at times lyrical. Maybe it's because I've read so many books that deal with similar themes, but it never quite caught fire for me. I'd recommend Handal's lyrics as a better introduction to her work.