What do you think?
Rate this book
Fan of Swords
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 17, 2013
The best poet you've never heard of, I guarantee. Syrian and surreal, the perfect flavor combo.
March 19, 2014
Much of the best writing is done in anguish. Too many writers have died to prove it. Muhammad Al-Maghut's verses have that stark allure. His is the agony of the Arab world, implemented by the style of prosaic poetry. Dr. Salma Khadra Jayyausi, herself a poet and scholar, describes in the "Foreword" how significant Al-Maghut's work really is. The images and vocabulary he chooses were completely unfamiliar in the Arabic poetic tradition at the time he chose them.
Al-Maghut was born in 1934 in a small town called Salamiyya in western Syria. Consider the significance that resonates to present day events: "Salamiyya! The tear that was shed by the Romans over the first prisoner who untied his chains with his teeth and died longing for her. . . " Al-Maghut did not have a formal education, remaining an enigma in having achieved writing a highly modernized poetry at quite an early age.
Al-Maghut sets his "hero" protagonist as a human with flaws and failings (reminiscent of T.S. Eliot) so that the individual character represents an entire people:
"Perhaps the storm won't finish its make-up for generations./But how can the eagle approach it when his beak is worn as a cobbler's thumb?/How can he hurry when he wavers like a bicycle crossing a river?/Year after year his white breast feathers grew soiled like the napkins of waiters. . . ."
Al-Maghut was born in 1934 in a small town called Salamiyya in western Syria. Consider the significance that resonates to present day events: "Salamiyya! The tear that was shed by the Romans over the first prisoner who untied his chains with his teeth and died longing for her. . . " Al-Maghut did not have a formal education, remaining an enigma in having achieved writing a highly modernized poetry at quite an early age.
Al-Maghut sets his "hero" protagonist as a human with flaws and failings (reminiscent of T.S. Eliot) so that the individual character represents an entire people:
"Perhaps the storm won't finish its make-up for generations./But how can the eagle approach it when his beak is worn as a cobbler's thumb?/How can he hurry when he wavers like a bicycle crossing a river?/Year after year his white breast feathers grew soiled like the napkins of waiters. . . ."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews