rock flight

by Hasib Hourani

One more rock thrown onto the pile to tumble the mountain on my chest

—Hasib Hourani

Hasib Hourani’s rock flight is a book-length poem that, over seven chapters, follows a single personal and historical narrative centered on the violent occupation of Palestine.

The poem uses refrains of suffocation, rubble, and migratory bird patterns to address the realities of forced displacement, economic restrictions, and surveillance technology that Palestinians face both within Palestine and across the diaspora. Searing and fierce, tender and pleading, rock flight invites the reader to embark on an exploration of space while limited by the box-like confines of the page. Through the whole, Hourani moves between poetry and prose, historical events and meditations on language, Fluxus-like instructions and interactions with friends, strangers, and family.

As incantatory and stirring as Inger Christensen’s alphabet or Raúl Zurita’s Inri, rock flight adapts themes of displacement and refusal into an interactive reading experience where the book becomes an object in flux.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT

Paperback

Reviews

[Ayesha Bhalla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone read this epic poem.

It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and so well conceived.

Was literally holding my breath (as was the author’s intention) whilst reading, feeling in my body the suffocation described (a metaphor for the settler/colony occupation).

[Caitlin]

This collection is *so* essential. Dauntless in its critique of Zionism and uncompromising in its portrayal of dispossession and displacement, ‘rock flight’ is both a suffocating and empowering read. The way Hourani weaves metaphor and fact, form and space not just throughout each poem, but the whole collection, is what made it so entrancing.

[Lizzie B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“god created earth and said, gibril go plant these stones all over it, and gibril took them and because we live on a sphere the rocks spread like butter: evenly, melting, and then gibril tripped on the taut string border into palestine and his bag of rocks spilled and now our country is a monument of stones, and a garden of stones, and a reminder of do not fall over. a reminder of when you are fleeing, look to your feet.

eat a date
keep the stone
in your pocket: the weight of the afterlife
of ammunition

a rock isn’t a rock
until it is thrown
and then it is a weapon”

WOW. I’m blown away by this collection.

[imogen · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m not a massive poetry reader but i enjoyed this. an incredibly strong sense of place and belonging amongst the feeling of exile from the authors homeland. beautifully written.

[Chanel Chapters]

Poetry as protest

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

both beautiful and harrowing in such a short space of time. straightforward but clever metaphors (of the avian kind 🥰)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Released in April of this year through New Directions, this poetry collection from the Lebanese-Palestinian writer really is one of the best works of modern poetry I’ve read. While its coverage of Palestine and Palestinian resistance is especially poignant, the creative and experimental nature of this work really is unique to any other poetry collection I’ve read.

Broken up into sections but one long poem, Rock Flight, covers themes of anti-imperial resistance and how the diaspora Palestinian experience plays out in a 2020s landscape. Hourani writes from a deeply personal perspective but is also able to capture the grander picture of resistance. From describing the systematic tools of oppression to the silencing of individuals, this work portrays these concepts as one in the same and really shows how top down acts of oppression and control work in maintaining the zionist project.

While covering this subject Hourani also uses a style of writing that is creative and engaging from a reading experience. Utilizing a variety of styles alternating between a narrative of vignettes and a meta narrative following the author’s experience writing this work. In terms of creativity and experimentation this is the greatest example of Palestinian meta fiction since Anton Shammas’ Arabesques.

The real accomplishment of this work is how effortless all this feels. This collection can be read in an hour and explores themes and displays information that many longer nonfiction works struggle to portray effectively. The reasoning of resistance, the isolation of individuals, the lack of representation of Palestinians in the diaspora. These ideas have all been explored by writers for years but never have I read a work that accomplishes its goal of writing about these themes with such a succinct manner without losing its depth.

It is amazing that this work was written in the immediately preceding days of October 7th. It only goes to show how perpetual these themes are and how these acts of oppression and aggression from israel have been. While the foreknowledge of this collection makes it as effective today as when it was written it does feel especially of this moment. The vignettes around hp and Anette feel deeply relatable to those of the Palestinian diaspora and also situations unique to our current moment.

This collection is well worth checking out. By far the best poetry collection on Palestine published post October 7th, as well as a great example of the creative and experimental nature of New Directions Publishing.

[✨ Aaron Jeffery ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Bri Little · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite kind of poetry: sparse and full and bold and melancholy and connected and instructive and hopeful.

[Maki Morita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in one held breath and now I want to read it again

[tesni · Rating 3 out of 5]

every autumn and every spring half a billion birds pass over palestinian air. the air is contested, they can't get home. the suffocating state has a solution: a 1991 military initiative titled migrating birds know no boundaries. the campaign is twee it uses the phrase take care we share the air. so the suffocating state bans low-altitude flight during peak spring and fall migration. there are no-go zones they call them bird-plagued. collisions between birds and planes fall by 76 percent and the suffocating state has saved raptor lives. thank you suffocating state for saving raptor lives.

[Angry.Sad.Motivated · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to make a rock.

[James Stanwix · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think perfect

[Pierce Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong sense of place throughout, which emphasises the importance of home and how it is being actively made precarious for Palestinians through dehumanising systems

[David Haberlah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerfully poetic account of diaspora and imagined connections to a place that has always been more of an idea than a home since the Babylonian exile. Of a struggle of natives against empires, of dispossession, disorientation, expulsion. Call it Israel, call it Palestine. The theme remains the same.

Hourani throws words like rocks. The book breathes through refrains of suffocation. Migratory birds that cannot return. Boxes within boxes within boxes. The page itself becomes a border checkpoint, a throat that cannot swallow, cannot breathe, yet can speak out loud and lament.

Learn to hold your breath. Learn to make a rock from clay and absorb the political poison you imbibed. Learn that sometimes a poem is not a poem but a survival manual, a love letter to an imagined country, to help a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians change myth making to move on, to forgive, to coexist, to breathe. To turn a pile of rocks into a green garden, a pit into a date palm.

[Kasey Milburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really great and experimental poetry collection by Hasib Hourani. It explores the suffocation and displacement of Palestinians through the symbols of birds, boxes and rocks. It explores the use of language as a tool and as a weapon, the dehumanisation through language that leads to cruelty, and the boxes in lives that represent imprisonment in both metaphorical and very real ways. The poetry is unconventionally broken and spaced that correlates with bird migration and Palestinian migration, and the resilience to still exist.

[Toni M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an unconventional and raw collection that I found to be evocative and suffocating. It was brilliantly formatted and I loved how experimental it was. It is a harrowing and essential read. The way metaphor was used to describe the dehumanisation of Palestinians will stay with me.

Thank you @prototypepubs for kindly gifting me this copy.

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

The work of defining is key to the work of Hourani’s poetry. He begins by offering a definition of his own name, Hourani, an ethnonym referring to a region in the Levant, “a field of 118 basaltic volcanoes”, or, in other words, the site of rock birth. Read more on my blog

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

israeli soldiers wear tee-shirts off-duty
a sharpshooter from the givati brigade
wears one that says one shot two kills
and then an image of a pregnant palestinian woman
and a bulls-eye on her belly
-- "'12. what do zionists consider contested?'"
--- Uri Blau, "Dead Palestinian Babies and Bombed Mosques -- IDF Fashion 2009"

even if the resurrection were established upon one of you while he has in his hand a sapling, let him plant it.
-- Hadith on Trees

we can't only choke
back the state that chokes us when
the state that chokes us
is being breathed alive
by bigger empires
empires that created
the state that chokes us
to keep the empires
empires
-- "'the jewish ethnostate was thought up by someone else'"

[Jane Fudger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an innovative book of poetry which it took me a while to get used to. Once I overcame this hurdle and accepted how the powems were formatted I thoroughly enjoyed the work.
Essentially the author is a Palestinian living in Australia and has at times been banned from returning to his homeland. Each of the poems/ statements reflect his emotions about the situation and the problems his country is currently experiencing.
This is a collection that after the initial read you would want to dip in and out of. I particularly enjoyed his description of how to make rocks and their usage in time of conflict.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book-length poem, the poet recounts the systematic oppression and slow suffocation of the Palestinian people by the choke-hold state that is trying to eradicate them with the help of bigger empires “that created / the state that chokes us / to keep the empires / empires” (p. 45). This prose-poem reads like the sputtering of someone in a chokehold, gasping for air, crying for help, pleading for justice, and fighting with all their might as life flashes before their eyes. For all the hurling of imaginary rocks, however, there’s a pile of stones that remain to be tumbled and polished, perhaps even cut and set to refract the most light.

[Avril Polson · Rating 3 out of 5]

All opinions are entirely my own. I am in no way affiliated with the author or publisher. Remember to support your local indie bookstore and library!

⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨ ᰔ ୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹

"what's a box?
a. a cage for things that aren't living
b. four walls a floor and a ceiling
c. something that stops you from moving"

- [ ] Star Rating: 3 Stars
- [ ] Discovery: Browsing
- [ ] Reading Format: Physical
- [ ] Read Time: 0.5 Hours

A book length poem that explores Palestine's occupation.

[Ayah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this like one big poem, was such a distinct experience. The use of metaphor was really brilliant. And also there's a couple times in the book where Hasib Hourani speaks about the fantasy of having a trainline. I have genuinely had that same fantasy about Lebanon. And its crazy to think at one time we did have a trainline that went from Cairo all the way up to Turkey and across to Medina. How these are things we've previously had and have yet to be restored. Such a beautiful piece to read.

[Roxanne Bodsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I held my breath from start to finish, a book to read through in one sitting though that does not mean skimming. Almost every page I found words to read over and over to absorb their impact, like "one more rock thrown onto the pile to tumble the mountain". Remarkable crafting, can still feel the impact of the rocks and am still weeping, from the beauty and the pain.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

rock flight is simply brilliant! One book-length build-up of forced breathing, forced displacements, and erasure made real. The build-up is in the repetitions that add onto themselves like list games and the juxtapositions of disparate source materials. rock flight is full of wordplay and double-entendre. The reader cannot hide from discomfort, isn't let off the hook.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This powerful book-length poem serves as an allegory for the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I appreciated the context provided in the blurb and footnotes, which helped me to better understand the poem. I also appreciated the new perspective I gained about what it is like to be an Australian-born Palestinian whose access to homeland is limited and heavily monitored.

[Afsana Banana · Rating 5 out of 5]

5:34PM. He is an expert at insinuating what can't be said. Often, his refusal to conclusively define is very powerful. It was very thought-provoking, and I've learnt a lot. The afterword is beautiful.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"its not enough
it won't do
we can't only choke
back the state that chokes us when
the state that chokes us
is being breathed alive
by bigger empires
empires that created
the state that chokes us
to keep the empires
empires"

Heavy. Very fucking heavy.

[JANE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly clever and evocative yet so raw at the same time. I loved it

[Kashmira · Rating 5 out of 5]

exquisite