Gaza: el poema hizo su parte

by Nasser Rabah, Luz Gómez García (Contributor), Alberto Benjamín López Oliva (Translator)

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2025

Reviews

[marta · Rating 5 out of 5]

escuchadme hay algo en la forma de escribir que claramente sabes que estás leyendo algo importante y que hay alguien escribiendo en mitad de algo histórico y que como es posible decir algo después de que alguien describa este tipo de vacío pero incluso si no lo fuese este tío dijo en el pasado los poetas tenían un sexto dedo en cada mano para soportar el dolor de la escritura y yo no lo voy a superar

[Cristian FG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poesía contra el genocidio.

“La vida y yo:
un ciego de rodillas entrega un anillo de luz a una ciega.
Lo que queda es la imaginación, un músculo incansable.
La imaginación es el café de los extraños, los espejos del inconsciente, las bibliotecas de los cautivos.
La imaginación es lo que nos queda para hacer una patria
de la nada.”

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as I saw the distinctive look of the City Lights Pocket Poets series on the new arrivals shelf in the library, I was immediately homesick for San Francisco. Although I should admit that I first learned to love these books back when I lived in DC, and may even have seen them when I was still at home with my family in the suburbs. But enough about my affection for the series, let's talk about this book, because this book is impressive in several ways. The cover spoke to me, because the poet's face just immediately struck me as somebody I would want to know, and because I love the subtitle, "The poem said its piece."

I like checking out a poet I haven't read before, and I was intrigued that the works were translated into English by three people working together. And of course, it's always nice if I find that I like the poet's work, which in this case I did. Here are some examples:

The Gate of Text

"If only this gate was mine, I'd break it,
and pass through like a cloud with no trail.
But it's a tricky gate, donning its timbers when I lose the key,
and turning into a puddle of water when I have it!
I go at the gate with a bucket of water,
and it turns back into a wooden gate.
In my dream, it becomes a window and I wake up
and it turns into a wall.
What kind of business is this, O Lord?
And what gate?
And is all this racket now taking my time another ruse?
Or is it imagination opening wide onto the void?"

This one is from a series of poems entitled Meditations:

"At the beginning shadows were a little faster than we were,
then they walked with us, now we drag the shadows
like sacks stuffed with dead wishes."

Here's an earlier one from that same sequence:

"The hunter brags about what happened,
and the trap also brags about what happened,
only the bird in the trap has to listen to two tall tales,
and shake its head in regret."

Here's one from the sequence What I Didn't Say to Me:

"For having left their prison, history applauds places, for their
emancipation from the noose of the circle, from the cycle of
death and life, from the revolution of the electron around
its hard nucleus, from the turning of the earth around its
burning sun, from the cycle of water and mud, and from
bitter fates like to like, history applauds places."

I'm impressed by the fact that anyone can write poetry at all in Gaza, with all the suffering there. But I'm reminded of what the poet laureate of Ohio told us last week when someone asked her how she became a poet. Her son volunteered for the Army and ended up in Iraq, and she was beside herself with worry and someone told her to write poetry, because it would help her to focus. And she said it did (she also said those early poems were terrible, but that she got in the habit of writing poems and couldn't stop). So maybe it's the same in all times of terror and tragedy: You write poems to keep from losing your mind? Or maybe you write poems because you are a poet, and that's how you process experience, no matter what the experience may be?

Last but not least, I'm impressed because this is a dual-language edition, with the original poems in Arabic on facing pages. Nice touch, but a bit of extra work for the press, so I admire it even if I can't read it.

[6r36.v1073t · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transcendently beautiful and heartwrenching. God bless this man and the translators. A must read for any fan of poetry. Thank you Nasser and Mosab and City Lights!

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nasser Rabah is my favorite living poet in Palestine," says Pulitzer Prize winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha in his Foreword to this work. "The musicality of his lines," he adds, "could replace my heartbeats. . . ." Published by City Lights, Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece is a collection of poems by Nasser Rabah, some published elsewhere, many appearing in English translation for the first time.

The work is filled with words that draw pictures beautiful and surreal, dripping with heartbreak and the sweet honey of hope, for one must hope above all so long as one still breathes, imagining alternatives, daring to believe in something beyond what is, while also seeing fragments of beauty in the Now. Haunted by the lines of Mahmoud Darwish, for he is Palestine's most beloved of poets, Rabah (like Mosab Abu Toha) writes the songs of a bird in a cage, yearning to be free and knowing that to be free is within his grasp, even if ever so unreachable. Even amidst war and genocide, in the rubble of buildings and broken dreams, Rabah creates something wonderful and new. He shows us that broken dreams can, like the art of kintsugi be put back together and perhaps made into something more beautiful still. And all around in the rubble, life still finds a way: lovers meet and part, birds sing, children play, and life with all of its heartbreak, mystery and awe goes on. Maybe not the same as before, but it goes on nonetheless. And a poet of Rabah's magnitude can find the shards of beauty in all of that and make of them something exquisite, the blood of the poet's hands, the sweat of his brow mixed in with everything else - the pain of living, the hope of tomorrow, the beauty in the mundane, a few lines of Darwish, a butterfly, a "sleepy cloud" - and make of it all something uniquely his and something undeniably Gazan, Palestinian, Human.

[Hannah Contreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly beautiful collection that at times is hard to get through because of the intensity of his work. Reading the note by the translators at the end helped to contextualize their work. Many of the poems, while at first glance accessible, are dense and opaque, and they invite the reader to really sit with their words and consider the symbolism and layered depictions of life among such tragedy. In an era where our access to information is increasingly complicated and truthful sources are hard to find and frequently misrepresented, poetry occupies a unique space where we can engage with a firsthand account of a life that seems nigh unthinkable to us. Rabah’s poetry is full of life and speaks to the way that the Palestinian people refuse to be broken in the face of the genocide perpetrated by Israel and supported by the USA. This little book of poetry is so important and I’m glad that I was able to read it, and that I picked it up at the OG City Lights in SF — one of the greatest and most well-stocked bookstores for intellectuals and revolutionaries in the country.

“Your fingers will be the fruit of orange trees, your arm the staff for a victorious flag, and your heart the train’s last station, you won’t be here then but somewhere hard to describe, explaining to bedazzled angels how love can accomplish a miracle.”
- Nasser Rabah, “What I Didn’t Say To Me”

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"19
Your fingers will be the fruit of orange trees, your arm the staff for a victorious flag, and your heart the train's last station, you won't be here then but somewhere hard to describe, explaining to bedazzled angels how love can accomplish a miracle."

Well this collection packs ahellofa punch!!

[Eman · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review coming soon in The Markaz Review.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read again and again.

[andre mariño · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conmovedores y estremecedores poemas sobre el genocidio palestino en Gaza. El poema donde enumera los cambios en su vida cotidiana y la muerte de sus amigos es de una contundente belleza y brutalidad, que pocas veces se mezclaron de esa forma