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Textu
"Joudah's poetry thrives on dramatic shifts in perspective, on continually challenging received notions."— The Guardian Emerging in the era of tweets and text messages, poet Fady Joudah has invented a new poetic textu. The "u" in textu echoes the one in haiku, and also emphasizes the intimate you. A textu poem has a single be exactly 160 characters long. As theme, form, and style are wide opened, a textu reveals new possibilities and poetry in unexpected ways. Textu Your spine a river into the forest
can't tell the neurons for the trees I light & light
you up with sound profile threading the image habit
of pleasure Conscience When we learn how an infant in the womb
Sleeps precisely in a parent's pose say with fist closed
pillowing the temple What will become
of the poem "A collection of poems that takes its form from the text message necessarily raises similar questions about attention, and attendant questions about empathy. Each poem in Fady Joudah’s Textu was composed on a smart phone’s text message screen, and is “exactly 160 characters long, specific to text message parameters.” Aren’t text messages the epitome of what we glance at in passing, and then just as quickly forget, in that often-described stream of information and stimulation? This book is not a reductive critique of this stream, or what it is doing to us. Neither does the collection let its premise—the textu form—justify itself without inquiry, as though shaping a poem according to the strictures of a text message necessarily makes the poem interesting. Instead, the form feels central to these poems, and to what they are doing. Joudah has pointed out that for most people in the world who can’t afford unlimited texting, exceeding the character count means incurring additional costs; the character is a unit of economic value. The constraint of character count in the book, then, is not only a new kind of meter. It is also a metonym for the ways in which our language and our relationships are constrained by the world in which we by taking their form from one born of late capitalism, the text message, what these poems implicitly suggest is that all of our communication—and all of our poems—are shaped by this system, whether we would prefer to hold our attention on this fact or not. It is fitting, then, that even as Textu asks us to consider the context in which lyric poems are made, it draws on and locates itself within the lyric tradition. The textu form shares the lyric’s feel of intimate address, the “u” in “textu” suggesting an interlocutor to whom the poems are addressed. And the poems in the collection take on, among other subjects, the conventionally lyric subjects of natural beauty, loss, and desire." —Margaree Little, Kenyon Review Online
Fady Joudah is a poet, translator, and emergency room physician. His first book, The Earth in the Attic , won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He lives near Houston, Texas.
can't tell the neurons for the trees I light & light
you up with sound profile threading the image habit
of pleasure Conscience When we learn how an infant in the womb
Sleeps precisely in a parent's pose say with fist closed
pillowing the temple What will become
of the poem "A collection of poems that takes its form from the text message necessarily raises similar questions about attention, and attendant questions about empathy. Each poem in Fady Joudah’s Textu was composed on a smart phone’s text message screen, and is “exactly 160 characters long, specific to text message parameters.” Aren’t text messages the epitome of what we glance at in passing, and then just as quickly forget, in that often-described stream of information and stimulation? This book is not a reductive critique of this stream, or what it is doing to us. Neither does the collection let its premise—the textu form—justify itself without inquiry, as though shaping a poem according to the strictures of a text message necessarily makes the poem interesting. Instead, the form feels central to these poems, and to what they are doing. Joudah has pointed out that for most people in the world who can’t afford unlimited texting, exceeding the character count means incurring additional costs; the character is a unit of economic value. The constraint of character count in the book, then, is not only a new kind of meter. It is also a metonym for the ways in which our language and our relationships are constrained by the world in which we by taking their form from one born of late capitalism, the text message, what these poems implicitly suggest is that all of our communication—and all of our poems—are shaped by this system, whether we would prefer to hold our attention on this fact or not. It is fitting, then, that even as Textu asks us to consider the context in which lyric poems are made, it draws on and locates itself within the lyric tradition. The textu form shares the lyric’s feel of intimate address, the “u” in “textu” suggesting an interlocutor to whom the poems are addressed. And the poems in the collection take on, among other subjects, the conventionally lyric subjects of natural beauty, loss, and desire." —Margaree Little, Kenyon Review Online
Fady Joudah is a poet, translator, and emergency room physician. His first book, The Earth in the Attic , won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He lives near Houston, Texas.
- GenresPoetry
118 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Fady Joudah
29 books94 followersJoudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the University of Georgia in Athens, and then the Medical College of Georgia, before completing his medical training at the University of Texas. Joudah currently practices as an ER physician in Houston, Texas. He has also volunteered abroad with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.
In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of recent poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish translated from Arabic, which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
His book of poetry Alight was published in 2013.
In 2017, Joudah translated Zaqtan's The Silence That Remains.
His 2021 poetry collection, Tethered to the Stars, was cited by Cleveland Review of Books as a poetry collection that "does not teach us how to answer any question it poses with a stylized rhetoric, a self-important flourish; the poems model a lyrical thinking which prompts the question itself."
Joudah won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American writer of “exceptional talent. His work entitled [...] was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection Shortlist and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.
Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.
In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of recent poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish translated from Arabic, which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
His book of poetry Alight was published in 2013.
In 2017, Joudah translated Zaqtan's The Silence That Remains.
His 2021 poetry collection, Tethered to the Stars, was cited by Cleveland Review of Books as a poetry collection that "does not teach us how to answer any question it poses with a stylized rhetoric, a self-important flourish; the poems model a lyrical thinking which prompts the question itself."
Joudah won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American writer of “exceptional talent. His work entitled [...] was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection Shortlist and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.
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April 29, 2024
For those of you connected with social media, you have likely come across Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah through their poem Mimesis that had gone viral and still makes the internet rounds every so often for unfortunate reasons. It’s a wonderful poem and while not in this collection you should read it anyways:
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
While you won’t find this in Textu, the viral aspect of it does nudge against the ideas presented in this brief collection from 2013. Textu is a fascinating experiment in imposed limitations that forces succinctness for an artistic vantage point in observing modern technology like social media. Here, I’ll let Joudah explain it as he does in the start of this book:.
Originally only available as an ebook to enhance the digital implications of these poems, it eventually came out in paperback from Copper Canyon Press in a tiny size that fits in your pocket. Like a phone. According to Joudah, the title Textu is a ‘play on the words “text you” and “haiku”’ and ‘came from noticing how much time people spend texting.’ But the ideas aren’t limited to just a text. Think of the Twitter character limit (which had been 140) and the ways users would try to squeeze ideas into those restrictions. Technology has long changed the ways we communicate, such as abbreviations and other various shorthands like emojis becoming commonly understood semiotic tools, and we see a sort of “twitter speak” in a lot of these poems. Such as using the number 4 in place of the word 4, for instance. Many studies have argued that social media has impacted our attention spans, such as moving away from longer, nuanced texts and essays in favor of pithy, tweetable (and more marketable) statements, and the brevity of these poems make them all something that are easily shareable on social media for that purpose. So lets take a look at the poems.
The Old Man Who Wept
Their children are around
& wonderful yet the couple
Knows they will go it alone
For 4 summers
He’s shared with me
A basketful of lemons
From his lemon trees
It is impressive to see all of these be exactly 160 characters. Its a sort of imposed set of limitations that reminds me of what the Oulipo writers were doing in the mid-20th century. It can make some of these poems feel a bit scattered or have words bundled in interesting ways that implies meaning beyond literal rote meanings of words, but that is precisely the elements of language that poetry excels in addressing and morphing. Poetry is language at its most malleable and Joudah does well. As you can see above, the limitations form their own unique cadence and meter to the lines. Sure there are poems that I think could have been improved upon without the limitations, but it is precisely the ways we think about that which makes us confront the WHY of the art here–it’s forcing us to think artistically about social media limitations on speech, message and clarity. The fingerprints are all over the linguistics of these poems. Which is pretty fun.
Revolution 4
Had the tyrant put his madness
Into writing
How would the story read if it were not told
Slant
Democracy is that
A tyrant can’t preside for life
There are some great themes here, with these short poems addressing a lot of social issues as well as capturing abstract singular moments of emotion. The darkness of the world does push in, with Joudah reminding us in Thank You Dark World that ‘If not for you there’d be / Among other things no poetry.’ Even in the condensed space he brings out some real shining stars of lines, such as in a poem about fellow Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish he writes ‘If olive trees knew the hands that had planted / them / Olive oil would have turned into tears!’ Joudah can mine gold anywhere, even social media experiments.
Immune
My heart isn’t another’s
Love is no transplant
It can be
Or when I’m dead
I will give you my eyes & also my liver
You must suppress their memory of me
If you are looking for more traditional poetry, Textu might not be the collection for you (his others are great though!) but for readers looking for experimentation this is an intriguing one. This would be an excellent collection to use in a classroom and sort of reminds me of something from that book Wasting time on the internet. In fact, I had a prof who had us develop a character and create a twitter account for that character. We then had to regularly interact with all our classmates in character and use the space for character development and crafting personality–the idea was that the character limit forced us to be succinct and really think about how to make each word count. Alas that twitter account was deleted when Musk took over and wiped “parody” accounts but it was a nice account for trolling local government offices. Anyways, Textu is a unique and fascinating experiment for the purpose of finding an intersection between technology and poetry. A worthwhile little read.
3.5/5
‘We shed light then leave its husk behind.
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
While you won’t find this in Textu, the viral aspect of it does nudge against the ideas presented in this brief collection from 2013. Textu is a fascinating experiment in imposed limitations that forces succinctness for an artistic vantage point in observing modern technology like social media. Here, I’ll let Joudah explain it as he does in the start of this book:.
‘All the poems here were composed on a cellular phone's text-message screen. The Textu poem has only one hard rule: that it be exactly 160 characters long, specific to text-message parameters. The Textu poem also suggests a meter in character, not syllable, count.’
Originally only available as an ebook to enhance the digital implications of these poems, it eventually came out in paperback from Copper Canyon Press in a tiny size that fits in your pocket. Like a phone. According to Joudah, the title Textu is a ‘play on the words “text you” and “haiku”’ and ‘came from noticing how much time people spend texting.’ But the ideas aren’t limited to just a text. Think of the Twitter character limit (which had been 140) and the ways users would try to squeeze ideas into those restrictions. Technology has long changed the ways we communicate, such as abbreviations and other various shorthands like emojis becoming commonly understood semiotic tools, and we see a sort of “twitter speak” in a lot of these poems. Such as using the number 4 in place of the word 4, for instance. Many studies have argued that social media has impacted our attention spans, such as moving away from longer, nuanced texts and essays in favor of pithy, tweetable (and more marketable) statements, and the brevity of these poems make them all something that are easily shareable on social media for that purpose. So lets take a look at the poems.
The Old Man Who Wept
Their children are around
& wonderful yet the couple
Knows they will go it alone
For 4 summers
He’s shared with me
A basketful of lemons
From his lemon trees
It is impressive to see all of these be exactly 160 characters. Its a sort of imposed set of limitations that reminds me of what the Oulipo writers were doing in the mid-20th century. It can make some of these poems feel a bit scattered or have words bundled in interesting ways that implies meaning beyond literal rote meanings of words, but that is precisely the elements of language that poetry excels in addressing and morphing. Poetry is language at its most malleable and Joudah does well. As you can see above, the limitations form their own unique cadence and meter to the lines. Sure there are poems that I think could have been improved upon without the limitations, but it is precisely the ways we think about that which makes us confront the WHY of the art here–it’s forcing us to think artistically about social media limitations on speech, message and clarity. The fingerprints are all over the linguistics of these poems. Which is pretty fun.
Revolution 4
Had the tyrant put his madness
Into writing
How would the story read if it were not told
Slant
Democracy is that
A tyrant can’t preside for life
There are some great themes here, with these short poems addressing a lot of social issues as well as capturing abstract singular moments of emotion. The darkness of the world does push in, with Joudah reminding us in Thank You Dark World that ‘If not for you there’d be / Among other things no poetry.’ Even in the condensed space he brings out some real shining stars of lines, such as in a poem about fellow Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish he writes ‘If olive trees knew the hands that had planted / them / Olive oil would have turned into tears!’ Joudah can mine gold anywhere, even social media experiments.
Immune
My heart isn’t another’s
Love is no transplant
It can be
Or when I’m dead
I will give you my eyes & also my liver
You must suppress their memory of me
If you are looking for more traditional poetry, Textu might not be the collection for you (his others are great though!) but for readers looking for experimentation this is an intriguing one. This would be an excellent collection to use in a classroom and sort of reminds me of something from that book Wasting time on the internet. In fact, I had a prof who had us develop a character and create a twitter account for that character. We then had to regularly interact with all our classmates in character and use the space for character development and crafting personality–the idea was that the character limit forced us to be succinct and really think about how to make each word count. Alas that twitter account was deleted when Musk took over and wiped “parody” accounts but it was a nice account for trolling local government offices. Anyways, Textu is a unique and fascinating experiment for the purpose of finding an intersection between technology and poetry. A worthwhile little read.
3.5/5
‘We shed light then leave its husk behind.
March 25, 2015
First, I thought the poems were gimmicky, but then I changed my mind.
I went to an author reading at the Poetry Center in Tucson, and found out some more about the composition of the poems. Joudah mentioned how he was under an intense period of his life, and his choice was "doing this or pills". Each poem is short enough to be composed as a series of text messages, 160 characters exactly or as close as possible (since not everyone has unlimited texting, he was quick to remind the audience). He would text the poems out to friends and family, and it was used as a way of not writing or translating anything new or major but a way of coping.
In that context, these poems shine.
I went to an author reading at the Poetry Center in Tucson, and found out some more about the composition of the poems. Joudah mentioned how he was under an intense period of his life, and his choice was "doing this or pills". Each poem is short enough to be composed as a series of text messages, 160 characters exactly or as close as possible (since not everyone has unlimited texting, he was quick to remind the audience). He would text the poems out to friends and family, and it was used as a way of not writing or translating anything new or major but a way of coping.
In that context, these poems shine.
January 17, 2025
My love I’m like a rose
Some days I decorate weddings
Other days graves
Some days I decorate weddings
Other days graves
May 4, 2019
I heard poet Fady Joudah speak last night, and I wanted to buy one of his books. I took home Textu and I read it today.
Well, I say I read it. I read the words. Some of it made sense. Most of it didn't. But even when I read it and reread it, the pieces refused to come together in my mind. See what you think:
Luke Cool Hand I'm Your Father
Nurturing people into junkies
par for the course
pills & fear
& salt & sugar & grease
@the dollar store
They did have a choice
Just me? Yes, I know poetry is elusive. But so elusive that it feels like a jumble of overcooked oatmeal?
Try another.
Fidelity
is a business deal
one secret slipping into another
I don't mean at the beach
we're above sea level
But echo in conch
Your heart needs a hearing aid
Hmmm. Textu is a hundred pages of that. Completely elusive.
Well, I say I read it. I read the words. Some of it made sense. Most of it didn't. But even when I read it and reread it, the pieces refused to come together in my mind. See what you think:
Luke Cool Hand I'm Your Father
Nurturing people into junkies
par for the course
pills & fear
& salt & sugar & grease
@the dollar store
They did have a choice
Just me? Yes, I know poetry is elusive. But so elusive that it feels like a jumble of overcooked oatmeal?
Try another.
Fidelity
is a business deal
one secret slipping into another
I don't mean at the beach
we're above sea level
But echo in conch
Your heart needs a hearing aid
Hmmm. Textu is a hundred pages of that. Completely elusive.
February 18, 2015
A relevant new form. My favorite moments:
A woman kissed is not a woman
in a kiss kissing
we’d be asking for water to die
But you Sir are no water
Death is not our only betrayal
we are having technical difficulties
We shed light then leave its husk behind
Don’t get all Che on me cheri
The world isn’t good with names
O duende that gives me mass, feathered time in a black hole, lit years, dog years, god years, pick a number.
We have entered the language of clouds
the weather is all over
A woman kissed is not a woman
in a kiss kissing
we’d be asking for water to die
But you Sir are no water
Death is not our only betrayal
we are having technical difficulties
We shed light then leave its husk behind
Don’t get all Che on me cheri
The world isn’t good with names
O duende that gives me mass, feathered time in a black hole, lit years, dog years, god years, pick a number.
We have entered the language of clouds
the weather is all over
May 27, 2020
A pocket size book of 160 character poems.
Some struck me - Immune, Hospice, 33, The Old Man Who Wept - some made me smile knowingly - others require further reflection. Fortunately the pocket size allows me to keep it nearby.
Some struck me - Immune, Hospice, 33, The Old Man Who Wept - some made me smile knowingly - others require further reflection. Fortunately the pocket size allows me to keep it nearby.
December 18, 2023
Textu by Fady Joudah
The poets know. I found the format of the Textu poems very interesting. I treasured this book of poems. I have so many highlights from the book. My favorites are
Conscience
Awe
Chronic
Thank You Dark World
This is my 23rd book for #23for23
The poets know. I found the format of the Textu poems very interesting. I treasured this book of poems. I have so many highlights from the book. My favorites are
Conscience
Awe
Chronic
Thank You Dark World
This is my 23rd book for #23for23
January 17, 2025
Very short read which I like. Did not connect with book well. Maybe my limited knowledge on how to read poetry is the reason for my lack of understanding or cultural differences. I did enjoy a few chapters though I had a hard time staying connected.
June 14, 2021
It was an interlude before bed.
September 2, 2023
"the heart is murky/like machine gun oil/clear all clear/a lidocaine filled syringe"
November 13, 2024
"Believe
or dis believe the massacre
took size & place it doesn't erase
the prerequisite preceding terror
Catastrophe
is not always evidence-based
Also erasure"
or dis believe the massacre
took size & place it doesn't erase
the prerequisite preceding terror
Catastrophe
is not always evidence-based
Also erasure"
October 4, 2025
These are poems with units of 160 characters.
November 2, 2015
Read for my Poetry (ENG 271) class. I enjoyed the compact nature of these poems, but sometimes they felt a bit inaccessible.
January 10, 2017
With the expansion of Twitter’s influence, I felt compelled to re-read this thoughtful collection. Joudah’s poems here are like darts—sleek and targeted.
Postcard review: http://ow.ly/rKzl307SmwC
Postcard review: http://ow.ly/rKzl307SmwC
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews