Balancing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1993 - 2015

by Yahia Lababidi

From Yahia Lababidi, a celebration of more than twenty years of poetry that, according to Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate of Vermont, ..". resonates in plain-spoken yet dazzling poetry-sometimes epigrammatic, sometimes expansive-that betrays the eclectic transmissions of his myriad influences, from Hafiz to Kierkegaard, Dickinson to Kafka." From the Press 53 Silver Concho Poetry Series, edited by Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root.

Genres: Poetry

204 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2016

About the author

Yahia Lababidi is an acclaimed Arab-American writer of Palestinian heritage, author of more than a dozen books of aphorisms, poetry, essays, and conversations. His work unites Eastern mysticism, Western philosophy, and Arab heritage to explore life’s enduring questions: love, faith, suffering, and self-discovery.

His newest books are On the Contrary: Wilde & Nietzsche (Fomite Shorts, 2025), a meditation on two contrarians who turned life into art and thought into moral adventure, and What Remains to Be Said (Wild Goose Publications, 2025), a career-spanning collection of aphorisms written over three decades. Philosophical yet poetic, these reflections offer clarity and consolation in a time of noise, conflict, and distraction.

Lababidi’s Palestine Wail (Daraja Press, 2024) is a love letter to Gaza, praised by Naomi Shihab Nye and translated into seven languages. His poems for Palestine have been read at literary festivals across the world and shared in classrooms and vigils alike.

Earlier works include Quarantine Notes (Fomite Press, 2023), written during the global pandemic; Desert Songs (Rowayat, 2022); Learning to Pray: A Book of Longing (Kelsay Books, 2021); and Revolutions of the Heart (Wipf & Stock, 2020). His acclaimed aphorism collections Signposts to Elsewhere and Where Epics Fail were endorsed by President Obama’s inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, who called Lababidi “the current-day master of the aphorism.”

His writing has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, ABC Radio, On Being with Krista Tippett, Best American Poetry, The Guardian, and World Literature Today. A five-time Pushcart nominee, Lababidi has spoken at Oxford University and served as a juror for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.

Reviews

[World Literature Today]

"Mystical and modern, Yahia Lababidi’s Balancing Acts, a collection of poems spanning across a career of decades, tethers together a spectrum of concepts seemingly distant yet connected in a fashion nothing short of revelatory. For Lababidi, a notebook is as adequate an allegory for a Platonic parable as litter is to the overwhelming amount of “discarded people” throughout every civilization. It is often in Lababidi’s simplicity that his verses resonate, unveiling a mind as in tune with contemporary society as an ancient sage with the unscathed wild." - Daniel Bokemper

This book was reviewed in the May/August 2016 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Zeyn Joukhadar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diaspora, exile, and loneliness twine through these poems like a silver thread, but there is hopefulness in these words, too. Lababidi is a rare talent.