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A Time Between Ashes and Roses
The first English translation of a signature work by one of the greatest living Arab poets.
In this noted anthology, the poet Adonis evokes the wisdom of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (which he liberally excerpts and remolds), the modernism of William Carlos Williams, and the haunting urban imagery of Baudelaire, Cavafy, and Lorca. Three long poems allow him to explore profoundly the human condition, by examining language and love, race and favor, faith and dogma, war and ruin. In the lyrical "This Is My Name " and "Introduction to the History of the Petty Kings, " Adonis ponders Arab defeat and defeatism. In "A Grave for New York, " he focuses on Vietnam-era America. Originally published in 1970 to widespread acclaim, the collection has been reprinted often but has never before appeared in English. Enhanced by Shawkat M. Toorawa's bilingual edition of the Arabic and English on facing pages, an afterword, and assisted by a critical bibliography of Adonis's works, this book is a crucial reference for all students and scholars of modern and Middle Eastern poetry and culture. Noted Syrian intellectual Nasser Rabbat offers a compelling foreword.
- GenresPoetry
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2004
About the author
Adonis
287 books213 followersAdonis was born Ali Ahmed Said in the village of Al Qassabin in Syria, in 1930, to a family of farmers, the oldest of six children. At the age of nineteen, he adopted the name Adonis (also spelled Adunis), after the Greek god of fertility, with the hopes that the new name would result in newspaper publication of his poems.
Although his family could not afford to send Adonis to school, his father taught him to read poetry and the Qu'ran, and memorize poems while he worked in the fields. When he was fourteen, Adonis read a poem to the president of Syria who was visiting a nearby town. The impressed president offered to grant a request, to which the young Adonis responded that he wanted to attend school. The president quickly made arrangements for Adonis to attend a French-run high school, after which he studied philosophy at Damascus University.
In 1956, after a year-long imprisonment for political activities, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles in Beirut, and co-founded and edited Sh'ir, and later Muwaqaf, both progressive journals of poetry and politics. He studied at St. Joseph University in Beirut and obtained his Doctorat d'Etat in 1973.
Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus (BOA Editions, 2008), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press, 2004); If Only the Sea Could Sleep (2003); The Pages of Day and Night (2001); Transformations of the Lover (1982); The Book of the Five Poems (1980); The Blood of Adonis (1971), winner of the Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum; Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (1961), Leaves in the Wind (1958), and First Poems (1957). He is also an essayist, an editor of anthologies, a theoretician of poetics, and the translator of several works from French into Arabic.
Over the course of his career, Adonis has fearlessly experimented with form and content, pioneering the prose poem in Arabic, and taking a influential, and sometimes controversial role in Arab modernism. In a 2002 interview in the New York Times, Adonis declared: '"There is no more culture in the Arab world. It's finished. Culturally speaking, we are a part of Western culture, but only as consumers, not as creators."
Adonis's awards and honors include the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He was elected as Stephen Mallarme Academy Member in Paris in 1983. He has taught at the Lebanese University as a professor of Arabic literature, at Damascus University, and at the Sorbonne. He has been a Lebanese citizen since 1961 and currently lives in Paris.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
Although his family could not afford to send Adonis to school, his father taught him to read poetry and the Qu'ran, and memorize poems while he worked in the fields. When he was fourteen, Adonis read a poem to the president of Syria who was visiting a nearby town. The impressed president offered to grant a request, to which the young Adonis responded that he wanted to attend school. The president quickly made arrangements for Adonis to attend a French-run high school, after which he studied philosophy at Damascus University.
In 1956, after a year-long imprisonment for political activities, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles in Beirut, and co-founded and edited Sh'ir, and later Muwaqaf, both progressive journals of poetry and politics. He studied at St. Joseph University in Beirut and obtained his Doctorat d'Etat in 1973.
Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus (BOA Editions, 2008), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press, 2004); If Only the Sea Could Sleep (2003); The Pages of Day and Night (2001); Transformations of the Lover (1982); The Book of the Five Poems (1980); The Blood of Adonis (1971), winner of the Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum; Songs of Mihyar the Damascene (1961), Leaves in the Wind (1958), and First Poems (1957). He is also an essayist, an editor of anthologies, a theoretician of poetics, and the translator of several works from French into Arabic.
Over the course of his career, Adonis has fearlessly experimented with form and content, pioneering the prose poem in Arabic, and taking a influential, and sometimes controversial role in Arab modernism. In a 2002 interview in the New York Times, Adonis declared: '"There is no more culture in the Arab world. It's finished. Culturally speaking, we are a part of Western culture, but only as consumers, not as creators."
Adonis's awards and honors include the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He was elected as Stephen Mallarme Academy Member in Paris in 1983. He has taught at the Lebanese University as a professor of Arabic literature, at Damascus University, and at the Sorbonne. He has been a Lebanese citizen since 1961 and currently lives in Paris.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 13, 2020
Time was about to step out of time, and what
they called homeland sits on the edge of time about to fall.
*
We shall speak plainness: In existence there is something called
presence, and something called absence. Let us speak truth:
We are absence
Sky did not beget us, dust did not beget us
We are foam evaporating from rivers of words
Rust in the sky and its heavens, rust in life!
*
—My love is a wound
*
… Life’s footsteps stopped at the chapterdoor of a book erased by my questions.
they called homeland sits on the edge of time about to fall.
*
We shall speak plainness: In existence there is something called
presence, and something called absence. Let us speak truth:
We are absence
Sky did not beget us, dust did not beget us
We are foam evaporating from rivers of words
Rust in the sky and its heavens, rust in life!
*
—My love is a wound
*
… Life’s footsteps stopped at the chapterdoor of a book erased by my questions.
April 19, 2025
هذا هو أدونبس
لعلّ قصيدةَ "هذا هو اسمي" ورقةُ انتسابِ أدونيس إلى الشِّعر الذي أرادَهُ أو بالأحرى هي بيانه الشِّعري...
وهي كما تقول الناقد خالدة سعيد أهم قصائده
هذا هو اسمي
هذا هو شِعري
هذا هو أنا
لعلّ قصيدةَ "هذا هو اسمي" ورقةُ انتسابِ أدونيس إلى الشِّعر الذي أرادَهُ أو بالأحرى هي بيانه الشِّعري...
وهي كما تقول الناقد خالدة سعيد أهم قصائده
هذا هو اسمي
هذا هو شِعري
هذا هو أنا
March 12, 2012
Rare good modern Arabic poetry
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews