We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage

by Hala Alyan (Editor), Zeina Hashem Beck (Editor)

This landmark anthology gathers together almost two-hundred vibrant English-language love poems by living writers of Arab descent. We Call to the Eye and to the Night is an amalgam of eminent poets ―Hayan Charara, Leila Chatti, Nathalie Handal, Fady Joudah, and Naomi Shihab Nye, among them―and those who have just begun to make their mark. These poets are descended from diverse countries and represent a breathtaking intersection of voices, experiences, and perspectives. Divided into whimsical sections (named for lines from poems they include), the anthology features an evocative array of erotic and romantic selections, as well as ones portraying love of family, friends, heritage, and homeland. Exquisitely curated and introduced by acclaimed authors Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck, We Call to the Eye and to the Night is at once sexy, sensuous, adventurous, and nostalgic―a treasury of love emanating from the Arab world and its diaspora.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

Published September 12, 2023

About the author

Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and grew up in Kuwait, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon. She earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and an MA from Columbia University. While completing her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, she specialized in trauma and addiction work with various populations.

Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.

She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).

Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry; Four Cities (2015); Hijra (2016), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019); and The Moon That Turns You Back (2024).

She co-edited the poetry anthology We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (2023) with poet Zeina Hashem Beck.

Alyan has also been awarded a Lannan Foundation fellowship and her poems have appeared in numerous journals and literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Jewish Currents,The New York Times Book Review, Prairie Schooner and Colorado Review.

Alyan is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU. She resides in Brooklyn with her family.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually an anthology is a mixed bag, in the sense of mixed quality, but NOT HERE. This anthology is a “mixed bag” in the sense of when you’re at a really good house party, wandering room to room and overhearing snippets of wholly different (but equally fascinating) conversations. Zeina Hashem Beck said that metaphor — and that warmth — was her desire as an editor, and oh my word did she ever achieve it. I’m so grateful to have been at a reading with some of the poets featured here, and so grateful to have learned of so many others in its pages, and I’m not a poet so I’m running out of ways to say “THIS IS EXTRAORDINARY, READ IT,” but it is and you should.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highlighting a variety of poems — concrete, prose, and ode, this gorgeous anthology ruminates on beauty, desire, loss, and place. Three of the poems I dog-eared consist of Ruth Awad’s “The Sleepwalker,” Carolina Ebeid’s “Auscultation,” and Noor Hindi’s “The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song & Other Confessions.” Compiling poems by Zeyn Joukhadar, Leila Chatti, George Abraham, and more, don’t miss out on these love poems. In fact, send them to someone you love. (A copy waits for me to wrap and snail mail to my soul sister.) I must stress: browse the bios. Learning the poets’ loves, from “seashells” (Amanda Ghazale Aziz) to “meaningful conversations on a rainy day” (Mariam Gomaa) to “soup in every season” (Zein Sa’dedin), inspired such joy.

from “12 of the Best Poetry Collections from 2023” via BOOK RIOT: https://bookriot.com/best-poetry-coll...

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so very much enjoyed reading this anthology! There is such a wide range of poetry with many poets I read for the first time. One of my favorite poems is "Riverbank" by Tala Abu Rahmeh, in which the speaker mourns their mother. I love how the poems follow each other intuitively, and how each part of the anthology takes a line or phrase from one of its respective poems as title. This is a treasure trove of an anthology to go back to again and again.

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking, stunning and exquisite.

This Anthology really sings to my heart and has rooted itself in my veins. There are no words that best describe the feeling you get, the yearning you feel and the ache in your soul for a land, a people and a sense of belonging you have to what it means to be Lebanese (or half in my case as I am also half Armenian).

The kinship is real with these poets, these artists, who can really help me navigate this world of diaspora through this book of poems and one I will be revisiting time and time again.

[Jack Malik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great anthology. I love how the editors arranged the poems into six parts:

1. Details Stolen from the Heavens (blending of the earthly & celestial)
2. Her Grief Into Bread, Her Joy Into Butter (melding of loss & grief)
3. To Where My Mother Pulled the City Lights to Dance (conjuring of places & ancestries)
4. I Found You at the Intersection (revelling in the fleeting & borderless)
5. Something Soft Against Something Body (reimagining pasts & futures)
6. And I, Your Riverbank (overflowing of longing - my favourite part of the book)

There’s another anthology on Arabic Poets, edited by Nathalie Handal—Poetry of Arabic Women: A Contemporary Anthology.

Personally, nothing beats Arabic Poetics. Khalas.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary collection of poems that has inspired me to add many of the authors to my TBR list. I loved all of Ruth Awad’s poems. Aiya Sakr, Deema K. Shehabi, and Tala Abu Rahmeh’s poems were all standouts.

I loved George Abraham’s “ars poetica with parallel dimensions.” There is such power in the lines “I confess, I am more vengeful than my oppressors deem me; my disposition is a learned burial”

I admired the craftsmanship of all the poems but there were just as many that left me cold as there were those that spoke to me. That being said, I strongly recommend reading this collection and seeing which poems resonate with you.

[Lionel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely one of my favorite poetry anthologies now; I must've gifted "my" copies 2-3 times so far already to friends because it's so important to me that they be able to experience how nourishing this book is for the mind & soul - I'd rather lose "my" copy if it means a new person is able to read and appreciate this work. I hope to introduce more people to it in the future. Absolutely beautiful.

[Will likely edit this with more specifics when the replacement copy comes in!]

[Madeline Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

just so beautiful, quite a wide range of forms and voices and i can't wait to return to these again and again. the title comes from the arabic "ya leil ya ein," a beckoning that works its way masterfully into the ethos of these poems.

[blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you know that. I love poetry. The way that only poetry can make you feel.

[cloud ୨ৎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must read anthology for poetry fans. i found myself underlining and highlighting lines every time i turned a page. just an incredible collection with some of the best poets.

[char · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful. took me a year to digest fully and slowly. i will be coming back to this one.

[Michelle Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, heartfelt compilation. I took it out from my local library and had to buy a copy for myself as well as gift a copy to a dear friend.