Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

This book features the disruption and random violence of war, at times experienced directly by the poet himself as a child growing up in Gaza. Though written in English, Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar and librarian who has studied in the US and his direct and ongoing experience in this war torn region result in many points of heartbreak in this book.

To say that Toha isn’t innovative would be an error. For example, the first section is composed of slice of life prose poems for every letter of the alphabet. The subject matter and details are chosen artfully. However, the language of the poems is not very engaging. They depict what happens or is seen or heard in fairly plain language and at times it gets rather expository for my taste.

What comes across through reading this book in its entirety is the generational history of his family, its tragedies and sacrifices in a place that is repeatedly decimated. Another thing that struck me was the creepiness of drones. Because this covers decades, there’s a sense of the development of methods of warfare.

If you’re interested in the Palestinian experience in Gaza (or war poetry more generally), this would be a good book to read. Because I like poetry that plays more with language, Toha is not a poet I’ll seek out to read. However, if another volume of his work happens to cross my path, I won’t mind reading his poetry again to see if he has other modes of expression.

Interesting - I was at the bookstore today and was looking at this one, but I chose not to buy it because I had a similar sense - that the style wasn't quite right for me. It looked like an interesting book, though, and it looked like in places there were images intermingled with the text