The Silence That Remains by Fady Joudah

Abstract

how the many experiences we have in this human existence are far more similar than not. Sometimes the most overlooked, seemingly simple events are the most profoundly unifying, as in this moment where the speaker says, “I didn’t mean to go outside except there / the sky was, just ridiculously blue, / taunting me with pigment that I felt / the need to name.” And haven’t we all experienced this magnitude of awe when looking up at the sky? This simple observation is the thread that will keep humanity from its complete unraveling. The characters, images, and language of Rocket Fantastic exist at the intersection of love and humanity—an ideal that seems entirely foreign but enchanting and necessary . We read on and we read on in this collection, and we want it to exist. Sarah Warren University of North Texas Adonis. Concerto Al-Quds. Trans. Khaled Mattawa. New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2017. 96 pages. In his Concerto Al-Quds, Adonis immortalizes Jerusalem through juxtaposing the city to its past and present rulers, wars, streets, and religions that are deeply rooted in history. Adonis brings together Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic histories and has them celebrate the marvelous Quds. The city is what always remains despite the fluctuation of politics and religions. For Adonis, Al-Quds is an ever-extraordinary city where all the contradictions of life meet—life and death, beauty and malice, love and hatred, peace and war. It’s a “Sky on earth / Al-Quds, a dream language / a language that history bleeds into what came before it and after it / that mixes the human and the real / ending and non-ending.” Al-Quds is like no other city. It is the impossible that will always declare its immortality. Adonis creates a vivid image of al-Quds and how instead of death representing the end of its inhabitants’ lives, it uses their bodies and graves for rejuvenation, as if death is the beginning of another life, parallel to that of the afterlife but this time on earth where “graves are the semen of al-Quds.” He utilizes creative images that leave the reader fascinated both with the beauty of al-Quds and the language that describes it, leaving a mythic illustration of this ancient city. Adonis’s meticulous choice of language embodies recurring attempts to capture the smallest details of everything in al-Quds, such as the sky as he says, “What can I say? / No, there is no sky any more / No Sama’ / The Seen is a sword, the Mim mortality / the Alifs are an oppressive ancestry / The glottal stop a vast emptiness.” With deep thoughts and carefully chosen language, Adonis champions Al-Quds as the sole victor among its multiple rulers. His style employs a variety of concrete to abstract images, old and new histories, divine and human, nature and the supernatural—all are proudly part of the city. He smoothly takes the reader from the depths of history to the geography around the city, putting Al-Quds at the center of every aspect of life, life on earth and the hereafter. Mohammed Kadalah University of Connecticut Ghassan Zaqtan. The Silence That Remains. Trans. Fady Joudah. Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon Press. 2017. 255 pages. In the preface to Ghassan Zaqtan’s The Silence That Remains, translator Fady Joudah tells the reader: “To have memory and to articulate memory are two different things. . . . The more one attempts to capture memory and enunciate it, the more one is resigned to an endless task.” Zaqtan writes in the caesura between memory and World Literature in Review 84 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2018 recollection, endlessly cataloging imperfectly rendered experience in the poems of this fine collection, capably rendered and introduced to English readers by Joudah (see WLT, March 2016, 31–36). Joudah describes Zaqtan as a kind of “art historian” of his own experience, and many of the spare poems of this collection engage memory in the manner of black-and-white photographs: they emphasize by shadow or absence; they frame what can be recollected , leaving plenty of room for that which remains outside the frame to speak. In “Their Absence,” Zaqtan writes, “And what remains / but little...