Arabic Poems

The Arabic poetic legacy is as vast as it is deep spanning a period of fifteen centuries in regions from Morocco to Iraq. As a unifying principle editor Marlé Hammond has selected eighty poems reflecting desire and longing of various kinds: for the beloved for the divine for the homeland and for change and renewal. Poets include the legendary pre-Islamic warrior 'Antara Ibn Shaddad medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Zaydun the wandering poet Al-A’sha and the influential Egyptian Romantic Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi. Here too are literary giants of the past century: Khalil Jibran author of the bestselling The Prophet; popular Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani; Palestinian feminist Fadwa Tuqan; Mahmoud Darwish bard of occupation and exile; acclaimed iconoclast Adonis and more. In their evocations of heroism nostalgia mysticism grief and passion the poems gathered here transcend the limitations of time and place.