Hearing Still

The Middle East both real and imagined forms the background against which George Messo's third collection Hearing Still shapes its recurring themes: silence destruction resistance and endurance. The poems are at times as sparse as the landscapes they inhabit; fragile breaths quivering at the edge of worlds driven by catastrophe and restored by human dignity. Ranging through Turkey Lebanon and Palestine to the gravel deserts of Oman and the desolate coastal plains of the Arabian Gulf Messo's uniquely strange and illusive vision is at once mysterious and distressing.