Louder Than Hearts: Poems

I adore this book. You need it, on your shelf and in your hands. Run, don't walk!

Louder than Hearts by Lebanese, Dubai based poet Zeina Hashem Beck is a book about the bi-lingual life, articulating in meditation like poems, the complexity of the Arabic language, culture and History in ways that go far beyond (and beneath) war, terrorism, corruption and politics.Zeina, a contemporary, aficionado of words, and seamstress of longing, has put together in this poetry collection a rhythmical manifestation of our deeply hidden grieves. With a sense of urgency and personal pain, she speaks for our homesickness. she writes giving into no limitation of translation, of what {could be} language/religion barriers, or freedoms, if we choose it to be.She writes for all of us, the broken hearted, the beloved, the in-love the homesick, the anxious, the lost, the wanderers, she writes a prayer for our spirits, for all of us.--Zeina writes of the limitless bonding powers of poetry. We may be of different cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, from different towns and cities, divided by imaginary borders, rivers, lakes oceans, and tongues, but we are all human, and we love all the same... And poetry is how we all can see the similarities, see our humanity, and know we are one. When it is beautiful, well written, masterfully articulated poetry, we all can relate."and if your sorrow hardened you fixed itby dipping it in seawater, and if your countryhardened, you fixed itby dipping it in song"Reality is where poets draw in their inspiration, their poems is merely a painting of what is in their environment and what influences and stirs their emotions. Zeina's poetry is about hearts broken not only by love, but by war, bullets, politics, religion, and displacement, hearts to be cared for, regardless, by beauty, love and kisses. Always."Bahr is how we were taught to measure poetry,bahr is how we've stopped trying to measure sorrow, back home.""Stop writing about war," he said. "Stopwriting about borders and blood. Stop writingabout revolutions and revolvers, about cities,rooftops with antennas and snipers.""For God's sake stopwriting about religion, I'm tiredof minarets and crosses, even the prayersare tired and want to sleep. Just writesome shade for me to sit in.""They would have done it in a cafe in Paris.They would have done it in a shelter in BaghdadI could have kissed you a Thousand years ago.It is the same scene everywhere and always,give or take the sound of bullets.""Did they have to bomb your bodyopen, to behold Allahin your artery?""& does poetry matter, & does dance?& is there a bridge where the displaced go after they're gone?"The never-ending yearning for home; new or old, just somewhere/someone/something to belong to, that would never leave, and how that yearning seems/sounds insignificant in comparison to the status of a refugee:"Here-Nina Simone singsGot my liver, got my blood,so here. despite the children sleepingon the floor, & the tends, & the sea,& much much more,kiss me, for where elsedo we carry home now, habibi,if not on our lips"Women and War, Poetry and song, songs of freedom, Woman and love, women in love.."I prefer Umm Kukthum-no one has ever screamedabout freedom the way she did,except, perhaps, for Piaf (who has handsthe size of continents, eyebrowslike distant bird wings), and DAlida(who has killed herself).For the love and passion we carry in our souls for our mother tongue, the beauty it is saturated with, the depth of its poetic soul, the history of it, the poetry, the poets, the singers, the artists, the all time lovers of the Arabic language:"Call me magnum, Layla.I freed gazelles from my trapbecause they reminded me of your.What food for those already deadof hunger? Tell me, did hekiss you in the morning?Let me, then, dive into the darkflame of this night, this Layla."The struggle of having Arabic as your mother tongue, as what you're expected to speak in, communicate in, yet your mind speaks in a different language, and so does your heart, but your soul forever yearns to master the art of this impeccable ocean deep language:"3awda-ahk ya babaI have fallen in lovewith Beckett, I stumbleon my Arabic inflections, confusesubject & object,but I have promised Al- MutannabbiI will come back."In a poetry book about the Arabic language and the flustered lives of those who -against their will- grow distant more and more from it, and without realizing, detaching themselves from a language may also bring detachment from everything else, it may subconsciously represent; the love of a country "homeland", or memories of songs that embodies our history and culture of love and passion, it could have not missed having a poem (or two) for and about our language/country lovers, including Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez."I traced a line from the Qur'an in the air the last time I left for the hospitain London. Girls threwthemselves off balconies the day I died. She has beautiful ways of keening,this country"And in the end, Zeina in her poem "Ode to my non-Arabic Lover", threaded flawlessly every sentiment and notion that storm within my conflicted bilingual heart, for it holds a significant place for the Arabic language, yet aches for not being able to use its incomparable profoundness in communicating with my own significant other. And that is when Zeina, and her poetry won my heart, again, perpetually."Walak off off ooffdo not call me cruel,say I love my language more than my love,my love. I don't. You see?I'm already tired and you alreadymistranslate."

brilliant, stirring, magisterial collection by an essential voice in contemporary poetry