Monday, August 11, 2008
"I speak in the voice of the absentee"
The Darwish work that touched me most is Memory for Forgetfulness. The prose poem/memoir of a single day during the Beirut bombing of 1982 negotiates the tension of recurring dreams and the brutal reality of modern warfare. "And between here and there they stretched their bodies like a vibrating bow until death celebrated itself through them."
Today's Democracy Now features an extensive interview with two of Darwish's translators, including Fady Joudah, who works in the Houston hospital where the poet died. Check it out here.
- Frank Sherlock