The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Resistance Poetry

"It is, quite simply, very important to see all these poems together still.... Reading [The Palestinian Wedding] we learn a great deal about Palestine and about ourselves as human beings."―Stephen Watts, Banipal The poems in this powerful bilingual collection range from the rhetorical lyricism of Tawfiq Zayyad to the complex, cosmic imagery of Walid al-Halis, from the romantic idiom of Salma al-Jayyusi to the edgy, convoluted style of Tawfiq Sayigh, all evoking Palestine, the never-forgotten homeland.The rich variety of the work is explored in Abdelwahab Elmessiri's extensive introduction and further reflected in the Arabic-language versions that accompany each selection. Opening with Mahmud Darwish's "The Roses and the Dictionary" and Samih al-Qasim's "To Najib Mahfuz," the collection is organized around six themes: aesthetics of the revolution, elegies, love of Palestine, steadfastness, resistance, and victory.Other poets represented include Laila 'Alush, 'Abd al-Latif 'Aql, Fawzi el-Asmar, Mu'in Basisu, Ahmad Dahbur, Yusuf Hamdan, Ahmad Husayn, Rashid Husayn, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Salim Jubran, Nazih Khayr, Kamal Nasir, 'Abd al-Karim al-Sab‘awi, Mayy Sayigh, and Fadwah Tuqan. The book also includes biographical notes and a selected bibliography.A Three Continents Press Book Read more