( 1 reviews )
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 24 2003
Venus Khoury-Ghata has written a beautiful, unusual book of poems, beautifully translated by Marilyn Hacker. Khoury-Ghata is Lebanese, speaking Arabic and French. The two languages seem to form a musical counterpoint that underlies her energized imagery. Her line is simple and declarative, but her imagined universe is enormously vibrant and animate. Wind moves it; water pours through it. Earth, sky, stones, trees, walls are constantly in motion, undergoing metamorphoses even when death, the opposite of change, is the prevailing subject.Her title, , refers less to Lebanon, torn apart by war, than to the lost landscape of sustenance provided by her husband and mother. "The Dead Man's Monologue," a poem-series on her husband's death, portrays grief deeply and accurately. The point of view is his -- his soul that lives while the body is gone -- but the pronoun is third person. Through this device, doubly shielded from rhetorical excess or self-pity, she reveals the intensity of her pain. But in the section that follows, "Seven Honeysuckle Sprigs of Wisdom," wit and gentle joy pervade observations of her mountain village, whose inhabitants live, speak, embody and defy the elements as boldly as the flying figures in Chagall's surrealist paintings. The "Early Childhood" section evokes her mother, who manifests as wind, water, sky, sun, stars, house, goddess-like in power but ordinary as her broom while she fills the whole of space around the little girl. It is a familiar theme treated with refreshing originality as it replicates the child-mind merging the truths and fantasies of maternal presence.Oberlin's Field Translation Series has done well to support Hacker's ongoing project of making contemporary French women poets known to English-speaking readers. This book reminds us of the basic realities experienced in every human life in every country. It serves as welcome solace, friend and peace-maker in this aggression-ridden world.
