Post by jeannerené on Jun 2, 2007 22:21:55 GMT -8
Elmaz Abi-Nader
Elmaz Abi-Nader ...Lebanese-American Poet
...I came upon Elmaz Abi-Nader, a contemporary (and for me, local) poet while browsing one evening and was very moved and impresssed by her poetry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elmaz AbiNader is an Lebanese-American author, poet and performance artist. She was born in 1954 in Pennsylvania. Much of Ms. AbiNader’s work is drawn from her childhood in an all-white appalachain coal-mining community and form her journey’s to her parent’s fatherland, other countries of the Middle East, parts of Africa, and travels throughout the United States. Her writing reflects her culture’s and family’s tradition to tell stories through poetry and music relating “the significant moments of a life, a family and a village.”
Ms. AbiNader received a MFA in poetry from Colombia University, and a PHD from the University of Nebraska. She currently is a professor at Mills College in Oakland, CA where her focus is providing a voice for writer’s of color. She is co-founder of Our Nations Arts Foundation (NONA).
For more insight into Ms AbiNader, her work and many ... many accolades, I suggest you go to Writers on America - Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State:
usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers/abinader.htm
Her article Just off Main Street is excellent reading. Here’s an excerpt…..
I hope you will read the whole article. You can easily find more about Ms. AbiNader on the web. I hope to be able to catch one of her live performances or lectures ....
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by the Author
Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon (1991)
In the Country of My Dreams: Poetry by Elmaz Abinader (1999)
"Country of Origin." Play. (1997)
"Under the Ramadan Moon." Play. (2000)
"Just Off Main Street." Essay. Writers on America. Ed. George Clack. U.S. Department of State.
Works about the Author
Chan, Sylvia W. "Goldies 2002- Literature: Elmaz Abinader." The San Francisco Bay Guardian 8 November 2002.
Handal, Nathalie, ed. Poetry of Arab Women. Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group, 2000.
Online Sources used:
->VG: Voices from the Gaps
-> Arab American Institute
-> Levintine - Cultural Center
-> Writers on America - Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry
link to Elmas Abi-Nader:
www.levantinecenter.org/pages/elmaz.htm
link to other Arab Women poets:
www.levantinecenter.org/pages/arabwomenpoets.html
Preparing for Occupation
Buy only short books, ones that read quickly with plots
you can keep track of when the pounding starts on the door.
Drive no nails into the wall, no pictures, no pencil sharpener
or mirror. Your face doesn't matter any way. You are no one.
Teach your children at home. Or leave them idle to wander
the streets to find a funeral parade; a crowd to join.
Use only votive candles so they can burn out before morning.
Stash your cigarettes in your pocket. Leave nothing
in the cupboards to remind them but a child's toy.
Adopt no pets. Hook up no phones. Print no cards, address
labels or stationery. Test your batteries daily.
All your clothes must be light, in similar colors and never need
ironing. Your only family heirlooms are habit, memory, name and song.
Believe that placing your daughter upon your shoulders will be home enough for her as she feels
for something familiar.
Avoid meeting the neighbors unless you've known them
since birth. Be careful of the bird flirting with you in the yard;
one of you may soon fly away.
One of you has migratory patterns.
You've been here thousands of years. But aren't your people
nomadic anyway? Can't you pitch your tent in a grove
on the outskirts? Move in with relatives? Cross into another
country, clogging the border with shanty towns, waiting
to return? I've seen you together; you prefer to be together.
Because this house bears the prints of your children
upon the wall, because the kitchen is furrowed
from your journeys made to the table from the stove,
the stove to the table, because the floor is pocked
from the weight of your davenport, doesn't mean
you can't move on.
The walls have echoed your voices, your sighs floated
up to the ceiling and gathered like clouds in a refugee sky.
Remember the time your son opened the door so quickly
the bulghur flew off the table and around the room?
Grains are in the corners still.
You will miss nothing: the window that refuses to open,
the sputtering light of the refrigerator, the leaking pipe
in the girls' room; the cat that crosses the fence in the morning.
He is not your family although your recognize him.
This is not your town, although you walked its streets
on your wedding day. Local water mixes with your blood.
This is not your country despite its dust covering
your shoes, the songs you have memorized; the poets
you claim as your own. Don't look down.
Look up. When the geese are passing in their vee formation,
join them, tuck your treasures under your wings.
From the refugee sky, you can count the bodies below you,
examine the shipwreck of your home while others pick
through the remains.
**
Letters From Home
to my father
Everytime you weep, I feel the surface of a river
somewhere on Earth is breaking.
You wipe your eyes as you read
aloud a letter from the old country.
From the floor, I watch the curls of the words
through the sheer pages.
Your brother and sister have gathered
around you. I don't understand
the language but feel a single breath
of grief holding this room.
Your mother writes of her weakening body.
She walks to church but cannot leave
the village. When you sat with her,
You wanted her forgiveness for your absence
but did not ask. She took you to her closet
to show you the linens she had gathered
which have already yellowed. Her hands
seemed small through the lace. You kissed
her palms, smelling your own fragrance on her skin.
She tells you of the refuge people have found
in the village. Others have gone to Paris.
You have a niece who is a doctor,
a nephew, an architect. Your own children
seem like nomads. They sit in scattered apartments
where you can't see your three daughters
gazing from their windows or your three sons
pacing the old wood of their rooms.
Yet you write to your mother,
they still pray.
You visit your mother now when you can
Each summer you cross the Mediterranean;
each summer you stand behind her house
looking into the sea hoping she will not die,
this time. And when these letters come,
I run my finger across the pages.
I hope I can learn the languages
you have come to know.
My Father’s House is a Terrorist Target
By Elmaz AbiNader
Two For Hayan:
The subject line of an email
The subject line of my shortness of breath
The subject line of the phone call
to my own father
who stands in the sun and lifts his head toward the sky
listening
Your father slows his car
on the highway from Beirut
tea and anise cookies in a cupboard
a few miles away, a few miles away
where the beds are empty, the sofa
losing the impression of his body,
the kitchen table with a bowl of apricots
your father slows the car a few miles
away—his eyes glaze over at the night
in front of him, at the stars falling
into the ends of the earth the horizon
My father—in high dry grass in Maryland
leaves the television talking behind him
loud enough the neighbors all hear what
what he doesn’t, lets the phone ring
recognizing the sorrowful notes of his children
asking about home his brothers their families
twists buttons off his shirt counting them
like pennies and the years he left Lebanon
behind stars falling into the ends
of the earth the horizon
Your father taking his son and wife home
slows his car but does not watch for long
It is routine to turn around hope for Beirut
damage will be measured tomorrow
when they return if they can
My father alone in the yard implores
his mother and my mother
as the fireflies rise up and orbit
around his head – knowing that he cannot return
You are not the son sitting in the back of the car
reaching a hand forward as the city burns
I am not the daughter pulling my father back
into the house as he whispers the air
We both sit still our arms covering our heads
a kind of prayer and protection from memory
and anger and shortness of breath. You write
the subject line, my father’s house is a terrorist
target and I want to answer each word of that line
breathe deep into the dust and disaster, but cannot – slow down a few miles away,
gaze outside the glass
and find myself stuck. I cannot go beyond my father’s.
**
Elmaz Abi-Nader ...Lebanese-American Poet
...I came upon Elmaz Abi-Nader, a contemporary (and for me, local) poet while browsing one evening and was very moved and impresssed by her poetry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elmaz AbiNader is an Lebanese-American author, poet and performance artist. She was born in 1954 in Pennsylvania. Much of Ms. AbiNader’s work is drawn from her childhood in an all-white appalachain coal-mining community and form her journey’s to her parent’s fatherland, other countries of the Middle East, parts of Africa, and travels throughout the United States. Her writing reflects her culture’s and family’s tradition to tell stories through poetry and music relating “the significant moments of a life, a family and a village.”
Ms. AbiNader received a MFA in poetry from Colombia University, and a PHD from the University of Nebraska. She currently is a professor at Mills College in Oakland, CA where her focus is providing a voice for writer’s of color. She is co-founder of Our Nations Arts Foundation (NONA).
For more insight into Ms AbiNader, her work and many ... many accolades, I suggest you go to Writers on America - Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State:
usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers/abinader.htm
Her article Just off Main Street is excellent reading. Here’s an excerpt…..
When I was young, my house had a magic door. Outside that door was the small Pennsylvania town where I grew up. Main Street ran in front of our house bearing the standard downtown features: a bank, a news stand, the hardware store, the auto parts supply, and other retail businesses. Families strolled the streets, particularly on weekends looking at the displays of furniture in Kaufman's giant window, the posters for movies hanging behind the glass at the Rex Theatre, and the mannequins, missing hands or fingers, sporting the latest fashions in the windows of my aunt's clothing store. In those days, the early 1960s, the small businesses in a town like Masontown fed the community's needs for food, clothing, and shelter.
My family's shops took their positions on Main Street as well: Nader's Shoe Store, Nader's Department Store, and the Modernnaire Restaurant. From the face of it, our businesses looked like any others and we gratefully satisfied the local mother trying to buy church-worthy shoes for the children, the father in for a good cigar and the newspaper, and the after-school crowd, who jittered near the juke box on the restaurant tiles. My father and my uncle stood in the doorways of their establishments, perfectly dressed in gray suits and white shirts, ties, and glossy polished shoes.
At that moment, frozen in second grade, at the threshold of the store, I saw no difference between my father, uncle, and the people who passed by.
My family's shops took their positions on Main Street as well: Nader's Shoe Store, Nader's Department Store, and the Modernnaire Restaurant. From the face of it, our businesses looked like any others and we gratefully satisfied the local mother trying to buy church-worthy shoes for the children, the father in for a good cigar and the newspaper, and the after-school crowd, who jittered near the juke box on the restaurant tiles. My father and my uncle stood in the doorways of their establishments, perfectly dressed in gray suits and white shirts, ties, and glossy polished shoes.
At that moment, frozen in second grade, at the threshold of the store, I saw no difference between my father, uncle, and the people who passed by.
I hope you will read the whole article. You can easily find more about Ms. AbiNader on the web. I hope to be able to catch one of her live performances or lectures ....
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by the Author
Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon (1991)
In the Country of My Dreams: Poetry by Elmaz Abinader (1999)
"Country of Origin." Play. (1997)
"Under the Ramadan Moon." Play. (2000)
"Just Off Main Street." Essay. Writers on America. Ed. George Clack. U.S. Department of State.
Works about the Author
Chan, Sylvia W. "Goldies 2002- Literature: Elmaz Abinader." The San Francisco Bay Guardian 8 November 2002.
Handal, Nathalie, ed. Poetry of Arab Women. Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group, 2000.
Online Sources used:
->VG: Voices from the Gaps
-> Arab American Institute
-> Levintine - Cultural Center
-> Writers on America - Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry
link to Elmas Abi-Nader:
www.levantinecenter.org/pages/elmaz.htm
link to other Arab Women poets:
www.levantinecenter.org/pages/arabwomenpoets.html
Elmaz Abi-Nader is an Arab American author, poet and performance artist whose work has been printed and performed throughout the States and the Middle East. Her most recent volume, In the Country of My Dreams... won the Josephine Miles PEN Oakland award for multi-cultural poetry. Her first play, Country of Origin won two Drammies from Oregon's Drama Circle and she is touring with her second performance, Ramadan Moon. Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon, her first book, is a widely acclaimed memoir of one family's immigration. Abinader has served as a senior Fulbright Scholar to Egypt and currently teaches at Mills College.
Preparing for Occupation
Buy only short books, ones that read quickly with plots
you can keep track of when the pounding starts on the door.
Drive no nails into the wall, no pictures, no pencil sharpener
or mirror. Your face doesn't matter any way. You are no one.
Teach your children at home. Or leave them idle to wander
the streets to find a funeral parade; a crowd to join.
Use only votive candles so they can burn out before morning.
Stash your cigarettes in your pocket. Leave nothing
in the cupboards to remind them but a child's toy.
Adopt no pets. Hook up no phones. Print no cards, address
labels or stationery. Test your batteries daily.
All your clothes must be light, in similar colors and never need
ironing. Your only family heirlooms are habit, memory, name and song.
Believe that placing your daughter upon your shoulders will be home enough for her as she feels
for something familiar.
Avoid meeting the neighbors unless you've known them
since birth. Be careful of the bird flirting with you in the yard;
one of you may soon fly away.
One of you has migratory patterns.
You've been here thousands of years. But aren't your people
nomadic anyway? Can't you pitch your tent in a grove
on the outskirts? Move in with relatives? Cross into another
country, clogging the border with shanty towns, waiting
to return? I've seen you together; you prefer to be together.
Because this house bears the prints of your children
upon the wall, because the kitchen is furrowed
from your journeys made to the table from the stove,
the stove to the table, because the floor is pocked
from the weight of your davenport, doesn't mean
you can't move on.
The walls have echoed your voices, your sighs floated
up to the ceiling and gathered like clouds in a refugee sky.
Remember the time your son opened the door so quickly
the bulghur flew off the table and around the room?
Grains are in the corners still.
You will miss nothing: the window that refuses to open,
the sputtering light of the refrigerator, the leaking pipe
in the girls' room; the cat that crosses the fence in the morning.
He is not your family although your recognize him.
This is not your town, although you walked its streets
on your wedding day. Local water mixes with your blood.
This is not your country despite its dust covering
your shoes, the songs you have memorized; the poets
you claim as your own. Don't look down.
Look up. When the geese are passing in their vee formation,
join them, tuck your treasures under your wings.
From the refugee sky, you can count the bodies below you,
examine the shipwreck of your home while others pick
through the remains.
**
Letters From Home
to my father
Everytime you weep, I feel the surface of a river
somewhere on Earth is breaking.
You wipe your eyes as you read
aloud a letter from the old country.
From the floor, I watch the curls of the words
through the sheer pages.
Your brother and sister have gathered
around you. I don't understand
the language but feel a single breath
of grief holding this room.
Your mother writes of her weakening body.
She walks to church but cannot leave
the village. When you sat with her,
You wanted her forgiveness for your absence
but did not ask. She took you to her closet
to show you the linens she had gathered
which have already yellowed. Her hands
seemed small through the lace. You kissed
her palms, smelling your own fragrance on her skin.
She tells you of the refuge people have found
in the village. Others have gone to Paris.
You have a niece who is a doctor,
a nephew, an architect. Your own children
seem like nomads. They sit in scattered apartments
where you can't see your three daughters
gazing from their windows or your three sons
pacing the old wood of their rooms.
Yet you write to your mother,
they still pray.
You visit your mother now when you can
Each summer you cross the Mediterranean;
each summer you stand behind her house
looking into the sea hoping she will not die,
this time. And when these letters come,
I run my finger across the pages.
I hope I can learn the languages
you have come to know.
My Father’s House is a Terrorist Target
By Elmaz AbiNader
Two For Hayan:
The subject line of an email
The subject line of my shortness of breath
The subject line of the phone call
to my own father
who stands in the sun and lifts his head toward the sky
listening
Your father slows his car
on the highway from Beirut
tea and anise cookies in a cupboard
a few miles away, a few miles away
where the beds are empty, the sofa
losing the impression of his body,
the kitchen table with a bowl of apricots
your father slows the car a few miles
away—his eyes glaze over at the night
in front of him, at the stars falling
into the ends of the earth the horizon
My father—in high dry grass in Maryland
leaves the television talking behind him
loud enough the neighbors all hear what
what he doesn’t, lets the phone ring
recognizing the sorrowful notes of his children
asking about home his brothers their families
twists buttons off his shirt counting them
like pennies and the years he left Lebanon
behind stars falling into the ends
of the earth the horizon
Your father taking his son and wife home
slows his car but does not watch for long
It is routine to turn around hope for Beirut
damage will be measured tomorrow
when they return if they can
My father alone in the yard implores
his mother and my mother
as the fireflies rise up and orbit
around his head – knowing that he cannot return
You are not the son sitting in the back of the car
reaching a hand forward as the city burns
I am not the daughter pulling my father back
into the house as he whispers the air
We both sit still our arms covering our heads
a kind of prayer and protection from memory
and anger and shortness of breath. You write
the subject line, my father’s house is a terrorist
target and I want to answer each word of that line
breathe deep into the dust and disaster, but cannot – slow down a few miles away,
gaze outside the glass
and find myself stuck. I cannot go beyond my father’s.
**
