She says / Venus Khoury-Ghata ; translated by Marilyn Hacker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Khoury-Ghata, Vénus.

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Khoury-Ghata, Vénus--Translations into English.

Khoury-Ghata, Vénus.

Physical Description:

xiii, 163 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf, [2003]

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

Award-winning American poet Marilyn Hacker offers the brilliance of Lebanese poet Venus Khoury-Ghata in an exquisite translation "She says" "the earth is so vast one can't help but be lost like water from a broken jug" "There is no fortress against the wind" "the winter wanderer must count on the compassion of walls" --from "She Says" Translated by celebrated American poet Marilyn Hacker, Venus Khoury-Ghata's "She Says "explores the mythic and confessional attractions and repulsions of the French and Arabic imaginations with poems that open like "a suitcase filled with alphabets." Sex, barrenness, grief, and death--the backdrop of a war-ravaged country--are always at the edges, made increasingly urgent by lines often jagged and spare, their music unhaltered. Khoury-Ghata is a vital voice in both her native and adopted languages and we are pleased to present this important collection in English.

Contents:

Words

In those days I know now words declaimed the wind 5

Where do words come from? 9

How to find the name of the fisherman who hooked the first word 11

The prudent man looped his family to his belt 13

Language at that time opened fire on every noise 15

What do we know about the alphabets which didn't survive the rising of the waters 17

The words which spring up on the borders of lips retain their terrors 19

Words, she says, used to be wolves 21

Words, she says, are like the rain everyone knows how to make them 23

It was there and nowhere else 25

The rain had few followers at that time 27

Guilty of repeated forgetfulness 29

There are words from poor peoples' gardens that crossbreed iron and thorns 31

She Says

There were too many women for too few seasons 35

She says / dig there where a shadow can stand upright 37

The wind in the fig tree quiets down when she speaks 39

She only opens her door to the winds 41

Between her two windows is a mirror 43

Without the wisteria 45

Drunken bread on the table 47

On the dark landing of her dreams 49

The frost that year shattered both the indoors and outdoors 51

He shakes her so she'll drop the words she stole 53

Her voice comes back to her from the canary's cage 55

In her dreams she thinks she is awake 57

Seated on her doorstep made of deaf stones 59

She lives in a high room next door to the clouds 61

Autumn preceded summer by one day 63

The dead she says 65

Spitting in the wind brings happiness she says 67

She carried her load of fog in all kinds of weather 69

There is winter in her sleep 71

She says / migrating birds won't replace the road 73

The dignitary who bent his servant backwards till the storm was extinguished 75

She says / there is a fire on the moon 77

She tells her dreams to the angels who inadvertently cross her bed 79

First / she kills the red hen that traces circles around her field 81

Her walls and her bones aged together 83

She puts her ear to the ground to listen to the buried voices clamor 85

She understands from the plane trees staring in shock at the countryside 87

She places her hands on the apple tree's hands 89

She says / the names of the months are closed up in books 91

Her house is a burial ground for mute objects 93

Winter is painful to her 95

It has snowed on her bed since her mirror contested the window 97

The old woman has the deafened mourning of those who live on stones 99

God will forgive me for having let the house wander away says the old woman 101

It took her years to understand the wind's behavior 103

At that time the earth was so high up 105

Someone is speaking within the walls 107

Stretched out close to the tree which breathes beside her 109

Plowing at night means one less loaf from each furrow she says 111

Once upon a time she had a book 113

Her laundry will soak all night beneath the moon which washes hilltops 115

Between twilight and crumbled bread 117

From rails buried beneath the rubble 119

A white odor of woman and declining summer stops them 121

She opens her door without hesitation to the elm leaf on her threshold 123

In the night of boxes they give up their linens 125

The old man who doesn't know how to count 127

The old man who left his shadow on the tracks 129

The fire which ravaged the last comet stretched out at the saint's shrine 131

They say / that he has blood under his fingernails 133

He told stories the way you peel a fruit 135

There were three of them who emerged from the night 137

The wind she says is only good for tousling the broom-bushes 139

The children knocked on every door 141

She says / the earth is so vast 143

They come from the same slope not the same hill 145

It sometimes happens that the forest disperses itself 147

A man is not an island 149

Storks have been nesting in the church font 151

The caravan that left the old town of Manama disappeared 153

She prefers round years 155

One day she says 157

Why I Write in French 159.

ISBN:

1555973833

OCLC:

52193683