Nettles : Poems
Author(s): Vénus Khoury-Ghata
The new collection by the Lebanese poet Vénus Khoury-Ghata, the author of She Says, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
it could only have been elsewhere
the sun's anger overturned the country
men who came from the wounded side of the river knocked
on our borders
I say men so as not to say locusts
—from "Nettles"
In Nettles, Vénus Khoury-Ghata brings her impulses for lyric poetry and for stark narrative together into four enchanting sequences. Each confronts the realities of womanhood, immigration, and cultural conflict with an imagination and history born from both the Arabic and French languages. Masterfully translated by
Marilyn Hacker, Nettles gives American readers this utterly original, indispensable poetry.
Review(s):
“Hacker opens for English-language readers a veritable 'suitcase filled with alphabets'--the perfectly blended French and Arabic imagination of Lebanese native and French emigrée writer Vénus Khoury-Ghata, who evokes in sinuous lines and multivalent imagery the richness of her experiences of a multi-ethnic traditional culture.” —The Women's Review of Books on She Says
ISBN: 9781555974879