Download or read book Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East written by Hugh Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Middle East has a poetic record stretching back five millennia. In this unique book, leading scholars draw upon this legacy to explore the ways in which poets, from the third millennium BC to the present day, have responded to the effects of war. They deal with material in a wide variety of languages including Sumerian, Hittite, Akkadian, biblical and modern Hebrew, and classical and contemporary Arabic and range from the destruction of Ur in 1940 BC to the poetry of Hamas and Hezbollah. Some poems are heroic in tone, celebrating victory and the prowess of warriors, others reflect keenly on the suffering that war causes. The result is a work that offers fresh insights into the poetry of the Middle East and provides a unique reflection of the ways in which this most violent and pervasive of human activities has been reflected in different cultures."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Download or read book Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East written by Hugh Kennedy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the rich legacy of the Middle East is a poetic record stretching back five millennia. This unparalleled repository of knowledge - across different languages, cultures and religions - allows us to examine continuity and change in human expression from the beginnings of writing to the present day. In Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East leading scholars draw upon this legacy to explore the ways in which poets, from the third millennium bc to the present day, have responded to effects of war. The contributors deal with material in a wide variety of languages - including Sumerian, Hittite, Akkadian, biblical and modern Hebrew, and classical and contemporary Arabic - and range from the Sumerian lament on the destruction of Ur and the Assyrian conquest of Jerusalem to the al-R?miyy?t of the poet and warrior prince Ab? Fir?s al-?amd?n?, the popular Arabic epics and romances that form the siyar, to the contemporary poetry of Hamas and Hezbollah. Some of the poems are heroic in tone celebrating victory and the prowess of warriors and soldiers; others reflect keenly on the pity and destruction of warfare, on the grief and suffering that war causes.The result is a work that provides a unique reflection upon the ways in which this most violent and pervasive of human activities has been reflected in different cultures. The history of war begins in the Middle East - the earliest reported conflict in human history was fought between the neighbouring city states of Lagash and Umma in ancient Iraq. At a time when the Middle East seems to be permanently at war and wracked by violence, it is salutary to look back at the ancient roots of modern attitudes and to see that in the past, as in the present, these attitudes are much more varied, and the emotions more subtle, than often realised.
Download or read book The Writing of Violence in the Middle East written by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing has come face-to-face with a most crucial juncture: to negotiate with the inescapable presence of violence. From the domains of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, this book stages a powerful conversation on questions of cruelty, evil, rage, vengeance, madness, and deception. Beyond the narrow judgment of violence as a purely tragic reality, these writers (in states of exile, prison, martyrdom, and war) come to wager with the more elusive, inspiring, and even ecstatic dimensions that rest at the heart of a visceral universe of imagination. Covering complex and controversial thematic discussions, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh forms an extreme record of voices, movements, and thought-experiments drawn from the inner circles of the Middle Eastern region. By exploring the most abrasive writings of this vast cultural front, the book reveals how such captivating outsider texts could potentially redefine our understanding of violence and its now-unstoppable relationship to a dangerous age.
Download or read book No Rattling of Sabers written by Esther Raizen and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers 93 poems, in their original Hebrew and in Esther Raizen's English translation. In the introduction, Raizen explores the issue of whether poetry written with a defined political message and in the context of current events can qualify as noteworthy literature. Poems included are by soldiers and civilians, as well as well-known poets.
Download or read book Lebanon Liban written by Nadia Tuéni and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-25 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bilingual anthology, edited by Christophe Ippolito, contains Samuel Hazo's complete translation of Lebanon: Twenty Poems for One Love and Paul B. Kelley's selections from the never-before-translated Sentimental Archives of a War in Lebanon. The Francophone poet Nadia Tueni has devoted readers in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East and has quickly achieved poetic distinction in France. The fluency of her poetic language and motifs—reflecting Tueni's love of her people and country—is illuminated in Ippolito's introduction: "She chose to create a new poetic language that captured the fragile essence of her troubled country and exposed the many crises of identities present in the war. By identifying with her country, she placed herself beyond all parties and created a sacred river that irrigates her poems." Drawn from two collections that were published during the civil war in Lebanon in 1979 and 1982, these poems are haunted by the Lebanese war: some transcend famous Lebanese locales as the symbolic incarnations of the land's eternal essence; others, illuminated at first by nostalgic memories, take on a prophetic tone. Tueni's work merges the poetic with the political landscape of her country. She writes: " I belong to a country that commits suicide every day, while it is being assassinated." The languages of Rimbaud, Lautreamont, and surrealist poetry have had a decisive influence on Tueni's poetry. But she also owes a great debt on the Arabic side to the avant-garde poets, for example, the celebrated Adonis. Like many Lebanese writers, Tueni was active in political circles, particularly after the war in 1967. Her poems tell of suffering—"memories of an abandoned garden slip away"—of her own life slipping away, and in the end, the reader is invited to reflect on the mimesis of identity: identity of a country, identity of a woman, each echoing the other.
Download or read book Welcome to FOB Haiku written by Randy Brown and published by . This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sherpatude no. 26: 'Humor is a combat multiplier ...' Has your war become workaday? Does life on the Forward Operating Base (FOB) now seem commonplace? Armed with deadpan snark and poker-faced patriotism -- and rooted in the coffee-black soil and plain-spoken voice of the American Midwest -- journalist-turned-poet Randy Brown reveals behind-the-scenes stories of U.S. soldier-citizenship. From Boot Camp to Bagram, Afghanistan. And back home again." --
Download or read book Rifqa written by Mohammed El-Kurd and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah--an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.
Download or read book Return to Oasis written by Victor Selwyn and published by London : Shepheard-Walwyn [for] Editions Poetry London for the Salamander Oasis Trust. This book was released on 1980 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Land of Aching Hearts written by Leila Tarazi Fawaz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century after the Great War, the experiences of civilians and soldiers in the Middle East during those years have faded from memory. A Land of Aching Hearts traverses ethnic, class, and national borders to recover the personal stories of those who endured this cataclysmic event, and their profound sense of sacrifices made in vain.
Download or read book The Dangers of Poetry written by Kevin M. Jones and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry has long dominated the cultural landscape of modern Iraq, simultaneously representing the literary pinnacle of high culture and giving voice to the popular discourses of mass culture. As the favored genre of culture expression for religious clerics, nationalist politicians, leftist dissidents, and avant-garde intellectuals, poetry critically shaped the social, political, and cultural debates that consumed the Iraqi public sphere in the twentieth century. The popularity of poetry in modern Iraq, however, made it a dangerous practice that carried serious political consequences and grave risks to dissident poets. The Dangers of Poetry is the first book to narrate the social history of poetry in the modern Middle East. Moving beyond the analysis of poems as literary and intellectual texts, Kevin M. Jones shows how poems functioned as social acts that critically shaped the cultural politics of revolutionary Iraq. He narrates the history of three generations of Iraqi poets who navigated the fraught relationship between culture and politics in pursuit of their own ambitions and agendas. Through this historical analysis of thousands of poems published in newspapers, recited in popular demonstrations, and disseminated in secret whispers, this book reveals the overlooked contribution of these poets to the spirit of rebellion in modern Iraq.
Download or read book 19 Varieties of Gazelle written by Naomi Shihab Nye and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-03-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EM"Tell me how to live so many lives at once ..."/em Fowzi, who beats everyone at dominoes; Ibtisam, who wanted to be a doctor; Abu Mahmoud, who knows every eggplant and peach in his West Bank garden; mysterious Uncle Mohammed, who moved to the mountain; a girl in a red sweater dangling a book bag; children in velvet dresses who haunt the candy bowl at the party; Baba Kamalyari, age 71; Mr. Dajani and his swans; Sitti Khadra, who never lost her peace inside. EMMaybe they have something to tell us./em Naomi Shihab Nye has been writing about being Arab-American, about Jerusalem, about the West Bank, about family all her life. These new and collected poems of the Middle East -- sixty in all -- appear together here for the first time.
Download or read book Kill Class written by Nomi Stone and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kill class is based on two years of fieldwork the author conducted within combat trainings in simulated Middle Eastern villages erected by the US military across America"--
Download or read book The Great War for Civilisation written by Robert Fisk and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping and dramatic history of the last half century of conflict in the Middle East from an award-winning journalist who has covered the region for over forty years, The Great War for Civilisation unflinchingly chronicles the tragedy of the region from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution; from the American hostage crisis in Beirut to the Iran-Iraq War; from the 1991 Gulf War to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
Download or read book We Are Iraqis written by Nadje Al-Ali and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the occupation of Iraq and its aftermath has received media and political attention, we know very little about the everyday lives of Iraqis. Iraqi men, women, and children are not merely passive victims of violence, vulnerable recipients of repressive regimes, or bystanders of their country’s destruction. In the face of danger and trauma, Iraqis continue to cope, preparing food, sending their children to school, socializing, telling jokes, and dreaming of a better future. Within the realm of imagination and creative expression, the editors find that many Iraqi artists have not only survived but have also sought healing. In We Are Iraqis, Al-Ali and Al-Najjar showcase written and visual contributions by Iraqi artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, and activists. Contributors explore the way Iraqis retain, subvert, and produce art and activism as ways of coping with despair and resisting chaos and destruction. The first anthology of its kind, We Are Iraqis brings into focus the multitude of ethnicities, religions, and experiences that are all part of Iraq.
Download or read book Epic Encounters written by Melani McAlister and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epic Encounters examines how popular culture has shaped the ways Americans define their "interests" in the Middle East. In this innovative book—now brought up-to-date to include 9/11 and the Iraq war—Melani McAlister argues that U.S. foreign policy, while grounded in material and military realities, is also developed in a cultural context. American understandings of the region are framed by narratives that draw on religious belief, news media accounts, and popular culture. This remarkable and pathbreaking book skillfully weaves lively and accessible readings of film, media, and music with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, race politics, and religious history. The new chapter, titled "9/11 and After: Snapshots on the Road to Empire," considers and brilliantly analyzes five images that have become iconic: (1) New York City firemen raising the American flag out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, (2) the televised image of Osama bin-Laden, (3) Afghani women in burqas, (4) the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad, and (5) the hooded and wired prisoner in Abu Ghraib. McAlister's singular achievement is to illuminate the contexts of these five images both at the time they were taken and as they relate to current events, an accomplishment all the more remarkable since—to paraphrase her new preface—we are today struggling to look backward at something that is still rushing ahead.
Download or read book Sand Opera written by Philip Metres and published by Alice James Books. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using techniques of erasure, Metres seeks rhythm or language within the spare, bleak testimonies of those tortured at Abu Ghraib.
Download or read book Martyrdom Mysticism and Dissent written by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first extensive research on the role of poetry during the Iranian Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). How can poetry, especially peaceful medieval Sufi poems, be applied to exalt violence, to present death as martyrdom, and to process war traumas? Examining poetry by both Islamic revolutionary and established dissident poets, it demonstrates how poetry spurs people to action, even leading them to sacrifice their lives. The book's originality lies in fresh analyses of how themes such as martyrdom and violence, and mystical themes such as love and wine, are integrated in a vehemently political context, while showing how Shiite ritual such as the pilgrimage to Mecca clash with Saudi Wahhabi appreciations. A distinguishing quality of the book is its examination of how martyrdom was instilled in the minds of Iranians through poetry, employing Sufi themes, motifs and doctrines to justify death. Such inculcation proved effective in mobilising people to the front, ready to sacrifice their lives. As such, the book is a must for readers interested in Iranian culture and history, in Sufi poetry, in martyrdom and war poetry. Those involved with Middle Eastern Studies, Iranian Studies, Literary Studies, Political Philosophy and Religious Studies will benefit from this book. "From his own memories and expert research, the author gives us a ravishing account of 'a poetry stained with blood, violence and death'. His brilliantly layered analysis of modern Persian poetry shows how it integrates political and religious ideology and motivational propaganda with age-old mystical themes for the most traumatic of times for Iran." (Alan Williams, Research Professor of Iranian Studies, University of Manchester) "When Asghar Seyed Gohrab, a highly prolific academician, publishes a new book, you can be certain he has paid attention to an exciting and largely unexplored subject. Martyrdom, Mysticism and Dissent: The Poetry of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) is no exception in the sense that he combines a few different cultural, religious, mystic, and political aspects of Iranian life to present a vivid picture and thorough analysis of the development and effect of what became known as the revolutionary poetry of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This time, he has even enriched his narrative by inserting his voice into his analysis. It is a thoughtful book and a fantastic read." (Professor Kamran Talattof, University of Arizona)
