#Fady Joudah

[luthienne]

Mahmoud Darwish, from The Butterfly's Burden; "I Have a Seat in the Abandoned Theater" (tr. from the Arabic by Fady Joudah)

[Text ID: I say: How is this my concern? I'm a spectator / He says: No spectators at chasm's door ... and no / one is neutral here. And you must choose / your part in the end]

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, from the poetry collection [...], excerpt pub. The Yale Review [ID']

[havingapoemwithyou]

A series of poems from Palestine, curated by the poet and translators Fady Joudah and Lena Tuffaha.

[firstfullmoon]

Years ago, I received a query from a prominent editor about a line in Mahmoud Darwish’s long poem, “The ‘Red Indian’s’ Penultimate Speech to the White Man,” (If I Were Another). The poem channels Chief Seattle’s voice and spirit. In the poem’s second section, the line in question follows an address to Columbus, “the free [who] has the right to find India in any sea, / and the right to name our ghosts as pepper or Indian.”

The line in question is this: “You have burst seventy million hearts…enough, / enough for you to return from our death as monarch of the new time”:

isn’t it time we met, stranger, as two strangers of one time and one land, the way strangers meet by a chasm? We have what is ours…and we have what is yours of sky. You have what is yours…and what is ours of air and water.

“I just don’t get where he got the seventy million from?” the editor asked.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t wonder about the accuracy of Darwish’s claim. Maybe he included all the Natives annihilated in the Americas over the centuries. The only thought I had in my head was, “Is this really what’s bothering you about the poem?”

Years later, in a daydream, a marginalia of my soul visited me, and it spoke thus: “Do you remember those seventy million punctured hearts in Darwish’s poem? If you’re ever asked again, if the person who asks you says that historical studies show the number is not possible or whatever, remember the buffalos.”

The buffalo hearts are also native hearts. Who will count the donkeys, dogs, and cats in Gaza? The birds will return.

— Fady Joudah, in his essay “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation”

[heavenlyyshecomes]

new poem by Fady Joudah, in conversation with Refaat al-Areer's "If I Must Die."

[poemsforthesehours]

From Fady Joudah's book, Alight. (Copper Canyon, 2013).

[geryone]

“Venus Cycle” by Fady Joudah from We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage

[kitchen-light]

The responsibility of the poet? My medical mentor, a Jewish man from Waco, Texas, used to say that a plethora of ongoing research on a particular medical subject indicates that we still don’t know enough about that subject. And that’s how I feel about the responsibility of the poet. We keep talking about it because it is relentlessly mutable, pluripotent. We are never satisfied with our answers. I often think that the responsibility of the poet is to strive to become the memory that people may possess in the future about what it means to be human: an ever-changing constant. In poetry, the range of metaphors and topics is limited, predictable, but the styles are innumerable. Think how we read poetry from centuries ago and are no longer bothered by its outdated diction. All that remains of old poetry is the music of what it means to be human. And perhaps that’s all we want from poetry. A language of life. I like this quote by J. M. Coetzee: “The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.”

Fady Joudah, from his interview with Aria Aber: "Fady Joudah | The poet on how the war in Gaza changed his work", published in The Yale Review, February 28, 2024

[northwindow]

Fady Joudah, from [...]

[fiercynn]

palestinian poets: fady joudah

fady joudah is a palestinian american physician, poet, and translator. he was born in the united states and grew up in libya and saudi arabia before returning to the united states for college. he attended the university of georgia–athens, the medical college of georgia, and the university of texas, where he completed his studies in internal medicine.

he has published five collections of poetry: the earth in the attic (2008), alight (2013), textu (2014), footnotes in the order of disappearance (2018), and tethered to the stars (2021). in 2014, he was a guggenheim fellow in poetry. joudah is also well-known for his poetry translation: he has translated the works of palestinian poets like mahmoud darwish, ghassan zaqtan, mary abu al-hayyat, and many more. he is based in houston, where he works as a physician of internal medicine.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE POEM BY FADY JOUDAH, MAKE IT THIS ONE: "the tea and sage poem"

OTHER POEMS ONLINE LOVE BY FADY JOUDAH

Scarecrow at poetry magazine

Remove at la review of books (along with a fantastic essay called "My Palestinian Poem that 'The New Yorker' Wouldn't Publish)

Mimesis at poetry magazine

WHO HAS NO LAND HAS NO SEA at poets for living waters

Palestine, Texas at Sappho's Torque

The Mother Between Us at the yale review

House of Mercury at northwest public broadcasting

Things You've Never Seen at poets.org

National Park at poetry magazine

Sleeping Trees at poetry magazine

[bones-ivy-breath]

In Her Absence I Created Her Image by Mahmoud Darwish (tr. Fady Joudah), from The Butterfly’s Burden

[luthienne]

Fady Joudah, from A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, from "Venus Cycle", part of 16 Love Poems by Writer's of Palestinian Heritage, pub. AAWW

[havingapoemwithyou]

Things You’ve Never Seen by Fady Joudah

[firstfullmoon]

Fady Joudah, from “I Seem As If I Am: Ten Maqams,” in [...]

[galina]

'Revolution', Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (trans. Fady Joudah), from You Can Be the Last Leaf