Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah
I must revise my work with the past,
take my time, without malice.
So far I have spread my past, quite well I’d say,
over men and aunties,
and was convinced that I would heal from it
once they were dead
and decomposed,
my ribs a broom
and my hands a canvas.
And especially after I give a lesson
on the imperishable land
and baby chicks that fall out of their nests
just before a crow eats them.
I must revise my work with the past,
my many loves
who died and still possess their corpses,
but also those who died
without declarable bodies.
I will inform them that I distributed the same poem
to each of them, though I didn’t necessarily
love them, a point I have previously explained,
that I like to explain again
as I redistribute poems.
I will tell them about your corpse
sprayed with chlorine
in a plastic bag
and how we return.
It wasn’t fair that you died
without a last scribble
in which you challenge something,
anything, so that we can say
“He finished his final painting,
didn’t leave it suspended in our throats.”
Whenever there’s a going, there’s no return.
They’re distributing plastic bags to the masses,
spraying chlorine through massive pumps.
We’re carrying our souls
right under our shoulders.
from the book YOU CAN BE THE LAST LEAF / Milkweed Editions
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As with life, art leans on the past which infiltrates the present and the future, as long as memory and breath serve our bodies. Is there a poem that does not endure revision? Is there art that does not look back at itself? The circularity of a Palestinian artist under colonial existence also asks what happens to love, to the intimate shadows of daily hours. It takes seriously what it mocks. Maya Abu Al Hayyat seems to run cricles around herself, her heart, and manages to complete a work in her lifetime that succeeds as it "suspends itself in our throats." 

Fady Joudah on "Revision"
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Joy Harjo: When Poetry Has Power

"To be an artist—a designer, a poet, or a comedian—it’s a kind of calling. We don’t always understand it, nor do others always understand who we are and what we do. While I was an undergrad at the University of New Mexico, I was an art major, and I heard contemporary Native poets for the first time. Suddenly, I was in those circles, and I started writing my own."

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"Bancquart’s poems are spare, grounded, and, for all their attention to demise, surprisingly light. Just the thing for a pandemic. This poem with its 'lost empires' and 'catastrophes' counterbalanced by a shrinking soap bar seemed particularly suited to the moment. I was struck by Bancquart’s vertiginous shifts in scope/scale, producing the same effect they do in cartoons—making us laugh."
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