Through a Glass Darkly: A Poetry Review—I Remember My Name
Hatim Kanaaneh reveiws I Remember My Name
The dedication of the current thin collection of poetry by the three internationally savvy poets, Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, to Gaza and Gazans blows their cover: They are diaspora Palestinians, world citizens and enemies of hegemonic cultural Zionism from within its field of operation; they are Trojan horses. Between them they span the globe in poetic exile seeming to be in constant flight from the inescapable curse of who they are, Palestinians by nature and nurture.
The book is by four poets, not three, for I cried just as much peering into the illustrations as I did reading the lines that inspired them. The way David Borrington renders the feelings behind the words of the poets in heartfelt visual images is a form of poetry as well. How else can he show you again and again what it means to be “anxious at the cellular level” for example?
Ramzy Baroud:
“Wherever I am in the world, from Seattle to Chile to South Africa and regardless of which struggle I am involved in, from Mali to the Rohingya, I am always thinking Palestine, even when I am not conscious of it.
“So, don’t talk to me about the Pharaoh:
My Father’s blood drenched the skin of Jesus
After the Romans caught him at a checkpoint
Hiding a recipe for revolution, and a love poem”
– Read more: Through a glass darkly: A poetry review—I Remember My Name – Hatim Kanaaneh
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