Lisa Suhair Majaj and Amal Amireh (eds.). Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist.

• Author: Hirschman, Jack

Lisa Suhair Majaj and Amal Amireh (eds.). Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002. 221 pages. Paper $28.50

[Written in ten-line prose-poetic form]

However far out into solarity, however into the ether the great Etel Adnan soars with her imagery, in flight that's a deeply hidden desire of a desperate Arab world to escape the horrors of colonialisms within and without, it is from the very ground of those atrocities that her words are born, herself a daring nomad poet who understands that homelessness is not simply a physical condtion for millions but a destiny for all in these alienated (and, for the Arab world, doubly alienated) times.

The essays in this book, which is the first collected recognition in the English language of this eminently important contemporary poet and artist, do indeed touch upon the wanderings, as it were, of Adnan--the importance of places like her native Lebanon, as well as Paris, and California. The book is divided into two parts, preceded by two essays by the editors themselves, the first locating Adnan within a literary context, the second presenting a brief but succinct biography beginning with her birth in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. Following these introductories,

The book is composed of a first section of six essays on Adnan as a poet and artist; a second section is made up of six essays on her most important prose work, the prose-poetic document called Sitt Marie Rose, a deeply moving homage to a woman political activist who fell victim to middle-eastern fascism. This work, now in its sixth edition and translated into many languages, is the one by which Adnan is most generally "known" to a reading public. But it is important to understand the dynamic that underlies that work, as well as all her written and, even, graphic works.

I mean by dynamic the driving energy-core that sets her in motion as a creator. It is the poem as passion. Simple as that. But with Adnan--and this is what distinguishes her from other poets--that passion is red by two other, to some contradictory, forces: philosophy and journalism. By philosophy I mean the drive to understand the truth of the meaning of existence. And by journalism I mean the breathing in and out of the daily horrors that the peoples of the world are subjected to. Adnan has worked as a journalist, and she has taught philosophy as well.

But where others who are poets have refused to allow those...