A mosaic of lyrical vignettes, at once deeply personal and political, set against the turbulent backdrop of Arab/Western relations. Adnan writes, "Contrary to what is usually believed, it is not general ideas and grandiose unfolding of great events that impress the mind during times of heightened historic upheavals, but rather the uninterrupted flow of little experiences, observations, disturbances, small ecstasies, or barely perceptible discouragements that make up day-to-day living."
"As the new world order continues to produce and rewrite our history, mainstream literary culture invades our consciousness to finally sever us from reality. Steadfast in her adherence to the world, Etel Adnan’s work is a mix of prose, poetry, political insight, philosophic speculation and historical remembrance honed here to mineral perfection. Working close to the very heart of American poetic power but from the centers of official recognition, Adnan has been delivering the news for decades, her eyes always focused on 'the narrow and long road which leads to the slaughter-house.'"—Ammiel Alcalay
"For years, Etal Adnan has been writing a quiet lyric prose that is also insistently political. In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country returns to the explorations of the history of war and the female body that made Sitt Marie Rose—her novel of the Lebanese civil war—a classic. Here she uses short vignettes to examine the world wide resonances of yet another war in the Middle East, to speak poignantly of how its terrors mix with mundane moments of beauty. This is a moving and complicated work."—Juliana Spahr, author of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (POCKET POETS SERIES, NO. 57)

Biographies & Memoirs

ADNAN, Etel

Arts & Literature

City Lights Publishers

Russell Chatham

Winn Books

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet, visual artist, and essayist. Her rich body of work documents an unblinking witness to beauty in nature, human beings and art; to cruelty, especially as enacted in the mindless violence of war; and to the power of love and human perseverance. In PREMONITION the voice is wise and paradoxical, opening with the observation, "There's always a conductive thread through space for untenable positions." Sentences are set apart in aphoristic cuts never wholly separate from this "conductive thread," and always shaped by the gem-like compressions of poetry. PREMONITION is a short book that refuses finality in a world of contingencies and human unpredictability. The only sure place to stand, in this late work of Etel Adnan's, must be created from day to day in life and art.

Premonition

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Kelsey Street Press

Poetry. A poem about everyday life in New York during the Three Mile Island nuclear accident; a subtle yet merciless indictment of nuclear war.

From A to Z

Poetry

The Post-Apollo Press

Literary Nonfiction. JOURNEY TO MOUNT TAMALPAIS is an essay on Nature, Art, and the relationship between them. Highly original in both content and literary structure, it provides a new outlook on the importance of Nature as an element of thinking; one of the major works on the "spirit of place" in contemporary literature. This book is illustrated with 17 drawings by the author. "An enlightening journey for those who love the mountain, and for those who love Etel Adnan."—Wendell Berry

Journey to Mount Tamalpais

Poetry. Illustrated with etchings by Russell Chatham. "Throughout the seven sections that are woven into a unified whole, Adnan displays a remarkable sensibility for the precise details that fuse the landscapes of individual and social nightmares. Through an ingenious synthesis of the best elements of the surrealist, cut-up and Language schools of writing, Adnan has attained a unique poetic voice."—The San Francisco Chronicle

The Indian Never Had a Horse & Other Poems

Poetry. Illustrated with etchings by Russell Chatham. "Throughout the seven sections that are woven into a unified whole, Adnan displays a remarkable sensibility for the precise details that fuse the landscapes of individual and social nightmares. Through an ingenious synthesis of the best elements of the surrealist, cut-up and Language schools of writing, Adnan has attained a unique poetic voice."—The San Francisco Chronicle

The Indian Never Had a Horse and Other Poems

Post Apollo Pr

Poetry. Middle Eastern studies. Translated from the French by the author. Reprinted with a new foreward by Jalal Toufic. "This book, a masterwork of the dislocations and radiant outcries of the Arab world, reaffirms Etel Adnan, who authored the great poem, Jebu, as among the foremost poets of the French Language. THE ARAB APOCALYPSE is an immersion into a rapture of chaos clawing towards destiny, and nullified hope refusing its zero. Is is also the journey of soul through the cartography of a global immediacy rarely registered by maps, replete with signposts like hieroglyphs in a storm of shrapnel and broken glass. And above all it is a book that, though capable of being read in its orderly sequence, has so surrendered to 'being there,' it can rivet the sensibility to the Middle Eastern condition at any point in the text--so rapid are its mutations, so becoming its becomingness--like a wisdom book or a book of Changes"--Jack Hirschman. "It has a power and intensity that few poets today can muster—only Allen Ginsberg's Howl comes to mind."—Alice Molloy "The power of Adnan's language and imagery reminds us that she is indeed one of the most significant post-modern poets in contemporary Arab culture."—Kamal Boullatta "THE ARAB APOCALYPSE is, to date, Adnan's most triumphant battle with the exactness of words."—Douglas Powell "The poem invokes a mythic past of Gilgamesh, Tammouz, and Ishtar to presage a present that resists narration, THE ARAB APOCALYPSE contests an uncritical reflection on the immediate historical past."—Barbara Harlow

The Arab Apocalypse (English and French Edition)

Poetry. "With this book of poems Etel Adnan establishes herself as a major poet who belongs beside internationally acclaimed poets like Tranströmer, Bly, Neruda, Vallejo, and Pessoa."—Eric Sellin

The Spring Flowers Own and the Manifestations of the Voyage

"Sitt Marie Rose" is the story of a young teacher who is abducted and then executed by Christian militiamen during the Lebanese Civil War. Based on a true story, this powerful and disturbing novel is now considered as one of the most important works of fiction to emerge from this tragic period in Lebanon. Highly innovative, and even iconoclastic, "Sitt Marie Rose" explores the role that sexual repression and 'tribalism' played in creating one of the most horrific conflicts in modern Arab history.

Sitt Marie-Rose: A Novel

Contemporary

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