Poetry. With accompanying CD. Fresh from her Tony-Award winning stint in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and a subsequent 51-city tour, Suheir Hammad has written her first collection of poetry since BORN PALESTINIAN, BORN BLACK, published when she was just 22 years old. ZAATARDIVA is poetry about love, politics and art, all coming out of Hammad's bag of zaatar. The poems in this collection are at once seductive and dangerous; they are possessed by a singular lyricism and awareness. "ZAATARDIVA summons through moments of lyrical insight and urbane wit, again and again, and before we know what has happened, we are hooked. Here's a poetry that urges a wholeness—a crossing of borders—as the personal is woven into the public, whereby a 'prodigal daughter' possesses her own knowing voice. Each poem in ZAATARDIVA is heart-driven by the urgent, raw orality of need. And, there is a glistening barb in each turn of phrase—a lure of quicksilver accuracy."—Yusef Komunyakaa

ZaatarDiva

Literature & Fiction

Hammad, Suheir

Poetry

Cypher Books

Poetry. In BREAKING POEMS Suheir Hammad departs from her previous poetry books with a bold and explosive style to do what the best poets have always done: create a new language. Using "break" as a trigger for every poem, Hammad destructs, constructs, and reconstructs the English language for us to hear the sound of a breath, a woman's body, a land, a culture, falling apart, broken, and put back together again. "Suheir Hammad's BREAKING POEMS introduces English to an Arabic vernacular that startles into being an altogether new language, bridging the archipelago of a Palestine under siege to the diaspora and beyond, breaking through convention, breaking open locks on mind and heart, breaking into a music inspired by the Coltranes, Sun Ra and free jazz, Lee Scratch Perry and Ravi Shankar, a music that is at once a joyous celebration of survival and a poignant cri de Coeur that cannot be ignored and that Mahmoud Darwish should have lived to see. This is a poetry written for people who have endured the winds of hurricanes and invasions. What wisdom, energy, joy and poignancy Hammad brings to the page—for all of this, and for teaching me a new speaking, I give her my thanks"—Carolyn Forché.

Breaking Poems

Poetry. PINK ELEPHANT is Rachel McKibbens' collection of beautifully crafted, emotionally searing poems depicting the fractured mythology of a family's tumultuous life. Picking up where Plath and Sexton have left off, McKibbens threatens the comfortable confines of confessional poetry with a take-no-prisoners surrealist and super-real edge. By creating a folklore out of brutality and violence (borne from misplaced or absent love) McKibbens ultimately locates both love and forgiveness, fearlessly placing them in their rightful home. McKibbens' PINK ELEPHANT is an audacious debut.

Pink Elephant

McKibbens, Rachel

Poetry. African American Studies. Latino/Latina Studies. "Up jumps the boogie. That's almost all one needs to say. Murillo is headbreakingly brilliant. I didn't have a favorite poet for this year: Now I do. But with this kind of verve and intelligence and ferocity Murillo just might be a favorite for many years to come."—Junot Díaz "The feel of now lives in John Murillo's UP JUMP THE BOOGIE, but it's tempered by bows to the tradition of soulful music and oral poetry. The lived dimensions embodied in this collection say that here's an earned street knowledge and a measured intellectual inquiry that dare to live side by side, in one unique voice. The pages of UP JUMP THE BOOGIE breathe and sing; the tributes and cultural nods are heartfelt, and in these honest poems no one gets off the hook."—Yusef Komunyakaa

Up Jump the Boogie

John Murillo

Poetry. African American Studies. Roger Bonair-Agard's new book, GULLY, journeys from the subverted sport of English gentlemen to the place where a black man might be swallowed up in the throat of trouble. These poems show us GULLY's trickster position, the source of song, the lurking place on the pitch that requires quick hands. GULLY is metaphor for the subject position of these first-person lyrics filed with a street's athlete's dynamism and energy. GULLY is the site of risk and swagger that swings from cricket bats to the diamond crusted smile of Lil' Wayne.

Gully

Bonair-Agard, Roger