{"title":"Adonis","description":"The pen-name Adonis, which Ali Ahmad Said began to use in the early 60s, refers to the mythological figures of the Mediterranean which interested Arab poets of the Tammuzi school in that period, the dying gods we know from the archaic mythologies of Egypt, Phoenicia and Greece. Born in 1930, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) mastered traditional poetic forms very early as a child in Syria. Later, in Lebanon, he became a pivotal figure in the new poetry which began to appear in the influential magazine Mawâqif, which he edited with Yûsif al-Khâl starting in 1968. By that time he had established himself, through poems like those in \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.boaeditions.org\/collections\/adonis\/products\/mihyar-of-damascus-his-songs\" title=\"Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMihyar of Damascus: His Songs\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e, as a writer who was thinking of new possibilities in Arabic poetry. Especially in Aghânî Mihyâr Dimishqî, \u003cem\u003eMihyar of Damascus: His Songs\u003c\/em\u003e (1963), Adonis forged a new set of possibilities for Arabic poetry, writing in traditional meters but directing them towards a kind of modernism which rethought every possibility of rhythm, style, and conceptual complexity.  Adonis has acted as visiting professor to a variety of institutions including Damascus University, Princeton University, and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin. In 1986 he was nominated Permanent Assistant Delegate to the Arab League at UNESCO. He currently lives in Paris.","products":[{"product_id":"mihyar-of-damascus-his-songs","title":"Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"The poems in this collection, \u003cem\u003eMiyhar of Damascus\u003c\/em\u003e, His Songs (Aghânî Mihyâr al-dimashqî,) established a new direction in Arabic poetry, comparable to that series of breaks with traditional styles we find elsewhere at early moments in the history of modernisms: Mallarmé or Apollinaire in France, Ezra Pound in the Anglophone world, Ungaretti in Italy, Sikelianos or Seferis in Greece. Adonis's early poems in traditional metrics demonstrate his mastery of the recurring rhythms and monorhyme: but Mihyar shattered that. The authoritative aesthetic break carried out in this book is a break from within. After Mihyar in 1961 there would be many additional leaps into experimental new forms: Mufrad bi-sîghat al jam‘ (Singular in plural form, 1977), for instance, in which words are scattered across the page in the manner of Mallarmé’s “Un coup de dés,” generating a pictorial force no less powerful than their sound, or most recently Al-Kitâb (The book, 1995), in which multiple voices combine surprisingly. Al-Kitâb takes the form of a poem in the center of the page, flanked by marginal comments on it by fictional critics, going down the page in dialogue. Al-Kitâb may be Adonis's most striking recent creation, but the poems of Mihyar constitute the initial, definitive disruption.\"--Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard, from the Introduction \"The availability in English of this seminal, startling, volatile, founding work of Arabic-language modernism is a welcome literary event...Adonis excels both in stately free verse and in the prose poems he calls 'Psalms'... [he] is likely the most original Arabic poet of his generation.\"--Publishers Weekly\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eThe Earth \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e How often you have said to me \u003cbr\u003e \"I have another country,\"\u003cbr\u003e your palms filling with tears\u003cbr\u003e and your eyes\u003cbr\u003e filling with lightning\u003cbr\u003e from where the borders keep edging closer.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Did your eyes know that the earth,\u003cbr\u003e whenever it cried or cheered your footsteps,\u003cbr\u003e here where you have sung, or there,\u003cbr\u003e that it knows every passerby but you\u003cbr\u003e and knows itself to be one,\u003cbr\u003e dried up breasts, dry inside,\u003cbr\u003e and that it doesn't know the ritual of rejection? \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Did your eyes realize\u003cbr\u003e that you yourself are the earth?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e © BOA Editions, Ltd 2008 \u003cbr\u003e Available editions: \u003cbr\u003e --------------------------------------------------------------------------------\u003cbr\u003e Cloth ISBN: 978-1-934414-09-5\u003cbr\u003e Price: $25.50\u003cbr\u003e Publishing Date: July 2008\u003cbr\u003e Paperback ISBN: 978-1-934414-08-8\u003cbr\u003e Price: $16.00\u003cbr\u003e Publishing Date: July 2008\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":9802215941,"sku":"9781934414088","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cloth","offer_id":8418689925,"sku":"978-1-934414-09-5","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/MIHYAR_OF_DAMASCUS2.jpg?v=1527683297"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/collections\/rahim_main_2141044b.jpg?v=1511300660","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/collections\/adonis.oembed","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}