Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393332381 ISBN 13: 9780393332384

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

Synopsis

A landmark anthology, providing the most ambitious, far-reaching collection of contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern poetry available.

Language for a New Century celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East, bringing together an unprecedented selection of works by South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. Some poets, such as Bei Dao and Mahmoud Darwish, are acclaimed worldwide, but many more will be new to the reader. The collection includes 400 unique voices―political and apolitical, monastic and erotic―that represent a wider artistic movement that challenges thousand-year-old traditions, broadening our notion of contemporary literature. Each section of the anthology―organized by theme rather than by national affiliation―is preceded by a personal essay from the editors that introduces the poetry and exhorts readers to examine their own identities in light of these powerful poems. In an age of violence and terrorism, often predicated by cultural ignorance, this anthology is a bold declaration of shared humanity and devotion to the transformative power of art.

About this title

About the Author:

Tina Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, New York, where she lives with her family. She is the author of two previous collections of poetry―including Half-Lit Houses, a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award―and coeditor of the seminal anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. The recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Academy of American Poets, and Poets & Writers, among other honors, Chang teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

New York–based poet, playwright, and writer Nathalie Handal performs and teaches worldwide.

Ravi Shankar, founding editor of Drunken Boat and author of Instrumentality, lives in Connecticut.

Carolyn Forché, poet, translator, and activist, is professor of English at Georgetown University. She has published two award-winning volumes of poetry, Gathering the Tribes and The Country Between Us. In 1990 Ms. Fourché received a Lannan Literary Award, granted to poets and writers of literary excellence "whose work promotes a truer understanding of contemporary life." Her most recent volume of poetry is Blue Hour.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. This ambitious yet accessible gathering of hundreds of poets from various parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, America and elsewhere is likely to excite poetry fans as well as those new to poetry. Seeking a response to 9/11, the three editors, who are poets and teachers of Asian-American descent, hoped to share an alternate vision of the new century in which words, not weapons, could define our civilization. Divided into nine idiosyncratic sections—with titles like Bowl of Air and Shivers that cover topics including Eros and the meeting of the political and the personal—the book is more an esoteric journey than a systematic reference. Readers may recognize the names of major international figures (Nazim Hikmet, Taha Muhammad Ali) and famous American writers (Michael Ondaatje, Li-Young Lee), who may draw attention to many writers unknown in the U.S., such as Hsien Min Toh of Singapore, who, upon seeing sport hunters shooting crows, awakens to an all-too-familiar ambivalence about my unkind nation, in whose name only I will be/ able to walk up the lane with lowered head. While the book's sheer size can be overwhelming, it is packed with treasures. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0393332381
• ISBN 13: 9780393332384
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 784
• Editor: Chang Tina, Handal Nathalie, Shankar Ravi