You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems

You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems - Paperback

$16.00
$16.00
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You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems
  • You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems
You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems - Paperback

You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems - Paperback

by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
$16.00
$16.00

Book Overview

Finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Translation


Translated from the Arabic and introduced by Fady Joudah, You Can Be the Last Leaf draws on two decades of work to present the transcendent and timely US debut of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat.

Art. Garlic. Taxis. Sleepy soldiers at checkpoints. The smell of trash on a winter street, before "our wild rosebush, neglected / by the gate, / blooms." Lovers who don't return, the possibility that you yourself might not return. Making beds. Cleaning up vomit. Reading recipes. In You Can Be the Last Leaf, these are the ordinary and profound-sometimes tragic, sometimes dreamy, sometimes almost frivolous--moments of life under Israeli occupation.

Here, private and public domains are inseparable. Desire, loss, and violence permeate the walls of the home, the borders of the mind. And yet that mind is full of its own fierce and funny voice, its own preoccupations and strangenesses. "It matters to me," writes Abu Al-Hayyat, "what you're thinking now / as you coerce your kids to sleep / in the middle of shelling" whether it's coming up with "plans / to solve the world's problems," plans that "eliminate longing from stories, remove exhaustion from groans," or dreaming "of a war / that's got no war in it," or proclaiming that "I don't believe in survival."

In You Can Be the Last Leaf, Abu Al-Hayyat has created a richly textured portrait of Palestinian interiority--at once wry and romantic, worried and tenacious, and always singing itself.
ISBN9781571315403
Author Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
PublisherMilkweed Editions
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2022
LanguageENG- English
Pages120
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Literary Criticism Nonfiction Poetry

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More by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems

You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems - Paperback

You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems - Paperback

By Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

About Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is the author of You Can Be the Last Leaf. She is also the editor of The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction and a contributor to A Bird Is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry. Her work has been published in The Guardian, the Irish Times, and Literary Hub. She is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. Abu Al-Hayyat lives in Jerusalem and works in Ramallah.

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