Fiona Sampson’s review of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s The Butterfly’s Burden, is — according to Laila Lalami — the first review of this copious collection since the book’s release in the U.S. over a year ago by Copper Canyon Press. (The fact that such an important book would have to be republished in England before a major news outlet would acknowledge its existence makes one wonder if the Israel Lobby doesn’t influence more than U.S. foreign policy.) The review says everything I might say about Darwish, whose work I was lucky to encounter three or four years ago, brought over into English by other translators. (The Butterfly’s Burden is beautifully translated by Fady Joudah, whose own collection The Earth in the Attic recently won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award (it is forthcoming in April 2008). It’s worth adding that Naomi Shihab Nye has called Darwish “the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people,” and she seems to be correct. Which leads me to wonder who, among our own living poets, we could call “the Essential Breath of the American people.”
I didn’t really mean to damn anybody; my final question was just that: a question. I sometimes wonder if an "essential breath" is even possible in the U.S. Whitman, I think, has been our closest candidate, but his status here is marginal—which is no criticism of his value, of course. Perhaps we have moved beyond the need for an essential breath?<BR/><BR/>Also, the AIPAC comment was meant as humor
Hi<BR/><BR/>Somehow I suspect the AIPAC is not concerned about this, really. Yet one wonders about the silence from those who know this is, in sampson’s words, a world-class poet. Instead of damning everyone, however, we should keep in mind the poetry industry (and there lies the rub) has other concerns in the US than translation or reviews. Neruda was only translated into English in 1961, for