How do we not know this feminist force? Venus Khoury-Ghata’s poems are literally and metaphorically otherworldly; the universes of these poems are specific and strange, erotic and tender, and both defiant of and in love with narrative. The luminous Marilyn Hacker, a fine poet in her own right, has taken on the task of translation: the powerhouse feminist combo is one for the history books.

Comprised of five sections or sequences of work, the first two delve into death that is as personal as it is political. Here, she talks about the death of loved ones – her mother, husband, and brother – as well as the refugees and victims of the Arab world. Displacement and destruction are common subjects for Khoury-Ghata. The last line of “The Cherry Tree Journey” is one that melds an intimate family moment with one of loss. Khoury-Ghata writes, “Where will we tie up the cherry tree’s shadow / now that we have neither donkey nor cherry tree? / asks the mother.”

The fantastic and perhaps surrealist twist of the poem alludes to great sorrow: the tree is gone and so is the donkey. Where will this family go? What will happen to the shadows; what will happen to the world? Who is writing our history? This is an important question for Khoury-Ghata. The title poem’s end asks:

what words will recall the migrations of men and women fleeing
genocide drought famine
children and chickens tied up in the same bundle whether they spoke
gravelly Aramaic
the choppy Arabic of warring tribes
or the language jingling like marbles in our childhood pockets

Khoury-Ghata brings both the strength and power of words to the table; here, they are needed as they are disregarded. The knack of this poet is her ability to bring conflicting ideas to the table: we are neither here nor there. The line is worked hard and meaning becomes an echo. One can’t move forward without looking back to what has come before. In this way, Khoury-Ghata has her finger on the pulse of history’s complexities. Truth is as sweet as a child’s marbles and as sour as the “sun’s anger [that] overturned the country.”