Adonis

The first major career-spanning collection of the poems of Adonis, widely acknowledged as the most important poet working in Arabic today

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world. His poems have earned international acclaim, and his influence on Arabic literature has been likened to that of T. S. Eliot's on English-language verse. This volume serves as the first comprehensive survey of Adonis's work, allowing English readers to admire the arc of a remarkable literary career through the labors of the poet's own handpicked translator, Khaled Mattawa.

Experimental in form and prophetic in tone, Adonis's poetry sings exultantly of both the sweet promise of eros and the lingering problems of the self. Steeped in the anguish of exile and the uncertainty of existence, Adonis demonstrates the poet's profound affection for Arabic and European lyrical traditions even as his poems work to destabilize those very aesthetic and moral sensibilities. This collection positions the work of Adonis within the pantheon of the great poets of exile, including César Vallejo, Joseph Brodsky, and Paul Celan, providing for English readers the most complete vision yet of the work of the man whom the cultural critic Edward Said called "today's most daring and provocative Arab poet."

"Poetry for [Adonis] is not merely a genre or an art form but a way of thinking, something almost like mystical revelation."--Charles McGrath, New York Times

"Poems of remarkable intellectual and emotional power."--Lawrence Joseph, Commonweal

"This new selection and translation . . . is certainly needed. . . . [Adonis's] 'Concerto for 11th September/2001 B.C.' . . . is nothing short of brilliant."--Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review

"Adonis is one of the great luminaries in contemporary world poetry, and with this impressive and entrancing volume of selected poems in English, superbly translated by Khaled Mattawa, his pool of admirers here in America is bound to increase."--Spencer Dew, Rain Taxi Review of Books

"Until [now], no single work in English gave an idea of the poet's range. Adonis: Selected Poems is thus a landmark: the collection matters not just because of its internal beauty, but because it provides a window on the career of one of Arabic literature's transformational poets."-- M. Lynx Qualey, Kenyon Review

"Provocative, emotionally wrought, and deeply human."--Keith Rice, Signature

Selected as a finalist for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize sponsored by the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry

Adonis was the winner of the 2011 Goethe Prize, given by the city of Frankfurt

Khaled Mattawa was the winner of the 2011 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for Adonis: Selected Poems, given by PEN American Center

Khaled Mattawa was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effecive institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defent human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. (prestige/important)

"There is no doubt this selection will prove to be the standard by which all translations, readings, and studies of Adonis's poetry in English will be judged. The sweeping canopy of his life's achievement is astonishing in Khaled Mattawa's vision. Mattawa's lyrical rendition of Adonis's intensely musical Arabic is unparalleled by any available translation, old or recent, of Adonis's work in English."--Fady Joudah, translator of If I Were Another: Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

"Adonis, born Ali Ahmad Said Esber in the Alaouite