Poetry
The Streams
Al-Jadawil
Elia Abu Madi · 1927
Synopsis
A collection of poems that celebrate nature, beauty and the questioning of the meaning of life. The poet blends philosophical meditation with luminous lyricism. The title names streams, and the pieces are short, in a short metre and with a sustained rhyme, as if each were meant to flow without stopping.
Context
The collection came off the presses of an Arabic newspaper in New York, with a preface by Mikhail Naimy; it was Gibran who had prefaced the previous collection, nine years earlier. The poems had first appeared one by one in the Arabic-language newspapers of the United States, which emigrants cut out and sent back home. The book marks a turning point through its short metres and the care of its rhymes, and the long poem of the Talismans that it contains, made of unanswered questions, earned its author accusations of impiety.
Who it is for
A collection of poems in Arabic, in short metres and carefully crafted rhymes. None of it requires prior knowledge, other than a taste for regular verse.
Prizes and reception
This collection is on the school curriculum in several Arab countries, and several of its poems have been set to music and sung.