Poetry
حزن في ضوء القمر
Not translated into English
Muhammad al-Maghut · 1959
Synopsis
Sadness in the Moonlight: prose poems, spoken by a wounded vagabond who loves the rain and speaks from the pavements, alleys and cafés of a city that owes him nothing. The poem that gives the book its title begs the spring that has come from a woman's eyes and the canary travelling under the moon to carry him to her, a love poem or a stab of the dagger. Other pieces address Layla in the language of the body, or cry out, like The Burning of Words and The Murder, the hunger for speech of a man released from prison.
Context
The book was published in Beirut, by the house of the magazine Shi'r run by Youssef al-Khal, and its author was twenty-five years old. The magazine was then defending writing without metre against a criticism that refused to see poetry in it; he held that poetry is a free space that neither measures nor feet can shackle. The same house published his second book the following year. A critic from his country noted that between his first pieces and his last one finds no difference in strength, and that his reserve was quickly exhausted.
Who it is for
A collection in Arabic, without metre or rhyme. It is worth knowing that black humour is constant in it and that its anger is aimed at the Arab states as much as at private misfortune.
Prizes and reception
It became the most famous of his collections and is regarded as one of the books that established the Arabic-language prose poem.