Hayan Charara's These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit,
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Hayan Charara's fourth book of poems, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, is an expansive collection. Set to come out in 2022, it explores themes such as heritage, family, religion, war, and the ever-present tension between joy and loss—topics that Charara weaves together through precise detail and careful description. In poems such as “All These Questions You Ask,” and “Terrorism,” the poet addresses his identity as a first-generation American son of Lebanese immigrants—and much of this collection explicitly addresses the experience of growing up Muslim and Middle Eastern in the United States. Charara writes: Just for a minute, give her back to me, before she died, kneeling in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling in Arabic, which no one has since. (12) ... Some people call Dearborn a hub of "terrorist" activity. I've placed the word terrorist between quotation marks because "Arab" or "Muslim" or "people who look like the terrorists we fear" is what they mean. (15) ... I thought I looked like a young Paul Newman. You were thinking Omar Sharif, weren't you? In Syria, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Egypt, and Libya, men with smooth hands stamped my passport, served me mint tea. (22) While Charara speaks directly about these subjects, he also highlights his heritage in nuanced and subtle ways. In “Self Portrait As Trees,” for example, he references sumac, a flowering plant, which—when ground to a powder—is used as a spice in Middle Eastern cuisine. In many ways, this entire collection dances between the direct and the subtle, at once using language that is both unflinching and delicate, both emphatic yet restrained. These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit is a complex and stunning collection that exemplifies Charara's incredible ability to write about life's complexities with grace and curiosity. ⋆ |
Hayan Charara is a writer and editor. His poetry books are the forthcoming These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit (Milkweed Editions, 2022), Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon, 2016), The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon, 2006), and The Alchemist’s Diary (Hanging Loose Press, 2001). His children’s book, The Three Lucys (2016), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak (2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. His honors include a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lucille Joy Prize in Poetry from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, the John Clare Prize, and the Arab American Book Award.
Marissa Ahmadkhani holds an MA in English from Cal Poly SLO and splits her time between the Bay Area and Costa Mesa, CA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.
Marissa Ahmadkhani holds an MA in English from Cal Poly SLO and splits her time between the Bay Area and Costa Mesa, CA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.