The NewsHour just aired a series of profiles, "Poetry of the Middle East," over the past two days, featuring Israeli and Palestinian poets, respectively. It made me interested in reading more of their work, each of them.
It also reminded me why I'm glad I chose this profession (or rather, this way of life, since I guess "profession" implies a livelihood.) But these are the people I want to be counted among, or with whom, I guess, I feel most kinship, far beyond tribe and creed.
Some quotes:
GHASSAN ZAQTAN (through translator): I am not the kind of person who will walk in front of the demonstration. I feel that's not my place. I walk behind the demonstration in order to collect the small things that may fall, whether it's the handkerchief or a child's backpack or a purse. That's my attitude.
AHARON SHABTAI: The world is big, and there are many big things, and poetry is tiny. But this tiny thing, it's like a small knife that you have in your pocket. But this is something that can say very important things.
TAHA MUHAMMAD ALI: In my poetry, there is no Palestine, no Israel. But, in my poetry, suffering, sadness, longing, fear, and this is, together, make the results: Palestine and Israel. The art is to take from life something real, then to build it anew with your imagination.
(And that last is profoundly good advice, summing up the crucial trick that I'd been trying to find words for recently.)
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