Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry

Edited by Sharif Elmusa and Gregory Orfalea. University of Utah, 1989. 300 pp. List: $29.95; AET: $22.95 for one, $29.95 for two.

Reviewed by George Shadroui

Grape Leaves, a collection of Arab-American poetry edited by Gregory Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa, is a worthy project for a number of reasons. As the editors explain:

"When a teacher wants to imbue her black students with a sense of pride, she might read Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, or Sterling Brown. There exist anthologies for virtually every American ethnic group: black, Hispanic, Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Armenian, and so on. Until now, however, none has existed for a group whose love of poetry is native and deep: Arab Americans." Any anthology, whether it includes Southern, Black, or women writers, aims to save the reader legwork—to make accessible a wide range of work that otherwise would not easily be seen or read. It is understood that each poet will speak to the reader in his or her unique way, employing individual instincts and perceptions in the hope of striking chords of understanding. Nothing is lost, then, in the way of artistic integrity, which was preserved or lost at the moment of creation. Something is gained, however, by packaging an anthology such as Grape Leaves. All of the artists, while the masters of their own work, have been shaped, in part, by their ethnic and cultural background. In this respect, Grape Leaves is a window through which to view the Arab and Arab-American experience.

The poets featured in the book—there are 20 in all—range from the famous (Kahlil Gibran) to the virtually unknown. It includes writers already accomplished in other genres, such as Fawaz Turki, author of the Palestinian memoir The Disinherited, and Etel Adnan, who wrote Sitt Marie Rose, a novel about the Lebanese civil war. In addition, among the contributors are a distinguished group of poets, literary critics, and authors whose reputations in their respective fields are already secure. Samuel Hazo, Eugene Paul Nasser and Orfalea himself are among those who had published widely prior to the publication of this anthology.

Poets are listed chronologically according to date of birth. The first several—Ameen Rihani, Nobel Prize candidate Mikhail Naimy and Elia Abu Madi—were among the immigrant writers who made up Kahlil Gibran's well-known "Pen League. All of the remaining poets were alive and writing at the time of publication.

In the end, names, reputations and ethnic considerations do not sell the book: the poetry does. This is a tribute to the care the editors showed in compiling the material. The whole of the book—notes, commentary and poetry—is sophisticated, interesting and often moving.

Poetry is in many ways the most difficult of written arts. It can be highly personal and reflective, full of imagery and metaphor that communicates on many levels. Breaking the "code" of a poem can be a demanding, albeit rewarding, task. That does not mean a poem cannot be "simple. " Naomi Nye's " Making a Fist" is a moving, gentle statement about the fragility of life. That it is only three stanzas long and easily read only enhances the achievement.

Other poems are more difficult to handle. Adrian's "The Beirut-Hell Express" opens with the jolting line: "The human race is going to the cemetery in great upheavals. From there, she takes the reader on a roller coaster of imagery and emotions. It is a complex work, very much in the stream of consciousness vein, and yet it conveys the chaos and destruction that, as Adnan foresaw, awaited a schizophrenic Lebanon.

Another war poem of note is Orfalea's "The Bomb that Fell on Abdu's Farm. , , In it, he describes first the intrusion of modern warfare into the simple lives of Lebanon's farmers: "It was terrifying and beautiful to see a wedge of silver up from the South."

The surreal beauty is shattered by a de explosion:

Next door, in my great-uncle's newly
irrigated fields, a bomb fell.
The mud smothered it. The mud
talked to it. The mud wrapped
its death like a mother. And
the bomb with American lettering
did not go off.
Water your gardens always. Always.

Gibran needs no introduction. His books, most notably The Prophet, have made him one of the best-known writers in America, where otherwise Arab and Arab-American art remains obscure. The selections chosen for this anthology suggest Gibran's skills as both a poet and a storyteller. "The Gravedigger" and "From Kahlil the Heretic" are dark poems, the first about the triumph of death over life, the second almost Marxist in its depiction of class tensions between ruler and ruled. There is also humor and whimsy—"The Fox" wakes up in the morning to see his shadow. Full of hope, he thinks of eating a camel. By noon, still hungry, he sees his shadow again and thinks, "A mouse will do. "

Ben Bennani's "Letters to Lebanon" captures the author's homesickness and isolation in America. He misses his family and neighbors in the old country. The poem ends on a melancholy note: "I am alone now. My pains are birds searching for a nest. " While Bermani laments his isolation, Elmusa celebrates marriage by chiding Gibran.

Do not eat from the same dish,

said Gibran;

but the prophet never married.

Drink from the same cup,

I say,

and dream on the same mattress.

While the Middle East is often a reference point or focus, the poetry is not limited in this regard. Elia Abu Madi touches deep, universal themes in several of his poems ' "The Bomb of Annihilation ... .. The Sea" and "The Silent Tear." Each one deals with man's "smallness" next to a universe that devours life. In "The Silent Tear" a man tries to console his grieving wife by telling her to take heart in the knowledge that this life is but a passing phase and a better world awaits the faithful. She smiles. He later lies in bed, awake, unconvinced by his own words. His fears echo those of his wife.

Oh night! I have lost my way.

Let there be light, if it exists!

Is this how we die,

how our dreams disappear in an instant, and to dust we return?

More fortunate than us, then,

are those who were not born,

and better then men are stones and rocks.

Few of the pieces in this wonderful collection fail to speak eloquently to some aspect of life, whether it be faith, love, loss, war or peace. Grape Leaves should be read at leisure, sipped on cool fall afternoons and on cold winter nights by a fire. It should be carried to a quiet park in the spring and to the shade of a tree in summer. It will reward those who put aside political and materialistic concerns long enough to reach for our common humanity. That is the goal of all good poets, after all, and Grape Leaves is filled with good poetry.

George Shadroui is a member of the Egypt edition editorial staff of the Middle East Times in Cairo.