The Butterfly’s Burden

Mahmoud Darwish

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah
Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was the most acclaimed poet in the Arab world, and The Butterfly’s Burden presents three recent books in a single volume, each translated into English for the first time and presented side by side with the Arabic: The Stranger’s Bed (1998), Darwish’s first collection of love poems; State of Siege (2002), a terse, politically charged sequence written in Ramallah; and Don’t Apologize For What You’ve Done (2003), a song “green like the phoenix” after the daily horrors in Ramallah.

These poems provide continual contrasts, balancing old literary traditions with new, highlighting lyrical, loving reflections alongside a bitter longing for the Palestine that was lost when Israel was created. Although each work stands alone as a dialogue within and among its poems, one can see the larger conversation Darwish conducts with language, and with self, from one book to another.

The breadth and inventive variety of this collection confirms Darwish as an artist who spoke to and from his time—a poet who sought conversation across national borders while also continuing to expand the borders of poetry.

status	Lost
genre	Literature and Fiction » Poetry
publisher	Copper Canyon Press
publish date	2007
popularity	checked out 0 time(s)