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October 4, 2003 By Uncategorized


Nelly’s Poem by Etel Adnan
From the Lebanese Women’s Association site

I conclude this survey of Tammuzi poets with some lines from the Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan from her long poem “The Spring Flowers Own“:

I see heading East the pearl-colored
march of clouds
roses lend their blood to young
soldiers drowning in the Tigris
flowers triumph
over the human race
their tragedies are
short-lived
their agonies exude incense and myrrh
at the entrance of
temples they are the
ones to be eternally eternal.

I envy their youth
their lucency their
quiddity
we are the shadows and they,
our hosts.

Adnan originally started writing in French and now writes in English. Her first poems were published in Shi’r as translations from French to Arabic in 1964, just as the Tammuzi poets were moving on and Shi’r was wrapping up. In many ways, Adnan embodies the dispersed identity and complex and sophisticated voice that the Tammuzi poets seemed to me to represent. She has essentially been an exile all her life which she said in an interview, has affected her thusly:

I was always an Arab, and have been like that not even as a Lebanese or a Syrian. I always felt like an Arab. It makes no difference to me. For example, I went to Morocco in 1966 and when I entered to the hotel and heard Umm Kalthum in the lobby, I said to myself: here is the Arab World. When it comes into expression, of course there is a problem because I went to French schools and my mother being Greek we did not speak Arabic at home. Children learn language at school and at home. I didn’t speak Arabic neither at home nor in the school. I grew up knowing French. I also speak Greek and Turkish, because my mother was Greek from Turkey and my father was an Arab in the Ottoman Empire. So, I knew these two languages, but I never learned them in school. So I don’t have a problem in identity like saying who am I? Because I feel I am an Arab, I am a woman, and I am a person in the 20th Century, and hopefully the 21st Century. But, when I write of course I have that question. For whom am I writing? For Americans I am an Arab. Arabs say why don’t you write in Arabic? So, we have to solve that problem through translations, and also I think the notion of identity should change. Identity is not a race. It is a culture and it is a commitment. I am committed to the Arab World and I am an Arab.

I have collected 19 poems and two full books of poetry from the Tammuzi poets over the past few days. You can view them at the Parking Lot Wiki: Tammuzi poets collection, where you can feel free to add more poems or poets if you find them. It’s a fascinating collection of poetry in English, giving a slice of Arab culture that is lost in the current cloudiness about good guys and bad guys. Enjoy!