Sargon Boulus: “This Great River”—Translating the Beats into Arabic
Sargon Boulus: “This Great River”—Translating the Beats into Arabic
$10.00
This book comes with a facsimile reproduction of “Tigris” featuring a long poem “Jebu” by Etel Adnan
Editor and Translator: Khaled al-Hilli
Introduction: Sinan Antoon
54 pp, softcover, saddle-stitch binding
ISBN: 978-1-958675-01-4
The Great River—Translating the Beats into Arabic traces the literary encounters of Sargon Boulus (1944-2007), an Iraqi poet who was part of the vibrant literary scene of late 60’s San Francisco. His life was marked by a period of restless traveling, that he would later describe as an attempt to pursue a poetic imaginary. This project continues to map his proximity to the Beat poets, his short-lived Bay Area poetry journal, Tigris, and his other English language publications. This publication includes a facsimile reproduction of Tigris ,featuring a long poem “Jebu” by Boulus’ good friend Etel Adnan.
Editor
Khaled Al Hilli
Khaled Al Hilli teaches Arabic at New York University and completing a doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center on the post 2003 Iraqi novel. His research is a comparative examination of literary narratives written by Iraqi and American writers, primarily from 2003 to the present. In addition to exploring the interplay between space and memory in contemporary Iraqi novels, his research explores fiction as an indicator of social, political and historical imaginaries, and explores its role in the construction of racial and national identity in the US, as well as the socio-economic factors involved in the construction of literary and cultural paradigms.
Sinan Antoon
Sinan Antoon’s teaching and research interests lie in pre-modern Arabic literature and contemporary Arab culture and politics. His scholarly works include The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013) and numerous essays on the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Sargon Boulus and on contemporary Iraqi culture. His essays and creative writings in Arabic have appeared in major journals and publications in the Arab world and in New York Times, Aljazeera.net, The Nation, Middle East Report, Journal of Palestine Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, and Washington Square Journal. He has published two collections of poetry in Arabic and one collection in English: The Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press, 2007). He has published three novels: I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2007) which has appeared in German, Portuguese, Norwegian and Italian editions, The Pomegranate Alone (2010) forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2013, and Ya Maryam (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2012). His translations from the Arabic include Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence (Archipelago, 2011) and a selection of Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef’s late work, Nostalgia; My Enemy (Graywolf, 2012). His translation of Toni Morrison’s Home is forthcoming in Arabic in 2013. Antoon returned to his native Baghdad in 2003 as a member of InCounter Productions to co-direct a documentary, About Baghdad, about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam-occupied Iraq. In 2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the EUME Program at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Arab Studies Journal and co-founder and co-editor of the cultural page of Jadaliyya. In spring 2013, he will be a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin .
Etel Adnan (1925–2021): Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and artist whose work encompasses a variety of media. She left Beirut in 1949 and lived between San Francisco and Paris. She is celebrated for her unique contributions to both literature and art.
