Ruins and Other Poems

In these poems, Samer Abu Hawwash stands upon ancient and modern ruins, engaging with the archetypal Arabic qasida and its echoes in the present, set against a backdrop of exile, displacement, and genocide. The site of the ruin, the journey, and the return home are the three movements of the archetypal Arabic form with which Samer contends in his book-length poem. Writing in and from the moment of crisis, the poet keeps returning to ruins, forfeiting the journey and the hope of return and resolution, rearranging the elements of poetry in the Arabic tradition in search of closure or consolation-in a gesture, a shadow, a memory, an object. The five poems that follow 'Ruins' in this book root themselves in monumental loss. When 'it no longer matters if anyone loves us' and 'we will lose this war,' nothing remains but the poem, the witness, the signpost in the wasteland of history.