{"id":116730,"date":"2018-08-20T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=116730"},"modified":"2018-08-22T08:24:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T07:24:24","slug":"o-jericho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/08\/o-jericho\/","title":{"rendered":"O! Jericho"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction by Gary Corseri:<\/em> My decade-long poet\/writer-friend, Farid Bitar, sent me A BLADE OF GRASS, a fine anthology of new Palestinian poetry, astutely edited by Naomi Foyle and featuring work by Farid, Naomi Shihab Nye and 10 other poets of the Palestinian diaspora. Published by Smokestack Books, the text is handsomely presented in English and in aesthetically pleasing Arabic. A team of translators also do first-rate work, rendering Arabic original poetry into English. Ms. Foyle’s intro is a sple<\/em>ndid enticement to explore the poems and to understand the suffering and yearning of these disenfranchised Semitic people. Here is a sample from Farid’s poem, “<\/em>O! Jericho“:<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jericho has the best mint tea on earth
\nTasted the sweetest oranges on earth
\nFelt I’m back to my happy childhood
\nFelt I’m in ‘deja vu’ land
\nWhen I smelled the rain
\nEvaporating in the hot summer days
\nPoof gone in seconds
\nWhere I walked through the streets
\nWhen I was my older brother’s tail
\nGoing to school Terra Sancta<\/p>\n

Jericho O! Jericho
\nHome of the Mount of Temptation
\nThe Ummayad Winter Palaces
\nHome of the best lemon trees
\nWhere I smelled the jasmine perfuming the streets
\nAlso home of the Refugee Camps
\nPoverty and misery nowadays<\/p>\n

Drove through the valley
\nAlong the River Jordan
\nWhere Jesus washed his feet
\nDrove to Tiberia Lake
\nDrove to Nazareth
\nHome of the famous prophet<\/p>\n

Jericho O! Jericho
\nHome of the Dead Sea
\nWhere nothing lives now
\nEven fish left town.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Farid Bitar<\/em> is a Palestinian-American poet, born in Jerusalem in 1961.\u00a0 The editor of the anthology, <\/em>Treasury of Arabic Love<\/em>, his own collections include <\/em>Footprints in the Mist <\/em>and two CDs, <\/em>Fatoosh <\/em>and <\/em>Shutat….\u00a0 Fuzzy Lines–67\/48<\/em>, a collection of poems and paintings, is forthcoming in 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Gary Steven Corseri is a m<\/em>ember of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/a> He<\/em> has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including,<\/em> TMS (Transcend Media Service)<\/a>, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and<\/em> Counterpunch.\u00a0 He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on<\/em> PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere.\u00a0 He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.\u00a0 Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Into by Gary Corseri: My decade-long poet\/writer-friend, Farid Bitar, sent me A BLADE OF GRASS, a fine anthology of new Palestinian poetry from 10 poets of the diaspora. A splendid enticement to explore the poems and to understand the suffering and yearning of these disenfranchised Semitic people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":115837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}