Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry Canadian

Alien, Correspondent

by (author) Antony Di Nardo

Publisher
Brick Books
Initial publish date
Apr 2010
Category
Canadian
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781926829241
    Publish Date
    Apr 2010
    List Price
    $10.96
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781894078795
    Publish Date
    Apr 2010
    List Price
    $19.00

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

These astute, generous poems give us contemporary Beirut in all its ravaged and incongruent beauty.

This arresting first collection is, in part, a delicately balanced look at Beirut from the perspective of a Westerner who lives and works in that remarkable city. Whether writing about the Middle East or about domestic life, Di Nardo refuses to romanticize; he doesn’t moralize about the causes of perennial conflicts. He is that rare thing: a clear-eyed witness.

Here and there Starbucks coffee cups collide
with service taxis and re-assign the chaos, litter
the brittle landscape of the coast, while the world
command picks through the sands of lawlessness
for just a grain of what remains of itself,
the little air of familiarity defunct, despised and fed
to those on foot like scraps to gutter cats in the shade
of too many parked cars that took the place
of date palms standing on the sidewalks.
Yet no one would ever leave their shift at the wheel,
or turn home in the grim belief life’s purpose is that unreal.

(from “Oh the streets of West Beirut”)

“Time and space are lenses Di Nardo overlays to bring Beirut into historic and personal focus… Evidence of violence abounds here, as does love, and Di Nardo epitomizes, like Cavafy, the empathy required to be its perfect correspondent.” –John Barton

About the author

ANTONY DI NARDO is a poet and teacher. He currently divides his time between Beirut, Lebanon?where he teaches English at International College?and central Canada. He is the author of two previous collections of poems: Alien, Correspondent (Brick Books, 2010) and Soul on Standby (Exile Editions, 2010).

Antony Di Nardo's profile page