A River Dies Of Thirst

"Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . . lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people." — Naomi Shihab Nye "Catherine Cobham's translations sway delicately between mystery and clarity, giving a rendition of the master's voice that should impress both those reading Darwish's work for the first time and those who are already familiar with it." — Fady Joudah, The Guardian This remarkable collection of poems, meditations, fragments, and journal entries was Mahmoud Darwish’s last volume to come out in Arabic. River is at once lyrical and philosophical, questioning and wise—full of irony, resistance, and play. Darwish’s musings on unrest and loss dwell on love and humanity; in the pages of River, myth and dream are inseparable from truth. Throughout this personal collection, Darwish returns frequently to his ongoing (and often lighthearted) conversation with death, warning that “eternity does not visit graves and loves to joke.”

"Darwish has given expression to his people's ordinary longings and desires."The New York Times 'There are two maps of Palestine that the politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Mahmoud Darwish's poetry.' - Anton Shammas Mahmoud Darwish was one of the most acclaimed contemporary poets in the Arab world and is often cited as the poetic voice of the Palestinian people. During the tumultuous summer of 2006, as Israel attacked Gaza and Lebanon, Darwish was in Ramallah and recorded his observations and feelings in this diary. Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of al-Birweh in Galilee, Palestine. He published around thirty poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into thirty-five languages. He died in August 2008.

This 2009 (VII) special issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge entitled “‘If I touch the depths of your heart’: The Human Promise of Poetry in Memories of Mahmoud Darwish,” is a commemorative issue on the life and poetry of the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, co-edited by a group of UMass Boston faculty and alumni. Other than keynote opening statements, the special issue is comprised of a selected series of longer and shorter poems by Mahmoud Darwish, followed by commemorative poetry and essays/articles that directly or indirectly engage with Mahmoud Darwish’s work and/or the subject matter of his passion and love, Palestine and human rights and dignity. Contributions include: Selections from the poetry of the late Mahmoud Darwish in two recently published collections: If I Were Another: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) translated by Fady Joudah, and another, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals (Archipelago, 2009), translated by Catherine Cobham; keynote contribution by UMass Boston Provost Winston Langley, keynote contribution of a poem by Martha Collins; and commemorative poetry or prose by the Palestinian-American poet, writer, and scholar Lisa Suhair Majaj, Amy Tighe, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Robert Lipton, Joyce Peseroff, Shaari Neretin, and Jack Hirschman; included are also essays/articles by Leila Farsakh, Rajini Srikanth, Erica Mena, Kyleen Aldrich, Nadia Alahmed, and Patrick Sylvain. Co-editors of the special issue were (alphabetically) Anna D. Beckwith, Elora Chowdhury, Leila Farsakh, Askold Melnyczuk, Erica Mena, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Joyce Peseroff, Rajini Srikanth, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (journal editor-in-chief). This “Class-Book” was a student/instructor self-publishing experiment in a course offered at Binghamton University (SUNY) taught by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi in Spring 1997 when he was a graduate student enrolled in BU’s doctoral program in Sociology. The course was freshly designed and titled, “Soc 280Z: Sociology of Knowledge: Mysticism, Science, and Utopia.” The class-book was designed and printed in less than two weeks by the instructor in order to make it available to students as soon a possible after the class. The “fake” publisher name proposed by a contributing student author (Ingrid Heller) and adopted by the contributors was the “Crumbling Façades Press.” The class-book experiment was one that eventually inspired and contributed to the launching of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (ISSN: 1540-5699, 2002-). It was dedicated to the living memory of the late Professor Terence K. Hopkins (d. 1997), the founding Director of the Graduate Studies program of the Department of Sociology at SUNY-Binghamton. Contributors to the volume include: Shannon Martin, Ian Hinonangan, Nicholas Jezarian, Jeff Alexander: Tears of a Clown, Meghan Murphy, Heather Mealey, Daniel B. Kaplan, Ingrid Heller, Martin Magnusson, Arturo Pacheco, Keira Kaercher, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi.

This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine.

This book tells the dramatic and often surprising story of the learning of the Irish language by Irish Republican prisoners held in the infamous H-block cells during the bloody political conflict in Northern Ireland. Using research methods and techniques, the author closely analyses the emergence of the Irish language amongst republican prisoners and ex prisoners in Northern Ireland from the 1970s up until the present. This pioneering study shows how the language was used exclusively in parts of the prison, despite the efforts of the prison authorities to suppress the language, and the dramatic impact this had on Irish society. Drawing on interviews with the prisoners, and various other materials, Mac Giolla Chriost shows how these developments gave rise to the popular coinage of the term ‘Jailtacht’, a deformation of ‘Gaeltacht’ - the official Irish-speaking districts of the Republic of Ireland, to describe this unique linguistic phenomenon.

In memoirs, Arab writers have invoked solitude in moments of deep public involvement. Focusing on Taha Hussein, Sonallah Ibrahim, Assia Djebar, Latifa al-Zayyat, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Edward Said, Haifa Zangana, and Radwa Ashour, this book reads a range of autobiographical forms, sources, and affinities with other literatures.Taking a comparative approach, Nasser shows the local sources of contemporary Arab autobiography, adaptations of a global genre, and cultural exchange. She also examines different aspects of the contemporary autobiography as it has evolved in the Arab world during the past half-century, focusing on the particularity of the genre written in different languages but pertaining to one overarching Arab culture. Drawing on memoirs, testimonies, autobiographical novels, poetic autobiography, journals, and diaries, she examines solitude and national struggles in contemporary Arab autobiography.

Exploring the Critical Issues of Beauty offers a wide range of topics on concepts of Beauty from scholars, academics and researchers around the world.