Winner of the Global Humanities Translation Prize
Hallaj is the first authoritative translation of the Arabic poetry of Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, an early Sufi mystic. Despite his execution in Baghdad in 922 and the subsequent suppression of his work, Hallaj left an enduring literary and spiritual legacy that continues to inspire readers around the world. In Hallaj, Carl W. Ernst offers a definitive collection of 117 of Hallaj’s poems expertly translated for contemporary readers interested in Middle Eastern and Sufi poetry and spirituality.
Ernst’s fresh and direct translations reveal Hallaj’s wide range of themes and genres, from courtly love poems to metaphysical reflections on union with God. In a fascinating introduction, Ernst traces Hallaj’s dramatic story within classical Islamic civilization and early Arabic Sufi poetry. Setting himself apart by revealing Sufi secrets to the world, Hallaj was both celebrated and condemned for declaring: “I am the Truth.”
Expressing lyrics and ideas still heard in popular songs, the works of Hallaj remain vital and fresh even a thousand years after their composition. They reveal him as a master of spiritual poetry centuries before Rumi, who regarded Hallaj as a model. This unique collection makes it possible to appreciate the poems on their own, as part of the tragic legend of Hallaj, and as a formidable legacy of Middle Eastern culture.
The Global Humanities Translation Prize is awarded annually to a previously unpublished translation that strikes the delicate balance between scholarly rigor, aesthetic grace, and general readability, as judged by a rotating committee of Northwestern faculty, distinguished international scholars, writers, and public intellectuals. The Prize is organized by the Global Humanities Initiative, which is jointly supported by Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Studies and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.
Finalist, Miller Williams Poetry Prize
“The past is a flame you must learn to hold / your hand above,” Eric Leigh writes in this stunning first volume of poems, a poignant meditation on the harm that we can and cannot keep from those we love, and the harm that cannot be kept from us. Taking place in both the rural and the urban, in fields and on sidewalks, in gay bars and in laboratories, with topics as diverse and powerful as a father’s suicide, a mother’s resilience, coming out, lost love, and the continuing plight of HIV, Leigh’s poems locate the heartbreaking music in these struggles. At the center of this profound book about loss—of family, of love, of immunity—lies the spirit’s ability to persevere. “My worst fear has come true, / and I am still here walking,” Leigh writes. Indeed, these poems are as assured and brave as those steps toward an unknown future. At turns beautiful, disturbing, mournful, and redemptive, Harm’s Way is an accomplished debut.
Harm’s Way is part of the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer.
Winner, 2011 National Book Award for Poetry
Winner, 2012 GCLS Award for Poetry
Winner, 2012 SIBA Book Award for Poetry
Nominee, 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry
The poems in Nikky Finney's breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney's poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother's wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president's final State of the Union address.
Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.
Hello I Must Be Going, David Hernandez’s fifth collection of poems, offers a unique take on poetry informed by works of art, in particular the work of artist Ed Ruscha. With narrative and lyrical brushstrokes, Hernandez crafts vibrant landscapes that depict the chaos of the modern world and the beauty entwined within it. Hello I Must Be Going pulses with originality. This is a book of our time, and of time itself—of unrest, loss, grief, and “this endless parade / shimmering toward silence.”
Winner, 2015 Seven Sisters Book Award for Poetry
The poems in Hemisphere explore what it means to be a daughter and what it means to bear new life. Ellen Hagan investigates the world historical hemispheres of a family legacy from around the globe and moves down to the most intimate hemisphere of impending motherhood. Her poems reclaim the female body from the violence, both literal and literary, done to it over the years. Hagan acknowledges the changing body of a mother from the strains of birth—from the growing body of a child, to the scars left most visibly by a C-section—as well as the changes wrought by age and, too often, abuse. The existence of a hemisphere implies a part seeking a whole, and as a collection, Hemisphere is a coherent and cogent journey toward reclamation and wholeness.
The poems in celebrated poet Elton Glaser’s sixth collection journey through the seasons, from spring to spring, a pilgrimage down to the South, over the Midwest of snow and roses, and across the Romance countries of Europe. If the poet often finds himself “[h]alfway between grief and longing,” that may be his natural condition, rooted in this world against the pull of the next, his faith in the “purple evidence of plums, the testimony of wild persimmon” weathering the stormy preachers and the droughts of middle age.
Within that tension, the range of tones is unlimited, sometimes in the same poem, from the serious to the sublime, from anguish to awe. Holding everything together is Glaser’s unmistakable voice, a warm idiom made pungent by wintry wit: “my tongue of odd American, my mongrel sublime.” Whether the poems speak of ripe pears or minor prophets, they invite the reader to a feast of language that lets us taste how it feels to live on this earth, in the shadow of the afterlife.
In her third collection of poems, Teresa Cader spins a complete universe of lyrical, probing verse that reaches out to readers and invites them to come inside. These poems deal with love and loss in particularly striking ways, as Cader uses rigorously controlled verse to express chaotic emotion. Stylistically adventurous, her work moves gracefully from intricate, slant-rhymed couplets to elliptical, lanky free verse. Geographically, she takes readers on a ride with stops in Kraków’s rock clubs, colonial New England’s sites, and shrines of contemporary Japan. The shadow of death, especially the loss of Cader’s mother, falls across many of her poems, but her verse reacts viscerally to such events, her emotion resounding out from each line to move through pain or desire.
In her second collection of poems, Jennifer Rose writes primarily of places and displacement. Using the postcard’s conventions of brevity, immediacy, and, in some instances, humor, these poems are greetings from destinations as disparate as Cape Cod, Kentuckiana, and Croatia. Rich in imagery, deftly crafted, and imbued with a lightness of voice, these poems are also postmarked from poetry’s more familiar provinces of love, nature, and loss.
In the next chapter of the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Poetry Prize, we enter the poetic world of Vievee Francis. Bold and skilled, Francis takes us into the still landscapes of Texas and the fluid details of the African American South. Her poems become panhandle folktales revealing the weight of memories so clear and on the cusp. Her creative tangle of metaphors, people and geography will keep the reader rooted in a good earth of extraordinary verse.
Horsefly Dress is a meditation on the experience and beauty of suffering, questioning its triggers and ultimate purpose through the lens of historical and contemporary interactions and complications of Séliš, Qĺispé, and Christian beliefs. Heather Cahoon’s collection explores dark truths about the world through first-person experiences, as well as the experiences of her family and larger tribal community. As a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Cahoon crafts poems that recount traditional stories and confront Coyote’s transformation of the world, including his decision to leave certain evils present, such as cruelty, greed, hunger, and death.
By weaving together stories of Cahoon’s family and tribal community with those of Coyote and his family, especially Coyote’s daughter, Horsefly Dress, the interactions and shared experiences show the continued relevance of traditional Séliš and Qĺispé culture to contemporary life. Rich in the imagery of autumnal foliage, migrating birds, and frozen landscapes, Horsefly Dress calls forth the sensory experience of grief and transformation. As the stories and poems reveal, the transformative powers associated with the human experience of loss belong to the past, present, and future, as do the traditional Salish-Pend d’Oreille stories that create the backbone of this intricate collection.
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