Psalms: Poems

In the final analysis, however, Darwish’s poetry refuses categorization. It is at once classical and modern, formal and colloquial, universal and personal, experiential as well as experimental as the next seventeen psalms amply illustrate. Though primarily “motivated” or “inspired” by political and military circumstances, the poems rise from their sources-like the phoenix-to celebrate what is at once personal and mythical, local and global, in language that is both simple and textured, natural and studied, culminating in both magic and rapture.

Ben Bennani