Translated from the Arabic and introduced by Fady Joudah, You Can Be the Last Leaf draws on two decades of work to present the US debut of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat.
Unfulfilled desires of many stripes haunt these verses, and Abu Al-Hayyat often describes an emotional inner world in physical terms: 'My hand takes off the woman’s face / and hangs it by the door'...As Joudah notes in his foreword, in these poems 'the exteriors of the self are mounted on a carousel along with other selves'...Among the varied longings that find expression in this work are those of 'the butcher / who wanted to be a violinist' but possessed the wrong kind of hands, and of the lover in 'Trash' whose timing is off ('[w]hy did I love you / in February and not in March') because his beloved would rather take in the fragrances of spring—a blooming wild rosebush or a neighbor’s jasmine—than pursue a romance she associates with the smell of the garbage on her doorstep...In 'Psychology News,' we observe again the idea of a mask, this time in the context of unrequited love...In You Can Be the Last Leaf words are a form of worldbuilding that also allows for magical thinking.
Words weaponize, the world marches on, but Abu Al-Hayyat rests between breaths, demonstrating through a brilliant puzzle of verbal turns the ways in which trauma has distorted our time...This collection brings together verses from multiple times and tomes, holding them in conversation, exchanging the writer’s lexicons and books through the years, and digesting the whole in the face of an indifferent universe...Abu Al-Hayyat’s verse is a camera, and what it captures, what it turns toward, is not only the violence but also the aftermath, the void left by time cut short.
... exquisitely translated ... English language readers gain an elegantly curated introduction to the work of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat. Abu Al-Hayyat is a versatile writer, with three novels and four poetry collections to her name. Selections from each of those collections are arranged chronologically in this book, giving us a clear sense of the poet’s development over time, as well as of the consistency of her vision ... Despite her belief in art 'as reparation for love and wisdom,' Abu Al-Hayyat’s poems remain firmly planted in the realities of a colonized homeland ... Abu Al-Hayyat’s best poems write about loss in multiple valences, the brutality of colonialism animates the scene but the violence of repetition, the daily heartbreaks inherent in a long-term practice of hope propel each line and attune the poet to unexpected sites of wonder ... Abu Al-Hayyat’s best poems write about loss in multiple valences, the brutality of colonialism animates the scene but the violence of repetition, the daily heartbreaks inherent in a long-term practice of hope propel each line and attune the poet to unexpected sites of wonder ... Abu Al-Hayyat’s disappointments and critiques are matched by her poetry’s tenderness, and its compassion for all of the struggling humans around her who fall short of the legends they make.
