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Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts (Three Continents Press)

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Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual andromantic verse. His work was featured not only in his two dozenvolumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work.

The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly said in Damascus today that Qabbani had been "as necessary to our lives as air."

Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," which broke with the conservative traditions of Arabic literature. But it was not until he resigned from the Syrian diplomatic service in 1966 that Qabbani reached full flower. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes.

Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. But his writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair, and it sometimes treated the oppression of women as a metaphor for what he saw as the Arabs' cursed fate. In his poem "Drawing with Words" he wrote: When a man wishes a woman he blows a horn, But when a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow.

The Egyptian novelist Mona Helmi said of Qabbani today, "His greatness came from his ability to put into beautiful words not only the ordinary actions between men and women, but also between the ruler and ruled and the oppressor and the oppressed."

Gamal el-Ghitanti, the Egyptian novelist and editor of the weekly News of Literature, praised Qabbani as having been "by any measure a great Arab poet who made a big effort to make his poetry understandable to all people and not only to the elite."

Qabbani published his first poem, "The Brunette had Told Me," in 1944, a year before he graduated with a law degree from the University of Damascus. He held diplomatic posts in Cairo, Ankara, London, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut before resigning, and had lived in London since 1967. But the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in "The Jasmine Scent of Damascus." In his later years, Qabbani's poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. One couplet in particular -- "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me" -- is sometimes quoted by Arabs as a kind of wry shorthand for their frustration with life under dictatorship. Still, Qabbani never explicitly criticized his native country or its long-reigning leader, President Hafez al-Assad, and that allowed him to be hailed across Syria as a national hero.

Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual andromantic verse. His work was featured not only in his two dozenvolumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work.

The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly said in Damascus today that Qabbani had been "as necessary to our lives as air."

Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," which broke with the conservative traditions of Arabic literature. But it was not until he resigned from the Syrian diplomatic service in 1966 that Qabbani reached full flower. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes.

Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. But his writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair, and it sometimes treated the oppression of women as a metaphor for what he saw as the Arabs' cursed fate. In his poem "Drawing with Words" he wrote: When a man wishes a woman he blows a horn, But when a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow.

The Egyptian novelist Mona Helmi said of Qabbani today, "His greatness came from his ability to put into beautiful words not only the ordinary actions between men and women, but also between the ruler and ruled and the oppressor and the oppressed."

Gamal el-Ghitanti, the Egyptian novelist and editor of the weekly News of Literature, praised Qabbani as having been "by any measure a great Arab poet who made a big effort to make his poetry understandable to all people and not only to the elite."

Qabbani published his first poem, "The Brunette had Told Me," in 1944, a year before he graduated with a law degree from the University of Damascus. He held diplomatic posts in Cairo, Ankara, London, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut before resigning, and had lived in London since 1967. But the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in "The Jasmine Scent of Damascus." In his later years, Qabbani's poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. One couplet in particular -- "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me" -- is sometimes quoted by Arabs as a kind of wry shorthand for their frustration with life under dictatorship. Still, Qabbani never explicitly criticized his native country or its long-reigning leader, President Hafez al-Assad, and that allowed him to be hailed across Syria as a national hero. Assad, who recently named a main street in Damascus after the poet, was reported today to be planning to dispatch a special plane to London to carry Qabbani's body home to Syria for burial.

Born on March 21, 1923, Qabbani was married twice.

His second wife, Balqis al-Rawi, an Iraqi teacher whom he had met at a poetry recital in Baghdad, was killed in a bomb attack by pro-Iranian guerrillas in Beirut, where she was working for the cultural section of the Iraqi Ministry. The poet had been in poor health for many months. He is survived by two daughters and a son.

Mr. Qabani is very famous in the arab culture. His reputation comes from the sensitive and sentimental poems he writes about love and women. Unfortunately, the collection of poems in this item did not represent well the work he is famous for.

Collaboratively translated into English by Bassam K. Frangieh and Clementina R. Brown, Arabian Love Poems showcases the poetry and verse of Syrian born Nizar Kabbani (1923-1998). Kabbani's poetry is direct, spontaneous, musical, and drew upon the language of everyday life. Each poem is presented in a bilingual text of Arabic and English in this superbly presented edition which will well serve to introduce an American readership to one of the finest 20th Century poets of the Middle East. When I wrote your name/On the notebook of roses/I knew/All the illiterate,/All the sick and impotent men/Would stand against me./When I decided to kill the last Caliph,/To announce/The establishment of a state of love/Crowning you as its queen,/I knew/Only the birds/Would sing of the revolution with me.

Nizar Kabbani is very difficult to translate. He is a poet of great simplicity, very direct and extremely spontaneous. Kabbani uses the language of everyday life with peculiar musicality. Therefore, many translators have failed, others could not take such difficult task. Frangieh's translation is the first book to represent Kabbani's poetry in English. He has done a great service to Arabic poetry and to the English speaking world. Congratulations!

This is truly a fine selection from the pen of a master poet of the Arabic language.
If you are a fan of poetry, you cannot help but be moved by the fine and artful translations presented here.
If, however you are looking for an appreciation of the original and you are not a native-level speaker, the volume fails to offer what you might hope to find in a bilingual presentation of a master poet. Due to the unfortunate choice to present the poet's original hand without typeset arabic characters to clarify it, this edition is all but useless as a chrestomathy for the beginning or intermediate student.
Qibbani's cramped, idiosyncrhatic poet's hand, unilluminated here, bars the door to what could otherwise have been an elegant journey into the mind of a true master of the language.
Other bilingual editions of poetries have managed to overcome the urge to present the art of the original pen without the benefit of a clear orthography for non-native speakers who are not professional chirographers. This edition, alas, did not.

If you are in love read the poems in this book. The words are musical, the emotions are strong, and the fire is really hot!

I greatly admire Nizar Kabbani's work and am heartened to have such a treasury of his work at my fingertips. The poems are presented both in hand-written Arabic on one page as well as in translated English on the other, which is very helpful to me as a student of Arabic. Nizar Kabbani viewed the treatment of women and sexuality in general in the Arab world as key to social liberation and his poems reflect this view.

Wonderful poems. Great for beginning Arabic students because it has both the original Arabic and nice translations on the same page.

These poems are very sensual, very passionate and very sexy. These are beautiful love poems. Recite them to a woman and see what happens...! Read the poems to someone special.