The Lives of Rain [Paperback]

Nathalie Handal (Author), Carolyn Forche (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Poet, playwright, writer, editor, critic and literary activist, she finished her postgraduate studies in English and Drama at University of London, her MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Bennington College, Vermont, her Master of Arts in English and her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Communications at Simmons College, Boston. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies and she is the author of The Neverfield and the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets bestseller andwinner of the 2002 Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Book Award. She has recently recorded "Traveling Rooms," a CD of her poetry with improvisational music by Vladimir Miller and Alexandr Alexandrov (ASC Records, 1999). She teaches at Columbia University.

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"In The Lives of Rain, Nathalie Handal has brought forth a work of radical displacement and uncertainty, moving continent to continent, giving voice to Palestinians of the diaspora in the utterance of one fiercely awake and compassionate, who, against warfare, occupation and brutality offers her native language, olives, wind, a herd of sheep or a burning mountain, radio music, a butterfly's gaze...Handal is a poet of deftly considered paradoxes and reversals, sensory evocations and mysteries left beautifully unresolved. Hers is a language seared by history and marked by the impress of extremity; so it is suffused with a rare species of wisdom." -From the Foreword by Carolyn ForchÇ

Product Details

• Paperback: 67 pages
• Publisher: Interlink Books (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566566029
• ISBN-13: 978-1566566025
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Song in the Back Pocket of a Martyr, March 29, 2006

By 

matt horton (washington, dc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lives of Rain (Paperback)

"In the tradition of Darwish, young Palestinian women in the Diaspora are taking up the mantle of modern Palestinian poetry. Nathalie Handal, a "poet in violet solitude" riding "sailboats across the world's heart," beautifully describes the continuing agony of exile of her generation of refugees, who should "no longer be sheets flying to nowhere"...In The Lives of Rain, Handal stands, weeps and celebrates as her poems "travel and move from one continent to the next, move, to be whole." The poet seamlessly weaves her experiences in Europe, Latin America and the Arab world through this "love song in the back pocket of a martyr." Her travels revolve around her current home, New York, where the rain gathers in puddles, ebbs, flows and disperses into lives of love, beauty and pain." -- From the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2006 issue.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stirring, Heartrending Collection, July 2, 2005

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lives of Rain (Paperback)

"The Lives of Rain" is a stirring, heartrending collection that forces us to look at the agonizing ramifications of military intervention and the Palestinian diaspora. Nathalie Handal does not point fingers; perhaps we all are to blame on some level. But one thing is clear: Handal is an important and eloquent voice whose poetic vision is as rare as it is necessary.