Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak (Hardcover)

~ Marc Falkoff (Editor), Flagg Miller (Preface), Ariel Dorfman (Afterword)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"At last Guantanamo has found its voice."--Gore Vidal

"Poetry, art of the human voice, helps turn us toward what we should or must not ignore. Speaking as they can across barriers actual and figurative, translated into our American tongue, these voices in confinement implicitly call us to our principles and to our humanity. They deserve, above all, not admiration or belief or sympathy-but attention. Attention to them is urgent for us."-Robert Pinsky

"Poems from Guantanamo brings to light figures of concrete, individual humanity,against the fabric of cruelty woven by the 'war on terror.' The poems and poets' biographies reveal one dimension of this officially obscured narrative, from the perspective of the sufferers; the legal and literary essays provide the context which has produced--under atrocious circumstances--a poetics of human dignity."--Adrienne Rich

Product Description

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable.

This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo.

If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry “forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art.

Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace."

Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 84 pages
• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1 edition (August 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587296063
• ISBN-13: 978-1587296062
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #546,473 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #88 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > African
  #96 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Middle Eastern

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars FOR JUDGES AND PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE, September 18, 2007

By	Gary Kern (NM USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It must be said at the outset that there are no great poems in this collection. Some are not even good, as poetry goes. But who would judge the poetic attempts of children in a hospital? The same sort of sympathy must apply to poems composed in solitary confinement. The publisher could have printed the bars of a cage over each one, for each bears the imprint of prolonged and tormenting isolation. None can be read as a purely artistic composition, without an awareness of the author's biography and suffering. Linguist Flagg Miller, in an analytical preface, relates these works to traditions in Arabic poetry, which is enlightening, but concludes that aside from rhyming couplets they have little in common with formal conventions. Likewise, they do not fall into the category of political or jihadist verse. Rather, they strike a popular and universal chord as cries from the heart, arranged in separate lines. They might simply be called poetical statements.

The analogy with children is not too far wrong, for all of these poets by necessity have been reduced to the most basic wants and desires. Some were poets before their arrest, others not. The translations in English tend to even them out, so that, with one or two exceptions, it appears that all of the poems were written by the same man, a generic man, maybe an Everyman of the Muslim world. This man wants to see his loved ones, to see God's--or Allah's--justice restored, to see--as poet Ariel Dorfman notes in his Afterword--the ocean, which he can smell in his tiger cage and hear roaring out of sight every day. (Think of it: it would drive you mad.) Above all, the "detainee" in "Gitmo," like every other long-term prisoner, wants to step out and breathe the free air, to stop being shackled and confined, to stop being tormented.

One of the poems, "First Poem of My Life," by Mohammed El Gharani, arrested at age 14, tortured by both Pakastani and American soldiers, and confined at Guantanamo since 2002, was obtained and translated by pro-bono lawyer and editor Marc Falkoff, who supplies three notes on the original. These notes are sufficient to indicate untold richness in the Arabic, especially word associations which cannot be converted into English. Possibly the other poems as well were written on a higher level than would appear at first sight. As Falkoff explains in his Preface, the Pentagon feared that releasing original texts would endanger national security, presumably because the Arabic could contain hidden messages. This ruling pertained to couplets written in toothpaste or etched with a pebble on a styrofoam cup. Only government linguists with high-level security clearance were permitted to see and translate the hundreds of poems composed at Guantanamo, and of these only a tiny fraction were declassified and released to the prisoners' insistent lawyers. Other poems were reconstructed from memory by the lucky few who were released.

The result is a book consisting of 22 poems written by 17 prisoners. For the most part, one author is represented by one poem. The "First Poem," mentioned above, tells a story: "They surrounded the mosque, weapons drawn,/ As if they were in a field of war./ They said to us, 'Come out peacefully,/ And don't utter a single word.'/ Into a transport truck they lifted us,/ And in shackles of injustice they bound us." Adnan Latif's "Hunger Strike Poem," featured in the Fall 2007 issue of Amnesty International, protests: "They are artists of torture,/ They are artists of pain and fatigue,/ They are artists of insults and humiliation." Jumah Al Dossari's "Death Poem" advises his tormentors to "Take my blood./ Take my death shroud and/ The remanants of my body./ Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely." He wants these sent to "the judges and people of conscience," who must "bear the burden, before their children and before history,/ Of this wasted, sinless soul."

We, the readers, are the judges and people of conscience, who must wonder how the US military authorities, holding a man in absolute confinement and isolation for five years, have been unable to determine whether he is innocent or guilty of anything and should or should not be brought to trial. What they have determined, as Falkoff reports in his preface, is that they are able to accuse fewer than half of the total 775 detainees of committing any hostile act against the United States, a mere eight percent of being members of Al Qaida and a mere five percent of being on the battlefield in Afghanistan. That means that probably eighty percent or more were wrongly arrested or sold out by others for a bounty. The whole thing is a violation of international law, American democracy and human decency. This book is only one of those that will reveal the US national disgrace in the years to come.

The University of Iowa Press is to be highly commended for making this collection available to the world, but I have a small quibble. In a volume of 75 pages there is no reason to print texts in 9 and 10-point type. Miniscule may look chic, but these poems are not dainty and should be printed in standard 11-point or even 12-point type. Let the words released from prison be seen!

21 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book packs a punch, July 30, 2007

By	Maria Damon - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

THis book is incredibly powerful. Having listened to Robert Pinsky's hesitant, almost apologetic interview about it on NPR's "The World," I was unprepared for the power of the real thing. It is really great, but hard to read. The poem by the 14 year old, the first poem he ever wrote, is heartbreaking. Falkoff, Miller and Dorfman, as well as the U of Iowa Press, are to be congratulated for this amazing, eye-opening service to both the prisoners and the mostly-numbed-out American public.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars most honest poetry in the history of literature, February 26, 2008

By	K. Day "EkStasis" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

very beautiful...Most honest and captivating poems I have ever read. very good that someone published such raw work..