The world is one place: Native American poets visit the Middle East. Edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez. Kansas City: BkMk Press, 2017. Pp. 119. ISBN: 9781943491070.
This book is an anthology that explores the viewpoints about the Middle East of a significant group of Native American poets, who have visited different parts of these regions at some point in their lives or have experienced them through the input of some significant others in their lives. Through their prose or poems, these writers give life to their thoughts, to their feelings, and to their cultural perspectives based on what they have experienced visiting these regions. The editors of this anthology included a vast part of the Arab world: Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, and Yemen as well as Morocco, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
The preface explains how the objectives of the Native American poets who contributed to the book and their cultures are committed to the world community of nations, of whom they command attention and respect. Many Americans know the Middle East only from social media or journalists’ reports, which can be suffused with catastrophes and conflicts. A poet’s view, on the other hand, despite the fact that it could be political or religious, could portray ordinary moments so powerfully in presenting love, sorrow, and pain, or even particular instants, that there are no explanations for them. And this is something to which the world needs to pay attention: the moments in the ordinary lives of people who belong to those regions, in order to consider what some of the people in the Arab world are going through. This includes the millions of refugees and those suffering from ISIS in many Middle Eastern regions in the past few years.
This anthology is a collection of words from the contributors as well as the editors of the book, and it is divided into three categories reflecting places, people, and spirits of those regions as experienced by these poets, among whom are Native Americans who have served in the US armed forces and have received decorations as well as casualties. The work notes from each poet which precede their poems reflect the connections that each of them unknowingly has with one another and with the places, people, and spirits of those regions.
The book opens with a foreword from one of the editors, Diane Glancy, and its spirit section ends with a few pages by the other editor, Linda Rodriguez, on meditation in the Middle East and the United States. At the end, it has a short biography of the poets and contributors to this collection.
It is a unique book of poetry (and prose) that helps the reader to feel the momentum of these regions and to observe them having different languages, traditions, communities, views, cultures, and histories, yet being altogether as one place, one world.
In general, this anthology is a good resource for academic libraries with a focus on literature as well as on Middle East Studies. It is also a good read for anyone interested in finding out more about these regions through the eyes of a group of poets from outside them.
Shahrzad Khosrowpour
Chapman University