A review by dotorsojak
The Wild Fox of Yemen: Poems by Threa Almontaser

3.0

Pretty good. Nice that it won the Whitman Award because superficially, stylistically the book is Whitmanesque. Lots of family stuff here. The poems tend to be long and I think several could benefit from cutting. Some great lines about being a muslim woman in 21st century USA. Next to last poem in collection, "When White Boys Ask to See My Hair," is highly recommended. Mahmoud Darwish and Abdullah Al-Baradouni are quoted or translated more than once. There's lots of Arabic poetry (in arabic script) for those who read that language. I don't. There's much Arabic and perhaps Yemeni vocabulary here as well. Good for one's vocabulary. Another favorite poem is: "Hunger Wraps Himself," which ends with the following lines:
"...By now,
she has grown intimate with starvation, wears it

like a pink buttercup behind her ear, handpicked
by a shy boy, later lost in the nest of her curls."

Wow, wow, wow. Recomended.