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A review by andreablythe
My Name on His Tongue: Poems by Laila Halaby
4.0
Halaby draws on her experiences as an Arab American to explore the duality of her experience and her general sense of homelessness. The poems read like passages from a memoir, illustrating her relation to two cultures, neither of which seem to fit properly. Her personal life mixes with her reactions to world events, such as the Iraq war or the bombing of Palestine.
You can tell that Halaby was a fiction writer first, because her poems tend toward narrative. However, this is not simply prose broken up into lines. The lines of her poetry goes from long lines to short, choppy lines, which emphasis words and phrases to effectively evoke the imagery, metaphor, and disjointed emotions presented. On the whole this is a beautiful and intellectual book of poetry.
You can tell that Halaby was a fiction writer first, because her poems tend toward narrative. However, this is not simply prose broken up into lines. The lines of her poetry goes from long lines to short, choppy lines, which emphasis words and phrases to effectively evoke the imagery, metaphor, and disjointed emotions presented. On the whole this is a beautiful and intellectual book of poetry.