That boom town [Abu Dhabi] proved to be the reef against which my family crashed, the story of many who seek the promised land, and my poetry is a versification of that personal history. History is all I have. Andre Naffis-Sahely More Quotes by Andre Naffis-Sahely More Quotes From Andre Naffis-Sahely I'm mostly surprised by the fact he's still alive; given that people have been trying to silence him for almost fifty years, he really shouldn't be. Aged thirty, Abdellatif [Laâbi's ] was kidnapped from his home in Rabat by plainclothes policemen, bundled into the back of an unmarked car, driven to a dingy gaol, and tortured for days on end. Andre Naffis-Sahely home people years Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground. Andre Naffis-Sahely pulse middle real Fear knows no borders, and the terminology of hate has seeped into every aspect of life. Andre Naffis-Sahely aspects-of-life borders hate Take Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic, where xenophobic demagogues have been allowed to turn the law-abiding workers who prop up their economies into barbaric freeloaders, all simply to further their nefarious ends. Andre Naffis-Sahely abiding law sides The real question should be: what makes a good political poem? The possible answers to that question are both obvious and yet still a little too subjective for anyone to ever fully agree on. What do I most wish to see in a political poet? Sublimated rebellion. Andre Naffis-Sahely political real wish I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not. Andre Naffis-Sahely hawks clever trying I don't like poems that invent memories, I have enough of my own. Andre Naffis-Sahely my-own enough memories I came to poetry at fourteen, in the middle of a booming oil-rush town in southern Arabia without a single public library: Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. All the wealth in the world and not a single intelligent idea as to how to employ it. Andre Naffis-Sahely oil intelligent ideas In a sense, I never got over Robert Lowell's History. A flawed, infinitely brilliant project I never tire of going back to. It's a modern Inferno, where Lowell plays both Dante and Virgil, guiding us through dozens of illuminating, bitter episodes from human history, all the while managing to hold a mirror to our confused hominid face as it squints at eternity and fails to grasp any of it. Andre Naffis-Sahely confused mirrors play I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me. Andre Naffis-Sahely translators heard sometimes Some of my colleagues are surprised by how little personal interaction I've had with "my" authors, but I don't translate to go fishing for friends. Part of me suspects that they wouldn't like me, or that I wouldn't like them, which would inevitably get in the way of the mission. None of the theory built around translation matters to me anyway: much of the process, I find, is intuitive. Andre Naffis-Sahely fishing matter littles Regardless of whether the authors I've translated have been "dead and canonized," or "living and established," or even simply "emerging," I must put myself to the same, old test: "can I do their texts justice?" I've translated twenty-one books, and except for three commissions, I "hand-picked" all my authors on the basis of whether my own peculiar idiosyncrasies would complement their own. Andre Naffis-Sahely justice book hands Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it. Andre Naffis-Sahely shy political lifetime The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness. Andre Naffis-Sahely labels political average To be a political poet means simply to be a poet, and any poet worth their salt will be a political animal in their own peculiar way - they have no choice: politics is one of the many fragments we thread into the tapestry of the poem. Andre Naffis-Sahely choices animal mean One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that. Andre Naffis-Sahely writing tea way Whenever poetry and politics are mentioned in the same breath, we tend to miss the point entirely - as I often have - and we ask ourselves whether poetry and politics even belong together, because they're often so poorly married that we think of them as oil and water. Andre Naffis-Sahely oil-and-water missing thinking When it comes to the challenges of the actual process, I soldier on as best I can, on my own. Andre Naffis-Sahely soldier process challenges I'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act. Andre Naffis-Sahely opinion political helping Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets. Andre Naffis-Sahely poet want pay
