Read This

What a delightful surprise: This year’s Reading the World initiative includes a collection of poems by Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Gabriel Levin, Yahya Hijazi, and Peter Cole. (Cole, you’ll remember, is a certified Genius.) The book is called So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005. Here is a sample poem by Taha Muhammad Ali. (Original Arabic here). I dare you not to cry when you read it.