Samuel Hazo

Poems portray the experiences of the author as a father, son, husband, army officer, and college professor.

Selected Poems

Thank a Bored Angel

A new collection of poems by Samuel Hazo; the majority of which are published here for the first time. The New York Times Book Review wrote of Hazo as having "a gift for phrase-making and for incisive moral judgments," and Richard Wilbur, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet, said "each of Hazo's poems is a spare sparkling flow of good talk . . . one relishes his jauntiness, his ever-varied grammatical attack and the witty surplus of his phrasing."

The Next Time We Saw Paris

Essays examine the relationship between poetry and public speech, the pursuit of the literary life, to reading within a cultural context governed by power relations.

Essays on Poetry and Other Provocations

The Stroke of a Pen

Adūnīs

Transpositions of Selected Poems of Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said)

The Blood of Adonis

Adunis

Adūnīs forme avant 2007

Ad̄un̄is

Ali A. Said

"If architecture exists to create space," the author reminds us, "poetry exists to create silence. Not mere quietude. Not solitude. Rather it is a silence within and by the experience of the poem itself. It inevitably exceeds the poem since, though the poem can create it, it cannot contain it. Within this silence the imagination and the feelings are renewed, and because of that renewal they live momentarily with a will and momentum of their own. In such a silence we are returned to ourselves, and we discover in ourselves the self that is common to us all. This silence is in essence our indispensable oxygen--the oxygen of our souls. If we try to communicate its presence to others, we do it best by not speaking at all, by letting the eyes convey it in that international language that is understood by all without translation. This silence is not the mere absence of words; it is rather what the words evoke, what their sound and heft and feel make palpable. It exists most completely between the lines of a poem or in the pauses between words."

Silence Spoken Here

Louise, a young film producer, falls in love with the subject of her documentary, a photojournalist believed killed in Beirut

Stills

For over fifty years, Hazo's poetry has meditated on themes of mortality and love, passion and art, and courage and grace in a style that is unmistakably his own. In this new collection, he offers his most candid reflections on the passage of time and the tenderness of the present moment. By turns convivial and introspective, these poems explore the complex synchronicity between life and art, and the connections between the personal and the political. With sharp clarity and deep emotion, Hazo continues his pursuit of wisdom and discovery through the act of expression.

Samuel Hazo

Books

Your next favorite book is out there