Description
Poetry. Palestinian Studies. At the intersection of narrative and noise, the poems in BABELDOM emerge to explore and translate the unheard and strange babel that surrounds our different worlds. These poems grasp at the hurried and ephemeral conversations within and outside of us that stretch from the quiet hours we spend alone to the anonymous faces that we pass on our daily commutes. BABELDOM is the exploration of all of this, this kingdom of babel, that we all wake and sleep in, in which the muffled noise you hear from across the street might be the prayer or indignation or defeat of another protagonist in a different story.
"These poems by Talal Alyan are suffused with incandescence, secrets hidden in dream and unearthed in waking life, answers to 'a prayer you haven't yet made.' They are a body spread across continents, deep in their longings, generous in their inclusions. An astonishing and prodigious first collection."—D.A. Powell
"Talal Alyan's BABELDOM is full of ears and prayers, commands and desires. It explores the way we try desperately to hang onto ourselves and each other in an overwhelming world and imagines the landscape we'll leave after we're gone. Even that landscape, though—human-less, apocalyptic, possibly radiated—contains the echoes of the voices we have whispered countless times into the dark, and is better for them."—Elizabeth Cantwell
"This book reads like lightning. Talal Alyan's writing straddles a fine line between surreal beauty and striking honesty. Tender and feral, illuminating and heartbreaking, BABELDOM marks the rise of a powerful voice in poetry."—Liz Worth
Author Bio
Talal Alyan is a Palestinian American writer based in New York. He grew up across the Middle East, living in Lebanon, Qatar, the U.A.E. He currently resides in Brooklyn. Alyan has written extensively as both a poet and political writer. His political writing has been featured in various publications including Vice News, Al Jazeera English, Huffington Post and Daily Beast while his poetry has been published in Colombia Journal, Mud Season Review, Wax Paper, Literary Juice, and elsewhere. He is the author of BABELDOM, his debut collection of poetry.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA