Ausable Press: Zodiac of Echoes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR | SELECTED POEMS | VIEW CART

Born in Benghazi, Libya, Khaled Mattawa immigrated to the U.S. in his teens. Zodiac of Echoes, his long-awaited second book, is a marvelous linguistic fusion of these diverse cultures and geographies. Rarely do we see a truly international poetry so powerfully articulated in language that’s as at home in the American landscape and vernacular as it is in the music, imagery, and politics of his native country.

REVIEWS & COMMENTS

"Balanced on a high wire between his Arabic past and American present, the poet comes to understand that 'stability on the rope / is all that matters' since, in any journey to the self, 'there's no arrival, / and if I were to fall, there would be no rescue.' 'Like a breath,' the poet can be truly 'naturalized' only 'within [his] rib cage.' Zodiac of Echoes inhales and exhales just such a breath. —John Gery in West Branch

"With its alluring rhythms, its sweeping energy and incantations, Zodiac of Echoes is a remarkable marriage between politics and lyric intensity. Mattawa, a Libyan-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in his teens, refuses to be limited to identity politics or the cross-cultural experience (though he writes beautifully of both), but turns his attention towards poverty and the exploitation of workers as well, capturing our "American rage / and the attendant resignation" with an intensity that can only be compared to Muriel Rukeyser. . . . Not only are the poems musically enchanting, but they startle us with their images as well, as Mattawa describes the rain as "an iron press turning / roads into mush, and the lingering licorice/ scent of tar," or "a sickle moon raking a field of violets." The book is more personal than it is political, though, moving in and out of memories as quickly as it moves between landscapes. If for no other reason, Zodiac of Echoes needs to be read for its closing poem, "Dark Anthem," a surreal tour de force in which the poet seems to move through his own subconscious and the world around him at once in an attempt to become "mortal and resonant."—Steve Gehrke, Editor's Pick, Missouri Review

"Zodiac of Echoes is Mattawa's gorgeously lyrical, powerfully written effort to take stock of his American place and citizenship, and, as such, it avoids many of the pitfalls of exile literature: nostalgia, lack of humor and self irony, a narrow focus. . . . Mattawa's language is sensual and powerful. His openness to the world around him, his political and emotional engagement, are done with delight, insight, and magnanimous detail. One feels transported and embraced, but never overwhelmed; emotionally engaged, but the poems are not sentimental or nostalgic. Mattawa's disarming narrative style inspires a well-rewarded trust."
—Marcela Sulak

"'Lord of basil and wild sage, / apples and diesel fumes, /and whatever splits the soul like a pod,' chants the poet in this richly synthetic and imaginative book. Khaled Mattawa's new five-part collection is about a life split between 'apples and diesel fumes,' between North Africa and the American South, between Arabic verse and Euro-American modernism. Mattawa has found an evocative language and a multifaceted form to embody contemporary cross-cultural experience. Kaleidescopic in structure and movement, daringly personal yet intensely political, his verse encompasses narrative, satire, meditation, and high-spirited hilarity. One moment, we're stuck on a highway on the way to the history-glutted Mississippi River. The next, questions of exile, identity, and linguistic alienation spiral in a poem set in a jaunty Cairo taxi ride. Line by line we turn from zany wisecracks about globalization to solemn invocations of the moon, from intensely felt lyricism to splintered, televisual, attention-fractured deferrals of feeling. Mattawa's images deliver strong sensations, his humor moves briskly, his phrases take startling turns, and his cadences roll and return and build momentum. These dazzling lyrics and sequences create one of the most compelling portraits we have of a mind, a sensibility, a language emerging from the hybridization of cultures."
—Jahan Ramazani

"Zodiac of Echoes: part divination of celestial bodies, part reading between the lying lines of cold type. Khaled Mattawa descries the transmogrification of cultures in an audacious effort to locate 'where the blessing lies.' He follows the world's scent. He puts it down in sand and stardust. He renders what is 'mortal and resonant."—C.D. Wright

“Mattawa is an exceptional new voice among the poets presently writing in the United States. The penetrating and exquisitely drawn images of his years in Libya framed in a language rooted in the American vernacular give his poetry a profound combination of agony and rapture, pride and grievance . . . . His observations of reality’s calamities and beauties, of a noisy and silent world, and his ability to be an exile and a native—all these give Mattawa his unique voice . . . . With his journey unceasing, his symbols drawn from everywhere, his light remains lit as we and poet face the promise of a morning that is ‘neither false nor true.’”
—Banipal Magazine (London)