Extracanonical Poetry

Only in the nal quarter of the book is the reader treated to Tahas actual poetry and his relation to the poetic scene.Here, specimens of Tahas unrhymed and unmetered works are quite ably translated by Hoffmans husband, Peter Cole, and two other friends, Gabriel Levin and Yahya Hijazi, an Israeli and a Palestinian respectively who previously published Tahas works in a translated anthology, So What: New & Selected Poems, 19712005 (Copper Canyon Press, 2006). [...]this book is silent on its own entrapment: in promoting the cause of prose in verse and the usual politics that comes with it, both Taha and Hoffman are continuing Kants assault on the ear, launched at the opening of the modern era. Andso, while disclosing Tahas poetry to the world, Hoffman participates (as Taha did before her) in essentially concealing the rich oral-musical tradition and its potentialities on which Taha (largely) turned his 130 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES back when he forsook acoustic measurement in verse only to supplant it with occasional resort to demotic local Arabic. [...]Hoffmans work is a unique addition to the chronicles of Palestinian ironies in the modern era.