Name: Critics of Mystery Marvel
SKU: CMM042018
Availability: InStock

Critics of Mystery Marvel

Collected Poems

APR. 2018

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Author: Youssef Alaoui Introduction : Laila Halaby Print Edition: ISBN: 978-1-940939-66-7 Product Details: 5.5 x 8.5; 176 pp. eBook Edition: ISBN: 978-1-940939-80-3 LCCN: 2017963104 REVIEWS: 2LP BOOK REVIEWS SKU: CMM042018 Category: Poetry Tag: Arab American

Meet The Author

Youssef Alaoui

This 2LP author has only one title with 2Leaf Press.

CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL is Youssef Alaoui’s debut full length poetry collection, which explores human relationships between individuals, cultures, races, and genders. Alaoui deftly utilizes archaic tones to formulate an artistic approach to metaphor in verse creating images that appear wholly in the mind and not on the page. This volume consists of ten sections that explores Alaoui’s family and heritage, an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings, blending surrealism, magical realism, and language alchemy as he explores the human mythos of love, gender, poverty, politics, racism, and war. A few of the poems are written in French and Spanish, translated to English. Post-beat verse from the San Francisco Bay area and the Big-Sur, CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL touches the depth of the soul with poetry that is metaphorically luminous. Cover art: Amine Alaoui-Fdili. Cover design: Youssef Alaoui

Contributors

Introduction by Laila Halaby

LAILA HALABY was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a Jordanian father and an American mother. She speaks four languages, won a Fulbright scholarship to study folklore in Jordan, holds an undergraduate degree in Italian and Arabic, and has two master’s degrees, in Arabic Literature and Counseling. Halaby is the author of My Name on His Tongue: Poetry (2012), and Once in a Promised Land: A Novel (2008). She is a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Authors selection; was named by The Washington Post as one of the 100 best works of fiction for 2007; and her first novel, West of the Jordan: A Novel (2003) won the prestigious PEN Beyond Margins Award. She currently works as an Outreach Counselor for the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health. http://lailahalaby.net

Here's What People Are Saying

Youssef Alaoui’s poems in Critics of Mystery Marvel are the exoskeletons of bullets, of bombs. Be careful, but proceed anyway. The barrage is not for harm, but for diversion: It is hiding a deep pool where lightning gathers in a broken heart, where silver shards of memory rise painful, but sweet in this poet’s voice. —Dian Sousa, author of Lullabies for The Spooked and Cool (2004) and The Marvels Recorded in My Private Closet (2014)

I have been following this wonderful poet-magician for a long time and have always admired how he continues to cross boundaries. In this new collection we’re taken on a tour of a complex and delightful mind. —Neeli Cherkovski, author of Elegy For My Beat Generation (2018)