Where Are the Trees Going? (Curbstone Poetry) - Softcover

"V nus Khoury-Ghata transforms memory into myth in this magical, heartbreaking book of longing and dislocation. Where Are the Trees Going?, which Marilyn Hacker has so vividly translated into English, expands and enlarges our world, our imagination." --Edward Hirsch "Taken together, these stunning, at times surrealistic poems amount to an elegy of survival that takes the reader to new ontological depths." --World Literature Today "Venus Khoury-Ghata's poetry in Marilyn Hacker's excellent translation grants us entry to a fierce, surreal world where mothers and trees, birds and stones, indeed flesh in its multifoliate forms coheres and splits into exquisite words, reclaiming a spiritual homeland, a mythic stay against chaos." --Meena Alexander, Author of Birthplace with Buried Stones

Where Are the Trees Going? brings together some of the latest work of the poet and novelist Venus Khoury-Ghata in a manner that showcases her central concerns in a wholly novel and provocative format. Renowned translator Marilyn Hacker interleaves a full translation of Khoury-Ghata's volume of poetry Ou vont les arbres with prose from La maison aux orties. The resulting interplay illuminates the poet's contrasting and complementary drives toward surreal lyricism and stark narrative exposition. Khoury-Ghata takes on perennial themes of womanhood, immigration, and cultural conflict. Characters take root in her memory as weathered trees and garden plants, lending grit and body to the imaginative collection. As bracing as the turn of seasons, Where Are the Trees Going? highlights a writer who has approached her most recent work with renewed urgency and maturity.