Today’s GalleyCrush is Fady Joudah’s Tethered to Stars, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions on March 9, 2021.
Perfect pitch: “A collection born of polyphony and the rhythms of our cosmos—intimate in its stakes, celestial in its dreams.”
First lines: “Be an owl, / not even a sunflower // turns its head / 270 degrees, // but may the need to ask me / about my darkness // never command you.”
Praise: “In his brilliant forthcoming book, Tethered to Stars, Fady Joudah writes about the mysterious cosmos swirling with intricate linkages—as his phone is pinging. Ah, yes, Jerusalem, the Holy City! Right now, let’s call all our cities holy. Let’s hope our trees continue to communicate, whatever humans can or can’t accomplish.” —Naomi Shihab Nye in the New York Times Magazine
Book notes: Poetry, paperback, 96 pages.
Author bio: Fady Joudah is the author of four previous collections of poems, The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, and Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the coeditor and cofounder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He lives in Houston and practices internal medicine.
