Almond Blossoms and Beyond

The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet.

Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the magnificent sustained Exile cycle, Almond Blossoms holds an important place in Darwish’s unparalleled oeuvre. It distills his late style, in which, though the specter of death looms and weddings turn to funerals, he threads the pulses and fragilities and beauties of life into the lines of his poems. Their liveliness is his own response to the collection’s final call to bid ＂Farewell / Farewell, to the poetry of pain.＂

Mahmoud Darwish, born in 1941 in the village of al-Birweh, Palestine, was the author of over two dozen volumes of poetry and prose. He died in the summer of 2008. Mohammad Shaheen is professor of English at the University of Jordan and the author of many books, including E.M. Forster and the Politics of Imperialism.