Publishers Weekly
★ 02/19/2024
The formally inventive and devastatingly evocative latest from Alyan (The Twenty-Ninth Year) reckons with grief, displacement, and enduring kinship. From Beirut to the U.S. to Jerusalem to Kuwait, Alyan draws from her experience as a Palestinian American to examine where one’s home is under occupation and forced displacement. An interaction with an Israeli soldier in Jerusalem, in which her passport is withheld until she agrees to take her hair down, is referenced repeatedly, evoking the helplessness of the occupied. Alyan’s ghazals are the jewels of the collection. In “Fatima :: Dust Ghazal,” the speaker has married “Salim with the long neck,” and in the process “became wife to three countries.” There’s plenty of joy—and defiance—in these pages. In “Tonight I’ll Dream of Nadia,” the speaker experiences the pleasure of being with her family when a loved one is in the hospital on a ventilator. At the poem’s end, she is in a nightclub: “I am/ everyone’s daughter, everyone’s wife, I muscle/ through the crowd to dance, I feel her hand in/ my hair as the machine breathes for us both.” These powerful poems linger long in the mind. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"[Hala] Alyan's fifth book of poetry grapples heroically with the fissures of family and lineage caused by displacement and migration." — Booklist (starred review)
"The formally inventive and devastatingly evocative latest from Alyan (The Twenty-Ninth Year) reckons with grief, displacement, and enduring kinship. From Beirut to the U.S. to Jerusalem to Kuwait, Alyan draws from her experience as a Palestinian American to examine where one’s home is under occupation and forced displacement....These powerful poems linger long in the mind." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Hala Alyan offers us a magnificent reckoning and witnessing. These poems are a dazzling achievement, singing of a body/bodies tethered to tenderness and hope, even in the face of landscapes that don't always offer ‘...good and patient soil.’” — Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders
"I will read anything Hala Alyan writes, knowing always that time spent in the company of her work makes me a better reader, a better writer, a more empathetic creature. Here is a writer who wields simultaneity to fascinating, beautiful effect: poems that are simultaneously stark and lush, blunt and experimental, crackling with tension, with tenderness. The poems in The Moon That Turns You Back are some of my favorite work by one of my favorite poets. I hope to spend a long lifetime with this book." — Safia Elhillo, author of Girls That Never Die
“Every line of Hala Alyan’s The Moon That Turns You Back drips with intentional craft, with brilliance. Hala’s ability to marry poetic experimentation with the deep tenderness of living makes these poems urgent, necessary, and loving. I feel honored to be alive in a time where I can read Hala Alyan, where I can devour book after book, where I can bask in her gorgeous heart. This book is a gift, those of us who encounter it should consider ourselves lucky.” — Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come For Us
"A bountiful collection of poetry...spellbinding...Hala Alyan renders rich, intricate landscapes of heritage and place." — BookPage
MARCH 2024 - AudioFile
Hala Alyan's velvety tones add a paradoxical dimension to her collection of poems exploring themes of displacement and identity. Alyan, a Palestinian American poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist, illuminates the diasporic experience in these poems but also addresses general discord in life, especially the trials she experienced after an ectopic pregnancy. Her use of succinct, candid language and haunting imagery effectively conveys feelings of disconnection and unease. Yet amid the darkness, her poetry and voice express glimmers of hope, transformation, and renewal. Through her crisp words and striking metaphors, Alyan paints vivid portraits of her family and cultures; her soothing voice, clear and articulate, creates an experience that is disquieting and penetrating. Alyan's evocative performance invites listeners to contemplate belonging, resilience, and the human spirit. M.F. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
