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Songs of Exile
Guernica Editions, Spring 2016
148 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771830874
ISBN10: 1771830875
English
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
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The poems in Songs of Exile are not simply about geographical or political exile. They reveal a metaphorical exile from the poet's lost self, the one she left behind in Iran, her place of origin, the one she has struggled to preserve all her life. They reveal concern about the Middle East and the negative associations with Iran; preoccupation with the possibility of reconciliation between the three Abrahamic religions; worries about family back home; and broodings on newly found friends and lovers. In these poems, the political is personal.
Oh, Word, /
I am banished to you /
from the land of /
non-verbal blood
Bänoo Zan’s Songs of Exile are spare, powerful poems of longing for (re)union with the Beloved, reaching out “to invisible borders” of non-duality. Repetition, paradox and oxymoron become in these poems a “chaos of harmony” – the poet’s words drunk with self, other, truth, the Word. Her prophetic “tongue of fire” sets readers’ hearts burning within them.
Kate Marshall Flaherty
Reviews
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Book Review: Songs of Exile
Quill and Quire - April 1, 2016
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Poetry Book Review: Songs of Exile by Bänoo Zan
Sumaiyya Reads - February 27, 2016
Books by Bänoo Zan
