Divide and Rule

"The empire's missing links are found deep in this poet's ever-astonishing states of multiple consciousness—astutely attuned to the pressured, violent, mass conformities forced upon us—brilliantly formed into poems as ambitious and achieved as any written in the English language today."—Lawrence Joseph

In these dramatic monologues, Walid Bitar delivers variations on the theme of power: in politics, in the subjugation and abuse of other cultures, and in our divided selves. Using satire, parody, koan, and riddle, Divide and Rule struggles with the mendacity of language and identity.

They have no maps. Ours, I'll redraw.
Isn't itself, their neck of the woods,
needs a rest—something more than a nap,
and less than death, though death wouldn't hurt.

Walid Bitar's poetry collections include 2 Guys on Holy Land, Bastardi Puri, and The Empire's Missing Links. He was born in Beirut and lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Walid Bitar was born in Beirut in 1961. He immigrated to Canada in 1969. His previous poetry collections are Maps with Moving Parts (Brick, 1988), 2 Guys on Holy Land (Wesleyan University Press, 1993), Bastardi Puri (The Porcupine's Quill, 2005) and The Empire's Missing Links (Signal Editions/Vehicule, 2008). He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lives in Toronto.