Words in the Memory of the Night: Selected Poems

Death, old age aside, Nothing is more humbling than a book or a woman. A beautiful woman. With a multicultural aesthetic perspective and a poetic voice that is simultaneously autobiographical and concrete, emotional and surrealistic, universal and humanist, Lebanese-American poet Mansour Ajami introduces his first collection of lyrical expression in Words in the Memory of the Night. This diverse compilation of more than eighty poems demonstrates diversity and difference of theme, employment of metaphor, idiom, and intellectual and emotional interplay, while exploring philosophical issues as time, space, memory, dreams, youth, old age, love, solitude, and on occasion, such whimsical topics as navels. While writing about everyday experiences like waiting for his children to come home, Ajami presents his poetry with a simple and straightforward style that is easily relatable to others in all stages of life. In Words in the Memory of the Night, a new poet emerges and shares his culture along with his heart in a memorable collection of modern poetry.