FOREST OF NOISE by Mosab Abu Toha (2024)
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - beautiful, achingly vivid, full of equal parts grief & perseverance, despair & conviction—a reflection, a plea, a prayer, one of the most important collections for our time…
“Tanks roll through dust, through eggplant fields. … No need for radio: We are the news. … Soldiers advance, burn books. Some smoke rolled sheets of yesterday’s newspapers, just like they did when they were kids. Our kids hide in the basement, backs against concrete pillars, heads between knees, parents silent. Humid down there. And heat of burning bombs. Slow death of survival.” - from “Younger Than War”
title: Forest of Noise
author: Mosab Abu Toha
published: 2024
publisher: Knopf
genre/subgenre: poetry
setting: Palestine
main themes/subjects: loss & grief, refugee camps, connection to the land, graves & unknown resting places, sibling relationships, children & childhood, travel & displacement, abduction & interrogation, survival, literature
representation: Indigenous Palestinian author
“On the hill in the village, you can chock
the wheels of your vegetable cart
with a stone your grandfather once used
to crush thyme. Or smash garlic with
a stone your grandmother used as a doorstop.”
- from “Palestinian Village”my thoughts:
I began reading this collection immediately after finishing Things You May Have Found Hidden In My Ear & was immediately dismayed at how much more pain there was to be shared in Forest of Noise, published only two years later. Of course, between the two books was October 7th 2023, over 200k Palestinian lives lost, & the near total destruction of the ancestral Indigenous lands of Palestinian Gaza: the author’s homeland.
The way the images evoked in “Under the Rubble” are images I’ve seen on screen with my own eyes as I follow the reporting of Gazans trapped & dying an ocean away. This poem, written by a survivor, by the voice in “This Is Me!” desperately, hopelessly screaming his truth, telling his story to so many deaf ears.
Stylistically I appreciated how raw & resonant these poems were. Their form & structure was so organic & native to the voice of the author & his experiences in a way that makes the reader able to parse the deep emotion & meaning in every word—line—verse—poem… Abu Toha wants his words to reach everyone, every ear, every soul.
My favorite poems were “Palestinian Village”, “This Is Me!”, “Request Letter”, and “After Walt Whitman”.
i would recommend this book to readers who are alive in this world. this book is best read in community. I’m going to recommend a paired reading of both of Abu Toha’s books to my irl poetry bookclub.
“This Is Me! A city whose streets escaped it, a house without windows, a rain with no clouds, a swimmer in the desert, a shirt with ripped-off buttons, a book with loose pages, a lightless moon and colorless grass, a toothless smile and suffocated laugh, a dark painting on black canvas. Do you understand? I’m a table with no legs, a noisy restaurant with no guests. I write with an inkless pen. I write my name in the air. When I shout it, no voice comes out. I look around and see many things, but I see no one.”
final note: Make sure you follow Mosab on instagram for more of his work.
CW // gen/cide, dεατh (especially of children), indiscriminate b0mbing, isolation & displacement
season: Spring/Summer
music pairing:
further reading:
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR by Mosab Abu Toha (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Mahmoud Darwish
YOU CAN BE THE LAST LEAF by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
DEAR GOD, DEAR BONES, DEAR YELLOW by Noor Hindi (2022)
IF I MUST DIE: Poetry and Prose, by Refaat Alareer (2024)
PALESTINIAN WALKS by Raja Shehadeh (2007) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
A REBEL IN GAZA: A Daughter in Rafah Speaks, by Asmaa Alghoul & Sélim Nassib (2024)
SALT HOUSES by Hala Alyan (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★ .75
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM by Katha Pollitt (2009)
Check out more books by Palestinian authors here.
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It sets to visit other places
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