Rain Inside (Paperback)

A Palestinian poet, Ibrahim Nasrallah is among the foremost poets of his generation. In this collection, Nasrallah describes the suffering of the Palestinians not through a personal lens, but through a universal context. He observes life with a natural human tendency toward a love that can heal, transcend, and transform the pain and sorrow of human experience.

"Taste"

There's the dewy taste of seas and clouds in the dust, the taste of the expanse and the rain, of plains, mountains, humans, of feminity, love, and intrepid oranges, of childhood and saffron, of living in my mother's heart, of travel, and of your soul and mine.But my beloved trees steal toward the sourceto taste it in solitude, before any of us

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1954, and raised in a refugee camp. After working as a teacher and a journalist, he became vice president of Darat Al-Funoun, Jordan's most prominent art and cultural center. He has written thirteen poetry collections and eleven novels, as well as works of literary criticism. He is also a painter and a photographer.

Omnia Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt. She is an author, translator, and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Zayed University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Rick London lives and works in San Francisco. His most recent publication is the poetry collection The Materialist (Doorjamb Press, 2008).

"The poet Ibrahim Nasrallah has absorbed both the 'bloody sorrow' of humanity and 'the steady radiance / at the heart of the world, ' that bi-level core of experience which cannot be separated from the sociopolitical. His poems manifest a bountiful and beautiful poetics, and they run a fever. They get under your skin. This is poetry to be read and reread for how it feels"--Marvin Bell"A tragicomic quotidian essence pervades these poems, and palpable echoes of Zbigniew Herbert's words are easily heard. Nasrallah's poems are a welcome translation. They expand and shape our vision of Palestinian poetry's rightful place in world literature."--Fady Joudah

"It is to be hoped that this little volume will start a trend, and that Nasrallah will sooner than later acquire a status in the Anglosphere commensurate with his status in the Arab world...until each of his 10 collections of verse have been translated--preferably bilingually--our view of this humane modernist will remain severely restricted. None of this detracts from the debt we owe Curbstone for making this introduction to Nasrallah available to the Anglophone reader. This plucky little press has set a standard that is now up to major publishing houses to emulate."--The Electronic Intifada

"A people in constant conflict, Rain Inside brings a Palestinian poet's work to the world for English speakers to embrace for the first time...Simple and straightforward with the emotions set forth, Nasrallah inspires the reader with the resilience of the Palestinian spirit and the universal essence in all of us. Rain Inside is a top pick for world poetry collections."-Midwest Book Review, Wisconsin Bookwatch