Ammiel Alcalay

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, a little history explores the deep politics of memory and imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American studies. With a preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay's book places the work of such major figures as Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka in the realm of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power of poetry as a unique form of knowledge. 

The second edition of from the warring factions brings back into print Alcalay's book-length poem dedicated to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, site of the massacre of some seven thousand Muslim men and boys in 1995. This daring blend of lyric and document remaps the world we inherit, from native New England to the Roman Empire, from the Gulf War to Palestine and the Balkans. In her new introduction, Diane di Prima writes, "This book forced me to redefine my life." Edited by Fred Dewey and accompanied by an extensive discussion between Alcalay and poet Benjamin Hollander, as well as a new preface by the author, this edition brings an essential text of the post-9/11 world back into the conversation.

A multilayered novel, Alcalay's Islanders is about finding one's truth. As he attempts to come to terms with the past and his struggle to find intimacy, a young man seesaws between nostalgic longing and hard-eyed realism. Set during the final cataclysmic years of the Vietnam war, in a landscape that shifts between bleak fishing towns and ruined cities, this novel explores the classic theme of identity's intricate relationship to place. 

Shimon Ballas was born in Baghdad in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1951. Before retirement, he taught Arab Literature there, and now spends part of the year in Paris, where he does most of his writing. Outcast is narrated by Haroun Soussan, a Jewish convert to Islam. The character is based on a historical figure, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa, who converted to Islam in the 1930s and whose work ended up being used as propaganda during the era of Saddam Hussein. Soussan is a civil engineer and historian who has just completed his life's work, The Jews and History. The book opens with his getting an award from the President (Saddam Hussein) during the period of the Iran-Iraq War. The text we are reading, the novel, is his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, where he explores his own personal and political history, including his relationship with his daughter and his friends, among them a militant communist in political exile in Eastern Europe.

Between a Cadillac and a Valiant sitting idly in the snow, Scrapmetal takes a provisional journey through the experience of work and the untangling of vampiric forces that sever life from our record of it. Part primer and part example, Scrapmetal offers a method of attacking the inflationary poetics" that deafen us in the "steady hum of overproduction."