O

by Zeina Hashem Beck

Published 5 July 2022
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB AND THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 

O is so full of music and passion for life . . . Zeina Hashem Beck’s poems unfold the abundance of our world.” —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
 
From a “brilliant, absolutely essential voice” whose “poems feel like whole worlds” (Naomi Shihab Nye), a poetry collection considering the body physical, the body politic, and the body sacred

Zeina Hashem Beck writes at the intersection of the divine and the profane, where she crafts elegant, candid poems that simultaneously exude a boundless curiosity and a deep knowingness. Formally electrifying—from lyrics and triptychs to ghazals and Zeina's own duets, in which English and Arabic echo and contradict each other—O explores the limits of language, notions of home and exile, and stirring visions of motherhood, memory, and faith.