Fady Joudah — [...]
Poetry Unbound24 Helmi 2025

Fady Joudah — [...]

Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, disaster, liberty — and it finds certainty only in the shaky universal ground of that ambivalence.

Fady Joudah is the author of […]. He has also published five other collections of poems, including Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received the Jackson Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife and children, where he works as a physician in internal medicine.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Fady Joudah’s poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. Order your copy of Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig) wherever you buy books.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaksot(218)

Diannely Antigua — Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me

Diannely Antigua — Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me

“You would’ve made a lousy nun.” The narrator of Diannely Antigua’s “Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me” overhears these words, and they jolt her into contrasting her life experience wit...

27 Tammi 202516min

Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig

Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig

Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with para...

20 Tammi 202514min

Ernesto Cardenal — Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)

Ernesto Cardenal — Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5)

When dictatorial leaders use talk of peace as a smokescreen to conceal their plans for war and  destruction, what are the people to do? Believe in a vision of peace and freedom that is muscular, sturd...

13 Tammi 202517min

Diego Báez — Inheritance

Diego Báez — Inheritance

Many people say their experience of time changes after they have children, a phenomenon that Diego Báez captures in “Inheritance.” In this poem, a past, present, and future starring the same child shi...

20 Joulu 202420min

Danielle Chapman — Trespassing with Tweens

Danielle Chapman — Trespassing with Tweens

Wonder and strangeness commingle with the commonplace and universal in Danielle Chapman’s “Trespassing with Tweens.” In a not-quite mirroring, a human mother and her children stand and watch together ...

16 Joulu 202416min

Richard Langston — Hill walk

Richard Langston — Hill walk

In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marv...

13 Joulu 202412min

Robert Hayden  — Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden — Those Winter Sundays

What sacrifices were made by your parents when you were a child? How did you think about them as they were happening? And how do you think about them now? In his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Ha...

9 Joulu 202412min

Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE

Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE

When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat ...

6 Joulu 202413min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

sita
olipa-kerran-otsikko
kaksi-aitia
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
i-dont-like-mondays
uutiscast
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
kolme-kaannekohtaa
mamma-mia
rss-murhan-anatomia
rss-nikotellen
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
aikalisa
meidan-pitais-puhua
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
naakkavalta
mystista
loukussa