Outside the Joy by Ruth Awad
Ruth Awad’s sophomore book of poetry, Outside the Joy (Third Man books) is, simply put, a knockout. Awad, a Lebanese American writer, has conjured for us a compendium of deeply personal poems mapping a multitude of familiar griefs in refreshing and powerful new ways; from her mother’s illness and the loss of her grandmother to an ancestral aching both for homeland and the state of our planet. Awad’s writing in these pages is striking and sharply honed, carving each poetic sentence with something that stays electric inside you long after the read. In the poem, In the Gloaming, in the Rolling Night, Awad opens with the line, “The hurt returns as it always intended— it is tender/ as the inside of my thighs, it is as blue too.” The poem goes on to talk about “an empire of loneliness” and what it feels like to be both living in an interior world of suffering while bearing witness to the outside world’s greater suffering, too. “Do you burn because you remember darkness?” the poem asks in conclusion, bringing the reader closer to remembering our own shared humanity. “Outside/ the joy is clamoring. It is almost like the worst day of your life/ is ordinary for everyone else.” With Outside the Joy, Awad has compiled a breathtaking collection of poems, beautifully written, that do not leave the heart empty-handed.
Image Via Third Man Books
