Divan of Ghalib by Nachoem Wijnberg and translated by David Colmer

This is poetry from Netherlands.

Divan of Ghalib by Nachoem Wijnberg translated by David Colmer is published by White Pine Press. This is a Book originally written in Dutch. This was published in 2016.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781935210856E12.

Divan of Ghalib, by Nachoem Wijnberg and translated by David Colmer, announces itself through conversation with a major lyric inheritance while remaining unmistakably a contemporary Dutch book. The title gestures toward Ghalib, toward the ghazal, toward devotion, wit, longing, and the intricate intelligence of address. But I would not treat the book only as homage. Wijnberg’s strength is in making forms of thinking feel slightly displaced, as though a poem were a room where business, prayer, history, and desire have all arrived early and are waiting for the reader. Colmer’s translation lets that intellectual strangeness remain visible. This is a book for readers who like their lyric tradition reactivated rather than merely preserved.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.