Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan Darwish and translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

This is poetry from Palestine.

Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan Darwish translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid is published by NYRB Poets. This is a Book originally written in Arabic. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781681375526E12.

Exhausted on the Cross, by Najwan Darwish and translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid from Arabic, brings Arabic-language poetry from Palestine into English through Palestinian crucifixion imagery, exhaustion, and Najwan Darwish’s ability to make the sacred feel politically exposed. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for cross, fatigue, witness, and the body asked to carry more history than a body should, not as a fixed lesson about Palestine. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Exhausted on the Cross belongs in the translated poetry library because it belongs as a sharp contemporary Palestinian lyric of burden, irony, and survival.

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.