Faces Hidden in the Dust by Ghalib and translated by Tony Barnstone

This is poetry from India.

Faces Hidden in the Dust by Ghalib translated by Tony Barnstone is published by White Pine Press. This is a Book originally written in Urdu. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781945680502E12.

Faces Hidden in the Dust, by Ghalib, is a Urdu poetry collection from India, translated by Tony Barnstone, published by White Pine Press in 2021. It is an Urdu collection of Ghalib that brings the ghazal’s dust, wit, longing, and metaphysical play into English. Ghalib’s poems matter because desire is never only desire; it becomes theology, argument, joke, ruin, and the shimmer of a face half seen. I would not approach it as a book that needs to be solved before it can be felt. Start with the pressure of the title, the texture of the translated line, and the feeling of a voice making room for itself in English. For this library, the book matters as more than a record of India; it is an invitation to let poetry remain particular, difficult, and alive without asking it to behave like explanation.

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.