These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit: Poems

Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award FinalistA thoughtful new collection of poems, one that deconstructs the deceptively simple question of what it means to be gooda good person, a good citizen, a good teacher, a good poet, a good father. With These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, Hayan Charara presents readers with a medley of ambitious analyses, written in characteristically wry verse. He takes philosophers to task, jousts with academics, and scrutinizes hollow gestures of empathy, exposing the dangers of thinking ourselves separate / from [our] thoughts and experiences. After all, No work of love / will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart. But how do we act on fullness of heart? How, knowing as we do that genocide is inscribed in our earliest and holiest texts? Thoughtful but never preachy, Charara sits beside us, granting us access to lifes countless unglamorous dilemmas: crushing a spider when we promised we wouldnt, nearing madness from a newborns weeping, resenting our lovers for what happened in a dream. Good poems demand to be written from inside the poet, we are reminded. And that is where we find ourselves here: inside a lively and ethical mind, entertained by Chararas good company even as goodness challenges us to do more.