When I first glanced at the title and the winsome botanical illustrations on the cover of a new book by Houston-based poet Hayan Charara, I expected a collection of nature poems. Charara does write lyrically and compellingly about the natural world. But that isn’t the focus of These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit. Rather, this is poetry of the human condition, which Charara describes as “a composite / of violence, vengeance, and theft, / ingenuity, too, and forms of love unique / to men and women.” These Trees is also a potently political work.
This is Charara’s fourth book of poems; his third, Something Sinister, was a 2017 Arab American Book Award winner. Born in Detroit, the son of Arab immigrants, Charara earned a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, where he now serves as professor in the Honors College. Charara is also an award-winning author of children’s books and the editor of an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry.
Unlike some poets of recent decades—say, John Ashbery or the Language poets—Charara spurns T.S. Eliot’s dictum that poetry in our time must be difficult. His poetry is plainspoken and accessible, yet as deep and evocative as any of the best contemporary poetry, rewarding repeated readings with new and deeper insights. In this respect, his work resembles that of another Arab American poet, Texas Observer poetry editor Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as his fellow Detroit native, former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine, whom Charara cites as a major influence. In “The Day Phil Levine Died,” Charara credits Levine’s poem “Belle Isle, 1949” for his decision to give up a medical career and become a poet. These Trees teems with scenes from daily life: sitting on the porch, listening to cicadas; buying groceries and washing dishes; watching a dog cross a freeway.
