And first up: how Southern California wildfires inspired a new book by André Naffis-Sahely.
Fiery Joshua Trees ablaze in a California wildfire create the striking cover image for “High Desert,” the new collection of poems by poet, editor and translator André Naffis-Sahely.
“It was also something that was quite fascinating to me, because one of the great differences between the Arabian desert that I grew up in, and the California desert that I spent so much time in, was the absence of fire, actually. Because fire is just not a thing over there,” says the poet. “We get sandstorms.”
“The original title was, ‘What the Immigration Officer Told Me,’ because that’s essentially what happened. That poem is pretty much a direct transcript of a conversation I had during one of the many, many times I was grilled by airport security,” says Naffis-Sahely, who says the agent couldn’t believe the poet was moving to the States for love. “They actually did print out my poems and essays” in a vain attempt to try to find some other motive.
One of the Los Angeles poems, “Maybe the People Don’t Want to Live and Let Live,” evokes the life of Arthur Lee, the leader of the great 1960s LA band Love. “When I was going through the graveyard, you’d see that the elements essentially had just rubbed away at the gravestones, to the point that you can barely make out the names,” he says. “Part of the fuel for these poems was, OK, you may not be able to capture the whole of what that moment was, the whole of what that existence was, but you’re able to put down at least a very limited record of it before it completely vanishes.
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