Adunis



Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, born 1 January 1930 (Arabic: علي أحمد سعيد إسبر; transliterated: alî ahmadi s-sacîdi l-'asbar or Ali Ahmad Sa'id) (born 1930), also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis (Arabic: أدونيس), is a Syrian poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. He has written more than twenty books in his native Arabic.

Quotes

 * New York is a woman holding, according to history, a rag called liberty with one hand and strangling the earth with the other.
 * "The Funeral of New York" (1971), from The Pages of Day and Night, trans. Samuel Hazo and Esther Allen (Northwestern University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-810-16081-1.


 * I wanted to break the linearity of poetic text to mess with it, if you will. The poem is meant to be a network rather than a single rope of thought.
 * Adunis, in: "" at nytimes, October 17, 2010


 * Poetry can only change the notion of relationships between things. Culture cannot change without a change in institutions.
 * Adunis, in: "" at nytimes, October 17, 2010