The Alchemist's Diary

By Hayan Charara

Book Overview

Poetry. THE ALCHEMIST'S DIARY is strong first collection featuring poems of family and Detroit's Arab-American community. Hayna Charara is a star -- follow him -- Naomi Shihab Nye. Sense and feeling...The ethics are true and tough -- Lawrence Joseph. Hayan Charara is the editor of Graffiti Rag.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931236038
• ISBN13: 9781931236034
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press
• Length: 85 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The Poetry of the matters that bind us

The alchemist's Diary's voyage takes us to the seams between the larger fragments that form a life. The poems invite us to the weaving act of mundane and tragic events as they coalesce and become each of us. I enjoyed it greatly.

a fellow Lebanese-American weeps with joy

As a Lebanese-American journalist, I am constantly searching for works by other Lebanese that reflect what it's like to be a Lebanese in America. This book is it. I had to put it down several times because it moved me so. It's poignant, powerful, and real. A great gift for anyone, but especially Arab Americans who can relate to every word.

Understanding The Emotional Balance of Two Worlds

Hayan Charara's first collection of poetry is unquestionably the result of profound contemplation over a period of many years in an attempt at understanding in its most fundamental sense. Though the author conducts the reader through a labyrinth of introspective thoughts and ideas from the opening poem to the last, an equally compelling feeling of expansion through time and space is omnipresent. The cry of the Arab immigrant struggle in his collection is never overwrought or designed to induce sympathy. The author at times painfully inhabits two worlds, not only within individual poems, but in the entire collection. Yet several poems seem free of the painful duality, a counterpoint which balances the whole compilation as a poignant statement about the human condition. Personal pain ("Where Light Divides Shadow") is seamlessly transformed into international sympathy. The collection also reads as an eloquently expressed novelette of survival ("Dandelions", "Going Home"), written in a reflective, philosophical, and weighty voice, though one so natural and at times naive, as to be deceptive... While there is disintegration in the streets of Detroit, and at times, within the author himself, the vitality of hope remains. At critical moments, a voice such as Charara's is indispensable.

Insightful and emotive

I just bought the book yesterday, and couldn't put it down. Hayan Charara has managed to find the expressions to touch the soul. Works about urban life, his sometimes awkward, sometimes intimate family relationships, and deep self-awareness. Some works like "That's All" and "Pregnancy" gave me chills because of the frightening reality depicted. Others, like the poems about his mother, reminded me of my own intimate relationships. Buy it! I'm going to go read it again.