Habibi

the love poems of the Moroccan poet Alim Maghrebi

Habibi, the love poems of the Moroccan poet Alim Maghrebi, is the latest in a series of David Solway's poetic "translations,"dating from Andreas Karavis' Saracen Island and including Nesmine Rifat's Pallikari, Rhys Savarin's Reaching for Clear, Bartholomew the Englishman's The Properties of Things, and Dov Ben-Zamir's New Wine, Old Bottles, the latter still in manuscript. These are what Solway calls his "ostensibles," poetic voices and artifacts which he regards as constituting an extended trope or metaphor of the desire for transformation. The purpose behind such ventures is not to perpetuate a deception but to create a style and renew a customary diction -- and, ultimately, to recreate a self.