Barely There Short Poems

"Lababidi moves from the aphoristic and the epigrammatic to the suggestive, the lightly hinted, the nuanced, with impressive ease. This is a rare gift, more associated with European writers than with American. This striation of tone, of register, of mood, gives a sense of surprise to his sentences; they spring back to the touch. Sometimes they even seem surprised at themselves . . . The book becomes an exploration on which the reader embarks. This is one of the elements in collections . . . I most appreciate--this secret invitation au voyage which the author holds out--and Lababidi does this extremely well--with courtesy as well as cunning." --Eric Ormsby, poet, scholar, and author of Ghazali: The Revival of Islam. "I find myself pausing everywhere among these wisdoms, wondering why the world stumbles and staggers through such a dark and greedy time when there are people alive with such keen, caring insight . . . If Yahia Samir Lababidi were in charge of a country, I would want to live there." --Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, anthologist, and author of There Is No Long Distance Now. "Wisdom for Lababidi is on the move, a matter of suppleness rather than rigor, of insights and angles rather than rules . . . As intense as his conversation with himself is, it is also kind, tolerant of his own limits and of ours . . . I give you that expert self-listener, that excellent writer, Yahia Lababidi." --James Richardson, poet, aphorist, and author of By the Numbers