Fady Joudah was the recipient of the Griffin International Poetry prize in 2013. His latest poetry collections are Alight and Textu, from Copper Canyon Press. Textu is written in meter based on the character count of smart phones. He is a practicing physician of internal medicine.
All of This Is True
Sept/Oct 2020
Sandra Bland, Texas
On the highway home last night you reappeared to me opposite where I was headed, so tell me, was it a cigarette that bothered your jailer so? (They let me […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2016
Progress Notes
The age of portrait is drugged. Beauty is symmetry so rare it’s a mystery. My left eye is smaller than my right, my big mouth shows my nice teeth perfectly […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
Traditional Anger (in the Sonoran Desert)
Because you wait for what you asked for how lonely is pleasure? the saguaros want to speak like mad telephone poles more numerous closer apart untransmittable tho there’s water where […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
Smoke
With a cigarette in her left hand she says love built the gazebo . . . Thirty years after the smoke between the two clans had cleared His from a […]
Nonfiction
Summer 2009
A Conversation with Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah was born on New Year’s Day in 1971 in Austin, Texas, to Palestinian refugee parents. He grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia, speaking Arabic as his first […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
Twice a River
After studying our faces for four months My son knows to beam is the thing to do He’ll spend years Deciphering the injustice or the illusion of it Which depends […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
Still Life
You write your name on unstained glass So you’re either broken or seen through When it came time for the affidavit The panel asked how much art Over the blood […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
Rustle
And like one who listens to a hidden revelation, I listen to the summer leaves . . . a timid, anesthetized sound, descending from the distances of sleep . . […]
Poetry
Winter 2007
Ladies and Gentlemen
… the easiest pain is someone else's, And even the Hittites Kept their nuclear weapon a sole possession For as long as they could. But it's been a bit much […]
Poetry
Winter 2007
The Tea and Sage Poem
At a desk made of glass, In a glass-walled room With red airport carpet, An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused, So another offered him tea […]
Poetry
Spring 2012
Like a Dream at Noon
From the Arabic. He didn't think, not for a moment that the garden is exactly behind his room that a woman sleeps alone in the other apartment each night […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
At a Train Station That Fell off the Map
Grass, dry air, thorns, and cactuson the iron wire. There’s the shape of a thingin the frivolity of nonshape chewing its shadow . . .a bound void . . . […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
If I Were Another
In solitude lies the competency of one entrusted with himself—he writes a phrase, looks up at the ceiling, then adds: To be alone . . . to be able to […]
Poetry
Summer 2005
On a Day like Today
From the Arabic. On a day like today, in the hidden corner Of the church, in full feminine adornment, In a leap year, in the meeting of endless Green with […]
Poetry
Summer 2005
In Jerusalem
From the Arabic. In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,I walk from one epoch to another without a memoryTo guide me. The prophets over there are sharingThe history […]
Poetry
Summer 2005
Don’t Write History as Poetry
From the Arabic. Don't write history as poetry, because the weapon is The historian. And the historian doesn't get fever Chills when he names his victims and doesn't listen To […]
The Kenyon Review Credos
In the Name of the Letter, the Spirit, and the Double Helix
The Kenyon Review Credos 1. In the beginning there was translation. Without it there’s no expression, not even gene expression, no life. Even the untranslatable is vital for the process. […]
Fall 2008
In Memory of Mahmoud Darwish
The Kenyon Review is pleased to present three poems by Mahmoud Darwish, a remembrance of Darwish by his translator, Fady Joudah, and a poem by Joudah in 2013 on the […]
Fady Joudah
A Conversation With Fady Joudah by KR poetry editor David Baker Transcript Fady Joudah was born on New Year’s Day in 1971 in Austin, Texas, to Palestinian refugee parents. He […]