>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC ^M00:00:06 ^M00:00:22 >> Joan Weeks: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of all my colleagues, and in particular Dr. Mary Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern division, I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to everyone. I'm Joan Weeks, head of the Near East section, the sponsor of today's program. We are very pleased to present this program on the poetry of Jawdat Haydar, a transnational framework. However, before we start today's program and introduce our speaker, I'd like to give you a brief overview of our division and the resources in the hopes that you'll come back and use this reading room for your research. First of all, this is a custodial division. That means that we house and serve the collections to researchers from around the world through all the 78 countries and more than two dozen languages. The Africa section is comprised of all the countries of sub-Sahara Africa. The Hebraic section covers Hebraic worldwide. And the Near East section covers all of the Arabic countries, particularly of North Africa, Turkey, Turkic central Asia, all the Arab countries in the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and the Muslims of China. Even the peoples of the Caucuses. So it's a very extensive collection and we really want to encourage people to come in for their research and further programs. We'd also like to invite you to try out our Four Corners blog. We have special little fliers in your seats that show those very special blog posts by our curators. Very interesting stories and very special items about our collections. And if you like us on Facebook, subscribe, you'll find out about future programs. And also many interesting facts about our countries. So also I'd like to remind you that you're more than welcome after the presentation to ask questions. But since we're videocasting this presentation, if you ask questions, you're implicitly giving us permission to rebroadcast them. Also after the presentation I'd like to invite you to a very special display of the poet. This is a very special time of the year at the library. We celebrate April as poetry month. And so this is a very special opportunity to celebrate that and see a display of the poet. As well as some refreshments. And so we really appreciate those and invite you to come back to the conference room after the presentation for that. So right now I'd like to invite our Arab world specialist Nawal Kawar up to the podium to introduce our speaker. Thank you. ^M00:03:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:28 ^M00:03:30 >> Nawal Kawar: Thank you, Joan. I'd like to welcome everybody today. I really enjoy having you all. First I'd like to welcome our speaker, Dr. Carol Fadda. And I appreciate her coming all the way from New York to be with us today. Dr. Carol Fadda earned her BA and MA from the American University of Beirut. She graduated from Purdue University in August 2006 with her PhD in contemporary American literature. Her work on US ethnic literatures focuses on Arab-American literary studies, designating the complexity of Arab-American communal and individual [inaudible]. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Arab-American cultures and literatures, US ethnic literary text, war narratives from the Middle East and its diaspora, and gender and sexuality in the Arab world. She has taught at the University of Shirja in the United Arab Emirates, Purdue University in Indiana, and St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Her journal articles on gender, race, ethnicity, war, trauma and transnational citizenship in Arab and Arab-American literary texts have appeared in the journals of Studies in Humanities, MELUS -- Carol will spell it out later on -- the Greenwood Encyclopedia for Multiethnic American Literature, [inaudible] and College Literature. Her essays have also appeared in the edited collection Arabs in America: Interdisciplinary Essays on the Arab Diaspora, 2006. Arab Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity through Writing, 2007. Teaching World Literature in 2009. And Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives in Arab Literature, 2010. She's currently working on a book. No, she's not currently working on a book. I am reading the old one. She just completed her book entitled, Between the Transnational and the Ethnic: Arab American Literary Renegotiations of Self and Home. Which looks at the wide variety of literary texts by Arab American writers spanning the second half of the 20th century to the present to examine the pivotal role that the Arab homeland plays in shaping Arab American. Please help me welcome Dr. Carol Fadda. ^M00:06:12 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:16 ^M00:06:20 >> Dr. Carol Fadda: Let me grab my computer here. Thank you so much for that introduction. And I've been instructed to speak close to the mic so that you can all hear me. And if for some reason I move away from the mic, just wave and I'll come close to it. So thank you so much for all being here on such a beautiful day. It means a lot you know when we leave the sun outside and come and sit in this beautiful library. I want to thank the Library of Congress, especially the Near East section of the African and Middle East division for hosting us in this lovely space. I also want to thank Mrs. Hasheen Al-Saddon, Mrs. Dean Al-Saddon and also Ria Al-Saddon for inviting me to be part of this event and to speak about the wonderful work of Jawdat Haydar. So my talk today will be focusing on the works of the Lebanese poet Jawdat Haydar who was born in 1905 and passed away in 2006. Placing his poetry in a transnational framework in order to analyze how such a framework can be used to link for example the US and the Arab world in ways that exceed and trouble neat divisions of here and there, the west and the east. So also this transnational framework will help us to read and study writers like Jawdat Haydar alongside Arab immigrant writers in the US, most notably the Bajhad writers whom I will speak about more in a bit. But part of my talk also today will show how the works of writers like Jawdat Haydar who did not necessarily reside long-term in the US, nevertheless include an important transnational link between the US and the Arab world as well as other places. That helps us in thinking about literary and poetic production beyond the limits of national contexts. So and then I will move to talk particularly about some poems from Haydar's body of works. I would argue that the poems of Jawdat Haydar provide us with an important lens to consider a vision that straddles multiple national locations without necessarily taking on ethnic or hyphenated identities such as Arab-American for example. The transnational aspect of Haydar's poetry navigates multiple belongings, literary influences and humanistic investments in ways that necessarily complicate again the neat divisions between here and there, the Arab world and the west. And by doing so reject the limited and rigid values attached to these binary divisions. With you know, what we're very familiar with, with the Arab world being depicted as backward and the west as civilized and progressive. So looking at how these poems trouble and complicate that. So again Haydar's poetry questions these binaries by presenting in his body of work as a whole a transnational vision that ultimately exceeds limited and prepackaged notions of identity, nation, belonging and citizenship. So just to speak a bit about this transnational framework, because I've taken it up in my own work, whereby I discuss the literature of Arab-American writers, mainly focusing from the 1990's onwards to show how these works exhibit forms of connection to the Arab world and to the US that point to a fluid, multiple and complex form of national belonging that cannot simply be contained by single citizenships or national identities. And we see that in a variety of ways in the works of the Arab-American writers I study, whether it's Lebanese-American writers, Palestinian-American writers, Iraqi-American, Egyptian-American, et cetera. And what about this concept of the transnational? Let me just say something about it quickly. To think about you know the transnational and people who perform this notion of transnational belonging, to think about how it mainly focuses on embodying a simultaneous physical or metaphorical placement in dual or even multiple locations that cut across national boundaries. Transnational enactments are far from being uniform or consistent, however. They include physical mobility but also extent to imaginative attachments. All promulgated by the fast development of tools of communication such as the internet and others. So these transnational enactments vary depending on the conditions that enable or prohibit people's access to multiple national locations, whether by virtue of geopolitical conditions, generational divides, or economic means. So what I mean by this is that even when we talk about the transnational as bridging two places, we also have to keep in mind that not everyone can travel easily between places and nations and cross borders. So it is with these understandings in mind that I argue for development of a complex transnational discourse, a discourse that overturns fixed and conventional adherences to diasporic, national and ethnic labels and underscores larger structures of belonging, citizenship and national membership that transform the limits of the nation state. At the same time, it places racial, ethnic, gendered, religious and sexual identities outside the rigid constructs of traditional or normative, cultural and national frameworks. So again I want to kind of see how that is an evidence in Jawdat Haydar's poetry and how that poetry negotiates this multiplicity of belongings. And just to kind of say a bit about the context of an immigrant framework, in order to place that in conversation with Jawdat Haydar's own experience, so this transnational consciousness is not a new phenomenon. And other scholars have written about it in a historical context in relation to the Arab diaspora and Arab immigration. And so we see how transnational connections between Arab homelands and the diaspora are very much in evidence during the first period of Arab immigration. And so just to kind of quickly say that Arab immigration to the US spans roughly three periods, three phases. The first one extends from the 1880's to 1925 or mid-1920's. Which is 1925 is the year that the Immigration Quota Act was passed. And that limited the number of immigrants to the US based on their nationality. And the second wave of immigration started with the end of World War II, '45 to late-'60's. And the last phase facilitated by the passing of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act extends from the 1960's to the current period. So that's also helpful to know because the various literary movements in the US as well as the movements that straddle the Arab world roughly follow these three waves of immigration, early, middle and contemporary period, with the Mahja writers coming to the forefront in the first period. And so this is -- I just want to kind of talk about that quickly because it's important to know that phase in terms of placing that first phase in relation to Jawdat's own experience in the US. So during this first period we have the Mahja writers including of course Khalil Gibran, Ameen Rihani, Mikha'il Na'ima, and Elia Abu Madi among others, who immigrated to the US and eventually resettled in their original homelands. And they wrote in both English and Arabic. In 1920 they established in New York what came to be known as Rabhi mik Colonia, or the Pen League, consisting of both Syrian and Lebanese writers. And they maintained a solid transnational outlook in their physical and intellectual negotiations of Arab and American identities. So again, to emphasize this early period, and in order because this is the period when Jawdat Haydar you know came to the US. So in order to get an idea of what kind of literary space was happening or existed within the US. So turning to the life and works of Jawdat Haydar, we see that somebody like him cannot be easily placed within a specific or rigid hyphenated identity, because he himself was not an immigrant per se. But came to the US to study, after which he returned to his native Lebanon. But as I will address here in a bit, his poems nevertheless point to a multiple and varied perspective that cannot so easily be defines as US-based or solely Lebanese per se. For these poems exhibit an elusiveness and a range of places, themes, commitments and relationships. Writing primarily in English, Jawdat Haydar published his first anthology, Voices, in 1980 which was followed by Echoes in 1989 and Shadows in 1998. In 2006 he published his last book, 101 Selected Poems at the age of 101. So after graduating from North Texas State University in 1928 and upon his return to Lebanon, Haydar kicked off his career as principle of the Universal College in Hallab, Lebanon, after which he assumed the directorship of the Nahda National School in Nables in Palestine. In 1932 Jawdat Haydar became the first national staff employee in the Iraq Petroleum Company, initially appointed as assistant employment officer in Syria. And then he became industrial relations advisor in 1956. After which he subsequently became general manager of the Mid East Oil and Trading Company until his retirement in 1965. Haydar was also the founder and president of [inaudible] or Oasis of Literature in the Baca Valley. And a member of the Union of Lebanese Writers. His poem, The Temple of Baalbek has been incorporated into the official curriculum for the Lebanese national baccalaureate. While a copy of the poem currently hangs in the museum at the temple of Baalbek. More recently the faculty of arts and humanities at the Lebanese University also passed an official decision incorporating Haydar's poetry into its national curriculum at the university level. And he's been the recipient of numerous medals and awards. ^M00:17:53 And there's a really wonderful display of these awards in the next room. So after the talk we can take a look at it. So it is during his time in the US, after he graduated from UAB in 1925, he came to the US. And so after -- it was during this time here that Haydar first started writing poetry. He graduated again from the North Texas State University in '28 with a BS in education. And so we see him writing about the US and this is the poem Dear Old Texas. And I'm not going to read all of it, but if we take a look at the end, it says, "Home again, home again to Dixie Land; the ship will and merrily I land; on the shore and straight I go to the plow; the hat, the pistol, the horse and the cow; I love thee old Texas, I love thy land; I love the plains, rivers, rocks, hills and sands; I love they flag, heaven, nature and sea; God keep you, God safeguard your liberty." So in fact this love of and attachment to the US, specifically Texas, is also elucidated in the poem Sweet Home, which he wrote while he was working in Nables. So again here you know we see him returning to this space of the US and specifically Texas as a space of belonging that he is longing for actually. And then he says, "Yes, those days of old were resplendent and fair; when nigh the sycamores with dear Jack and Lee; I jovially rallied, played and learned to care for the land of the real, the land of the free. Oh no more, nevermore, those homely sunsets; no more, nevermore, those song sparrows to hear; for the queen moved to take me where she sits, on the horizon and old Texas the dear." So now this poem and the preceding one might be used to simplistically assert a singular type of belonging that elevates the US and Texas to a higher level of national attachment. However, such a reading falls short when considering the larger scope of Haydar's poetic works in which we find multiple and complex assertions of love and attachment towards a sense of place, nation and one's own standing within these spaces. As well exceeding singular or binaristic spaces that are pitted against each other. For reading Haydar's poems through a transnational lens enables us then to place poems like Dear Old Texas and Sweet Home both temporally and spatially alongside poems like Lebanon and others like it. In which the concepts of freedom, democracy and national pride are not restricted to one nation or country, but one that Haydar locates in multiple and interconnected spaces that are connected through his transnational location within and across them. And so we see that similar type of you know, exploration and veneration of a place happening in a poem like Lebanon. And towards the end he says, "Oh life, there is nothing more to enchant me than this vision of growing ecstasy; I feel dissolved and carried fancy free where beauty and dreams meet in policy." And he says that's the Lebanon. This is the last stanza, "That's the Lebanon, the heart of the world, where the cedars living for ages unknown and the flag of liberty always unfurled and a democracy without a throne." And so here he's talking about Lebanon. In thinking about Haydar and his work within a broader transnational framework, what is noteworthy about his writing in relation to for example the Mahja poets who lived and wrote in the US for most of their adult life, is that Haydar's writing enacts a similar investment in a transnational viewpoint as that of the Mahja poets, but from the location of the Arab world. Which again contributes to a sense or a worldview that is not restricted to simple notions of national expression. And I would argue that this is the crux of my argument, that it is primarily a unique aspect of Jawdat Haydar's work and in fact distinguishes him from the Mahja poets and that he was located in the Arab world but wrote in English mostly, a combination that complicates in a positive way and captures the interconnected aspects of what is often presented and perceived as east versus west, here and there. So thus we see here how a transnational poetic vision does not necessarily have to emanate from a US context, but can be based in an Arab context while asserting the fluidity of belonging that literature articulations bring forth in varied ways. And that is something that the Mahja poets collectively struggled with and worked on throughout their lives, because they ultimately occupied a different positionality than that of Haydar's. I want to emphasize though that such a transnational poetic vision that I've been discussing is often juxtaposed with the restrictions and limitations of physical boundaries and borders. And we see that affecting Jawdat Haydar himself when for instance we see him after graduating from the American University of Beirut, he went to France. And he was trying at first unsuccessfully to get a visa to study in the US while he was in France. So the story goes that he by chance met the American consult's wife in a movie theater and she offered to help him procure a visa to the US. And we also see the difficulties of border crossings and the conundrums of national identities, especially for colonized peoples, even when supposedly returning home. When Haydar could not procure a passage to Lebanon from the US because he would be entering what would be referred to as French mandated territory and that he was still identified as a Turkish subject. So I'm giving these examples to help us think about not only the ease, but the difficulty of crossing borders and enacting that transnational vision that I'm talking about. So we see here a link between the lives and works of Jawdat Haydar and the Mahja poets, which is a recurrent thematic focus on cultural negotiation, and in between this, specifically in terms of east and west relations, cultural difference and political instability affecting their home country. Even though as John Monroe states, Jawdat Haydar himself did not experience the feeling of being pulled in two different directions, sometimes toward the east and sometimes toward the west. I would point out that Haydar's poetry nevertheless exhibits sensitivity, awareness and investment in such cultural negotiations. An awareness that might not emanate from again an immigrant experience per se, but one that is nonetheless shaped by experiencing the US and specifically Texas as an Arab. And then living and travelling in the Arab world as a Lebanese but with multiple cultural registers and experiences. Moreover, even though as Monroe writes in his book, Jawdat Haydar: the Voice from Baalbek, that and I quote, "Haydar's sense of alienation was quite different from the alienation as experienced by the Mahja writers," it is inevitable that Haydar was quite cognizant of the negative representations of Arabs in the US, and the extent to which these representations were internalized by many Arabs and Arab-Americans themselves. So for here we have a context of a long history of orientalism that defines western attitudes toward the east. And just to speak briefly about it, you know, this kind of back and forth was not only you know, Arab immigrants coming to the US, but also there's a back and forth movement. Because American culture in the late 18th and 19th centuries was characterized by what [inaudible] describes in US orientalism as a race to the orient. So we have merchants, travel writers, tourists and academics among other explorers and opportunists sweeping the orient in pursuit of treasures, whether they be material, spiritual or intellectual. And also accounts of near eastern and Asian lore and magical tales of adventure and discovery were in great demand among the American public at that time. Such reports contributed in fostering and embellishing an alluring eastern mystique in the western, specifically American, consciousness. A natural consequence of these exploratory endeavors was the inevitable inception of a valuable vein of discourse between western and eastern culture. However, such a rapport, instead of being a mutual and balanced exchange of cultural views and ideas, was initially heavily informed by a western biased outlook in matters pertaining to the perception, translation and espousal of the collective eastern mind. And of course some of these western perceptions of eastern thought were initially transmitted by the waves of Christian missionaries who flocked to the Near East in the early 19th century, specifically to Syria, Lebanon and Egypt in pursuit of converting the masses into Christianity and hence -- you know, as described by them -- redeeming their own souls in the process. The reactions emanating from such western encounters with the east greatly contributed to shaping the manner in which eastern characteristics and images were absorbed by and imprinted on the American mind. So this intellectual and even dominance-oriented expansion towards the east however may be offset by a counter movement towards the west led by Arab immigrants and students seeking their fortunes in the Arab world. And so there were serious implications of this exchange, right, in terms of these western missionaries and scholars going to and describing the east on western terms. However the US's early what is referred to as benevolence control in the Arab control presented it in a largely positive light for Arabs, especially when compared to the colonial roles of France and Britain in the region. Which is why it is not surprising that Jawdat Haydar's attitude to the US and his coming to the US was a largely positive one. So you know, just to kind of place it in historical context. His relatively short stay in the US might have helped maintain that positivity which differs for example from the increasing disillusionment faced by many of the Mahja poets in the US and what they described as the country's excesses and greed. However, if we look at the long arc of Jawdat Haydar's poetic output, we see him denouncing the causes and effects of immigration, which he comes to describe as detrimental to the Arab psyche, advocating for the Lebanese for one to stay at home rather than pursue the dreams of success in the west and specifically America. ^M00:30:00 The urge that characterized many of the early immigrants, including the Mahja writers among them. And this is one of the things that's really great about these poems, is that given that they span a long historical period, we can see how they also can be placed in conversation with each other. So for example, in this poem Lebanese Immigrants -- and I'll read just a short excerpt from it. He starts by saying, "Friends, why spend yourselves on the wings of time, flying everywhere and nowhere to land. Look how the eagles dare the sky and climb, and wing reach and back on the cliffs to stand." And then later on in that same poem he says, "The alien footing treading on your threshold to safeguard the grandeur of your tradition, by the lion limb you have had of old, the mighty shield of your true position. Come back, put your food down and your head up, like proud Sunine on the breast of our land, with eyes looking the world from the top up, our flag down the years of the brine washing sand." So keep in mind if you look at the date on that poem that this poem is actually written while the Lebanese Civil War was still going on and raging. So to write this poem during that period, you know to caution against immigration is pretty noteworthy. And not only showing that Haydar's poetic vision spans a long historical period and charts different historical, geographical and political moments, and the poet's specific position in relation to them, but also that his poems take up thorny and difficult topics of war trauma and the devastating effects of conflicts on individual and collective psyches. While the Mahja poets for one, as well as the more contemporary Arab American and other diasporic writers of the late 20th century onwards for the most part accessed the wars, unrest and political conflict, from the vantage point of the diaspora, Haydar lived those experiences from within the Arab world and wrote about them in English. Which provided access to a wider audience. For one Haydar wrote extensively about the Lebanese war in this poems, warning the destruction of Beirut and denouncing the violence that overtook his country. Again, writing about it not from the vantage point of the diaspora but from within Lebanon itself. And he says in this poem -- I'm going to read the last part, which is cut from here so you can -- I'll just say it. "Never mind, history will record the crime, and timing time, timely will avenge blood for blood; just to make the balance sheet right; and I'll stand there on the highest mound to spit now on every year once on the whole world, to lubricate the tools of its mechanism. Perhaps it will wheel right to the palace of justice so that the people on earth may enjoy their safety tomorrow." And that's written on August 12th 1982. However, attesting to their thematic versatility -- and you know, I really do need to emphasize that the range of his poems also shows the thematic versatility and the multiple themes that he takes up in these poems. So again these poems do not focus singularly on the Lebanese War or on Lebanon, but explore stated and unstated far-reaching effects of such violence on individual and collective psyches. We see in Haydar's later poems for one a turn to nature that elucidates a continuing interest in and influenced by the romantic poets, which he has also written about in his poems. On his poetic style, Jason Lewan who is an assistant professor of creative writing at AUB, he writes, "He, Haydar, boldly fuses the poetic styles and sentiments of the romantic, Victorian and modern periods of Anglophone literature while exploring issues of common interest to people living in regions as far apart as Texas and Iraq." And so we see also that versatility of the poems coming through in that broad thematic reach. You know, and expressing his influence and admiration of the romantic poets, we have a poem here titled In Memory of Wordsworth and His Sonnet Upon Westminster Bridge. And he says, "Wordsworth, I stand where you once stood before, on this bridge of antiquity and fame; where emperor, tourist and troubadour have come to London in honor of your name." And he says, "Wordsworth, your words worth being a tableau, pranked by the lifelike hue of your sonnet; with the stately views of the world that show old London wearing a gray sky bonnet." And he says, "Although you fell silent long ago, you are enlivened by your posse; to remain time-honored in your chateau, bearing the regal crown of posity." And so at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, Haydar chose to retire in his hometown Baalbek where he spent the rest of his years. It is also in Baalbek that Haydar established what I referred to early as [inaudible] or the Oasis of Literature, a society of poets who strove to revive Lebanese poetry and enhance collaboration among the poets of the Baca valley. And under his presidency, it's noteworthy that Oasis of Literature restored the statue of the renowned poet Khalil Tran to the entrance of the historic city in recognition of Tran's prominence as a native scholar. And Haydar dedicated the rest of his years to farming and poetry, a wonderful combination in my opinion. Insisting he is a farmer at heart, Haydar over 90 years old relates, he says, "I still farm my land to get the fresh smell of the earth." And in an interview shortly before his death, Haydar states, "My secret for long life is always being thankful. Life is a gift. Be happy when you can." So the simplicity of these words belie a rich and complex vision that understands and well articulates the conundrums, ironies, joys and pain of a life richly lived and experienced. And I'm going to end here with this poem which I think really captures the vision that runs throughout these poems and span a long historical period, but captures that essence of these poems. And it's titled Going Back. "We start going back on the road we take, walking ahead to the outset behind; that's how of birth we are stepping to make, a ring back on the track into the blind. That's a round trip we are destined to run, climbing the hill and railing down the slack; and railing we signal the day is done, and what is done, a journey ahead and back. Sure, we come going with the ticks of time, a distance measured by fate and we fall; never to stand again, never to climb, heaven and back and gone beyond recall. That's how travelers ahead walking back, leaving impressions only of name; and memory of the walk on the track and the track trails and smoke behind the flame." Thank you. ^M00:38:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:38:31 Now for questioning. >> Nawal Kawar: Thank you, Carol. That was really wonderful. Anybody has a question, please? Yes? Mary Jane, carry on. >> Thank you very much. That was wonderful. And I wanted to ask you, did Haydar have a group? You know, sometimes poems belong to a group of other poets and writers that share the idea with their community, whether in Texas or Lebanon. >> Dr. Carol Fadda: From my readings I saw that you know, he had a good community in the US and Texas. And you know, that partly explains his favorable experience there. And you have a really good experience. But from what I read, you know, he was the only Arab in there. So that's also interesting, to see how he was engaged in the community as someone who's Arab and coming into that community from the Arab world. But in terms of Lebanon, you know, the Oasis of Literature group is really interesting. Because that shows that he had the big investment in not only producing poems individually, but also collaborating. And having this sort of communal sense of artistic production that was invested in showcasing the works of other poets and writers like Matran, and placing him very centrally in the square. So there definitely was an investment in collectively producing and insisting on artistic production. Yeah. >> Nawal Kawar: There is one over there. ^M00:40:39 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:40:47 >> Dr. Carol Fadda: I didn't catch the last part. I'm sorry. ^M00:40:50 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:41:03 Yeah, he went to EB. I mean, I can't speak to why he decided to do that, but I can also speak of what does it mean to write in English as an Arab poet. And so I would say that also shows a kind of approach to writing that is not limited to you know as an Arab one only writes in English, right? Or you know, so that also shows a kind of educational background, also an exposure where English you know becomes a way of communicating and writing that is not only restricted to writers who are in the US, right? Or in the west. So I think that's the point that I'm really interested in, to kind of think about if you want to call it Anglophone literature as literature that doesn't only emanate from the west, right? Or is only owned by a western context. But also how writers positioned in the Arab world also engage linguistically with English in order to produce their own visions and their own relations to the language, right? And also to kind of show that versatility of linguistic and artistic production. That becomes part of you know Anglophone Arab cultures. ^M00:42:37 ^M00:42:46 Okay. ^M00:42:48 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:43:09 So the first poem on Texas, I think that was published in a college newspaper. So we can count that as you know the first publication and reception of that poem, which was received very favorably. And you know, I also want to note that the mere fact that were having this event today in the Library of Congress attests to the reception of these poems and these works that you know, extend beyond a certain timeframe. Right, so then how we think of the reception of these works and the ongoing reception of these works in a kind of longer time frame is also important. ^M00:43:55 ^M00:44:00 >> Nawal Kawar: I think we have a couple of questions, and then -- okay. ^M00:44:06 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:44:26 ^M00:44:31 >> Dr. Carol Fadda: Probably. I mean, this is all conjecture, but also the kind of thing about the Mahja poets like Gibran and Ameen Rihani, their experiences I think in Boston and New York are significant, you know. So location I think plays a big part in how do you interact with your location or what kind of community do you find yourself in. You know, because most of the Mahja poets lived and wrote in Arab immigrant communities. So I think that also shapes that vision significantly. So my response would be absolutely, location, who you're connected with, who you interact with, these communities around you are ultimately going to shape your vision of that place. ^M00:45:22 ^M00:45:26 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:45:45 Primarily it's that form. Right, yeah. And there are other I think -- this one, so there's a variety. So we see here in this poem there is a variety there. And also you know, looking at the scope of the poems is important because then we see how there's a change over the range and the scope of these poems, right? So that's versatility, absolutely. ^M00:46:20 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:46:25 So the experimental part, like how are we defining the experimental, right? Because if I'm thinking of experimental, I might go through the extreme and kind of think about extremely experimental poems. So even if he is not experimental in that sense, I would see a kind of shift in form and trying different forms throughout the poems. Yeah. ^M00:46:54 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:47:09 So I think he has an autobiography you know. He wrote an autobiography so that's kind of another genre that he worked on. But his primary focus was on poetry. ^M00:47:25 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:47:32 I hear that he did, and Mrs. Al-Saddon was just telling me that they're honoring him. Maybe if you can speak more to that, because you were just visiting the university. ^M00:47:46 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:47:57 >> I'm very pleased to see all of our friends coming to share with us this event. I would say that he was always in contact with everyone he knew. He was such a friendly person and wanted always go keep in good relation with everyone and everywhere. And the reason why he did not -- may I answer this question, if you don't mind? The reason why he wrote directly in English, I suppose he was the only one who wrote directly in English since he was 16 years old. Because he was deprived from learning Arabic in Lebanon, we were under Turkish rule. And his family was against the Turkish rule and they were exiled to Turkey. And here he was, only eight years old. His mother, he stayed with his mother when he was eight years. His mother passed away. She was sick from typhoid. And here he was all on his own. He went and asked the Turkish responsible man at the gate of the train, "I want to go to my parents, to my father and brothers." And they said, "Go away, you little boy, from here." He said, "No, I want to go. Otherwise I'll try to write a letter." You know, his father was like a judge and so the man said, "Okay, I will let you go." Then he went to Turkey. He was deprived of Arabic, was learning Turkish. He came back. The British troops were looking over that the Turkish would leave Baalbek. He was there and he was listening to their language. He was fascinated by the English language and he said, "I must go to the new world and I must learn this language. It's so beautiful." And so he had a private tutor. This is after all the family came back in 1917. And he learned English, went to the American school which is not the American school. It was the International College, IC. And so he was very good in English. He wanted to go to the States, and this was how he was deprived from the Arabic. And when he came to Texas, his teacher was so in love with Burns and she used to all the time read for him. So my father stood up and said, "Sweet, don't be proud of thy fairly good eyes," so and so. And he said, "Oh, a poet is born. A poet is born." Then the Dallas newspaper published his first -- he was 16 years old. And then when he came back to Lebanon, of course he was studying Arabic as well and everything, but he felt that English was the tool that he could express his feelings and himself. That's why. And when he published his first book, he sent his poems to Vintage Press here in New York and they immediately you know, they were published. And since then he kept on writing. Thank you very much. ^M00:51:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:51:25 >> Nawal Kawar: Mrs. Al-Saddon, she is the daughter of Mr. Haydar, if nobody knows here. Nobody hears me? Mrs. Al-Saddon is the daughter of Mr. Haydar the poet. Okay, now we come to an end. And please, everybody is invited to the reception. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.