Double paperback release day! In Deadly Embrace collects the vivid and evocative hunting poetry of one-day caliph Ibn al-Muʿtazz (tr. Montgomery), and The Divine Names by scholar and poet al-Tilimsānī (tr. Casewit) explores the names of God with logical rigor and philosophical sophistication.
"Ibn Ḥamdūn declaimed: I gave my soul to love . . . And she answered on the spot: . . . and love ruled like a tyrant. He continued: So I became a humble slave . . . And she rejoined: . . . and followed where he went."
"I thus declare: certain of our most eminent scholars have said that the woman is more honorable than the man, more imposing, nobler, more clem- ent, more virtuous, and more generous."
"“Glory,” said she, “lies in change of location. If hopes could be attained through nobility of domicile, the sun would never leave its ovine station.”"
"He said, “Just think, wife—we’ve lived together a goodly span of time.” “That’s all I think of,” she replied. The Fāriyāq resumed his narrative. “I asked her, ‘Hatefully or gratefully?’ and she replied, ‘Half the latter and half the former.’"
"A sun, whose approach makes plain that the sun itself need not trouble to rise, You grow, despite your years, in brightness and in beauty as wine grows more delicate in its old age."
“Whenever her nightly phantom visits me my eyes are hurt, my tear ducts overflow, with tears like pearls let loose—strung on a string, but now the string has let them down.”
"My heart is a valley that’s crawling with locusts; at night, they strip every shrub bare of its leaves. It’s as if I’m in a wooden ship tossed by a raging sea, swollen by the storm winds that drive the surging waves,"
"While the verses it contains are like bricks in their stacking, and there are learned discussions free for the taking. Gaze on it well and peruse it truly and very soon you’ll find your stomach’s unruly!"
"I wander the palace, but I see no one, no one will answer my plaint, it would seem, I feel as though I’ve committed a sin, one I can repent of but can never redeem."
