"A scholar and a librarian, Mosab Abu Toha is also a major poet whose first collection made him a talent to celebrate. After graduating from a master's program at Syracuse, he returned home to complete his second work. Then the current assault on Gaza began. When the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety--not for the first time in their lives. Remarkably, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, this collection forms one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime. Here are directives for what to do during an air raid and lyrics about the poet's wife, who sings to their children to distract them. Huddled in the dark with his family, Abu Toha remembers his grandfather's oranges, and his daughter's joy in eating them. Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely livable occupation, 'Forest of noise' invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination--even as people are watching the crisis in real time. Abu Toha's poems introduce readers to his extended family, some of whom are no longer with us. This extraordinary, arrestingly whimsical book brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering"--

Mosab Abu Toha, a poet in his thirties, was well-known before the current siege of Gaza began. When the Israeli army bombed his house, destroying a library he had built for the community, he and his family fled for safety, having experienced displacement before. Amidst the turmoil, Abu Toha continued writing poems. These works are marked by clarity, directness, and beauty, emerging as one of the remarkable artistic responses to wartime. The poems include practical guidance for air raids, as well as reflections on his wife’s efforts to comfort their children and memories of his grandfather’s oranges. Moving between moments of relative peace and the harsh realities of life under occupation, Forest of Noise offers a powerful look into an experience that is difficult to imagine, even as it unfolds. Through his poems, Abu Toha introduces readers to his extended family, some of whom are no longer with him.