"LANGUAGE FOR A NEW CENTURY" CALLED "NOT THE TOWER OF BABEL" BY NADINE GORDIMER

Well, I'll be waving from the pages of a Norton Anthology viz Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar.

It'll be interesting to see who else will appear in this anthology that apparently features over 400 poets from 55 countries writing in 40 different languages. The editors have shared that Carolyn Forché writes a "deeply felt Foreword". And this blurbie:

"This extraordinary, library-in-one-volume: what a resource! Those to whom poetry is essential as the supreme use of language will find the work of many poets they have never before come to, and those readers who have limited themselves to prose have the opportunity to discover how the poet outreaches everything prose can illuminate in who and what we are, no matter where, on the map. Nine thematic groupings of the work bring us wonderfully, almost perilously close to ultimate experience in childhood, love, war, exile, the inextricable relations between politics and the personal, the tragic and the ironic, the wisdom in sorrow and humor, that only the most intense imagination can plumb. That of the poet. The realm of imagination is one. This anthology gives entry to its vast expression in the Middle East and Asia, including the changing sensibilities of poets in the ever-growing world of immigration. Assembled here not the Tower of Babel, but the astonishment and subtlety inherent in many languages and their experimental modes to expand the power of words. The introductions to each section offer perceptions engagingly, against which to place one's own readings. The editors have boldly envisaged and compiled a beautiful achievement for world literature."
-Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate

The anthology is scheduled to be released in April 2008. Moi representation is one of the poems from ENGLISH.