An Interview with Nathalie Handal 
                                       by Elizabeth Nunez
                 Chair of PEN American Open Book Program 
 

                  Review of The Lives of Rain (MoorishGirl.Com) 
                  Crab Orchard Review 
                  The Washington Report
                  Journal of Palestine Studies
                  Multicultural Review, Summer 2006

The Lives of Rain is a book of exile and wandering, geographically and emotionally. In it are wars, loves, scars, ancestors. In it are olive trees, lemon trees, weddings, music, fear. In it are English, French, Arabic, Spanish, "the breath of cities," the blue hour of a woman's body. Nathalie Handal is a poet for our time of crisis and need, for our awakening sense of the battles of eros and thanatos in our world.

Alicia Ostriker 

Some poets have a fire in the belly, an urgent need to tell the truth for the sake of those who do not know, and those who do. Nathalie Handal is one such poet. Yet her poems transcend the fire of their birth: there is also a cool intelligence here, the words of a witness who will tell the story and get it right. These brave, sensual and striking poems humanize the Palestinian people at a time in history when they are too often dehumanized. Gracias, Nathalie.

   Martin Espada

Nathalie Handal's poetry is a global poetry of witness and wisdom.  The weightiness of her subjects is delightfully at odds with the buoyancy of her cadence.  In The Lives of Rain, Handal's crisp multi-lingual diction renders passion, intelligence, and despair, deftly chronicling the human condition in its vivid particulars.                                                                                    

Denise Duhamel

In The Lives of Rain we catch the accent and the stress of displacement, of being in the wrong place, ‘shadows behind shadows’ - Nathalie Handal's exilic tone stays and roots itself.

Tom Paulin 

Great writing, hard, moving, tough , real.

Bob Holman 

The Lives of Rain reminds me of an essay by Edward Said [Reflections on Exile]. The melody is mine, belongs to the reader, as I am also this hatless man: his maps his books, his memories his exile his half-forgotten name on a bench by the river... Une vraie poétique du déplacement, sensuelle, érotique et (pourquoi pas) politique

   Milton Hatoum