Divide and Rule

By Walid Bitar

In Divide and Rule, Walid Bitar delivers a sequence of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power, each in rhymed quatrains. Though the pieces grow out of Bitar’s personal experiences over the last decade, both in North America and the Middle East, he is not primarily a confessional writer. His work might be called cubist, the perspectives constantly shifting, point followed by counterpoint, subtle phrase by savage outburst. Bitar’s enigmatic speakers are partially rational creatures, have some need to explain, and may succeed in partially explaining, but, in the end, communication and subterfuge are inseparable – must, so to speak, co-exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781770563056

Walid Bitar

Walid Bitar was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1961. He immigrated to Canada in 1969. His previous poetry collections are Maps with Moving Parts, 2 Guys on Holy Land, Bastardi Puri and The Empire's Missing Links. He lives in Toronto.

Book preview

DIVIDE

AND

RULE

WALID

BITAR

COACH HOUSE BOOKS

TORONTO

copyright © Walid Bitar, 2012

first edition

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also ­acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication.

Bitar, Walid, 1961–

Divide and rule / Walid Bitar.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-55245-254-7

I. Title.

PS8553.I87755D58 2012 C811′.54 C2012-900236-4

THE POEMS

Mission Creep

The Good Reason

The Hundred-Metre Hurdles

Sound Barrier

Digging a Hole

Contractors

An Immigrant

The Low Volumes

Exact Change

The Wish

Scorched Earth Policy

Grave Robbers

The Unemployed

Shock and Awe

Inner Sanctum

The Collaborators

Tunnel Vision

Pyrrhic Victory

The Picture of Concentration

The Barricade Auction

The Zodiacal Beasts

Grey Matter

Outer Space

Sabotaging the Calendar

The Minotaurs

Habeas Corpus

The Mobs

Learning Curves

Over the Rainbow

Margin of Error

Beneath the Level of Conversation

Accordionist

A Flight of Stairs

False Flag

Atheling

Freedom of Assembly

Waterboarding

Still in the Camera

The Naturalization

Not So the Ocean

Cloak and Dagger

Acknowledgements

About the Author

MISSION CREEP

Big, small and medium-sized,

fish whose schools I didn’t dynamite

the first blockade or two, mission creep

setting in now – flames children burst into,

we elders sit around telling fairytales,

sick of you as you are of us,

patients concealing serious symptoms.

The sun behind you, you could eclipse,

if you were the moon. Words often fail

at the last minute that arrives too early.

Seems you’re currently at a loss for them;

here they are. Listen how? Carefully,

hunger-striker. Sing for my supper,

and you prove the whatchamacallit

would never land on your broad shoulders,

as if it were a parakeet – bolt of lightning,

more like, though that isn’t it either.

I’m at a standstill, not up to scratch,

dependent as pawns are on chessboards –

rooks, kings, queens, the grandmaster’s

THE GOOD REASON