Climbing Leaves

By Wissam Charafeddine

An impossible journey that must be taken. Love moves in very slowly and gradually, organically like climbing leaves. We never see it happen, but we wake up one day and the leaves are flickering at our window. A mix of Arabic passion with American clarity. Minimalistic at times, symbolic at others, and reflective in the majority. Wissam Charafeddine is a first-generation immigrant who has escaped the war-torn Middle East to grow up in America, absorbing the Western civilization and mixing the passion of the East with the humanism and freedom of thought of the West.They said about his poetry: "A struggle between realism and idealism, producing much surrealism. Accompanied by photos taken by the author to complement the poetic meaning of the calm pages."In "Climbing Leaves", Wissam Charafeddine weaves a web of poetry, music, and photography that we can't help but get entangled in. We are lured into a muffled entropy of questions which, though left unanswered, delight us in their playful uncertainty. Yousef Alqamoussi, author of "poems" (2019) and "chapter one: Costa Rica" With delicacy and the vulnerabilities of nostalgia, Wissam Charafeddine's poetry enters the heart through a journey of senses accessing memory. His words illustrate place and ignite sensibility while traveling through the pages of the words he creates. Ali Al-Arithy, Poet and Educator, author of "Safe: "Deceptively simple, his poetry leads you smoothly, then it leaves you staring at the expanse of the city and the depths of its people. The silence in his poems is a teacher, teaching you to come to terms with seemingly opposite worlds that are, in his own words, swing "under the heedless sky" with "different directions, same rhythm." Now in my first year in Michigan, in the nights I couldn't go there, Charafeddine's poetry captured "the sad Detroit river" for me, bringing me close enough to feel it, but keeping me "far enough to recreate" it. Dr. Wessam Elmeligi, Professor of Arabic Literature at University of Michigan-Dearbor

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B087FJ9V6J
• ISBN13: 9798639034909
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.0"