decades before it appeared in English, and depicts the desolation of New York City as emblematic of empire, described as a violently anti-American, in the poem Walt Whitman the known American poet, as the champion of democracy, is taken to task, particularly in Section 9, which addresses Whitman directly. Adonis wrote the poem in spring 1971 after a visit to the United States. Unlike his poem "The Desert", where Adonis presented the pain of war and siege without naming and anchoring the context, in this poem he refers explicitly to a multitude of historical figures and geographical locations. He pits poets against politicians, the righteous against the exploitative. The English translation of this long poem from Arabic skips some short passages of the original (indicated by ellipses), but the overall effect remains intact. The poem is made up of 10 sections, each denouncing New York City in a different way. It opens by presenting the beastly nature of the city and by satirizing the Statue of Liberty. "A Grave for New York" is an obvious example of Adonis's larger project of reversing the Orientalist paradigm to re-claim what he terms 'eastern' values as positive. "Al-Kitab" (book) Arabic for "The Book", Adonis worked on this book, a three-volume epic that adds up to almost two thousand pages, from 1995 to 2003. In "Al-Kitab", the poet travels on land and through the history and politics of Arab societies, beginning immediately after the death of the prophet Muhammad and progressing through the ninth century, which he considers the most significant period of Arab history, an epoch to which he repeatedly alludes. Al-Kitab provides a large lyric-mural rather than an epic that attempts to render the political, cultural, and religious complexity of almost fifteen centuries of Arab civilization. The book was translated to French by Houria Abdelouahed and published in 2013. "Adonis: Selected Poems" (book) Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa and described as "a genuine overview of the span of Adonis's", the book is the inclusion of a number of poems of between five and fifteen or so pages in length. The book included selected poems from the following poem collections: "First Poems (1957)" "Songs of Mihyar of Damascus (1961)" "Migrations and Transformations in the Regions of Night and Day (1965)" "Stage and Mirrors (1968)" "A Time Between Ashes and Roses (1971)" "Singular in a Plural Form (1975)" "The Book of Similarities and