"totally alive, funny, sharp, shapely, and never dull" — Wayne Koestenbaum
Thank You For The Window Office is the second book by Egyptian-American poet and translator Maged Zaher. This is a book as much about alienation as it is about belonging. Zaher investigates the subtleties of place and identity in late-capitalism, the corporate world, and the dating scene. These poems navigate the linguistic landscapes that an immigrant writing in his non-native tongue negotiates daily in a foreign culture. This unusual confluence creates a wry exploration of the social and lingual that blends the musicality of the Arabic language with a sardonic humor unique to America popular culture.
Excerpt ˇExcerpt
On why I became a terrorist:
My childhood was bad—
The government invited everyone to brunch
But showed up late
Having a sexy mother didn’t help either
So I composed poems
While watching you drink
There is suffering in the universe
It can give you pleasant feelings to know
That others are also tired
The futurists were on our backs
Never agree to the fifteen-minute rule
Close ˆ
About the Author
Maged Zaher is the author of Thank You for the Window Office (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), The Revolution Happened and You Didn't Call Me (Tinfish Press, 2012) and Portrait of the Poet As an Engineer (Pressed Wafer, 2009). His collaborative work with the Australian poet Pam Brown, Farout Library Software, was published by Tinfish Press in 2007. His translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry have appeared in Jacket, Banipal, and Denver Quarterly. His poems have appeared in 6X6, among other journals. He has performed his work at Subtext, Bumbershoot, Chapterhouse, the Kootenay School of Writing, St. Marks Project, Evergreen State College, and The American University in Cairo.
Links
An excerpt of Thank You for the Window Office from Rattapallax
Portrait of the Poet As an Engineer on SPD
Book Details
Trade PaperbackPerfect-bound. 88 pp, 6 x 8 in.
ISBN 978-1-933254-97-5
Publication Date: December 1, 2012
Distribution: SPD
Funding: the National Endowment for the Arts.
- 02.18.14 | Maged Zaher's Thank You For The Window Office is reviewed in Pleiades
- 06.21.13 | Maged Zaher is interviewed at HTML Giant
- 03.02.13 | UDP books by Joshua Edwards, Cecilia Vicuña, and Maged Zaher are on SPD's February best seller list
- 01.30.13 | Maged Zaher is "out to lunch" with David Ulin in LA Times
News and Reviews
Advance Praise
Maged Zaher: my favorite discovery, so far, of 2013. His poems are totally alive, funny, sharp, shapely, and never dull. A great pleasure to read this effervescent, awake book.—Wayne Koestenbaum
Maged Zaher is in my view the contemporary writer simultaneously the furthest inside and the most outside the English language as we know it. If Frank O'Hara had been an Arab and a Coptic Christian living in late capitalist Seattle, he would have been called Maged Zaher.—Leonard Schwartz