Elia Abu Madi
Elia Abu Madi | |
---|---|
Born | إيليا أبو ماضي (Īlyā Abū Māḍī ) May 15, 1890 Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Syria |
Died | November 23, 1957 (aged 67) New York, United States of America |
Occupation |
|
Nationality | Lebanese |
Genre | poetry |
Literary movement | Mahjar (The Pen League), New York City |
Relatives | [1] |
Elia Abu Madi (also known as Elia D. Madey; Arabic: إيليا أبو ماضي Īlyā Abū Māḍī [note 1]) (May 15, 1890 – November 23, 1957) was a Lebanese-born American poet.
Early life
[edit]Abu Madi was born in the village of Al-Muhaydithah, now part of Bikfaya, Lebanon, on May 15, 1890 to a Greek Orthodox Christian family. At the age of 11 he moved to (Alexandria, Egypt) where he worked with his uncle.
Career and Works
[edit]In 1911, Elia Abu Madi published his first collection of poems, Tazkar al-Madi. Shortly after, he was exiled by the Ottoman authorities[2] and he left Egypt for the United States, where he settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1916, he moved to New York City and began a career in journalism. In New York, Abu Madi met and worked with a number of Arab-American poets including Gibran Khalil Gibran. He married the daughter of Najeeb Diab, editor of the Arabic-language magazine Meraat-ul-Gharb, and became its chief editor in 1918. His second poetry collection, Diwan Iliya Abu Madi, was published in New York in 1919; his third and most important collection, Al-Jadawil ("The Streams"), appeared in 1927. His other books were Al-Khama'il ("The Thickets")[3](1940) and Tibr wa Turab (posthumous, 1960).
In 1929, Abu Madi founded his own periodical, As-Samir, in Brooklyn. It began as a monthly but after a few years it was published five times a week.
His poems are very well known among Arabs; poet, author, and journalist Gregory Orfalea wrote that "his poetry is as commonplace and memorized in the Arab world as that of Robert Frost is in ours."[note 2]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Lebanese Arabic Transliteration: Īlya Abu Māḍi, pronounced [ˈʔiːlja (ʔa)buˈmɑːdi].
- ^ In A Community of Many Worlds: Arab Americans in New York City, ed. Kathleen Benson, Syracuse University Press, 2002, page 62.
External links
[edit]- A photo of Elia Abu Madi as a member of Al-Rabita Al-Qalamiyya (The Pen League).
Scholarly criticism
[edit]- Ahmad, Imtyaz. "Abu Madi: A Voice of Modernity in Contemporary Arabic Poetry" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 15, 2016. Retrieved July 30, 2016.
- Alawi, Nabil. "Arab American Poets: The Politics of Exclusion and Assimilation" (PDF).
- Boullata, Issa J. "Iliya Abu Madi and the Riddle of Life in His Poetry" Journal of Arabic Literature, 1986; 17: 69-81. (journal article)
- Nijland, Cornelis. "Religious Motifs and Themes in North American Mahjar Poetry" pp. 161–81 IN: Borg, Gert (ed. and introd.); De Moor, Ed (ed.); Representations of the Divine in Arabic Poetry. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi; 2001. 239 pp. (book article)
- Romy, Cynthia Johnson. Diwan Al-Jadawil of Iliya Abu Madi (Masterʻs thesis, University of Arizona). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291551
References
[edit]- ^ Marmorstein, Emile (October 1964). "Rāshid Husain: Portrait of an Angry Young Arab". Middle Eastern Studies. 1 (1): 3–20. doi:10.1080/00263206408700002.
- ^ Orfalea, Gregory (2002). Benson, Kathleen; Kayal, Philip (eds.). My Mother's Zither. New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 63. ISBN 0815607393.
- ^ Ahmad, Imtyaz. "Abu Madi: A Voice of Modernity in Contemporary Arabic Poetry" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 15, 2016. Retrieved July 30, 2016.
Sources
[edit]- Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, Brill, 1977.
- Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, 1980.
- The New Anthology of American Poetry, eds. Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, Thomas J. Travisano, Rutgers University Press, 2005.
- Orfalea, Gregory; Elmusa, Sharif, eds. (1999). Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-American Poetry. New York: Interlink. pp. 65–82. ISBN 1566563380.
- Poeti arabi a New York. Il circolo di Gibran, introduzione e traduzione di F. Medici, prefazione di A. Salem, Palomar, Bari 2009. ISBN 88-7600-340-1. ISBN 978-88-7600-340-0.
- 1890 births
- 1957 deaths
- American people of Lebanese descent
- 20th-century American poets
- 20th-century Lebanese poets
- Lebanese writers
- American writers of Lebanese descent
- American male journalists
- Lebanese male poets
- 20th-century American male writers
- American male non-fiction writers
- American Arabic-language poets
- Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the United States