By Bethany McCarl
Found Poems from Exit West
(From page 45) #1
Nadia led Saeed.
He felt.
She sat.
Aren’t you going to take that off?
You first.
Together, then.
Together.
(From page 64) #2
They smoked.
They pleasured.
His head rested.
“You want to get married?”
“To me?”
“To you.”
She felt great tenderness.
She felt
terror.
She felt
complicated,
resentment,
“I don’t know.”
(From page 136) #3
They sat.
He extended a hand.
She took it.
Promise.
I do.
They felt closer.
They had been born.
(From page 153) #4
We’ve left.
We have no connection.
Apart.
No answer.
Despite the horrors,
he had felt.
She had felt.
They had felt together.
(From page 186) #5
Saeed and Nadia
found themselves changed.
A man of substance.
She felt strangely unmoved,
without desire.
(From page 187-188) #6
He believed he loved her.
Resentment
made him angry.
He wanted to feel.
Loss
left him unmoored.
He cared,
wanted to protect.
She was family.
He hoped.
They were better.
(From page 230) #7
Beside one another
under the sky.
They looked,
they spoke.
Two lives.
Former lovers,
not wounded.
Together.
Imagine how different life would be.
Imagine how different it would be.
What is a “found poem?”
“Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.”
Artist Statement-2018: Bethany McCarl
I have always found poetry in small things. I find poetry in the way leaves move in the wind. How they change colors and fall to the ground and are born again. I find poetry in the way a mother bird makes a nest from what humans call dirt and sticks and provides a shelter for her babies, until they are able to fly on their own. I find poetry in the way a dog will wait at the door for her owner all day. Poetry is all around us in everything that happens in life. You just need to have the eyes and heart to find it. In Hamid’s Exist West, poetry is all over the pages, so I did not reorganize any of the words to make my series of found poems; the poems were already made. Hamid’s words are so powerful and heartfelt that all I had to do was pick my favorite ones.
The story of Nadia and Saeed’s relationship is what I call a “journey in reverse” due to the fact that they start out as passionate lovers, but, instead of progressing in that relationship, become increasingly like brother and sister to each other. I find their love story to be both heartbreaking and beautiful simultaneously. They start out very passionate, timid in a sensual way, and find themselves hoping to get married one day. As their relationship develops, their passion grows. But as their migratory experiences get increasingly difficult, they find themselves falling out of that passion with one another. Their love they retain, though it evolves into something different, something that emerges from living in their city of blackness, to losing Saeed’s mother and leaving Saeed’s father behind, to migrating time and time again. While much is lost and destroyed, they find family in each other. I think they do not want to risk losing another member of their family, so they stop the romance and accept the fact that their love has changed into a protective and bonded sort of love.
We all have love stories of our own. Hamid’s novel reminded me of a love I had lost, but also a love I have found. It awoke the sleeping poet within me, with the natural flow of its words, and the raw, intense relationship between Nadia and Saeed. It is important to read books that make you feel. Now I will always have this novel to reopen, in case the poet inside of me falls asleep again.