Premonition

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet, visual artist, and essayist. Her rich body of work documents an unblinking witness to beauty in nature, human beings and art; to cruelty, especially as enacted in the mindless violence of war; and to the power of love and human perseverance. In PREMONITION the voice is wise and paradoxical, opening with the observation, "There's always a conductive thread through space for untenable positions." Sentences are set apart in aphoristic cuts never wholly separate from this "conductive thread," and always shaped by the gem-like compressions of poetry. PREMONITION is a short book that refuses finality in a world of contingencies and human unpredictability. The only sure place to stand, in this late work of Etel Adnan's, must be created from day to day in life and art.