Tuffaha, Lena Khalaf: Water & Salt

Red Hen Press, paperback Publication Date: April 27, 2017 Publisher Marketing: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's debut, Water & Salt, sings in the voices of people ravaged by cycles of war and news coverage. These poems alternately rage, laugh, celebrate and grieve, singing in the voices of people ravaged by cycles of war and news coverage and inviting the reader to see the human lives lived beyond the headlines. “Aside from wheat, essential ingredients for making bread are water and salt. And in Lena Tuffaha’s luminous poems, she provides the necessary words to feed our humanity. The poems in Water & Salt are fearless and frank. They speak of a place where a phone call announces doom and where ‘portraits find their frames.’ But always, despite the violence and war, in the music of Tuffaha’s poetry there is a clear summons, beckoning us to join in the feast of her language. These are poems that rise, surge, and stir us.”  ―Oliver de La Paz, author of Requiem for the Orchard “Arab-American