Which Seeds Will Grow?

A new collection of poems by Palestinian-American Catholic poet Andrew Calis, Which Seeds Will Grow? ​finds hope in the Holy Land. Grappling with his identity as a Christian Palestinian American, Andrew Calis recalls his father who saw Israeli jets swoop over his house in Jerusalem and a military helicopter fire bullets into his front yard. The same father who wouldn’t teach his children Arabic, for fear that they would have accented English, who kept his past close to his chest—unknown to his son. He recounts the death of his grandfather, a grandfather who would beat his father, and for whom he could not fully mourn because Arab men don’t cry. Andrew Calis digs through the pain of his family and of his homeland to find the fragile seed of contained life and delicate hope for the Holy Land—and reflects on how tenderly that seed must be nurtured. Steeped in wonder, Which Seeds Will Grow? explores the past and the present, from ancient Jerusalem to Baltimore’s gardens and alleys throu