The Collector of Bodies: Concern for Syria and the Middle East

By Diane Glancy

A 1994 trip to Syria and Jordan as an Arts America Speaker for the United States Information Agency began the group of poems for The Collector of Bodies. The manuscript stayed in a file until the Civil War began in Syria, March 18, 2011, the author's 70th birthday. The poems were retrieved, and the manuscript continued.

Glancy wrote as an observer--as someone who had talked to the students in the universities--who had experienced a foreboding of what was ahead for Syria, especially after listening to the unrest of the students. In the bright sunlight, as they walked toward her, smiling, she felt an inexplicable point of grief. She heard the desire of the people to be free. Later, following the uprising of civil war on the news, she knew she was seeing the price the Syrians would pay for that desire.

A visit to a foreign country leaves part of oneself in that place. But something in return is taken. This collection of poems explores the "something that is taken" with implications for the Christian believer and the issues involved. What can be done in a world full of refugees? Is there anything to do other than stand back and watch?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532603013

Diane Glancy

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. She has published six books with Wipf & Stock— Uprising of Goats (2014), One of Us (2015), Ironic Witness (2015), Mary Queen of Bees (2017), and The Servitude of Love (2017). Check out my interview with Sheila Tousey

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THE COLLECTOR OF BODIES

Concern for Syria and the Middle East

Diane Glancy

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The Collector of Bodies

Concern for Syria and the Middle East

Copyright © 2016 Diane Glancy. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

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8

th Ave., Suite

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Eugene, OR

97401

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0300-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0302-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0301-3

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

November 28, 2016

Table of Contents

Title Page

Part One: A Journey into Syria and Jordan

Notebook of a Trip

Damascus, March 24, 1994

Down to the Simplest Wire in the Human Voice

The University at Lattakia

Can You Imagine Hearing No Stories?

Blue

Despondency

Presentiment

Monday, March 28, Private Dinner Hosted by Bohemian Syrian Writers and Dissidents

Ebla, Syria

Departure to Another Place

Bedouin Girl Reads about Transportation in Russia

Ding-y Bat Attackment

Irrigation

Histronics

A Blueprint of Heroics

The Leaving

At the Poetry House, Tucson, April 27th

Jerney

Near Tucson in the Desert

Instructures

North Dakota, March 4th

Necessary Departures

Moab

The Whole of What Story

Roof

Tough Cookie

You Wild and Turbulent Riding a Big Machine

Restorytive

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Weaponry

The Heroics of History

Post Multiculturalism

Damascus Square

Inviolate

Pulp

An End Note to Part One

Part Two: The Civil War in Syria

The Watch

The day we refuse to bow—3/18/11

The Wind at the End of the World

Scorched Earth

The Storm Wind Engulfing

The Collector of Bodies in Houla

Now Homs Again

Pieces of the News (1)

Loading Zone for Interior Traffic

In a dream I climbed the stairs.

The Cup He Cried For

Unknown No. 14

Wired

Prayer for Syria

ISIS

The Loneliest Road

Pieces of the News (2)

Until Nothing Is Left

Residue

Afterword

Acknowledgments

PART ONE

A Journey into Syria and Jordan

Our writing comes from forgetfulness, not from memory.

Ahmad Iskander Suleiman, Writer, Damascus, Syria

Hide me from the secret counsel . . . from the insurrection

[of those] who whet their tongue like a sword and bend

their bows to shoot their arrows—Psalm 64:2-3

Notebook of a Trip

Over a ten-day spring break, between the two wars of the two Bush administrations, I went to Syria and Jordan as an Arts America speaker for the United States Information Agency, when it was still in operation. I gave readings and lectured about Native American culture. I answered questions about America. They asked about the violence. Was I afraid to leave my house?

I remember stopping at the airport in Athens, Greece, where armed soldiers boarded the plane to search it. I remember landing in Cairo, taking off again, seeing a pyramid like a thimble on the barren land. I remember the square in Damascus where the driver pointed, that’s where they hold public executions.

In Syria, I visited Aleppo University, the University of Damascus, Tishrin University in Lattakia, and Ba’th University in Homs, sometimes traveling a hundred miles between cities in an American Embassy van with a US cultural attaché, a visiting Fulbright fellow and the Syrian driver. In Jordan, I visited the Jordan Writer’s Union, the Arab Writer’s Union, Al Isra University in Amman, the Jordan University for Women, and various other groups.

Afterwards, the trip settled like an encampment on a hill. Maybe the trip was more intense because I was on land that connected to Christianity. The trip uncovered thoughts that had been pushed down by an academic setting. I heard, we’re people of the book—Jews, Christians, Muslims, from the Muslims more than once. I was asked to explain Christianity—How it meant different things to different people. But for me, it meant salvation through faith in the death