Praise for Thirteen Departures From the Moon

"Scribble this little map/on a torn napkin—" but Deema Shehabi's map is huge and deep as she weaves the threads of landscape, earth and sky, into a cloth wide enough to cover everyone. Her grandfather was the mayor of Gaza— in his light, in the light of her precious mother and her people's ongoing pain, with a stunning lyrical gift of seeing and knowing, she walks the wide world through language that redeems and blesses. Her poems are crucial, passionate, magnificent.” 

— Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Sometimes a new poet appears who has a generous field of vision, a craft at once well-honed and extravagant, and a unique point of view, with narratives that could belong to no one else—a poet who, by being of her specific time and place, writes for the widest world. As Anglophone readers greeted the emergence of Derek Walcott, Yusef Komunyakaa or Eavan Boland, so must we open our eyes and our minds to the poems of Deema Shehabi.” 

— Marilyn Hacker, author of Names

An amazing richness of imagery, deep political awareness, an authentic emotional pulse, and a sure mythic imagination mark Deema Shehabi's Thirteen Departures From the Moon. Each poem in this collection is a clear, honest yet intensely transformed communication, dripping with a honey-like sweetness of literary gifts.

— Annie Finch, author of Calendars