The Not-So-Brief Useful

About this book

In a world running breathlessly after the brief and useful, Ali Salem comes to leap outside the flock with The Not-So-Brief Useful. This work is not merely a collection of poetry in Egyptian colloquial; it is the bag of the subconscious mind suddenly opened to scatter the tales of the streets, the aches of closed rooms, and the soul's questions approaching forty with a child's trepidation and an old man's wonder. Within these pages you will find a poet building a stele with every ten verses, not to glorify kings but to document the fractures of the ordinary human who buys straw because he never once owned the price of gold. The work's tone progresses between the obscurity of a self hiding the traces of its emotional crimes, and the inspiration of confessing fear as a lone brave act in a world of masks. Have you ever wondered about the price of availability in a time when meeting grew rare? Or how a headache pill can summarize the tragedy of a clever tailor run over by the train of arrogance? Ali Salem dives into our neglected details: from the silence of grandfather's ancient palm tree, to Shalimo the soda can lid that died suffocated by loneliness. It is a work written for those who refuse lies, and for those who glimpse the features of happiness in the eyes of a dog rescuing its owner, or in the tears of a vendor chasing a living for his wife. The Not-So-Brief Useful is an invitation to open the closed windows and confess that truth is sometimes unwanted by people because it shatters their illusions.