The latest book titled “Clay Tablets in Nietzsche's Cave” by Saudi poet Raed Anis Al-Jishi published by the Sail Publishing House represents a true poetic gem of modern Saudi poetry.
Poet Raed Anis Al-Jishi is one of the most prominent contemporary Saudi poetic figures. His latest poetry book titled “Clay Tablets in Nietzsche's Cave” confirms his literary and poetic discourse. The book was published by the Sail publishing House, with the preface by George Elliott Clarke, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2016 & 2017) and E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian LIterature University of Toronto. The book has already captured the hearts of readers around the world and was present in the international book fairs.
The author has a rich international literary career. He is an international awarded poet and translator from Qateef - Saudi Arabia). Has an honorary fellowship in writing from Iowa university-USA, he is a member of the advisory committee of the exquisite Teacher training plan of the national Changua University of Education - Taiwan and an editor (modern dialogs- Macedonia).
His poetry has an unique poetic expression shaped by his personal believes and emotions, wrapped up in the philosophical and mystical package that expresses his poetic arriving.
From the Preface by George Elliott Clarke
Clay Tablets in Nietzsche's Cave is a masterful, poetic work, and as momentous for the reception of Arabic poetry in English, as was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls for theologians and anthropologists. These “clay tablets”excavated ostensibly from the cave of the Neanderthal of atheistic philosophy unfurl a tour-deforce of aphoristic verses insisting on our need to sing, especially in negotiating our existence as animate dust, prostrate before Divinity. Raed Anis Al-Jishi will remind some readers of Rumi. However, his mysticism--if that's what it is--moves in sympathy with the surrealism of Octavio Paz. The strangeness of his insight always conveys deep feeling: “Your shiver is an outpouring of beauty.”In fact, you're "burying yourself with your self.” Moreover, “your shadow, as you know, is your only legacy / to the inheritance of the crucifixion.” Al-Jishi's verses, like those of the love-crazed bard, Majnun, contemplate poetry's eternal defiance of mortality: “drizzle wishes to write your blood's Iliad // and feels proud when it reads it / and asks itself: is it really me / who wrote the elegy of bleeding?” In a sense, Al-Jishi tells us, in lines vivid as fire and clear as water, a cave-bound philosopher is always out-thought, out-theologian'd, by the poetry inscribed on the clay, even if broken, tablets flanking the mortal self.