Arabic Poetry is a dazzling, one-of-a-kind showcase of a fascinating literary tradition that is as vast as it is deep, spanning a period of fifteen centuries in regions from Morocco to Iraq. Themes of love, nature, religion, and politics recur in works drawn from the pre-Islamic oral tradition through poems anticipating the recent Arab Spring. Given the enormous timespan, the editor has chosen to focus her selection on poems reflecting desire and longing of various kinds: for the beloved, for the divine, for the homeland, and for change and renewal. Poets include the legendary pre-Islamic warrior "Antara Ibn Shaddad, medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Zaydun, the wandering poet Al-A"sha, and the influential Egyptian Romantic Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi. Here too are literary giants of the past century: Khalil Jibran, author of the bestselling The Prophet; popular Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani; Palestinian feminist Fadwa Tuqan; Mahmoud Darwish, bard of occupation and exile; acclaimed iconoclast Adonis,...