Alien, Correspondent

These astute, generous poems give us contemporary Beirut in all its ravaged and incongruent beauty.

This arresting first collection is, in part, a delicately balanced look at Beirut from the perspective of a Westerner who lives and works in that remarkable city. Whether writing about the Middle East or about domestic life, Di Nardo refuses to romanticize; he doesn’t moralize about the causes of perennial conflicts. He is that rare thing: a clear-eyed witness.

Here and there Starbucks coffee...