Lost Praises

Complimentary words touch us deeply; kind expressions leave behind a beauty that lingers-perhaps for a lifetime. What does praise do to us? And how do we transform others when we praise them?Does the universe itself change when we praise things our houses, our years, our old streets?Raed Al-Eid does not begin his book with a preface, but with a beginning; nor does he end with a conclusion, but with a new enchantment. He walks you along the edges of things, not to introduce them, but to teach you how to see them as if for the first time. In his pages, praise does not dwell in the palaces of language, but wanders through alleys, pauses at the margin of a painting, drinks from the cup of contemplation, and stitches together the voids of forgetting. Here, in Lost Praises, praise is hesitant, wandering, contemplative, perhaps delayed yet sincere, always finding its way. The praises of this book are not ready-made poems, nor certificates of merit; they are not about someone, but about everything meditations on forgotten beauty, on the small details that are rarely praised, yet are most deserving. Beginnings without prefaces, ceilings without walls, frames that fashion paintings out of whiteness; play that is not for amusement, vistas from above, almond trees that reveal the fragility of the shell and the firmness within; places beyond place, and margins where meanings lie resting, denied their space in the text.