Blindfold

John Asfour, John Mikhail Asfour

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780773586307
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Blinded by a grenade in Lebanon as a teenager, poet John Asfour came to Canada armed with James Joyce's words, "For the eyes, they bring us nothing. I have a hundred worlds to create and I am only losing one of them." Blindfold investigates the ways in which disability influences our lives and is magnified in our minds. In a series of thematically linked poems, Asfour draws the metaphor of the blindfold across the eyes of sighted citizens who are impaired by estrangement, emotional complexity, and social pressures.

A sense of exile and belonging dominates the poems, following the journey of a blind man whose life in his new land has been hampered by prejudice and barriers to communication. Exposing the rich and surprising possibilities of a life that has undergone a frightening transformation, Blindfold relates feelings of loss, displacement, and disorientation experienced not only by the disabled but by everyone who finds themselves separated from the norm.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Different World
• Mediterranean Eyes
• The Blind Shepherd
• Call to Mind
• Admitting the Light
• Telling Her Stories
• The Straw Chair
• Uncle
• Silver Threads
• Wings
• December 25th
• The Intruder
• A Sunday in June
• Blindfold
• The Cutting Edge
• Surgery
• Ultimate
• Anticipation
• A Shot in the Paper
• Reflections
• Booting the PC
• Confined Kisses
• Did Not Own Up
• Beyond Belief
• In the Metro
• The Interview
• The Curtain’s Down
• Division of Labour
• Etched on the Mind
• Falling-Out
• Black Hole
• Eggs
• Morning Coffee
• Oblivious
• At Fifty-Five
• Passing Desires
• Repudiation
• Second Hand Love
• Short of History
• Waiting
• Casual Hand Shake
• We Only Meet in a Poem Now
• Acknowledgments