Poems from Guantanamo:The Detainees Speak Edited by Marc Falkoff University of Iowa Press, 2007. Reviewed by Mohd Asim Siddiqui It will be a cliché to suggest that anything can be the subject matter of poetry or that poetry can represent variety of feelings and emotions. Hanif Kureishi is of the view that the forbidden, the sacred, and the unspeakable must all be represented in art. “Theatre, or poetry, or dance, the novel, or pop are the places where it is possible to speak of the darkest and most dangerous things.” Interpreting Kureishi’s words, Wendy O’ Shea-Meddour points out that an “artist who silences or refuses to listen to the ‘words inside his own body’ is accused of reflecting and perpetuating dictatorial societies in which ‘free speech’ is denied. Marc Falkoff, the editor of the short book titled Poems from Guantanamo:The Detainees Speak must be complimented for presenting before the world the innermost feelings and emotions —dangerous from the point of view of US government ---of detainees held in the US detention centre at Guntanamo Bay, Cuba. An important feature of the book is the preface brilliantly written by Flagg Miller and an equally important afterword written by Ariel Dorf man. Of the 775 prisoners, to quote the Department of State data, fewer than half are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. As the jacket of the book notes “in hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable”. Obviously the editor, with help from the lawyers, had to face the difficult job of getting the clearance from the military and the Pentagon “Privilege Review Team” to publish them as most of the poems were “deemed unsuitable for public release on the grounds that they revealed interrogation techniques that the military had a legitimate interest in keeping secret.” How art can sometimes come out from difficult conditions and how the expression of feelings can become a pressing need for the artist is proved by the circumstances in which the poems were composed. Without access to pen and paper, and without any hope of their poems seeing the light of the day many of the poems were composed on Styrofoam cups with toothpaste. Though thousands of poetic words failed to get clearance from the military, the few poems that have survived- thanks to the courageous efforts of Mark Falkoff, the editor of this book, Flagg Miller, a linguistic and cultural anthropologist, Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean poet and human rights activist and a great many volunteer lawyers-are enough to throw light on what was going on in the minds of the detainees. Some of the poems offer a trenchant criticism of the United States of America. A country that boasts of freedom and peace, that is the protector of human rights in different parts of the world can treat its prisoners so poorly in violation of all human norms. Martin Mubanga, who was released in 2005, writes: America sucks, America chills, While d’ blood of d’ Muslims is forever getting spilled, In the streets of Nablus, in d’ streets of Jenin,