This is a heartbreaking and powerful collection that really brings to life the struggles of living in Gaza. Through his raw and emotional poems, Mosab Abu Toha shows both the pain of constant violence and the small moments of love and resilience, making it a really important read that hits hard.

The marrow of Mosab Abu Toha’s experiences, especially since the Israeli-Hamas War began in October of 2023, spills throughout every poem and phrase in “Forest of Noise: Poems” (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024).

Palestinian poet and founder of the Edward Said Library Abu Toha’s first poetry collection, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” (2022), won the Palestinian Book Award and the American Book Award. With “Forest of Noise,” there is no divide between his poetry and struggles on the frontlines with his family in Gaza. The stark and everlasting generational and environmental horrors are all laid bare on the page.

“My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter: Gaza, May 2021,” Abu Toha takes us on a nighttime journey with his family through bombings in Gaza.  Away from the windows.  Huddled together for shelter and support.  Terror juxtaposes with uncertain happiness for any time they remain safe.  But the poem title says it all. It’s his five-and-a-half-year-old son who now knows if a bomb explodes and scares his younger sister enough; he should cover her with a blanket for a semblance of temporary safety.

Throughout Abu Toha's raging and liminal forest of explosive and echoing noises, the impact of war on our loved ones, not just our children but our aging parents, is in the foreground. The detriment to the literary arts and our conceptualization of home (and a homeland) also simmers beneath the surface of this poignant, must-read poetry book.

Thank you to Mosab Abu Toha, Alfred A. Knopf, and NetGalley for the eARC.

"But of all things,
losing the only photo of my grandfather
under the rubble of my house
was a real disaster.'

This is such a heartbreaking and haunting collection of poems about life in Gaza; each one tears the heart out a little bit more. I feel so grateful to the author for sharing his feelings and experiences; I think I ended up highlighting almost every page because it was all so powerful. Highly recommend this one.

Thank you so much to Knopf and Netgalley for this book.

This collection includes poems from the past several years up to the present as Mosab Abu Toha has survived multiple attacks on Gaza. These poems chronicle the poet's life in Gaza showing the horrors of oppression juxtaposed with moments of joy. The poet puts a spotlight on the tragedies happening in Palestine of which we are still actively witnessing. Yet, it also reminds the reader of the enduring legacy of decades of colonial violence and how this has been a continuation of the Nakba. They examine the violence inflicted on Palestine, the anger at those who turn a blind eye, the exhaustion and burnout of experiencing and witnessing continuous tragedy, and the conflicting emotions of knowing this is the life the world has seemingly deemed acceptable for others. There's also the sense of urgency and fear in these poems that this is all Palestinians will be remembered for - the violence enacted upon them. Who will tell their stories? Who will write their books? Who will be their next generation of poets? Who will prevent Palestinians from becoming just a memory? Mosab Abu Toha asks the reader to consider these questions and I wish there was a way to answer it, to ease the suffering and fears of all Palestinians.

Absolutely breathtaking in its impactful and devastating prose. Mosab Abu Toha cuts straight to the bone and does not ever hold back in portraying the suffering of the Palestinian people, or in showcasing the beauty in their resiliency.. I found this to be an incredibly powerful and necessary collection of poetry. A beautiful voice amidst an entirely avoidable and disturbing ongoing tragedy. Anyone reading Toha's words should feel honored to bear witness to the enduring strength and love of all Gazans. I will be recommending this collection to everyone.

WOW. These poems were so incredibly written and heartbreaking. They were easy to read but really packed a punch.

I read Mosab Abu Toha’s first poetry collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (2022) last year, and absolutely loved it. I admired the Abu Toha’s imagistic precision, how deftly he worked with form—and his craft was the perfect vehicle for dispatches about what it meant to be from Gaza. Since then, I’ve been recommending this collection to poetry lovers and poetry beginners alike, and what it means to be from Gaza has continued to become more of a horror story.

These poems aren’t as form- and craft-forward as those in Abu Toha’s first collection. I kept asking myself, how could they be? This is a book of urgent witness, with poems that seem to have been written and published quickly. This collection doesn’t have things like the long abecedarian from the first. Instead, it’s almost entirely short lyrics that twist the knife with sharp images and painful realizations. A lot of the images in this collection become, devastatingly, the same—bombs, graves. The longest poem recounts when Abu Toha was kidnapped by the IDF as his family tried to leave Gaza—“On your knees!” is a refrain.

I was struck by how many of the poems address or otherwise incorporate family members. Abu Toha’s young children, who grow up, as he has, in the shadow of violence. Elegies for his brother (2000-2016—the dates alone break my heart). These poems are primarily about living under occupation, bombing, constant threat—but also about living—the texture of daily life also includes love and community, memories of oranges.

I’m grateful for Abu Toha’s work, but I hate that it has to exist. I would prefer to live in a world without these poems and with all those, named and nameless, they eulogize.

There is little that can be said to fully capture the emotional impact of Mosab Abu Toha's work. This new collection of poems gives a raw and humanizing look at what has been and is going on in Gaza and all of Palestine. It forces the reader to see beyond the numbers and statistics of genocide, to see the human lives lost, and the ripples of trauma that will carry on through future generations. In this book, Mosab Abu Toha calls on us to witness and to act.

Forest of Noise is filled with immense thoughtfulness, heartache, and near-unimaginable loss. Mosab Abu Toha's singular voice brings an urgency and proximity to Gaza that feels palpable. Though this collection is more experimental than its predecessor, each poem lingers in a way that only the words and imagery of Mosab Abu Toha can linger.

To illustrate, here is one of my favorites from the collection:
"Ramadan 2024

Around that dinner table, missing are the chairs
where my mother, my father,
and my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays,
and where my siblings and their kids
used to drink tea at sunset when they visited.
No one is here anymore. Not even the sunset.
In the kitchen, the table is missing.
In the house, the kitchen is missing.
In the house, the house is missing.

Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise."

this was such a breathtaking collection of poetry, each poem tugs at you until you're face to face and can't do anything but keep reading. it's writing and a sense of resistance that gives you hope that there'll be a free palestine in our future.

"In the refugee camp,
where land is strewn with
debris, where air chokes with rage,
my harvest is yet to arrive,
my seeds only sprout on this page."
— "My Grandfather's Well"

FOREST OF NOISE is a breathtaking and heartbreaking collection from Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toham, which explores the ongoing struggles of living in an occupied country and how those struggles can infect the small moments of joy. He worries about his family still living in Gaza, he mourns the family he has lost. F-16s replace birdsong, but the old house keys survive. Essential reading.

This is a heartbreaking and sobering collection of poems that have a lot of agency and power. They are active poems in so many ways – they commemorate, celebrate, honor, witness, grieve, question, expose, and a laundry list of other verbs; but above all, they represent with unflinching candor what it’s like to grapple with the paradoxical reality of life in modern Gaza. Would strongly recommend for readers looking for deeply personal and emotional examinations of the impact of the Israel-Palestine conflicts on daily life and legacy.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

What a beautiful and devastating collection. I found so much pain in these poems, as I expected because Toha does write about the ongoing genocide. But even more than the pain, it was the mourning that got to me and made me cry. The mourning for lives, both known and unknown, lost and the lives lost to destruction, the farms and habits and school experiences and dreams and hopes. They have lost everything to the bombs and hatred, but Toha provides here an example of the hope that continues on through the pain.

I don’t know how to capture this collection any more than that attempt. It is sad and brutal and devastating and beautiful. Mosab Abu Toha is a wonderful poet detailing a horrific situation.

With unflinching language and heartwrenching imagery, Mosab has crafted an incredibly moving collection of poetry. Detailing the journey of a young Palestinian poet in Gaza, it's particularly harrowing to read this collection while the war continues. It is not an easy read but a necessary one.

"If you live in Gaza, you die several times."

"Will my bones find yours after I die?"

"In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed. Nothing remains for the soul. Even our souls, they get stuck under the rubble for weeks."

"No need for the radio. We are the news."

What a remarkable book. This book is a gift, a jewel, the most beautiful treasure. Mosab has written a masterpiece. And yet..I wish it were about the absolute beauty of Gaza, of Palestine, about the beautiful people of Palestine, alive and well, laughing together. Oh, my heart. I don't have much words other than Free Palestine, from the river to the sea, and Long live the resistance.

What a remarkable book. This book is a gift, a jewel, the most beautiful treasure. Mosab has written a masterpiece. And yet..I wish it were about the absolute beauty of Gaza, of Palestine, about the beautiful people of Palestine, alive and well, laughing together. Oh, my heart. I don't have much words other than Free Palestine, from the river to the sea, and Long live the resistance.

I had to rework this review so many times because this poetry collection had and still evokes so many conflicting emotions that it is hard to articulate properly. There is this strange marriage of brutality and vitality that continues throughout that is hard to encapsulate any emotion let alone one so immensely prominent as the sense of a neverending absence/loss of a culture and its people. You feel capsized by the endless deluge of despair, abject terror, destruction, and even hope. It is disarmingly gentle and melodic in its description of war, that it begs the question "Are you ok, truly ok?" And what would the proper response be anyway? All this just to say that it touched me deeply. The narrative thread feels like it was written in an ancient text describing a part of a time, a part of a country that no longer exists, like Mesopotamia or something, almost like a living artifact. But Palestine exists and so do its people.

Highly Recommend.

This is so heartbreaking and beautiful. The poems are haunting long after you finish the collection.

Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha is a collection of anecdotes so concise and raw and grounded that the closest thing I can compare it to isn’t even “poetry” per se. I’ve been listening to Solange’s 2016 record, A Seat at the Table incessantly this year, and this collection by Abu Toha reminds me of “Mad,” especially Lil Wayne’s verses in it. A Seat at the Table is one of the few records from the last ten years that feels like a masterpiece to me and I would say I think the same about Forest of Noise. I got a lot to be mad about. So does Abu Toha. What’s that old cliché? If you’re not mad you’re not paying attention. The best poetry, to me, is grounded in reality and terse. What is flowery language to a gun? What is it to a bomb? In “Younger than War” Abu Toha writes: “No need for radio:/We are the news.” and in “Mothers and Mulberry Tree” a seemingly idyllic scene ends with “And the drone watches over all.” To some extent we can all relate to this, we’ve all either inflicted violence or had violence inflicted upon us. We’ve all surveilled or been surveilled, we all understand the trauma of these repeating patterns. There is magic in the ability Abu Toha has to piece the violence in these poems together with a tenderness rather than a fury. There is anger present, yes, but instead of perpetual moral righteousness, Abu Toha provides “True or False: A Test by a Gazan Child” if you answer the test truthfully, there is no way to misunderstand the thesis of Forest of Noise.

I received an ARC of Forest of Noise from NetGalley and Knopf. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf. Preorder Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha.

The most important book I've read this year. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars. Mosab Abu Toha’s "Forest of Noise" is more than a collection of poems—it’s a living, historical document. Set against the backdrop of life in Gaza, these poems transform the horror and destruction of war into profoundly moving art. Abu Toha writes with a clarity and intimacy that is both painful and beautiful, capturing moments of fear, hope, and memory that ripple through the chaos.

One striking element of this collection is its stark, unflinching look at life under siege. From instructions on what to do during an air raid to heart-wrenching reflections on the loss of family members, the poems offer a visceral sense of what it’s like to live through conflict. In “Under the Rubble,” Abu Toha’s ability to convey the silence that follows a bomb’s impact speaks volumes: “When a bomb fell, they fell silent.”

While war is ever-present in "Forest of Noise," the poems also offer glimpses of beauty and tenderness. Abu Toha writes about his daughter’s joy in eating oranges—small, fleeting moments of happiness that stand out even more against the harshness of their surroundings. These moments ground the collection in humanity, showing that even in the darkest times, life goes on.

This is not an easy book to read. Each poem carries the weight of grief, loss, and trauma, and yet it also insists on the resilience of the human spirit. Abu Toha’s voice speaks not only to his personal experience but also to the collective experience of those living in Gaza. The devastation he describes is unimaginable to many of us, yet through his poetry, we are invited to witness it, to feel it, and to reflect on the ongoing suffering.

"Forest of Noise" is a powerful reminder of the role poetry plays in resistance and remembrance. Abu Toha’s words are a testament to the endurance of Palestinian culture and identity, even in the face of overwhelming destruction. This collection is a must-read for anyone looking to understand the human cost of conflict, and it will leave you with images and emotions that are impossible to forget.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.