Somewhere Else
Reviews

2006 American Book Award Winner

Black Issues Book Review:
"It feels shamefully rare now to find poems like these—each stanza is a set of open arms to the world. In Somewhere Else, Shenoda's first book, he weaves both contemporary and ancient language around the historical context of his own familial and cultural experience. . . Shenoda leads the reader on a journey that is at times mythic and often rebellious—he recounts his grandmother's proverbs in the same breath as rousing a cry against police brutality."

Altar Magazine:
"Matthew Shenoda's book of poetry, Somewhere Else, is a mosaic of time, culture, and understanding. . . . those who read Somewhere Else will be inspired by the truths he tells."

Minneapolis Observer:
"With his first book, Matthew Shenoda asserts himself as a poet capable of latitude. His poems are as much about oppression and rebellion as they are about wordplay and jazz; they're at home in the Nile Valley and on the b-ball court. . . . They practically beg to come off the page and be performed."

NewPages.com:
"[Shenoda's] poems leap from contemporary urban American to pre-industrial Egypt, trying to make sense of the disparity. . . . Like Brautigan, Bukowski, Tu Fu and others, he gets tot the heart of the matter without affectation, excess or aesthetic red herring."

Juan Felipe Herrera:
"These papyrus-dipped poems launch the Eastern desert into the ‘Forever-West' where we all dwell. Listen to Shenoda's ‘giraffe tongue' unwind—incantations reclaiming the Coptic earth and its peoples, stories and sufferings, a grandmother and grandfather's lessons of war, death, rebirth, love and peace. This book holds the keys to our present global predicament—each word is a star in our night."

Simon Ortiz:
"While reading Matthew Shenoda's Somewhere Else, I become acutely aware of history insisting on the verity of knowledge. History is more than memory. It is hope and experience. And it is the passion of life. And for Shenoda, it is the connection to the Nile of story, song, music, dance, and the power of language between Egypt and America. Great poetry you can dance to!"

Quincy Troupe:
"The history of Egypt and the Nile River Valley are strikingly evoked in these tightly crafted, most times short, terse poems, with lines full of surprises, as in: ‘I am somewhere/between home & home,' or ‘in our bodies a rooted history.' These are strongly political, beautiful and peaceful poems and they constantly remind us: ‘Holy things/Do not die.' Somewhere Else is a wise, eloquent book."