Bitar was born in Beirut, settled in Canada, studied and published in the U.S. and travelled widely, and his poetry addresses current geopolitical realities with an informed and idiosyncratic gaze. The book is firmly engaged, in complicated ways, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a look at the titles in the table of contents confirms: “Mission Creep,” “Power-Sharing Formula,” “Divide and Rule,” “Waterboarding,” “The Barricade Auction” etc. Bitar was a teaching/writing fellow at Iowa...
