Saturday, August 08, 2015

The real place of Kahlil Gibran in the US culture: an antidote for Lebanese myths about the man

"The burning question during my freshman year in college was whether “The Prophet,” a slim volume of poetic essays by the early-20th-century Lebanese writer and artist Kahlil Gibran, was more spiritually profound than Captain Beefheart’s seminal album, “Trout Mask Replica.” I still haven’t decided.

On boomer bookshelves the world over, grubby copies of the text, most likely given by a first love, nestle alongside the collected works of Rod McKuen. Our window for welcoming poetry — and probably enlightenment — is narrow but deep, and any author who slips through it can be life-altering. But “Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet,” an animated attempt to turn the essays into a family movie, won’t give you goose bumps of nostalgia; it’s more likely to put you to sleep."