"The first new poems I've liked for years . . .Unpredictable, savage, chaotic. There is something of Zbigniew Herbert in them, clever, abstract, musing stuff, but they are this year's model, an 'upgrade,' as we would say, with terrifying bleakness in place of his periodic geniality." —Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement
"Mersal doesn’t offer herself as a representative of her country, culture, or religion, and her feminism manifests not as a creed but as a tone, a disposition toward life and love. Her voice is so inviting, so familiar, so confiding that it’s even easy to forget that these are translations: Creswell renders her as a perfect contemporary . . . To read The Threshold is to be heartened by poem after poem that exhibits the whole woman—heart and mind, candor and cunning." —Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books
[Mersal's poetry] is bracing, clever, and terse, but slippery too. The self is not her subject so much as an impediment that she writes around; there’s deceit, disloyalty, duplicity, misdirection . . . There is an almost joyful sense of privacy in Mersal’s poems: She obscures as much as she discloses." —Amir-Hussein Radjy, The Nation
"This selection, drawn from [Mersal's] first four books and nimbly translated from the Arabic, showcases the sweet, tough verve of her voice." —The New York Times Book Review
"Mersal's poems are many things—sensuous, cerebral, intimate, angry and disorientating. They provide food for thought and elicit laughter in the dark . . . [The Threshold is] a perfect entry point for readers new to her work." —Malcolm Forbes, The National
"Ravishing . . . Mersal’s poems read like short stories; they are spare but resonant, full of charming misfits, and governed by chance." —Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, 4Columns
"Mersal’s work is unafraid of its own promontories and edges . . . the poems read like missives of faith addressed to a shadowy, mirrored world of choices unmade and lives unlived, now assuming the force of a haunting." —Alex Tan, Asymptote
"In a voice both fluid and laser-focused, fierce and tenuous, unflinching and vulnerable, [Mersal] hews a path that is post-Arab-modernist, unsettling certainties about the ground from which an individual sees and speaks . . . The individual poems, and the collection itself, reflect Mersal’s compassionate and ruthless exploration of a complicated journey through contemporary history and troubled geographies." —Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., Book Page
"In Mersal’s writing, humor serves as a sign of life and of the insistence—stubborn, courageous—to bear witness to any situation without sacralizing it." —Maru Pabón, Bidoun
“The publication of Iman Mersal’s The Threshold is a major literary event. Long recognized throughout the Arab world and in Europe, Mersal is one of the strongest confessional (or postconfessional) poets we now have, in any language: her poems are fueled by a mordant wit, sensual vibrancy, and feminist brio. Impatient with pieties—whether political, erotic, or poetic—she writes, like Louise Glück, with emotional intensity and analytic coolness. This is poetry of earned and perfect pitch: the notations of an impassioned mind. I read The Threshold straight through; it will become a permanent companion.” —Maureen N. McLane, author of More Anon
“Undeceived, ironic, daring, Iman Mersal’s poems are animated by a singular sensibility. They deal candidly with real life—migration, dying parents, emotional entanglements—and discover general truths among the fine particulars. Robyn Creswell’s translation is deft and subtle, and the Anglophone world is lucky to have it.” —Nick Laird, author of Feel Free
