The Stings of Monroe’s Wine

The Stings of Monroe’s Wine is a poetry collection by Yemeni poet Hamid Oqabi. In this book, poetry is not written for beauty or decoration. It is written as a deep human experience. The poems speak about a self facing a harsh world, an aging body, and a language that has lost its first innocence.

The spirit of the book is tension. There is tension between love and loss, faith and doubt, pleasure and pain, life and death. Wine is not a symbol of joy or escape. It is a sharp sting that wakes the body and the memory, and opens the door to confusion and inner truth.

The poems move like an inner voice, close to confessions or long monologues. The language is free and broken, mixed with images of war, desire, myth, religion, and daily life. This collection asks one hard question: what remains when meaning fades, and only the body and language are left?