Mikhail Naimy

Poet and philosopher Mikhail Naimy was born in Lebanon in 1889. He lived in Palestine as a child and attended the Theological Seminary in Poltava, the Ukraine, from 1906 to 1911. In 1911 he moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Washington-Seattle before moving to New York City. He returned to Lebanon in 1932. In New York, he was associated with Khalil Gibran, a fellow member of the New York Pen League, an organization promoting Arab writers and writing. Author of the spiritual work Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark (1948), Naimy also wrote a biography of Khalil Gibran.

Naimy’s poems are collected in Hams al-Juf­ún (Eyelid Whisperings) (1945). While his poetry frequently addresses spiritual matters, critic Issa J. Boullata, in “Mikhail Naimy: Poet of Meditative Vision” for the Journal Of Arabic Literature, noted that Naimy moves away from entirely traditional Arabic forms his work, using an accessible, common diction. “His meditative mood,” wrote Boullata, “coupled with the attraction of his whispering quiet tone, wins over the reader as one who shares the experience with the poet.”

Naimy was living in East Beirut at the time of his death in 1988.