The poems included in Invocations to Retire from the Sweetly Blown Trumpet of Lies, El Habib Louai's third collection, span the tumultuous period extending from 2021 to 2026. Louai explains "Most of them were composed during the height of the COVID19 pandemic when I lived in a cluttered, but homely apartment- at least by my Moroccan bohemian standards- in a small village on the Atlantic coast. I was not self-isolating there as much as I was enjoying the freedom of movement that was not attainable by the residents of the metropole and its environs. In the village, I would still ride my bike up and down the surrounding hills. Late in the evening, after my scenic road trip to the Atlantic to catch the sunset, I would return to my place, put on some John Coltrane, Mile Davis, Sonny Rollins or Chet Baker, and let my mind gently untether. The poems would barrel down memory lane and come to me in recollections of things I have seen, felt and heard. I would write them spontaneously in the tradition of Jack Kerouac who embraced an improvisational approach to creative writing, accentuating raw, unfiltered subconscious flow over deliberate craft. As Kerouac recommended in his "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose," I sought to capture the rhythm of everyday speech and immediate experience of the daily life.
Thematically speaking, the poems included in this collection continue to deal with the intricacies of the human condition with its universal, often paradoxical experiences that define our existence. They are in a constant quest for meaning, in a persistent struggle to maintain ideal individual morality and empathy while navigating a complex, often flawed world where humans are shaped by the institutions, political systems, and cultures they build. In doing so, the poems do not search for static origins but strive to navigate, in the words of the Martinican philosopher and writer Édouard Glissant, the restless, interdependent world (Tout-Monde), where the role of poetry is "to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash" (Allen Ginsberg). The poems in this collection denounce brutality, oppression and exploitation inflicted by supposedly democratic governments on individuals struggling under the yoke of capitalist imperialism and historical amnesia. They deal with socioeconomic disparities in a techno-globalized world where humans are mere laborers or consumers who wage wars (psychological and military) against each other, resulting in modern-day exodus, cultural displacement and new forms of discrimination. Additionally, the poems in this collection dwell on issues having to do with the current environmental catastrophes and call for a renewed awareness that puts the ecosystem and its various species in the center instead of extolling a blind infatuation with the Anthropocene. Finally, while connecting with a previous tradition that exists in the Americas, the poems call for a return to the alternative ways of living as shown by drawing attention to the sane lifestyle of indigenous cultures, the Amazigh in North Africa as an example."
