Both the first generation poets and these newer voices deal with the issue of success and failure. The first group struggled personally with the American drive for success and the spiritual death they often felt it entailed. They questioned the meaning of success, failure, and despair, often finding inspiration in struggle and being misunderstood. These two poets, by contrast, became very successful professionally. While Awad in particular acknowledges the ultimate transience of power and financial success (ie in Variations on a Theme) their poetry deals more with their own drive to succeed instilled in them by first generation parents who struggled against far greater odds and felt themselves failures. They identify strongly with American values, and therefore don't so much question the value of success as struggle with the barriers to it which arise in part from their ethnicity.

The more modern writers tend to write in more narrative, personal styles. Their poems read more as straight-up autobiographies, as opposed to treatises on more metaphysical topics. Which isn't to say that their poems don't discuss grand ideas such as hope, love, and God, just that they do it in a more prosaic manner.

I particularly liked 'I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Failures,' and it's lament for people with no passion. The idea that even hate is better than indifference is not uncommon among the artistic community, and I love the imagery he uses to express it. 'For Jude's Lebanon' was also very moving, and it shows a connection to his Arabic roots that is present in a good deal of Joseph Awad's writing.

Lawrence Joseph's 'Curriculum Vitae' is a very intersting description of his growing disillusionment, first with God and then with the world around him. The disillusionment and anger are themes repeated in many of his poems, including 'Then', 'Not Yet' and 'Sand Nigger'.

I like the poems that were written by these two authors, but they were definately different from the poems of the first generation of Arab-American writers. I like the first generation better because they wrote about things such as hope or the earth, and I had to really think about what the poet was trying to say. These poems were mainly talking about the authors life and what happened. I felt like the poems were more like a story, and all of them were connected to eachother.

Princeton University has some Arabic poetry recitation online if you want to hear someone with a better accent than mine.