Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha’s second poetry collection, “Forest of Noise,” contrasts the horror of war-ravaged Gaza that he describes with the masterful language he implements to paint a clear, emotional portrait of a community racked with war.

A former English teacher for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Abu Toha’s preferred form of activism is arming readers with the language needed to evoke change. Whether that’s through publishing poems as accounts of his experiences with war or founding a multi-branch, English-language public library in Gaza, Abu Toha understands the visceral power of language, and this much is evident in the pages of “Forest of Noise.”

The collection opens with an epigraph from Audre Lorde’s 1985 essay of the same title: “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” The Lorde opening marks the start of a tradition within this collection to emphasize language as a mode of survival, something that Abu Toha takes on through his laudable, restrained use of grammar, syntax and word choice. He is not an indulgent wordsmith with the luxury of rambling lines — he is a survivor scavenging what words he can find.

With the few words he allows himself, Abu Toha maintains a level of control over the chosen few that speak volumes within their limited space. Specifically, his deft usage of prepositions creates a violent subtlety surrounding blame and ownership of the actions within the verse.

In the poem “Gaza Notebook (2021-2023),” Abu Toha describes time with “at” as opposed to “in.” With a simple change in directionality, his prudent word choice shows time as a location because the moment is rooted in a sense of physicality due to his need to survive from moment to moment. The care that he imparts in the descriptions of life during the span of the conflict in Gaza is not only effective but also masterful.

His restraint in words leads to yet another subtle idiosyncrasy in his voice as a poet: his careful control over the flow of information within each poem. Abu Toha allows bits of description or narration to enter the periphery of the reader like a valve monitoring the amount of fuel that drips into a combustion chamber.

In poems like “Under the Rubble” or “What a Gazan Should Do During an Israeli Air Strike,” Abu Toha implements short, isolated stanzas or verses separated with mere slashes that place the reader in milli-second-long flashes of terror. His syntax works alongside the ways he chooses to describe the physical settings for an immersive experience that leaves the reader reeling.

Abu Toha rarely includes color at all throughout the collection, only opting to intermittently indulge in faded memories surrounding orange trees and olives. Conversely, the poet contrasts these warm memories with blood and gray rubble when describing the present, making the shift between the two realities even more jarring for the reader.

If the vivid descriptions and tense narration weren’t enough, Abu Toha plays with the phonetics of his verse for softly percussive sounds tying the collection together in true poetic fashion. Rather than focusing on “p” noises, Abu Toha takes a more unique, gentle route by opting for “b” sounds instead. The muted percussion creates a bass in the poems like a timpani, like a bomb heard from nearby or the vibration that spreads through the ground after an impact.

Several of the more panicked, fleeting poems feature breathy syllables that indicate the noticeable displacement of air or something picking up speed as it nears a target, creating the woodwinds in his symphonic collection.

Abu Toha toys with several Western cultural ideas to supplement the reader’s immersion into the physical space of war-battered Gaza with a biting sense of earnestness that mocks as much as it begs.

In “The Last Kiss,” the poet describes a classic, tragic scene of a young soldier boarding a train to part from his pregnant wife, only to never return. In Western tradition, one might picture an auburn-coiffed sweetheart waving her handkerchief as her blond-haired, blue-eyed beau departs for the front lines with his fellow young patriots.

What makes this poem so powerful is its universality that disappears within the context of Mosab Abu Toha’s collection — what is this soldier fighting for, if anything? Nothing in the piece indicates the young man’s allegiance, leaving the reader with only the understanding that the soldier leaves behind his young family.

To be a soldier means to risk death, and to be a civilian is to be collateral damage — either way, Abu Toha’s parody of Western sentimentality and patriotism is a scathing, compassionate expression of dissatisfaction with the world’s interpretation of Palestine.

The collection’s vivacity in voice results in a clarity of movement as he navigates through his own perspective and that of the world in which his collection is published. With his unique narrational dexterity, Abu Toha achieves cohesion within the collection as a whole while avoiding repetitiveness.

Abu Toha reaches for Allen Ginsburg in his own rendition of “Howl,” he describes an Icarus felled not by ego but by tank shells. If the reader can’t see themselves in his detailed descriptions or powerful storytelling, Abu Toha refuses to let Western readers walk away without seeing, smelling, tasting or hearing the current horrific reality of Gazan civilians in terms that they can understand.

A potent tour-de-force of poetry, “Forest of Noise” is proof that an adroit poet like Mosab Abu Toha can transform poetry into something more than art: Under Abu Toha’s pen, poetry becomes an act against silence and words become action rather than idle criticism.