Abook exploring death poetry sounds like it would make for macabre reading. Instead, Transforming Loss into Beauty — Essays on Arabic Literature and Culture in Honor of Magda Al-Nowaihi is a pleasant academic introduction to a little-discussed genre: ritha’ or elegy — poems for the dead.

A sort of elegy in itself, the book was compiled by the former colleagues, teachers and students of the late Columbia University professor Magda Al-Nowaihi, to commemorate her and continue her life’s work. Al-Nowaihi had begun writing a book on Arabic elegiac poetry after losing her mother and brother and subsequently facing her own mortality through a cancer diagnosis. She died in 2002 at the age of 44, her book unfinished. Six years later, Loss into Beauty was published.

In the introduction, Hamid Dabashi, a colleague of Al-Nowaihi’s at Columbia University, describes her death as a terrible loss of a high-caliber intellectual and teacher: “She was singularly committed to her students. In them she wrote her books, planted the seeds of her critical intelligence and heard the echo of her own creative mind. But the rest of us she taught indirectly, sideways, by creatively insinuating her sharp wit into our critical character.”

This critical intelligence can be viewed immediately in the book. The first essay, a speech she gave to an Arabic class, introduces the concept of elegy and provides a base for the weightier academic ponderings in the following chapters. At its most basic level, Al-Nowaihi explains, elegy is poetry written when someone dies to express grief or to eulogize them. Examples of the various types of this genre can be found throughout the book, peppered with poetry as it is.

The most basic form of elegy is very private, written when a deeply loved one dies, such as the son in this example by Ben Jonson: “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy / My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.”

It can also be public and collective, written for a figure like a tribal chieftain, caliph or president. Consider the example by Salah Abd Al-Sabur: “Did our martyred professor not tell us the ultimate words of wisdom? / Our teacher said, ‘Know thyself O human being’ / Having known himself, he died peacefully / He smiled / He has died for perfection, the ultimate endeavor.”

Also introduced in the book is ritha’ al-nafs or elegy of the self, a type of elegy believed to be unique to Arabic literature. Here, knowing their death to be imminent, a person elegizes him or herself. While in prison awaiting execution in 968 AD, the poet Abu Al-Firas Al-Hamadani wrote a ritha’ al-nafs to his daughter: “My little girl, don’t be sad / Everyone must go / Mourn me intensely / From behind your veil / Say, when you call out to me / And I’m unable to find the words to respond / ‘The Glorious Youth Abu Al-Firas never lived out his youth.’”

Poems are written for animals as well, to honor the life of a cat, horse or much-loved camel, though sadly no examples could be found in the book.

The second, and much shorter, half of the book leaves the elegy behind and moves into studies of modern Arabic literary forms, particularly free verse and the novel. This section explores the near impossibility of adequately translating Arabic literature into other languages while keeping the cultural references, especially considering how incomprehensible they would be to a neophyte of Arabic literary study.

This fairly hefty 404-page book ranges in readability from the simple speech of the first essay — created for second-language students still grasping Arabic — to advanced academic writing. Phrases such as “she challenges the nationally allegorical/apolitically libidinal boundary” might take a bit of deciphering for a pedestrian reader.

Unmistakably a book for intellectuals and academics, this is not a breezy read to flip through while relaxing on your balcony. For those seeking to delve into a much-ignored corner of Arabic literature, however, it is a fascinating read, and one can’t help but feel enlightened knowing the difference between qasida, marthiya, and niyaha — elegy for a nobleman, elegy for a loved one, and primordial female lament. Whether or not this information will ever come in handy in a conversation is debatable, but this is not the book’s aim. And though it is fundamentally academic and often ventures into verbosity, it has an unmistakable human element. The lingering connection to Al-Nowaihi is felt while reading it. There is no denying that a book dedicated to a woman loved and revered by her colleagues, written on a subject dear to their friend’s heart, is a beautiful, tangible tribute.

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