A glance at the literary history of Libya's flooded city of Derna

The formal name of the coastal Libyan city destroyed by floodwaters is Derna.

Its nickname? The City of Poets.

And so it's fitting that one resident — whose life was lost in the September 11 tragedy — seems to have forecast the collapse in verse.

"Exposing the wet streets; / And the cheating contractor; / And the failed state," poet Mostafa Trablsi wrote on Facebook on September 10.

The New York Times introduces those of us less familiar with the region to Derna's rich cultural history, some of which was destroyed in the stormwater surge, in a profile of Libya's City of Poets.

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