Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
Too good.
"I thought I saw you last year, bark wrapped
around your thighs, lurching toward the shore at dawn. It was only mist
and dumb want. They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel
will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad
away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary
it can get here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around
my neck that still burn in the wind. I was promised epiphany, earth-
honey, and a flood of milk, but I will settle for anything that brings you now,
you still-hungry mongrel, you glut of bone, you, scentless as gold."
"I thought I saw you last year, bark wrapped
around your thighs, lurching toward the shore at dawn. It was only mist
and dumb want. They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel
will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad
away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary
it can get here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around
my neck that still burn in the wind. I was promised epiphany, earth-
honey, and a flood of milk, but I will settle for anything that brings you now,
you still-hungry mongrel, you glut of bone, you, scentless as gold."
This is a solid first book of poems, even if I at times wished Akbar pushed his craft a little farther. He has some obvious strengths-- a strong sense of line and enjambment and an ability to develop wild imagery and also to integrate strange narrative fragments, whether imagined or "biographical." There's a strong sense of voice in the poems as well, one that is bruised and self-dramatizing and which delights in a (self)lacerating last line. I wished, sometimes, that that voice would get out of the way. But that's not what these poems are about- they are vivid, dramatic, occasionally surreal monologues where even when you can't identify every piece of the narrative being told, the emotional stakes and journey is hard to miss.
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
dark
slow-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Rather than try to capture Akbar's singular voice, I'll just let one of my favorites from this collection speak for itself (see link below). Raw, honest, quirkily unique. If all sinners sang for grace and repented so sublimely, the gods would be out of a job.
Thirstiness is Not Equal Division
https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v17n2/poetry/akbar-k/thirstiness-page.shtml
I slowed down reading this one so it didn't end too soon.
Thirstiness is Not Equal Division
https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v17n2/poetry/akbar-k/thirstiness-page.shtml
I slowed down reading this one so it didn't end too soon.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
