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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse
Kaveh's poems are smart, passionate, and beautiful. I found myself most drawn to the works he'd already put out in his chapbook Portrait of an Alcoholic. That is not to say I didn't enjoy the other poems, I think I felt especially drawn to poems that so rocked me then. I believe Akbar's poems require a bit more work than some other poets but the work is immediately rewarded. Can't wait to read more from Akbar and return to this collection in the future.
“Blessed are those who can distract themselves and blessed are the distractions.”
I loved this collection of poems. The author is hard on himself but soft on the world. Reminds of Leonard Cohen’s work.
I loved this collection of poems. The author is hard on himself but soft on the world. Reminds of Leonard Cohen’s work.
(update: i'm bumping this up to 5 stars because ever since i read it i haven't been able to get my mind off of it. at this point i've probably reread it a dozen times, and i can't foresee myself stopping any time soon. this poetry has gotten into me, has made itself right at home in my head.)
lately i've been trying to dip my toes into the world of modern poetry collections by young authors. although i love poetry dearly i've been a little wary of them in the past, mainly because i'm not super into the kind of tumblr/instagram poetry that's become popular and even mainstream. so that's scared me off a little. but i know i'm missing a lot of amazing new work, so i picked up a few volumes recently, including this one. and i'm very happy that i did!
i had never heard of this author before, but the title intrigued me, and so did the few snippets i read. this collection was very good; many of the poems had an antique or ancient feel about them, something primal, wild but sometimes also cold. my favorites were probably "thirstiness is not equal division," "the new world," and "unburnable the cold is flooding our lives," but i enjoyed almost all of them. definitely recommended for those who are looking for modern, fresh poetry that carries depth, beauty, and mystery, relatable in the deep spaces of the self. some of my favorite lines, though there are many more:
"Some days we can see Venus in midafternoon. Then at night, stars
separated by billions of miles, light traveling years
to die in the back of an eye.
Is there a vocabulary for this - one to make dailiness amplify
and not diminish wonder?"
- from do you speak persian?
"I knew only that I wanted
to be like him,
that twilit stripe of father
mesmerizing as the bluewhite Iznik tile
hanging in our kitchen, worshipped
as the long faultless tongue of God."
- from learning to pray
"I'm told what seems like joy
is often joy that the soul lives in the throat plinking
like a copper bell I've been so young for so many years
it's all starting to jumble together joy jeweling copper
its plink a throat sometimes I feel beautiful and near dying
like a feather on an arrow shot through a neck other times
I feel tasked only with my own soreness like a scab on the roof
of a mouth."
- from what seems like joy
"hold the horns curling out from my skull
which are getting so long now and so sharp if you think
of evolution as ancestral advice then a baby's eyelids
drooping from fruitsugar could mean this world
is too sweet to bear awake give me an orgy of sleep
give me sleep from every angle"
- from thirstiness is not equal division
"Droughts occur
constantly under God's holy watch.
His response? He yawns
immortally on his throne,
fans himself with an elephant ear."
- from the new world
"The hands that folded me into my body were not punishing me
nor could they ever be punished, while the hands of the idol sculptor
were cut off and tossed to the dogs."
- from against hell
"the prophets are alive but unrecognizable to us
as calligraphy to a mouse for a time they dragged
long oar strokes across the sky now they sit
in graveyards drinking coffee forking soapy cottage cheese
into their mouths
(....)
some migrant birds build their nests over rivers
to push them into the water when they leave this seems
almost warm a good harm the addictions
that were killing me fastest were the ones I loved best
(...)
sometimes a mind is ready to leave
the world before its body sometimes paradise happens
too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake"
- from unburnable the cold is flooding our lives
"Milk splashes
into a bowl and coronates
itself with a crown of droplets.
I too have been trying to exalt
my own body, but there is no switch
to flip for this."
- from no is a complete sentence
"All I want is to finally
take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled
horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug
on them, but secretly I will want that very much."
- from my kingdom for a murmur of fanfare
lately i've been trying to dip my toes into the world of modern poetry collections by young authors. although i love poetry dearly i've been a little wary of them in the past, mainly because i'm not super into the kind of tumblr/instagram poetry that's become popular and even mainstream. so that's scared me off a little. but i know i'm missing a lot of amazing new work, so i picked up a few volumes recently, including this one. and i'm very happy that i did!
i had never heard of this author before, but the title intrigued me, and so did the few snippets i read. this collection was very good; many of the poems had an antique or ancient feel about them, something primal, wild but sometimes also cold. my favorites were probably "thirstiness is not equal division," "the new world," and "unburnable the cold is flooding our lives," but i enjoyed almost all of them. definitely recommended for those who are looking for modern, fresh poetry that carries depth, beauty, and mystery, relatable in the deep spaces of the self. some of my favorite lines, though there are many more:
"Some days we can see Venus in midafternoon. Then at night, stars
separated by billions of miles, light traveling years
to die in the back of an eye.
Is there a vocabulary for this - one to make dailiness amplify
and not diminish wonder?"
- from do you speak persian?
"I knew only that I wanted
to be like him,
that twilit stripe of father
mesmerizing as the bluewhite Iznik tile
hanging in our kitchen, worshipped
as the long faultless tongue of God."
- from learning to pray
"I'm told what seems like joy
is often joy that the soul lives in the throat plinking
like a copper bell I've been so young for so many years
it's all starting to jumble together joy jeweling copper
its plink a throat sometimes I feel beautiful and near dying
like a feather on an arrow shot through a neck other times
I feel tasked only with my own soreness like a scab on the roof
of a mouth."
- from what seems like joy
"hold the horns curling out from my skull
which are getting so long now and so sharp if you think
of evolution as ancestral advice then a baby's eyelids
drooping from fruitsugar could mean this world
is too sweet to bear awake give me an orgy of sleep
give me sleep from every angle"
- from thirstiness is not equal division
"Droughts occur
constantly under God's holy watch.
His response? He yawns
immortally on his throne,
fans himself with an elephant ear."
- from the new world
"The hands that folded me into my body were not punishing me
nor could they ever be punished, while the hands of the idol sculptor
were cut off and tossed to the dogs."
- from against hell
"the prophets are alive but unrecognizable to us
as calligraphy to a mouse for a time they dragged
long oar strokes across the sky now they sit
in graveyards drinking coffee forking soapy cottage cheese
into their mouths
(....)
some migrant birds build their nests over rivers
to push them into the water when they leave this seems
almost warm a good harm the addictions
that were killing me fastest were the ones I loved best
(...)
sometimes a mind is ready to leave
the world before its body sometimes paradise happens
too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake"
- from unburnable the cold is flooding our lives
"Milk splashes
into a bowl and coronates
itself with a crown of droplets.
I too have been trying to exalt
my own body, but there is no switch
to flip for this."
- from no is a complete sentence
"All I want is to finally
take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled
horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug
on them, but secretly I will want that very much."
- from my kingdom for a murmur of fanfare
This book filled my heart all the way up. God and bodies and becoming better.
Enjoyably vivid language, with close attention to discrete images that tend not to have much of a larger pattern or order. There is a consistent returning to Akbar’s alcoholism, a subject I usually find that poets (and novelists) can only be mawkish and self-indulgent about (even to the point of secret pride). Akbar deftly evades those attitudes; alcoholism is a fact and a condition to be described and confronted with the poet’s resources, but not wallowed in with what is often a poet’s sense of self-importance—the sense that everything that happens to the poet is both important and poetic because it happened to *them*.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
I have a confession to make; I read "Forfeiting My Mystique" and maybe one or two other poems by Kaveh Akbar, and then immediately started naming him as one of my favorite poets. "Forfeiting My Mystique" is very good, and years later it is still one of my all-time favorite poems, but still, I feel like I probably should have read more of his work before now. However, having now read this whole collection, I am happy to say that it's only confirmed that he's one of my favorite poets. I genuinely loved every single poem in here. So many of them blew me away. I know I'll come back to read them again and again. I could not recommend this book enough.