Kaveh Akbar Books

I could not be held responsible for desire he could not be held at all In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, the reality of love can all too often prove disappointing at best, and life-threateningly ineffectual at worst. As Kaveh Akbar puts it in 'Heritage', a poem dedicated to an Iranian woman executed for killing the man who was attempting to rape her: 'in books love can be war-ending/...in life we hold love up to the light/ to marvel at its impotence.' Yet, as it brings us along on its author's struggle with addiction, this darkly sumptuous first collection by an award-winning poet also shows us that there can, after all, be a power and a beauty to our desires, in the strength of their flow, in their achievements and frustrations, and in the pain and joy of denying oneself for one's own sake. These are poems of thirst: for alcohol, for other bodies, and for knowledge. They find the speaker poised between life's clatter and rattle, wanting to retreat yet hungering for more; and, though they rush forward at full tilt through a stream of reflections, memories and emotions, they are never simply indulgent. This refreshingly honest and often breathtaking addition to the canon of addiction literature will carry readers with it just as the poet is carried, and leave behind indelible images of an existence richly felt.

Kaveh Akbars schreibt Lyrik von fast ungebremster emotionaler Wucht. „Ein herausragender Gedichtband, unverkennbar eigen und von größter Schönheit.“ Roxane Gay Das Debüt eines außergewöhnlich kraftvollen Lyrikers: Kaveh Akbars Gedichte sprühen Funken, sie bersten vor Beredsamkeit, Bild- und Ideenreichtum, sprachlicher Musikalität. Wenn Kaveh Akbar über Liebe und Begehren schreibt, über Herkunft und Identität und immer wieder über den qualvollen Kampf mit der eigenen Alkoholsucht, entsteht leidenschaftliche Lyrik von fast ungebremster emotionaler Wucht, gefasst in einer vollkommen eigenen Sprache. Gedichte eines mit sich, Gott und der Welt Ringenden, der die Finsternis kennt und die Schönheit leuchten lässt.

Portrait of the Alcoholic is the first chapbook of poems from Ruth Lilly-winner and founding editor of Divedapper, Kaveh Akbar.

Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is a holistic and global survey to a lyric conversation orbiting the divine that has been ongoing for millennia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BC Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this anthology presents a number of canonical voices like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser- anthologized diverse voices going up to the present day, that showcase the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the divine across place and time. These poets' voices commune between millenia, offering readers a chance to experience for themselves the vast and powerful interconnectedness of these incantations orbiting the most elemental of all subjects - our spirit.

'A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized' Rowan Williams, TLSThis rich and surprising anthology is a holistic, global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BCE Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this selection presents a number of canonical figures like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized, diverse poets going up to the present day. Together they show the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the spiritual, across place and time.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize.00With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar's second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body's question, "what now shall I repair?" Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance - the infinite void of a loved one's absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation - teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness.0Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell's linguistic rigour is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives - resonant, revelatory, and holy.0America, I warn you, if you invite me into your home0I will linger,0kissing my beloveds frankly,0pulling up radishes0and capping all your pens.0There are no good kings,0only burning palaces.0-from 'The Palace'0'Very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar . . . each of the poems in this collection finds its target' LAUREN GROFF