Pilgrim bell : poems

Pilgrim bell Poems

Kaveh Akbar

Book - 2021

Kaveh Akbar's exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf... With 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.... Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell's linguistic rigor 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.

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Subjects
American poetry > Muslim authors.
American poetry > Iranian American authors.
Religious poetry.
Poetry.
Genres
Religious poetry
Poetry
Published
Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Kaveh Akbar (author)
Physical Description
76 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781644450598
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • Vines
  • The Miracle
  • Ghazal for the Men I Once Was
  • Reza's Restaurant, Chicago, 1997
  • There Are 7,000 Living Languages
  • The Value of Fear
  • Mothers I Once Was
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • I Wouldn't Even Know What to Do with a Third Chance
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • My Empire
  • In the Language of Mammon
  • My Father's Accent
  • There Is No Such Thing as an Accident of the Spirit
  • Forfeiting My Mystique
  • Cotton Candy
  • Against the Parts of Me That Think They Know Anything
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • Seven Years Sober
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • An Oversight
  • Ultrasound
  • Palace Mosque, Frozen
  • How Prayer Works
  • How to Say the Impossible Thing
  • Shadian Incident
  • Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats
  • Escape to the Palace
  • Ghazal for a National Emergency
  • Reading Farrokhzad in a Pandemic
  • Famous Americans and Why They Were Wrong
  • Pilgrim Bell
  • Against Memory
  • The Palace
  • Notes
Review by Booklist Review

This incandescent second collection of poetry from Akbar, following Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017), illuminates questions of divinity and language in swift, surprising lyrics. An Iranian-born writer of unmatched imagery and searing critique, Akbar uses plainspoken language ("Somewhere a man is steering a robotic plane into murder") and otherworldly imagining ("Heaven / is all preposition--above, among, around, within") to collide our world and the next. "In the Language of Mammon" references a biblical term for material wealth and satirizes poets' relationships to money: "Behold the poet, God's / incarnate spit in the mud, / chirping like lice in a fire." The poem is printed in mirrored script, rendering it almost impossible to read. Another inventive poem, "Palace Mosque, Frozen," is arranged as a square within a square, doubly depicting the supplicants' experience: "bright dust / pillowed floor / we see our prayers / as we say them." Akbar names several inspiring Persian and Iranian poets, such as Hafez and Forugh Farrokhzad, and his obvious skill and subtle flirtation with self-deprecation will surely endear readers to this volume's exceptional speakers.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this rich and moving collection, Akbar (Calling a Wolf a Wolf) writes poems of contradiction and ambivalence centered on religious belief and ethnic and national identity. Evocative and polyphonic, surprising but never artificially shocking, Akbar's poems flit from the divine to the corporeal in the same breath. In "Vines": "when I saw God/ I trembled like a man"--and a few lines later, "I live like a widow// every day a heave of knitting patterns and sex toys." In "The Miracle," the poet confesses to himself: "Gabriel isn't coming for you. If he did/ would you call him Jibril, or Gabriel like you/ are here? Who is this even for?" Within that question lies a tension between cultures, religions, loyalties, and ways of being in and looking at the world. As an Iranian-born American, Akbar does not feel that either of these nationalities can fully encompass his identity. "Some nights I force/ my brain to dream me/ Persian by listening/ to old home movies/ as I fall asleep," he explains. This impressive, thoughtful work shimmers with inventive syntax and spiritual profundity. (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Bidart, whose multiple awards include a Pulitzer, tops off five decades of writing with a book arguing Against Silence in its embrace of the world.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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