Wildly interesting. A Persian-American who has lost touch with his roots, but what roots they are! And he knows it. Walking the same path as Hafez, Saadi, Ferdowsi, Rumi, Attar, etc. etc. They are all looking down at you, you feel the weight of it. Does Kaveh Akbar live up to them? Hell no. But why in the world would you ever try? He doesn’t. He is not trying to be a saint, merely a poet, in touch with his emotions. He does that well. Really well. So glad I own this book, because it takes multip...

I’d never heard of Kaveh Akbar until I read Calling a Wolf a Wolf in 2018 and gave it five stars. One of my compliments for his writing was, “I’m not someone who saves favorite quotes, but if I did, I’d cut a line of two from almost every Akbar poem for my scrapbook.” As a result, I added Pilgrim Bell to my Want to Read list as soon as I heard about it, but the book and I got off to a rocky start. He did several things to annoy me: From using. A period any. Time. He feels. Like it. to printing a...

In keeping with a promise I made to myself, in which I was challenged to take a pause on the audiobook facet of my reading and spend more time with the Poetry Foundation's VS podcast, I've now listened to 17 episodes. I spent two weeks with the ebullient laughter of Franny Choi and Danez Smith, and learned about several new poets I can't wait to read.One of my fave episodes was an early one with Kaveh Akbar. Akbar, whose debut I gave a 5 star review to several years ago, strikes me as a person w...

this book of poems was meditative, cathartic, freeing. akbar writes with a steady flow and rhythm, calming even in its enormity. really grateful to be able to read poets like akbar who take such care in their craft. ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥“a heart / can sink too, like a root, or a library / whose architect forgot / to factor in the weight of its books”“i hope somebody / forgets you today too. i hope somebody / cuts that ribbon free”

I found something I loved in almost every poem. Spirituality, guilt, joy, family - Akbar covers a lot of ground here, and I definitely want to find a copy for myself and re-read it. I have been yearning for a couple of years now to find an ethical framework that resonates with me, to make sense of and give meaning to the myriad cruelties of the world, and my role in them. I thought that I might find answers in a religion or spiritual practice (and I hope that I may still), but some of the poems

This book advances what Calling a Wolf a Wolf began: the establishment of Kaveh Akbar as one of the greatest authors alive today. This book, like Wolf, is not only compelling and musical, it is also completely accessible and deeply moving. I recommend this book for anyone. It's filled with beauty in every line. A true gem of a collection.

Kaveh Akbar has spoken about poetry operating as a spiritual technology in his own life, an idea he explores in Pilgrim Bell. Many poems here read as prayers, some explicitly so. Akbar reckons with his Islamic faith, past addictions, family, and the lure of America. With this collection, his second, Akbar is finding his voice.

If you spent five years alone in a room thinking about these two stanzas from "The Miracle," that seems like it would be the appropriate way/amount of time to think about them:Gabriel seizing the illiterate man, alone and fasting in a cave, and commanding READ, the man saying I can't, Gabriel squeezing him tighter, commanding READ, the man gasping I don't know how, Gabriel squeezing him so tight he couldn't breathe, squeezing out the air of protest, the air of doubt, crushing it out of his crush...

sometimes you read a book and you wish you were smarter so you could understand all the references and this is one of those books. some of the poems are stuck in my chest like a greasy meal and it’s going to take a few scrapings to get them out.

I know I can't fully appreciate the work of art that is this collection but I truly enjoy Kaveh Akbar's prose. Some of my favorites include Palace Mosque, Frozen and How Prayer Works. Almost every other one to be honest.

read in one sitting

not sure what it is about kaveh akbar (everything?), but his poetry tickles my brain in a way that cannot be explained or compared to any of my other poetry-reading experiences. i love the way that he wields language, i love that his collections compel me to reconsider the world at a new slant, and i love that tenderness imbues every inch of his work, even as we are delivered swiftly to our suffering: You travel and bring back silk scarves, a bag of chocolates for you-don't-know-who-yet. Some...

My Shelf Awareness review: This second poetry collection by Kaveh Akbar is a playful and profound meditation on life as a Muslim American.Scriptural themes and echoes abound here. Prose poem "The Miracle" is about Muhammad the Prophet, an illiterate man who nevertheless read God's words at an angel's command. Akbar ponders the fears and addictions that hold people back from assenting to revelation. The multi-part title piece probes identity, forgiveness and vulnerability. Its short, punctuated p...

Ugh, I don't know how, but Kaveh Akbar has done it again with his second collection. I love how much you can trust his lines. I love how simultaneously immersed these poems are in the political and the personal and the spiritual, how they speak generously to this moment without an overt urgency, how they manage to prioritize beauty in language in the midst of all this and an at times ugly honesty about the world. He's truly doing it all, and is absolutely one of my favorite poets. Read this, rea...

i read this collection mostly on walks by the water and intermittently out loud, which i think was the only way i could bear it

Poetry is like a language I don't always fully understand. Yet, I keep trying. I suspect that these are good poems. It's impossible for me to rate them.What I can say, is how the poetry made me feel. These words fell like eggs, the yolks filled with a tremendous striving and frustration, of wanting to be heard and known.

A more spiritual version of Jeet Thayil’s poetry, with a stylized academic (putting that MFA to good use I suppose) touch.

kaveh akbar is one of my favorite living poets, so i was very excited to read this. the poems in the first section didn’t quite do it for me (with notable exception of “reza’s restaurant, chicago, 1997”). in the following sections, i was floored by almost every poem, and i say this as someone who hasn’t been able to quite read poetry in the past two years. brilliant brilliant brilliant.

Such an amazing young poet. He's a great metaphorist. Sometimes he's funny. Sometimes kind of shocking. More often he's wise, mystical. Here are some of my favorite lines, from a poem called "My Father's Accent":"On first inspecting Adam, the devil entered his lips.Watch: the devil enters Adam's lips,crawls through his throat, through his gutsto finally emerge out his anus.He's all hollow! the devil giggles.He knows his job will be easy, a human just one longdesperation to be filled."In several

I'll have to dive into this one again soon as it bears rereading thanks to so much going on. Religious stuff (Islam), political stuff (America), addiction stuff (Akbar's own life). But mostly word stuff (more on that ahead).The first poem, one of many title poems called "Pilgrim Bell," takes a page out of Anne Carson's book by using periods that don't stop the reader and SHOULDN'T stop the reader if the reader hopes to make any sense out of the poem. Example:Dark on both sides.Makes a window.Int...