Böcker av Kazim Ali

"'So how do you discern a shape for / what is often called god' asks the poet in a book that is as metaphysical as it is very much of this moment, of this, our crisis. How so? Because every crisis is first of all metaphysical. Kazim Ali speaks in the same breath of the injustice of our world and of 'the actual syllables Orpheus sang/ to the dead to be allowed into hell.' This is a metaphysics of a scream. It speaks against world that wrongs us, yes-but also of 'what language cannot / hold onto,' of 'ecstatic sound aiming to reach from the muck of the earth.' What is this speech like? It takes many forms: lyrical, cinematic, choral. The Voice of Sheila Chandra is a sequence of sequences, a book where three long poems come together to make a statement that is far larger than the sum of its parts. It is a brilliant book." -Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

"Reading Ali is an act of redemption . . . both a challenge and a balm." -THE RUMPUS

To go without food from dawn to dusk for the whole month of Ramadan - how does this feel? What do we become when we deny our major appetites during the hours of daylight, and in what ways does this transform the nights? In these absences, what new presences, what illuminations and revelations arise? After many years of not practicing, acclaimed writer Kazim Ali has re-embraced the Ramadan tradition, and he brings a poet''s precision and ardor to these brilliant meditations on an ancient and yet entirely contemporary ritual. Jane Hirshfield has said, "Kazim Ali - a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to - has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali''s meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned; planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment''s air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is."

To go without food from dawn to dusk for the month of Ramadan - how does this feel? When we deny our major appetites, what do we become? Kazim Ali brings a poet's precision and ardor to his brilliant meditations on ritual fasting.Jane Hirshfield, author of AFTER and NINE GATES, says: "Kazim Ali -- a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to -- has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali's meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned; planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment's air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is."