"'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
In 1953, Yoko Ono wrote a score called "Secret Piece," an open-ended formula for musical performance in a forest at daybreak. Beginning with this invitation to creation, and using essays, diary entries, prose maps, and verse fragments, Kazim Ali marks a path through quantum physics, sixth-century Chola Empire sculptures, the challenges of literary translation and of climate change, and destruction of a priceless set of handmade flutes by airport security. Amid shards from far-flung histories and geographies he finds the cosmos.
"Our contemporary English is shifting too and so the poems I wrote then, in my house with two other humans and two animals and no one else in sight, dug down into the locality of English, slangs and slashes commingling with various lexicons and legibilities." - Kazim Ali
"Reading Ali is an act of redemption . . . both a challenge and a balm." -THE RUMPUS
Kazim Ali's wildly inventive novel The Secret Room asks: how does one create a life of meaning in the face of loneliness and alienation from one's own family, culture or even sense of self? In the space of a single day, the lives of four people converge and diverge in ways they themselves may not even measure. Sonia Chang, a violinist, prepares for a concert. Rizwan Syed, a yoga teacher, makes one last panicked attempt at reconciliation with his family. Jody Merchant tries to balance a stressful work life with a dream she abandoned long ago. Pratap Patel trudges through his life trying to ignore the pain he still feels at old losses. The experiences of these four characters, woven together in the manner of a string quartet, together create a raw, fluid composition. Kazim Ali (born 1971) is an American poet, novelist, essayist and professor. Born in the UK to parents of Indian descent, and raised in Canada and the US, Ali is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. He cofounded the independent press Nightboat Books.
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."
Kazim Ali uses a range of subjects - the politics of checkpoints at international borders; difficulties in translation; collaborations between poets and choreographers; and connections between poetry and landscape, or between biotechnology and the human body - to situate the individual human body into a larger global context, with all of its political and social implications.
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."
Over the course of more than four decades, contemporary American poet Jean Valentine has written eleven books of stunning, spirit-inflected poetry. This collection of essays, assembled over several years by Kazim Ali and John Hoppenthaler, brings together twenty-six pieces on all stages of Valentine's career by a range of poets, scholars, and admirers.
An American poet takes on Eastern philosophy, Western culture, and his Muslim heritage
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