Kaveh Akbar Knihy

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.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction. “Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There “The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

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.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize, Kaveh Akbar's second collection embarks on a spiritual journey of disavowal, exploring the presence of divinity amidst the shedding of self and belonging. It grapples with the complexities of recovery from addiction without annihilating the self-as-addict and contemplates the challenges of living justly in a nation that seeks erasure. Akbar poses the poignant question, "what now shall I repair?" and responds with prayer as a form of devotion to dissonance—addressing the void left by a loved one's absence, the discipline of austerity, and the experience of being a Muslim in an Islamophobic society. Richly crafted and generous, the collection's linguistic rigor resonates with the current moment and beyond. As the soul confronts its limits against the backdrop of the American empire and human capacity for both cruelty and grace, these powerful poems inhabit the empty space where song thrives—resonant, revelatory, and sacred. America, I warn you, if you invite me into your home I will linger, kissing my beloveds frankly, pulling up radishes and capping all your pens. There are no good kings, only burning palaces. "Very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar... each of the poems in this collection finds its target." - LAUREN GROFF

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.