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Calling a Wolf a Wolf
"The struggle from late youth on, with and without God, agony, narcotics and love is a torment rarely recorded with such sustained eloquence and passion as you will find in this collection." —Fanny Howe
This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight.
“In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Kaveh Akbar exquisitely and tenaciously braids astonishment and atonement into a singular lyric voice. The desolation of alcoholism widens into hard-won insight: ‘the body is a mosque borrowed from Heaven.’ Doubt and fear spiral into grace and beauty. Akbar’s mind, like his language, is perpetually in motion. His imagery—wounded and resplendent—is masterful and his syntax ensnares and releases music that’s both delicate and muscular. Kaveh Akbar has crafted one of the best debuts in recent memory. In his hands, awe and redemption hinge into unforgettable and gorgeous poems.” —Eduardo C. Corral
This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight.
“In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Kaveh Akbar exquisitely and tenaciously braids astonishment and atonement into a singular lyric voice. The desolation of alcoholism widens into hard-won insight: ‘the body is a mosque borrowed from Heaven.’ Doubt and fear spiral into grace and beauty. Akbar’s mind, like his language, is perpetually in motion. His imagery—wounded and resplendent—is masterful and his syntax ensnares and releases music that’s both delicate and muscular. Kaveh Akbar has crafted one of the best debuts in recent memory. In his hands, awe and redemption hinge into unforgettable and gorgeous poems.” —Eduardo C. Corral
100 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2017
About the author
Kaveh Akbar
26 books1,185 followersKaveh Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the founder and editor of Divedapper, a home for dialogues with vital voices in contemporary poetry.
His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017.
Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Iowa. He was a visiting professor at Purdue University in Indiana in Fall 2017.
His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017.
Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Iowa. He was a visiting professor at Purdue University in Indiana in Fall 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 715 reviews
September 15, 2017
An outstanding book of poetry. I was particularly impressed by the imagery and deftness with language. The title poem is by far my favorite but every poem offers something compelling or strange or unknowable and always beautiful.
May 10, 2022
kaveh akbar is one of those rare poets whose work immediately and seamlessly clicked with my brain and all the things that i personally love emulating in my own work. he's prone to lists (of three), always seems to be writing towards something (although never seems to shy away from looking back at what he considers ugly, unwieldy, or unready), and though the contents of his poems might at times seem small in nature, they embody the slow growth of a guileless imagination, one that refuses to ever fold in on itself. in a collection that spends so long contemplating addiction, that is the best kind of startling.
akbar puts out collections where no single poem ever appears to lag behind. there is something new and/or alarming to discover in every piece that he serves up. calling a wolf a wolf is a collection you can devour in one sitting without growing bored, even if there are certain ripples or repetitions in the styles or subjects he spends his time on. he's not clumsy with his language; each poem feels painstaking, and also—my favorite—unbearably tender, like looking in on a couple embracing through an open window.
aaah, his voice is so so so refreshingly gorgeous. when i try to conceptualize my feelings over this book, i keep gravitating towards simile! reading this was like—! like sinking bare feet into warm silt! like slipping naked into a bathtub of bubbles! like growing old and sleepy beneath a canopy of shivering leaves! i love it! i love everything about this collection, and i can't wait to crack open the new book he has coming next month.
some favorites (though i had to resist underlining every other stanza, i was that enthralled with his words):
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
THE YEARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE TENDERNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE SLOW SEEP OF SORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!
akbar puts out collections where no single poem ever appears to lag behind. there is something new and/or alarming to discover in every piece that he serves up. calling a wolf a wolf is a collection you can devour in one sitting without growing bored, even if there are certain ripples or repetitions in the styles or subjects he spends his time on. he's not clumsy with his language; each poem feels painstaking, and also—my favorite—unbearably tender, like looking in on a couple embracing through an open window.
aaah, his voice is so so so refreshingly gorgeous. when i try to conceptualize my feelings over this book, i keep gravitating towards simile! reading this was like—! like sinking bare feet into warm silt! like slipping naked into a bathtub of bubbles! like growing old and sleepy beneath a canopy of shivering leaves! i love it! i love everything about this collection, and i can't wait to crack open the new book he has coming next month.
some favorites (though i had to resist underlining every other stanza, i was that enthralled with his words):
I had been asleep, / safe from sad news, dreaming / of my irradiated hairless mother / pulling a thorn from the eye of a dog.
—
Sometimes / you have to march all the way to Galilee / or the literal foot of God himself before you realize / you've already passed the place where / you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember / the being afraid, only that it came to an end.
—
I remember him quiet / as a telescope / tiny as a Plutonian moon.
—
I am a quick forgetter / such erasing makes one voracious / if you teach me something / beautiful / I will name it quickly before it floats away.
—
It doesn't take much / to love a saint like me. / On a gravel road, the soft tissues / of my eye detect a snake curling around a tree branch. Because I am here / each of these things has a name.
—
it is not God but the flower behind God I treasure
—
I like it fine, this daily struggle to not die.
—
I am glad I still exist / glad for cats and moss / and Turkish indigo / and yet / to be light upon the earth / to be steel bent around an endless black / to once again / be God's own tuning fork / and yet / and yet
—
All I want is to finally / take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled / horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug / on them, but secretly I will want that very much.
—
THE YEARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE TENDERNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE SLOW SEEP OF SORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!
September 26, 2018
This was gorgeous and haunting. Even when I didn't understand exactly what Kaveh was trying to say, the phrasing was so delicate and articulate that I couldn't help but stop and ponder the words. I read these poems aloud to several of my friends to bask in their glory, and I can't wait to get a physical copy so I can underline my favorite lines, which was usually several per poem. Highly recommend!
October 3, 2021
Calling a Wolf a Wolf is Book Three of my October poetry project. Reading this all in one go was an EXPERIENCE. One I definitely recommend! This is brilliant, a book to appreciate not just for its own merits but for the way it makes you consider and reconsider everything you see, everything you feel and how you feel about it.
April 18, 2019
These poems are full of desire and alcoholism, identity and guilt, God and words. I love his use of space on the page because it makes you take a pause along with him.
Some of my favorites are
Do You Speak Persian?
Some Boys Aren't Born They Bubble
Desunt Nonnulla
Thirstiness is Not Equal Division
River of Milk
God
So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction
(I read this from a print copy via interlibrary loan but it is available in Hoopla, if you have access.)
Some of my favorites are
Do You Speak Persian?
Some Boys Aren't Born They Bubble
Desunt Nonnulla
Thirstiness is Not Equal Division
River of Milk
God
So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction
(I read this from a print copy via interlibrary loan but it is available in Hoopla, if you have access.)
June 12, 2020
One of the best poetry books I've ever read.
April 6, 2022
this debut poetry collection is part of Kaveh Akbar's effort at making sense of his former alcohol addiction – as well as withdrawal, and the arduous journey towards recovery. many of these poems also provide insight into his experience as a migrant, exploring the impact of displacement upon one's identity.
a certain skepticism towards language casts its shadow over Kaveh Akbar's poems, and these were the ones I enjoyed most – verses which acknowledge the limitations of language, questioning the communicative potential of "calling a wolf a wolf".
"Is there a vocabulary for this – one to make dailiness amplify
and not diminish wonder?
I have been so careless with the words I already have.
I don't remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.
[...] For so long every step I've taken
has been from one tongue to another.
To order the world:
I need, you need, he/she/it needs.
The rest, left to a hungry jackal
In the back of my brain."
a certain skepticism towards language casts its shadow over Kaveh Akbar's poems, and these were the ones I enjoyed most – verses which acknowledge the limitations of language, questioning the communicative potential of "calling a wolf a wolf".
"Is there a vocabulary for this – one to make dailiness amplify
and not diminish wonder?
I have been so careless with the words I already have.
I don't remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.
[...] For so long every step I've taken
has been from one tongue to another.
To order the world:
I need, you need, he/she/it needs.
The rest, left to a hungry jackal
In the back of my brain."
December 27, 2020
Though Yale Review says that Akbar has what every poet needs: the power to make, from emotions others have felt, memorable language nobody has assembled before. I could say that perhaps he still lacks what a poetry reader needs to be overwhelmed by the beauty of language, to want to come back to the poem again...
I’ve given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one
I’ve given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one
Read
March 25, 2023This is the second time I have chanced across Akbar’s work. Calling a Wolf a Wolf is a decent enough selection with some shining highlights, but there are just a few too many poems in between these peaks where momentum drops and emotions get muddied and fogged up.
I liked these poems:
- Do You Speak Persian?
- Heritage
- Portrait of the Alcoholic with Doubt and Kingfisher
- Against Hell
- Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives
From the final one above, here are a couple of lines that I loved:
after thirty years in America my father now dreams in English
says he misses the dead relatives he used to be able to visit in sleep
I liked these poems:
- Do You Speak Persian?
- Heritage
- Portrait of the Alcoholic with Doubt and Kingfisher
- Against Hell
- Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives
From the final one above, here are a couple of lines that I loved:
after thirty years in America my father now dreams in English
says he misses the dead relatives he used to be able to visit in sleep
December 18, 2017
Sometimes fast starts work against you. It's the "Billy Collins Rule" to always start with your best poems (like they're easy to identify) but I felt like the collection sagged a bit and slouched over the finish line. Still, some strong stuff in the first half made it worth reading. Akbar is one of the young Turks (even though he's Iranian) getting a lot of press lately, including the cover of the latest Poets & Writers.
What's up with the cover? Maybe it's a friend of the author's, but easily one of the most regrettable covers I've ever seen and poetry books are known for regrettable covers. Where's Chip Kidd when you need him? A close-up of a wolf's eyes, man! Yeah. Worth an extra five (of any poetry book's 32) readers right there!
What's up with the cover? Maybe it's a friend of the author's, but easily one of the most regrettable covers I've ever seen and poetry books are known for regrettable covers. Where's Chip Kidd when you need him? A close-up of a wolf's eyes, man! Yeah. Worth an extra five (of any poetry book's 32) readers right there!
May 12, 2020
When I read poetry collections, I either highlight in my e-reader, or tear tiny scraps of paper as markers in my hard copies to revisit phrases or copy down a line or stanza to remember.
I read Calling a Wolf a Wolf on my e-reader, and once I realized I was highlighting every single poem, I knew this was a Best of 2018 collection.
Akbar's work has received a lot of praise already, and I am just heaping it on. It was a stunning collection and one I will revisit. I hope to see more work by this amazing poet.
From "Exciting the Canvas"
Some people born before the Model T
lived to see man walk on the moon.
To be strapped like that
to the masthead of history
would make me frantic.
At parties I'd shout
I'm frantic, and you?
Like a fire, hungry and resisting containment,
I'd pound at the windows,
my mouth full of hor d'oeuvres.
I read Calling a Wolf a Wolf on my e-reader, and once I realized I was highlighting every single poem, I knew this was a Best of 2018 collection.
Akbar's work has received a lot of praise already, and I am just heaping it on. It was a stunning collection and one I will revisit. I hope to see more work by this amazing poet.
From "Exciting the Canvas"
Some people born before the Model T
lived to see man walk on the moon.
To be strapped like that
to the masthead of history
would make me frantic.
At parties I'd shout
I'm frantic, and you?
Like a fire, hungry and resisting containment,
I'd pound at the windows,
my mouth full of hor d'oeuvres.
October 21, 2017
It took me awhile to really grab hold of these poems: I was reading too tentatively. When I finally dove in, I was amazed by what I found. Beauty amidst addiction, pain, loss. Craving not only alcohol but life itself. There were lines that took my breath away (it slowed my reading, all those lines that demanded deeper attention).
There is also a struggle with faith, a craving for a God who often seems absent from His creation.
This is a book that anyone who cares about poetry should read.
There is also a struggle with faith, a craving for a God who often seems absent from His creation.
This is a book that anyone who cares about poetry should read.
October 2, 2017
"Like the belled cat's // frustrated hunt, my offer to improve myself / was ruined by the sound it made."
May 25, 2018
"I’m becoming more a vessel of memories than a person it’s a myth
that love lives in the heart it lives in the throat we push it out
when we speak when we gasp we take a little for ourselves"
easily one of the best poetry collections i've read this year. it's so raw & poignant - from the very first poem, it rips out ur bones, leaves u hollow and aching. only to then delicately share w u its own journey to recovery, its own tricks for learning to love urself. (they don't always work)
"I hold my breath.
The boat I am building
will never be done."
Read
September 7, 2017Earlier this year, I urged Book Riot readers to follow Kaveh Akbar (and a few other poets) on Twitter, in part on the power of his chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, which was published in January. Beating everyone on this list for turnaround time, Akbar is about to publish another book, this one full length, not even 9 months later. This book continues Portrait‘s examination of addiction and recovery (“everyone wants to know / what I saw on the long walk / away from you”) but expands that focus to even more encompass the whole ragged, lovely space where one’s self meets one’s world (“the geese are curving around the horizon drawing maps / a curve is a straight line broken at all its points so much / of being alive is breaking”). Akbar’s poems are somehow and always striking, sensual, abstract, and exploratory. And Calling a Wolf a Wolf has one big advantage over Portrait: it simply has more of those gorgeous poems for you to dive headfirst into.
–Derek Attig
from Buy, Borrow, Bypass: Second Book Edition: https://bookriot.com/2017/08/21/secon...
–Derek Attig
from Buy, Borrow, Bypass: Second Book Edition: https://bookriot.com/2017/08/21/secon...
November 24, 2019
I'm very careful with the poetry I read, as I'm used to classics instead of new collections, but the clever title caught my attention, it is straight to the point even if seen as hidden in metaphor, and for that I had to give it a chance.
The book is mostly based on him and his alcoholic addiction, represented as the wolf. Calling it what it is, he is able to express how he, and his family members and friends feel about this problem, and his constant struggle between drowning his sorrows and sobriety.
"Blood from the belly tastes sweeter
than blood from anywhere else. "-Soot
Yet the poems I prefer in this collection had nothing to do with his addiction, but rather with his identity, of being spiritual or irreligious, of being Iranian, or becoming too American, even forgetting how to speak his mother tongue.
"I don't remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.
I remember only
delam barat tangshodeh, I miss you. "- Do You Speak Persian?
An entertaining read.
The book is mostly based on him and his alcoholic addiction, represented as the wolf. Calling it what it is, he is able to express how he, and his family members and friends feel about this problem, and his constant struggle between drowning his sorrows and sobriety.
"Blood from the belly tastes sweeter
than blood from anywhere else. "-Soot
Yet the poems I prefer in this collection had nothing to do with his addiction, but rather with his identity, of being spiritual or irreligious, of being Iranian, or becoming too American, even forgetting how to speak his mother tongue.
"I don't remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.
I remember only
delam barat tangshodeh, I miss you. "- Do You Speak Persian?
An entertaining read.
October 30, 2018
i watched a college talk kaveh akbar gave on youtube and he described coming to poetry like the sky coming apart and an angel trumpeting, you’re a poet. like when mitski picked up a guitar and knew she was doomed. imagine writing with such tenderness. look at what i’ve underlined, “their mouths were little pleasure portals for taking in grape leaves cloudberries the fingers of lovers”, “an eccentricity of our species like blushing, gold teeth, and life after children,” a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades,” “i would be more grateful if being alive hadn’t seemed so effortless” god i have too many favorites from this collection. i am so sad that i will never read this book for the first time again
March 14, 2018
One of the most beautiful collections I have ever read. So many of these poems tore my heart out piece by piece, but in the very best way possible. In fact, because of the powerful emotional pull I felt toward this collection, I don't feel like I can write a full critique like I usually do. I will just say that that I think that this book is very much worth reading, especially if you are going through a process of recovery or a period of loneliness. Along with Danez Smith, I think that Kaveh Akbar is one of the most courageous, talented, and unpretentious young poets today.
October 6, 2017
This is as close to a perfect collection of poems as I can imagine. I normally consume a book of poetry in a day or two, stopping every now and then to reread a piece if I connect with it in some way, but with Calling a Wolf a Wolf, it took me more than a week because I kept going back to reread every piece. Akbar fills his poems so densely with image and idea that each line contains both suffering and joy. The themes include addiction, hunger, cultural disconnection, family, and ultimately or sort of hard-fought hope. I found these poems compelling, insightful, inspiring. There is something to be savored in all of them. Just for a taste, here are a few lines from "Neither Now Nor Never":
I remain a hungry child
and the idea of a land flowing with milk
and honey makes me excited,
but I do wonder what gets left out--
least favorite songs on favorite albums,
an uncle's conquered metastasis,
or the girl whose climaxes gave way to panic,
whose sobs awakened the feeling of prayer in me.
I must have read those lines half a dozen times, overcome by the beauty of them, and also the narrator's interesting way of questioning the Grand by delving into the Small. That's the way this book is: filled with the extremes, guiding a meditated search of self, others, the universe. Magic. Definitely makes my top-5 list for the year.
I remain a hungry child
and the idea of a land flowing with milk
and honey makes me excited,
but I do wonder what gets left out--
least favorite songs on favorite albums,
an uncle's conquered metastasis,
or the girl whose climaxes gave way to panic,
whose sobs awakened the feeling of prayer in me.
I must have read those lines half a dozen times, overcome by the beauty of them, and also the narrator's interesting way of questioning the Grand by delving into the Small. That's the way this book is: filled with the extremes, guiding a meditated search of self, others, the universe. Magic. Definitely makes my top-5 list for the year.
May 3, 2018
Favorite poems: Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Inpatient), Desunt Nonnulla, Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober, Unburnable The Cold is Flooding Our Lives, Everything That Moves is Alive and a Threat - A Reminder
"It's difficult to be anything at all with the whole world right here for the having."
"...I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one"
"it hurts to even think about the leak in my brain where brackish water trickles in and memory trickles out. with what do I mend a hole like that answer me with what"
"I finally have answers to the questions I taught my mother not to ask but now she won't ask them"
"It's difficult to be anything at all with the whole world right here for the having."
"...I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one"
"it hurts to even think about the leak in my brain where brackish water trickles in and memory trickles out. with what do I mend a hole like that answer me with what"
"I finally have answers to the questions I taught my mother not to ask but now she won't ask them"
May 6, 2020
Hands down, the best poetry collection I've ever read. Absolutely gorgeous.
February 17, 2023
I have never read poetry like this before. I am very impressed by the force of the language and the images it creates. Hard and honest and yet sensitive and poetic.
August 10, 2018
Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf opens with the lines “Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust, / chewing away a chain link fence or mariner’s knife.” In “Soot,” the poem these lines are from, and in the collection’s subsequent poems, Akbar’s speaker wrestles with both God and demon. God comes in the form of the speaker’s father and religion of Islam, while the demon comes in the form of addiction. The speaker, having encountered loss, knows that “Blood from the belly tastes sweeter / than blood from anywhere else.” Perhaps due to the ravages of addiction, the speaker finds himself distanced from memories of the past. In “Wild Pear Tree,” he realizes that he has “forgotten even / the easy prayer I was supposed to use / in emergencies” and in “Do You Speak Persian?” he doesn’t “remember how to say home / in my first language, or lonely, or light.” Indeed, the first section of the book is almost exclusively housed in the language of loss in a world where “so much / of being alive is breaking.” There is light here, however, amongst the darkness of the poems about being an alcoholic, and there is beauty. In “Prayer,” the speaker writes that “compared to even a small star / the moon is tiny it is not God but the flower behind God I treasure.” And in “The New World,” “The soul is a thirsty / antelope nervously lapping up / water from a pool / in the hunter’s backyard.” In “No Is a Complete Sentence” Akbar writes: “I fumble toward grace / like a vine searching for a wall.” The poems in this collection act much in the same manner, lush and loose and lost and seeking a stable home.
June 2, 2018
4.5 stars
Poetry books are always difficult reads for me without the structure of an English lit class, allowing me to really analyse them with the help of others. This collection, however, is extremely beautiful and gut-wrenching. I had many favourite lines and moments that made me wish I wasn’t reading a library copy so that I could underline them. The minus half star is really just my own failing, and my wish that I could be in a group to discuss these poems more.
Poetry books are always difficult reads for me without the structure of an English lit class, allowing me to really analyse them with the help of others. This collection, however, is extremely beautiful and gut-wrenching. I had many favourite lines and moments that made me wish I wasn’t reading a library copy so that I could underline them. The minus half star is really just my own failing, and my wish that I could be in a group to discuss these poems more.
August 15, 2018
I am clearly in the minority here, but I was not moved by Akbar's work. I found that the poems read like a self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness and I frequently lost track of the meaning. I also didn't find much variety between poems. Not my cup of tea.
September 4, 2023
پرترهٔ شاعر زیر دندانهای نیش. حالآ الکل از دُم مار تا به گلوی من؛ عاج بریده بر گردن مادر.
Read
June 12, 2023I’m becoming more of a vessel of memories than a person it’s a myth / that love lives in the heart it lives in the throat we push it out / when we speak when we gasp we take a little for ourselves
Just a beautiful collection, mainly focusing on recovering from addiction. So many of these poems center on intimate, tender moments that feel quiet yet overwhelming. From the very first poem, I knew that Kaveh Akbar would be a new favorite poet.
April 28, 2018
The first time I read Kaveh Akbar’s poetry, I wasn’t too keen on it. I thought the internal caesura was jarring and I had trouble following their narratives. I loved The Orchids, but that was the only one I really understood. He did a reading at my college, and I was dubious about going. But the lure of witnessing live poetry tugged me towards his reading on Thursday night, and I’m so glad it did.
His mannerisms intrigued me. He bent the mike down too low on purpose, so that he had to hunch over to be heard. He swayed, feet planted, and his voice was wavering. I didn’t realize what his behavior reminded me of until he had already read a few poems: he read like he was drunk. And sad. As soon as a poem ended, the alcohol slipped off of him and he was laughing, joking, answering questions sincerely. But it was clear he was intoxicated by his own poetry. The feeling was contagious.
After his reading, I bought a copy of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and spent the next three days working my way through it. Some poems I had to read out loud; some I had to read repeatedly; others ran through my fingers like a patch of grass. After hearing him read his poetry out loud, I understood how to read their textual forms. I would read them out loud and then imagine how Kaveh would read them. Each of them had an element of rawness, graphic corporal imagery, and the blurring of the mundane with the divine.
Kaveh went on to address his use of internal caesura. He said he was trying to get the effect of a line break without having to actually end the physical line on the page. Limited by his choice to eschew punctuation in some poems, he took to spacing out clauses in order to give the reader a little clarity. This knowledge made his poetry much more comprehensible to me.
"I remain a hungry child / and the idea of a land flowing with milk / and honey makes me excited, / but I do wonder what gets left out-- / least favorite songs on favorite albums, / an uncle's conquered metastasis, / or the girl whose climaxes gave way to panic, / whose sobs awakened the feeling of prayer in me. / May they be there too, O Lord. / With each second passing over me / may that heaven grow and grow."
"there is a pond I leapt into once / with a lonely blonde boy when we scampered out one of us / was in love I could not be held responsible / for desire he could not be held at all"
"All I want is to finally / take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled // horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug / on them, but secretly I will want that very much."
His mannerisms intrigued me. He bent the mike down too low on purpose, so that he had to hunch over to be heard. He swayed, feet planted, and his voice was wavering. I didn’t realize what his behavior reminded me of until he had already read a few poems: he read like he was drunk. And sad. As soon as a poem ended, the alcohol slipped off of him and he was laughing, joking, answering questions sincerely. But it was clear he was intoxicated by his own poetry. The feeling was contagious.
After his reading, I bought a copy of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and spent the next three days working my way through it. Some poems I had to read out loud; some I had to read repeatedly; others ran through my fingers like a patch of grass. After hearing him read his poetry out loud, I understood how to read their textual forms. I would read them out loud and then imagine how Kaveh would read them. Each of them had an element of rawness, graphic corporal imagery, and the blurring of the mundane with the divine.
Kaveh went on to address his use of internal caesura. He said he was trying to get the effect of a line break without having to actually end the physical line on the page. Limited by his choice to eschew punctuation in some poems, he took to spacing out clauses in order to give the reader a little clarity. This knowledge made his poetry much more comprehensible to me.
"I remain a hungry child / and the idea of a land flowing with milk / and honey makes me excited, / but I do wonder what gets left out-- / least favorite songs on favorite albums, / an uncle's conquered metastasis, / or the girl whose climaxes gave way to panic, / whose sobs awakened the feeling of prayer in me. / May they be there too, O Lord. / With each second passing over me / may that heaven grow and grow."
"there is a pond I leapt into once / with a lonely blonde boy when we scampered out one of us / was in love I could not be held responsible / for desire he could not be held at all"
"All I want is to finally / take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled // horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug / on them, but secretly I will want that very much."
December 19, 2017
To my knowledge, this is Kaveh Akbar's full-length debut. Though I have not read his chapbook, Portrait of an Alcholic, I suspect that this collection includes the poems from the chapbook, as there are numerous poems which carry titles beginning with "Portrait of the Alcoholic..." It comes as no surprise that this poems are among the most powerful, and they work to contextualize much of the grief, anguish, and yearning evident throughout the collection.
What really sets this book apart, for me, is Akbar's willingness to be entirely vulnerable in every stanza. Every poem in this book bleeds, and the author makes no attempt to conceal his wounds. The result is a collection which both haunts and inspires, shouts at the dark and supplicates at the foot of even the smallest joys.
2017 was an impressive year for contemporary poetry, and easily 5 collections now have a firm place in my top 10 poetry books of all time. That said, Akbar's may be my favorite yet. The poems have mastered balance, resounding with urgency and patience simultaneously. Every line, every word, feels absolutely essential to the underlying narrative. There's never a wasted breath, which is convenient, as I found myself holding my own for entire poems again and again.
Read this book. You won't regret it.
What really sets this book apart, for me, is Akbar's willingness to be entirely vulnerable in every stanza. Every poem in this book bleeds, and the author makes no attempt to conceal his wounds. The result is a collection which both haunts and inspires, shouts at the dark and supplicates at the foot of even the smallest joys.
2017 was an impressive year for contemporary poetry, and easily 5 collections now have a firm place in my top 10 poetry books of all time. That said, Akbar's may be my favorite yet. The poems have mastered balance, resounding with urgency and patience simultaneously. Every line, every word, feels absolutely essential to the underlying narrative. There's never a wasted breath, which is convenient, as I found myself holding my own for entire poems again and again.
Read this book. You won't regret it.
December 14, 2021
3-3.5 stars
some of these poems were stylistically irritating and unoriginal, as were some of the images he repeated. some similes (“quiet as a bowl of fruit hardening under lava”) and metaphors were completely nonsensical (“in a dream / i pull back your foreskin / and reveal a fat vase / stuffed with crow / feathers”—what? i’ll pay you $5 if you can tell me what this means) while some were fantastic. BUT the poems i did enjoy are really, really impressive, and since everyone seems to adore this collection, it could be more of a me issue in that i often cannot connect to this particular style. i will note that i liked his musings on religion. he has excellent command of language, he just occasionally grips it a little too loosely for my taste.
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"sometimes a mind is ready to leave / the world before its body / sometimes paradise happens / too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake”
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"it’s a myth / that love lives in the heart / it lives in the throat we push it out / when we speak / when we gasp we take a little for ourselves”
some of these poems were stylistically irritating and unoriginal, as were some of the images he repeated. some similes (“quiet as a bowl of fruit hardening under lava”) and metaphors were completely nonsensical (“in a dream / i pull back your foreskin / and reveal a fat vase / stuffed with crow / feathers”—what? i’ll pay you $5 if you can tell me what this means) while some were fantastic. BUT the poems i did enjoy are really, really impressive, and since everyone seems to adore this collection, it could be more of a me issue in that i often cannot connect to this particular style. i will note that i liked his musings on religion. he has excellent command of language, he just occasionally grips it a little too loosely for my taste.
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"sometimes a mind is ready to leave / the world before its body / sometimes paradise happens / too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake”
-
"it’s a myth / that love lives in the heart / it lives in the throat we push it out / when we speak / when we gasp we take a little for ourselves”
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