Welcome to Litsy!

Kaveh Akbar�s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar�s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body�s question, �what now shall I repair?� Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance�the infinite void of a loved one�s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation�teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell�s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives�resonant, revelatory, and holy.