Kaveh Akbar Orden de los libros (cronológico)

Un joven sobrio y huérfano, hijo de inmigrantes iraníes, guiado por las voces de artistas, poetas y reyes, emprende una búsqueda notable de un secreto familiar que lo lleva a una pintora terminal que vive sus últimos días en el Museo de Brooklyn. Electrificante, divertido y completamente original, ¡Mártir! presenta una voz esencial en la ficción contemporánea. Cyrus Shams es un hombre joven que lidia con una herencia de violencia y pérdida: el avión de su madre fue derribado sobre los cielos del Golfo Pérsico en un accidente sin sentido; y la vida de su padre en América estuvo marcada por su trabajo matando pollos en una granja industrial en el Medio Oeste. Cyrus es un alcohólico, un adicto y un poeta, cuya obsesión con los mártires lo lleva a examinar los misterios de su pasado, hacia un tío que atravesó campos de batalla iraníes vestido como el ángel de la muerte para inspirar y consolar a los moribundos, y hacia su madre, a través de una pintura descubierta en una galería de arte de Brooklyn que sugiere que ella puede no haber sido quien o lo que parecía. ¡Mártir! es un canto a cómo pasamos nuestras vidas buscando significado: en la fe, el arte, nosotros mismos y los demás.

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

'A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized' Rowan Williams, TLSThis rich and surprising anthology is a holistic, global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BCE 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 selection presents a number of canonical figures like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized, diverse poets going up to the present day. Together they show the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the spiritual, across place and time.

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.

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.