Pilgrim Bell

Starred review from June 21, 2021
In this rich and moving collection, Akbar (Calling a Wolf a Wolf) writes poems of contradiction and ambivalence centered on religious belief and ethnic and national identity. Evocative and polyphonic, surprising but never artificially shocking, Akbar’s poems flit from the divine to the corporeal in the same breath. In “Vines”: “when I saw God/ I trembled like a man”—and a few lines later, “I live like a widow// every day a heave of knitting patterns and sex toys.” In “The Miracle,” the poet confesses to himself: “Gabriel isn’t coming for you. If he did/ would you call him Jibril, or Gabriel like you/ are here? Who is this even for?” Within that question lies a tension between cultures, religions, loyalties, and ways of being in and looking at the world. As an Iranian-born American, Akbar does not feel that either of these nationalities can fully encompass his identity. “Some nights I force/ my brain to dream me/ Persian by listening/ to old home movies/ as I fall asleep,” he explains. This impressive, thoughtful work shimmers with inventive syntax and spiritual profundity.

Starred review from June 1, 2021

The poems in Akbar's highly anticipated second collection (after Calling a Wolf a Wolf) span and invert boundaries, addressing addiction, faith, language, history, self, family, and power. Instead of purporting to provide answers ("obviousness ruins things"), the poems exist in between--"Somewhere between wonder./And shame"--like the messy experience of being. Embedded in each poem is the question of how to live and what responsibility comes with knowledge: how to live as an addict after addiction; how to believe while reserving "the right./To refuse. Enchantment"; how to exist in a nation that questions your existence. Probing the tension between doubt and faith, Akbar questions stories meant to console or justify: "That the prophets arrived not to ease our suffering/but to experience it seems--can I say this?--/a waste?" A wry wariness adds levity to the collection, as in a speaker's exasperated response to a directive epigraph from John Donne: "yes John I tried that the results were/underwhelming." The collection's final poem, "The Palace," is a tour de force that weaves all its themes into a powerfully resonant close. VERDICT Lyrical, profound, and honest, the kind of collection to which a reader will return.--Amy Dickinson, Montrose Regional Lib. District, CO

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2021
This incandescent second collection of poetry from Akbar, following Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017), illuminates questions of divinity and language in swift, surprising lyrics. An Iranian-born writer of unmatched imagery and searing critique, Akbar uses plainspoken language (""Somewhere a man is steering a robotic plane into murder"") and otherworldly imagining (""Heaven / is all preposition--above, among, around, within"") to collide our world and the next. ""In the Language of Mammon"" references a biblical term for material wealth and satirizes poets' relationships to money: ""Behold the poet, God's / incarnate spit in the mud, / chirping like lice in a fire."" The poem is printed in mirrored script, rendering it almost impossible to read. Another inventive poem, ""Palace Mosque, Frozen,"" is arranged as a square within a square, doubly depicting the supplicants' experience: ""bright dust / pillowed floor / we see our prayers / as we say them."" Akbar names several inspiring Persian and Iranian poets, such as Hafez and Forugh Farrokhzad, and his obvious skill and subtle flirtation with self-deprecation will surely endear readers to this volume's exceptional speakers.

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