“You know very well that the earth is filled with angels and djinn, partying like teenagers, spinning around like waterwheels. Come listen.” – Kaveh Akbar, ‘Martyr!’
What up Friday, I am battling a mysterious illness that I’m pretty sure isn’t serious, but is leaving me in a lot of pain and making it hard to think. Y’all are just gonna have to excuse any typos.
I write anyway, because I imagine you, reader, basically two ways: 1) on the CTA to a job you hate, possibly hungover, thankful it’s at least Friday or annoyed because Friday is your Monday or 2) at least partially responsibility-free and joyously cheering the end of the week. In both scenarios, this email is a treat.
Or as this week’s author says in their Acknowledgments page, “Reader, your attention—a measure of your time, your most non-replenishable resource—is a profound gift, one I have done my best to honor. Thank you, thank you.” THAT’S RIGHT, WE’RE READING KAVEH AKBAR THIS WEEK WOOOOOOOO!
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
First of all, Kaveh, if you happen to see this, sorry about the Bucks. At least Khris Middleton looked alive some this series.
Quick story: I went to Kaveh’s Chicago book tour stop at the Haymarket House, hosted by the incomparable Women & Children First, H Melt, and Eve L. Ewing. I was wearing a Bulls shirt and so Kaveh and I talked basketball. I know, right?! The world is sometimes full of good things—couplets with caesuras, the swish of a three—but I had something I really wanted to say that for once did not involve Dame-Giannis PNRs. For the record, I did not tell him that he was one of the Twitter Poets Back In 2016-17 that inspired my beloved and I start a podcast originally called “Poets Love Basketball.” What I wanted to say, and it’s an incredibly true thing is: “hey Kaveh, I went through years of burnout, where I didn’t write anything and questioned if I even liked poetry, and both your work and constant posting of poems on Twitter helped rescue me from writing burnout.”
You know what this man said to me?
“Thank you sincerely for saying that. Writers have been that for me, I’ve been that for writers, and one day, you will be that for other writers.”
The opposite of Martin Amis. Kaveh’s about as tall as Victor Wembanyama, and all heart.
Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar: Mal always says she can’t trust me when I say she looks good because why would her husband say she looks bad? Well, lest you think I’m going to spend the whole blog tongue-cleaning Kaveh’s Jordans—I thought Pilgrim Bell was fine. Not as earth-shattering as Calling A Wolf A Wolf, although I’m always glad when a poet tries to write a different book from their first. These poems are more spare, more devotional. It’s not that I didn’t like this collection, it’s that it didn’t quite sing to me the way Kaveh’s other two books have. I’ll return to this at some point—maybe a second reading will open me more to letting the poems’ magic work.
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar: my God, this book. The trend of poets writing absolutely dynamite novels that I read for this blog continues. It takes a lot for me to say something should be required reading—it’s a thought-killing cliché that reeks of Literary Hall Monitoring—but I do think every writer should read this book. Certainly I, a recovering drunk who is obsessed with the idea of his books being meaningful, wish I had read this book when I was 26 instead of 36.
Yes, this is a book starring a writer main character—normally a pet peeve, the realm of philandering Updike narrators or white male navel-gazing—but the writing conceit serves the project. Cyrus Shams is a poet obsessed with death mattering/the concept of martyrdom, and when poets have an obsession that they’re trying work out in book form, it’s interesting. Whether or not you like poetry, the poetic process is supposed treat even the simplest concepts “with rigor,” as José Olivarez put on his The Line Break appearance. To watch Cyrus grapple with his martyr-obsession—and in doing so, get a better understanding of his own life’s purpose—that’s interesting, in this context. The book is littered with Cyrus’s bad rough drafts, but even bad rough drafts written in a character’s voice is new Kaveh Akbar poetry. It’s all a treat, is what I’m saying, and the treat is wrapped in an actually compelling narrative that is hard to put down. To bring up another reader’s cliche, I am sad to have finished this novel, because it means I’m no longer reading this novel. You should, though.
LINKS!
There is simply too much going on with the campus protests right now for me to do it any justice in covering it here. Not to mention, it’s basically the only thing on my Bluesky feed rn, maybe you want a break. Also, if you read this blog, you can probably discern where I come down.
To the students who peacefully and clearly stating their demands (read: all of them?)—solidarity. To the people brought in for the sole purpose of doing violence (read: cops)—hey, consider a career change and therapy. To the administrators threatening to rescind degrees and having students arrested for standing up to injustice—shame is a deep well that’s hard to crawl out of, and I hope your journey is difficult. Personally, my Jesuit alma mater told us, metaphorically, to “go forth and set the world on fire.” If trying to upend the military industrial complex and end the United States’s funding of genocide isn’t what Saint Ignatius was admonishing, then I must’ve misunderstood.
Anyway, here’s Operation Ivy.
Happy trails to Candace Parker, retiring as one of the greatest in her sport and the coolest athlete a Chicago team has acquired in my adult lifetime (honorable mention to DeMar DeRozan, Joakim Noah, Jimmy Butler, and Tim Anderson). She’s also great for basketball media. Here’s Maitreyi Anantharaman at Defector on a person who truly loves basketball: “…the real story of her career is one she doesn’t have to tell. Breanna Stewart tells it when she switches onto the perimeter, A’ja Wilson tells it running the floor, so does Alyssa Thomas racking up triple-doubles. Satou Sabally, Elena Delle Donne, Emma Meesseman—every time they bend the rules of basketball a little bit, they tell Parker’s story.” Thank you for bringing Chicago a championship, Candace.
Huh. A Boeing whistleblower who was a quality auditor one of their suppliers has died after, and I quote, a “sudden, fast-spreading infection” even though “he was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle.” Dominic Gates and Lauren Rosenblatt report in Seattle Times about Josh Dean, a man with family and friends and who spent his last days on dialysis and intubated for reasons I’m certain have no explanation. It’s not like anything like this has happened before.
Wanna read a poem? I wanna read a poem. It’s not gonna cheer us up, even though it’s really good. Here’s Ian Williams in Superstition Review with “MAKE SURE TO SMILE AND GREET STUDENTS AS YOU GUIDE THEM THROUGH THE WEAPONS DETECTION CHECKPOINT.”
Some good news, finally! Illinois is finally home to federally protected tribal land, after a portion of the state was given back to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. Eunice Alpasan at WTTW reports. More, I say, more.
Here’s something else comforting: cosmic insignificance! I could use some cosmic insignificance, Kaveh Akbar makes me crave cosmic insignificance and feel like life matters at the same time. Here’s Barry Petchesky at Defector looking closer at the images the James Webb Space Telescope is sending back to us, and feeling smaller: “But a funny thing happens when you look at our big honking universe. Anything with a sense of scale breaks down under enough magnification, because there is something smaller, older, farther away behind it. Lots of somethings.” You’ll never think of the Horsehead Nebula the same again.
What’re you still doing here? It’s Friday and I assume the weather’s nice, if it’s not raining. (I’m writing this on a Thursday, btw. Sorry to ruin the magic.) Either go outside, or go read my poem in Moist Poetry Journal and the 29 other poems Han published this month.
Here’s Jamal Murray, for some joy:
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. In Martyr!, the artist Orkideh is working in a diner when she gets her big break. A gallery owner asks if she’s a painter, and she says she works in a diner. Listen: there is honor in pouring diner coffee.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris