Kaveh Akbar

An anthology edited by acclaimed poets Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis. In 1997, Sarabande published Last Call , a poetry anthology that became a formative text on the lived experiences of addiction. Now, more than twenty-five years later, editors Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis offer this companion volume for a new generation.  Another Last Poems on Addiction & Deliverance showcases work from poets like Joy Harjo, Afaa M. Weaver, Diane Seuss, Layli Long Soldier, Sharon Olds, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, and Ocean Vuong, as well as many new and powerful voices.   Samuel Ace, Chase Berggrun, Sherwin Bitsui, Sophie Cabot Black, Jericho Brown, Anthony Ceballos, Marianne Chan, Jos Charles, Brendan Constantine, Cynthia Cruz, Steven Espada Dawson, Megan Denton Ray, Martín Espada, Megan Fernandes, Sarah Gorham, Joy Harjo, Mary Karr, Sophie Klahr, Michael Klein, Dana Levin, Ada Limón, Zach Linge, Layli Long Soldier, Sharon Olds, Airea Dee Matthews, Joshua Mehigan, Tomás Q. Morín, Erin Noehrem, Joy Priest, Dana Roeser, sam sax, Diane Seuss, Natalie Shapero, Katie Jean Shinkle, Jeffrey Skinner, Bernardo Wade, Afaa M. Weaver, The Cyborg Jillian Weise, Phillip B. Williams, Ocean Vuong

"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

A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

Sin da molto piccolo Cyrus Shams ha dovuto fare i conti con la morte. Quando aveva pochi mesi la madre, Roya, rimase uccisa in un terribile disastro aereo causato da un incrociatore americano che abbatté, per errore, l’aereo di linea iraniano su cui viaggiava. Il padre, Ali, alla ricerca di un futuro diverso, e per tentare di fuggire al dolore, si trasferì con il piccolo Cyrus proprio negli Stati Uniti, lavorando per il resto della vita in un allevamento di polli nell’Indiana, fino a spegnersi improvvisamente mentre il figlio era al college. Cyrus, infatti, grazie alla sua intelligenza vivace e al talento per la poesia si era garantito una borsa di studio in una buona università, dove aveva anche avuto le prime esperienze con alcol e droghe. Esperienze che ben presto si erano trasformate in una dipendenza sconfitta a fatica. Ora, a ventinove anni, Cyrus ha un fare in modo che la sua morte non sia priva di senso come quelle dei genitori. È affascinato, fino quasi all’ossessione, dai “martiri”, uomini e donne che hanno vissuto e si sono sacrificati per una causa superiore, non per la fede o la gloria, ma per il bene degli altri. Sogna di scrivere un libro che li celebri e poi, forse, diventare uno di loro. Non sa, però, che questa ricerca lo porterà a scavare anche nel passato della sua famiglia risvegliando fantasmi che credeva ormai dimenticati. Martire! è un romanzo meraviglioso, originale e divertente. Un inno alla vita e alla ricerca di un senso che ognuno può trovare in modi diversi (nella fede, nell’arte, in sé, negli altri, nell’amore). Con questo strepitoso esordio Kaveh Akbar si afferma come la nuova voce, essenziale quanto potente, della narrativa internazionale contemporanea. “Akbar ha creato un protagonista indimenticabile. Quello che l’autore riesce a fare in Martire! è a dir poco miracoloso.”The New York Times Books Review “Martire! è capace di essere al contempo divertente e serio, assurdo e profondo.”Los Angeles Times “Il miglior romanzo che possiate leggere sulla gioia del linguaggio, la dipendenza, lo sradicamento, il martirio, l’appartenenza e la nostalgia di casa.” Lauren Groffautrice bestseller di Matrix e Fato e furia

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Kaveh Akbars faszinierender, von Presse und prominenten Leserinnen und Lesern gefeierter Debütroman führt vom Iran der 1980er-Jahre bis in die heutigen USA und ist eine Hymne auf all das, was uns bei der Suche nach Sinn und Bedeutung im Leben helfen auf die Kunst, den Glauben an uns selbst, auf Liebe, Freundschaft und Mitmenschlichkeit. Nominiert für den National Book Award 2024.  Cyrus Shams, 29, ist kein Meister des täglichen Lebens. Er schreibt umwerfend gute Gedichte und nimmt zu viele Drogen. Seit er denken kann, ringt er mit den großen Sinnfragen, mit seiner sexuellen Identität und seiner Vergangenheit. Er war noch ein Baby, als das Flugzeug abgeschossen wurde, mit dem seine Mutter auf dem Weg aus Teheran in die Freiheit war. Ein tragischer Irrtum, ein sinnloser Tod, der ihn bis heute verfolgt. Cyrus sucht nach dem Sinn seiner Existenz und ist fasziniert von Märtyrern. Wie wäre es, sich einer Sache so zu verschreiben wie Jeanne d'Arc oder Bobby Sands? Und wer war seine Mutter eigentlich, wohin sollte ihre Reise führen? Cyrus, ausnahmsweise nüchtern und eventuell verliebt, begibt sich auf eine Reise in die Vergangenheit, die ihn zu den Fragen der Zukunft führt. «Ich werde diese Geschichte und die Menschen darin für den Rest meines Lebens in mir tragen.» John Green «Dieses Buch vibriert vor Liebe zum Leben, zur Schönheit und zur Sprache. Ich bin voller Ehrfurcht.» Natalie Portman «Elegant, schwindelerregend und verspielt – Märtyrer! ist ein großartiger Roman.» Lauren Groff «Ein Juwel von einem Roman.» Tommy Orange

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.

"Was it Jung who speculated that alcoholism might be an attempt at a material solution for a spiritual problem? Kaveh Akbar seems able to contain both--he's a demotic, as well as a spiritual, poet (the only type of either I trust). Each word in this little book might rise up from somewhere deep in the earth, but they turn into stars." - Nick Flynn "In Islam prayer is not transactional, poetry is not divorced from the quotidian and portraiture is embraced only in the abstract. And yet here in Kaveh Akbar's book, entreaty is earnest, aimed at the human and particular more often than the divine but at the same time the language and form elevate themselves to the fevered register of desperation. Yes, sure, fine, you would think that a Muslim writing about being a drunk would have to adopt unconventional approaches, but drunkenness in the Islamic literary tradition is a long and time-honored metaphor. For what? Abandonment to God, a cessation of the self--but not so here; no. Here it's real, it's coarse, it's dangerous. The reason we Muslims do not pray for things is that it is similarly dangerous for one to call God's attention onto oneself. But for Kaveh Akbar, whose very name means 'poetry, ' it is a risk every poem takes with gusto. And speaking purely for myself, these poems give me life because 'for so long every step I've taken/ has been from one tongue to another.' Be careful, little brother. God's got His eye on you now." - Kazim Ali

Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration, and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology serves as a truly holistic and global survey to a lyric conversation about the divine that has been going on for millenia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BC Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David, to Lao Tzu, to the fourteenth century Ethiopian national religious epic, the Kebra Nagast - this anthology presents a number of canonical voices like Blake, Rumi, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized diverse voices that showcase the breathtaking multiplicity of ways in which humanity has responded to the Divine across the centuries. These poets' voices commune across the centuries, offering readers a chance to experience for themselves the vast and powerful interconnectedness of these incantations orbiting the most elemental of all subjects - our spirit.