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Open Books: Events
November 18, 2010 07:30 PM
KAZIM ALI & SARAH VAP
The subtitle "Autobiography and Cities" describes the frame for poet Kazim Ali's book of creative non-fiction, Bright Felon (Wesleyan $22.95). Written in brief passages of poetic prose, the work unfolds as a journey not only from city to city but also within the sojourner, a challenging journey to be true to himself as "a poet, a Muslim, and of a particular persuasion." The dangerous power of silence and the dire yet frightening need to speak thread through the pieces -- "What have you ever done but wondered when you could go home. // When you can't go home because there is something you have not said. // When you say it you will not have a home anymore." He travels through "streets wet with asters and deletions," declaring that "faltering perhaps, fading for sure, though I mispronounce myself, I will speak," and creating a work of heartbreaking candor.
Sarah Vap's Faulkner's Rosary (Saturnalia $14) is an evocative collection of lyric poems that illuminates what it means to make a family. With an arc shaped by pregnancy, the book shimmers with unusual detail offered in a language that is often tender and startling -- "My world is sunlight. Your world / is a single wave wrapped around. // Assembling / within me, our slightest idea // turned into roselight and chained // behind the sternum." The poems are contemplative in quality and pacing, the voice at times shifting into a kind of prayer -- "Glory be to the cluster, and to the string, and to the holy spontaneity. / Intimacy in the beginning, is now, and ever dissolving. The world, without. Amen." They carry both vibrant reality and mystery.
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