What do you think?
Rate this book
Sand Opera
" Sand Opera is what political poetry must be like today in our age of seemingly permanent war."—Mark Nowak Sand Opera emerges from the dizzying position of being named but unheard as an Arab American and out of the parallel sense of seeing Arabs named and silenced since 9/11. Polyvocal poems, arias, and redacted text speak for the unheard. Philip Metres exposes our common humanity while investigating the dehumanizing perils of war and its lasting effect on our culture. From "Hung Lyres": @ When the bombs fell, she could barely raise
her pendulous head, wept shrapnel until her mother capped the fire
with her breast. She teetered on the highwire of herself. She
lay down & the armies retreated, never showing their backs. When she unlatched
from the breast, the planes took off again. Stubborn stars refused to fall . . . Philip Metres has written a number of books and chapbooks, most recently A Concordance of Leaves (Diode, 2013), abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine, 2011), To See the Earth (Cleveland State, 2008), and Behind the War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941 (University of Iowa, 2007). His work has appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry , and has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, four Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Anne Halley Prize, the Arab American Book Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.
her pendulous head, wept shrapnel until her mother capped the fire
with her breast. She teetered on the highwire of herself. She
lay down & the armies retreated, never showing their backs. When she unlatched
from the breast, the planes took off again. Stubborn stars refused to fall . . . Philip Metres has written a number of books and chapbooks, most recently A Concordance of Leaves (Diode, 2013), abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine, 2011), To See the Earth (Cleveland State, 2008), and Behind the War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941 (University of Iowa, 2007). His work has appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry , and has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, four Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Anne Halley Prize, the Arab American Book Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.
100 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2015
10 people are currently reading
394 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
April 15, 2017
[This review first appeared in Al Jadid: A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts.]
The Sacred and The Profane
Sand Opera
By Philip Metres
Alice James Books, 2015
Reviewed by Angele Ellis
In a February 2015 interview in The Los Angeles Review of Books, renowned poet and translator Fady Joudah describes Philip Metres’s latest volume of poetry, Sand Opera:
[It] is ultimately a book about love, its loss and recapture, and
the struggle in between. Many will completely misread it as
another political book of poems, in that reductive, ready-made
sense of "political" which is reserved for certain themes but
mostly for certain ethnicities. So part of that misreading is due
to the book’s subject matter or its Abu Ghraib arias, and also
because it is written by an Arab American. (LARB)
Metres—an award-winning poet, translator, and university professor—has in Sand Opera expanded his stunning chapbook abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine Press, 2011) into a five-section meditation on the intersections of war and institutional torture and the struggles and blessings of ordinary life, including married love and fatherhood. In “Salaam Epigrams,” Metres uses a stylized version of the Arabic word for peace to punctuate, like a fetal heartbeat, a poem written for his yet-unborn daughter:
…
سلام
Star jiggered from the sky
to green ground, you
beeline toward its bloom.
سلام
Apostrophe of a womb—
fetal you—and the line you will become. (p. 42)
“Salaam Epigrams” is juxtaposed with “War Stories,” in which the small battles of caring for an infant in privileged America are contrasted jarringly with the bloody wars that continue "…outside the zone / of ground zeroes”:
…Our fathers and brothers wear the flak jacket
of metal and shrapnel. We don the softness
of palms, the odor of baby wipes. Somewhere
outside, someone’s brother’s buried
a box he won’t tell us where. (p. 43)
Metres, a third generation Arab American of Lebanese Christian descent (whose father was a Vietnam War veteran), is keenly aware of the complex issues surrounding agency, identity, and loyalty. In The Los Angeles Review of Books interview, this artist hurt into poetry by 9/11 and its aftermath reflects:
…The recent events reminded me how dismayed I was by
American representations of Abu Ghraib. Take Errol Morris’s documentary “Standard Operating Procedure.” Here was this
careful examination of how the prison scandal unfolded, through
the eyes of the perpetrators, and NOT ONE of the victims was interviewed. Their presence was merely fodder for the exercise of imperial remorse…I should make it clear, at the same time, the important work of American veterans standing up and speaking
out not only against acts of abuse or atrocity, but owning complicity with larger structures of oppression…American veterans carry a particular burden of grief and guilt that makes it complicated for
them to speak publicly…So the war continues for our veterans, something I broach in Sand Opera in a handful of poems: “The
Blues of Ken Davis,” “The Blues of Joe Darby,” “War Stories,” “Home Sweet Home,” and “Breathing Together.” (LARB)
The empathy for a range of voices displayed in Sand Opera is enhanced by Metres’s use of contemporary poetic techniques, including redaction (here representative of the blacking out of official files as well as of individual memory). The book also has several vellum inserts containing schemata of torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and black sites, which overlay brief yet poignant poems. In “Black Site (Exhibit I),” the prisoner’s testimony beneath/surrounding his cell is as follows:
Whenever I saw
a fly in my cell
I was filled
with joy
though I wished for it
to slip under the door
so it would not be
imprisoned itself (p. 67)
Metres brackets the five sections of Sand Opera with two poems that draw upon Catholic imagery: “Illumination of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew” and “Compline.” St. Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Disciples, was in legend flayed alive. In Metres’s poem, he becomes both a symbol of torture and of the ability of saint and artist to transfigure it:
…& if
the body’s flayed & displayed
in human palms / & human skin
scrolled open / the body still dances
& if the flesh is the text
of God / bid a voice to rise /
& rise again (p. 1)
The Sacred and The Profane
Sand Opera
By Philip Metres
Alice James Books, 2015
Reviewed by Angele Ellis
In a February 2015 interview in The Los Angeles Review of Books, renowned poet and translator Fady Joudah describes Philip Metres’s latest volume of poetry, Sand Opera:
[It] is ultimately a book about love, its loss and recapture, and
the struggle in between. Many will completely misread it as
another political book of poems, in that reductive, ready-made
sense of "political" which is reserved for certain themes but
mostly for certain ethnicities. So part of that misreading is due
to the book’s subject matter or its Abu Ghraib arias, and also
because it is written by an Arab American. (LARB)
Metres—an award-winning poet, translator, and university professor—has in Sand Opera expanded his stunning chapbook abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine Press, 2011) into a five-section meditation on the intersections of war and institutional torture and the struggles and blessings of ordinary life, including married love and fatherhood. In “Salaam Epigrams,” Metres uses a stylized version of the Arabic word for peace to punctuate, like a fetal heartbeat, a poem written for his yet-unborn daughter:
…
سلام
Star jiggered from the sky
to green ground, you
beeline toward its bloom.
سلام
Apostrophe of a womb—
fetal you—and the line you will become. (p. 42)
“Salaam Epigrams” is juxtaposed with “War Stories,” in which the small battles of caring for an infant in privileged America are contrasted jarringly with the bloody wars that continue "…outside the zone / of ground zeroes”:
…Our fathers and brothers wear the flak jacket
of metal and shrapnel. We don the softness
of palms, the odor of baby wipes. Somewhere
outside, someone’s brother’s buried
a box he won’t tell us where. (p. 43)
Metres, a third generation Arab American of Lebanese Christian descent (whose father was a Vietnam War veteran), is keenly aware of the complex issues surrounding agency, identity, and loyalty. In The Los Angeles Review of Books interview, this artist hurt into poetry by 9/11 and its aftermath reflects:
…The recent events reminded me how dismayed I was by
American representations of Abu Ghraib. Take Errol Morris’s documentary “Standard Operating Procedure.” Here was this
careful examination of how the prison scandal unfolded, through
the eyes of the perpetrators, and NOT ONE of the victims was interviewed. Their presence was merely fodder for the exercise of imperial remorse…I should make it clear, at the same time, the important work of American veterans standing up and speaking
out not only against acts of abuse or atrocity, but owning complicity with larger structures of oppression…American veterans carry a particular burden of grief and guilt that makes it complicated for
them to speak publicly…So the war continues for our veterans, something I broach in Sand Opera in a handful of poems: “The
Blues of Ken Davis,” “The Blues of Joe Darby,” “War Stories,” “Home Sweet Home,” and “Breathing Together.” (LARB)
The empathy for a range of voices displayed in Sand Opera is enhanced by Metres’s use of contemporary poetic techniques, including redaction (here representative of the blacking out of official files as well as of individual memory). The book also has several vellum inserts containing schemata of torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and black sites, which overlay brief yet poignant poems. In “Black Site (Exhibit I),” the prisoner’s testimony beneath/surrounding his cell is as follows:
Whenever I saw
a fly in my cell
I was filled
with joy
though I wished for it
to slip under the door
so it would not be
imprisoned itself (p. 67)
Metres brackets the five sections of Sand Opera with two poems that draw upon Catholic imagery: “Illumination of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew” and “Compline.” St. Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Disciples, was in legend flayed alive. In Metres’s poem, he becomes both a symbol of torture and of the ability of saint and artist to transfigure it:
…& if
the body’s flayed & displayed
in human palms / & human skin
scrolled open / the body still dances
& if the flesh is the text
of God / bid a voice to rise /
& rise again (p. 1)
February 13, 2015
lots to appreciate about how this book is put together. closer to a 3.5
October 20, 2025
To call this book “moving” seems like a severe understatement. Really really insane and significant portrayal of horrible and disgusting acts of terror.
“My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight”
“My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight”
March 10, 2021
beautifully written, and full of important poems. disturbing but important reading
July 31, 2018
Maybe the best non-vet book to come out of the "War on Terror." Metres is an Arab American whose perspective is shaped by the double consciousness that forced upon him, his family, and his community post-9/11. That's a starting point, not a limit, because Sand Opera is at its best when Metress is triangulating perspectives, as in the series of "Blues" poems departing from the perspectives of Americans involved in the interrogations.
At first I was put off by the use of blacked out words, blank spaces and diagrams, which handled differently could have felt like attempts to aestheticize the suffering. Before long, however, I was convinced that Metres was fully aware of those potential dissonances and was using rather than being used by his theoretical awareness.
As the title suggests, Sand Opera is structured around arias and recitatives, so you really need context to take in the full impact of individual poems, but "The Blues of Ken Davis," ""No I am what I saw," "Recipe from the Abbasid," and "When I Was a Child, I Lived as a Child, I Said to My Dad" give a sense of the range. A few of many memorable lines:
"What I ask you is this: base
What you believe on what you can almost see."
"My frames have narrowed
to lenses eye-sized. My myopia grows. To see
what's happening, I open a laptop, lean into a screen."
"I should have
said: Identity isn't an end--it's a portal, a deportation
from the country of mirrors, an inflection within a
question, punctuation in the sentence of birth. I said
nothing."
At first I was put off by the use of blacked out words, blank spaces and diagrams, which handled differently could have felt like attempts to aestheticize the suffering. Before long, however, I was convinced that Metres was fully aware of those potential dissonances and was using rather than being used by his theoretical awareness.
As the title suggests, Sand Opera is structured around arias and recitatives, so you really need context to take in the full impact of individual poems, but "The Blues of Ken Davis," ""No I am what I saw," "Recipe from the Abbasid," and "When I Was a Child, I Lived as a Child, I Said to My Dad" give a sense of the range. A few of many memorable lines:
"What I ask you is this: base
What you believe on what you can almost see."
"My frames have narrowed
to lenses eye-sized. My myopia grows. To see
what's happening, I open a laptop, lean into a screen."
"I should have
said: Identity isn't an end--it's a portal, a deportation
from the country of mirrors, an inflection within a
question, punctuation in the sentence of birth. I said
nothing."
July 20, 2015
Wow--Philip Metres' collection of poems, Sand Opera, is simply remarkable! The lexical innovations, imitating the redaction of censors but also of the fragmentation of emotional intensity, both embody and comment on the subject matter, and Alice James books has created an object that fosters these forms in a way I haven't seen in a typical trade edition. Metres goes beyond formal cleverness, though. These serve the intellectual engagement with the subject matter--personal experience of the Iraq war, particularly the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and the torture of other detainees. These acts were initially explained away as random incidents perpetrated by wayward individuals, but later it became clear that they were Standard Operating Procedure, a phrase that gives the book it's title if you let some letters wash away. The poems do contain outrage and a befuddled tone of "how could...?" but the elegaic deepens all the other emotions, unifying them all into a powerful, one-of-a-kind reading experience.
July 12, 2018
This book is strangely timely, even though it most closely explores the events surrounding the torture of prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. In the section titled "abu ghraib arias," Metres juxtaposes the testimony of prisoners with that of American soldiers, highlighting the casual violence and dehumanization at the heart of this torture. This is but one example of the deftness with which Metres uses source material (including floor plans of the prison which are hauntingly printed on see through pages that cover fragmented accounts from prisoners) to position the reader's encounter with this troubling material. That said, it's also clear throughout the collection that the poet himself wishes to do more than simply bear witness, but to ask himself what he (as an Arab American) and we (as Americans) should do in the face of this violence. A great read for any writer/reader interested in the political uses of documentary technique and/or the discourses of American "security" that continue to be used to perpetuate violence.
July 28, 2020
"What consequence is a body."
I appreciated Metres's form and use of found language, but especially his work with biblical ideas. The second poem entitled "(echo /ex/)" examines our image, our patterning after God, and the weight of the abuse of that image. "The Blues of Charles Graner" (from his infamous "The Christian in me..."), which follows not long after, ought to encourage our more careful use of religious language, or at least, that we more deeply consider the obligations our religious language places upon us. Political poetry is, after all, ethical poetry.
Metres's collection ought to be read out-loud, with pauses given for those redacted words. Highlights: (echo /ex/): "In the beginning..."; Woman Mourning Son; Hung Lyres; Love Potion #42; A Toast (for Nawal Nasrallah).
I appreciated Metres's form and use of found language, but especially his work with biblical ideas. The second poem entitled "(echo /ex/)" examines our image, our patterning after God, and the weight of the abuse of that image. "The Blues of Charles Graner" (from his infamous "The Christian in me..."), which follows not long after, ought to encourage our more careful use of religious language, or at least, that we more deeply consider the obligations our religious language places upon us. Political poetry is, after all, ethical poetry.
Metres's collection ought to be read out-loud, with pauses given for those redacted words. Highlights: (echo /ex/): "In the beginning..."; Woman Mourning Son; Hung Lyres; Love Potion #42; A Toast (for Nawal Nasrallah).
July 9, 2017
This book is about the Iraq War. The form is unusual and tactile; it uses black erasure over text and vellum pages to evoke a sense of both what is missing and lost and what is hidden and misrepresented. It employs found poetry from the words of American guards, from documents, and includes maps of Black Sites. The language is physical and tender and close to the speakers; it humanizes those who participated in the imprisonment and torture of others. The poems draw us in, not so much as witness to suffering & cruelty, but as sisters and mothers. The voices did not feel distant and inconceivable, but painfully close.
August 8, 2018
Sand Opera orchestrates multiple voices, palimpsest structures through velum overlays sprinkled like sand throughout the collection, and poetic redactions to critique political and military standard operating procedures after Abu Ghraib. This is a post-modern collection seeking to ascribe meaning to the terrors of war—ours and our enemies’. It’s a brilliant collection, and as I read I thought about how to incorporate one or two poems into the high school English class, but this is a work that deserves a complete reading rather than an extrapolative one. The four-voiced choral “Cell/(ph) one (A simultaneity in four voices)” offers a good option.
April 13, 2016
A insightful, creative and heartbreaking collection of poems, images and drawings chronicling the imagined experiences of guards and prisoners in these torture facilities, or "black sites". Metres uses the words of these individuals and repurposes them in a number of creative ways to provide a human connection. This connection bridges the gap between us, the American public, and those who are tortured in our name. Fascinating read in a society were terrorism, hatred and coercion are on the rise.
January 6, 2019
Arab American poetry that looks at issues of rendition, redacted language, and space, Metres's collection predates Solmaz Sharif's memorable collection "Look" but has the same value of positioning resistance through the collating and then broadcasting--laying bare--of those same mechanisms of military abuse.
July 6, 2017
Brutal and beautiful, this is a book that sticks to your gut, poignantly political with poems that straddle a fine line between literature and visual art, its a book that brings poetry from book to literal physical space in a very visceral way.
June 14, 2016
Sand Opera--Standard Operating Procedure--policy that sanitizes the barbarous practices of the US in Iraq. Abu Ghraib and other events reimagined and critiqued in vivid images and poetry.
April 30, 2024
Philip Metres’ poetry collection, Sand Opera, is an honest look into the lives of Iraqi prisoners and the crimes committed by the United States Army during the Iraq War. Rather than hiding or excluding the information regarding the brutal abuse inflicted upon the imprisoned boys and men, Metres’ piece of war poetry advocates for them by providing their truthful experiences in Abu Ghraib.
Through his collection, Metres tells the stories of the prisoners and the guards in pieces. Several of his poems explore unstructured poetry forms of short, scattered text that chaotically moves across the white space of the page or contain redactions, withholding information from the reader. Both provide only the necessary information and indicate that something is hidden from the reader, allowing them to recognize the government's control of information and power over the public. Due to the balance of hidden and provided information, constant tension builds and surrounds the reader, forcing them to sit in it for the entire collection.
Within the poems, Metres weaves in themes of identity and pride for one’s culture, religion, and history. By incorporating these topics into the poems, Metres captures the conflicting feelings and daily torment experienced by the prisoners regarding their country and beliefs.
Metres’ blunt language creates straightforward and intensely graphic images that show the reader exactly what the prisoners endured. When you think you've read the worst of the abuse inflicted upon the prisoners, you read the following poem, and it gets worse. Since the descriptions of the various forms of torture are honest and not sugarcoated, the poems are emotionally challenging and uncomfortable to read, evoking feelings of remorse, disgust, and heartbreak within the reader. However, they are informative, educating the reader on the prisoner's experiences of the inhuman forms of torture.
Metres' poetry collection is a rewarding read. He makes the Iraqi prisoner's voices heard through his poems. He doesn’t let their suffering go unnoticed or become forgotten by providing readers with the dark and painful truths the public rarely receives. Those who want to be educated on the crimes committed during the Iraq War and are prepared emotionally for a taxing read will not be disappointed by Philip Metres' poetry collection.
Through his collection, Metres tells the stories of the prisoners and the guards in pieces. Several of his poems explore unstructured poetry forms of short, scattered text that chaotically moves across the white space of the page or contain redactions, withholding information from the reader. Both provide only the necessary information and indicate that something is hidden from the reader, allowing them to recognize the government's control of information and power over the public. Due to the balance of hidden and provided information, constant tension builds and surrounds the reader, forcing them to sit in it for the entire collection.
Within the poems, Metres weaves in themes of identity and pride for one’s culture, religion, and history. By incorporating these topics into the poems, Metres captures the conflicting feelings and daily torment experienced by the prisoners regarding their country and beliefs.
Metres’ blunt language creates straightforward and intensely graphic images that show the reader exactly what the prisoners endured. When you think you've read the worst of the abuse inflicted upon the prisoners, you read the following poem, and it gets worse. Since the descriptions of the various forms of torture are honest and not sugarcoated, the poems are emotionally challenging and uncomfortable to read, evoking feelings of remorse, disgust, and heartbreak within the reader. However, they are informative, educating the reader on the prisoner's experiences of the inhuman forms of torture.
Metres' poetry collection is a rewarding read. He makes the Iraqi prisoner's voices heard through his poems. He doesn’t let their suffering go unnoticed or become forgotten by providing readers with the dark and painful truths the public rarely receives. Those who want to be educated on the crimes committed during the Iraq War and are prepared emotionally for a taxing read will not be disappointed by Philip Metres' poetry collection.
May 21, 2018
Probably would not have picked this up if it weren't for a class. Definitely wouldn't have finished it. Too much reliance on "found language" and experimental techniques, such as an entire poem written with only punctuation marks -- not a single word! -- spaced across an entire page. I know next to nothing about musical theory, and the title of this book claims it's an opera, so perhaps I'm missing something, but the majority here just didn't resonate with me. Nor does the theme -- the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo -- pull me in, although his use of polyphony and voice is intriguing.
He did have a few what I'm going to call "love poems," as well as an ekphrastic about an Etruscan cista handle, that I really enjoyed, as well as a few really breathtaking lines, such as "We are windows, half-open, half-reflecting, trying to impersonate someone who can breathe" (p. 89). Ultimately glad to have read these few poems and lines, which is what bumped this up to a 3-star. If experimental poetry is your thing, you may get more out of it than I did.
He did have a few what I'm going to call "love poems," as well as an ekphrastic about an Etruscan cista handle, that I really enjoyed, as well as a few really breathtaking lines, such as "We are windows, half-open, half-reflecting, trying to impersonate someone who can breathe" (p. 89). Ultimately glad to have read these few poems and lines, which is what bumped this up to a 3-star. If experimental poetry is your thing, you may get more out of it than I did.
October 11, 2020
While I did not dislike this book, I was definitely not my style of book nor my style of poetry. I read this for my Poetry as an Investigative Practice class, and while I did not like it, I have a strong admiration for what this collection of poetry is trying to do and what it has accomplished. It is bringing light to horrible events that are occurring in the world that we wouldn't otherwise hear or know about. While these poems are not something I enjoyed reading, I do feel as though I am more cultivated as a human being now that I have read this collection. I am a romantic era poetry lover, and while that is an era with important poetry, this particular collection leaves more room and prompts more cultivation of the human mind than 19th century poetry does. So, while I did not enjoy the book, because of what it did for me, it at least deserves a three star rating.
Read
May 6, 2024I picked up Sand Opera knowing little about Abu Ghraib. I'm too young to remember, and the news swallowed itself into a bad memory no one brought up when I was old enough to understand. Philip Metres did not only write a book of beautiful and heart-wrenching poems, but he also ensured that this story wouldn't go unread or unknown. With great care to the abused bodies in these poems, Metres relays their truths, not shying away from the parts that make us cringe.
Today, I woke up to read that there were two more mass shootings last night—at least one a hate crime. A few lines from Philip Metres' Sand Opera stuck with me throughout the day as I read more and more news:
“This world is centaur: half
daydream, half nightmare,
not knowing if we’re awake or dreaming.”
Today, I woke up to read that there were two more mass shootings last night—at least one a hate crime. A few lines from Philip Metres' Sand Opera stuck with me throughout the day as I read more and more news:
“This world is centaur: half
daydream, half nightmare,
not knowing if we’re awake or dreaming.”
August 11, 2025
This book feels like it belongs in a museum. It mixes poetry, found text, and visual layouts that make you slow down. Metres takes language from military manuals, news reports, and testimonies, and reworks them into something that makes you feel the weight of what is being said or what is being left unsaid. It is about war, torture, and how words can both hide and reveal the truth. Some pages I read twice, not because they were confusing, but because I wanted to sit with how they were put together.
August 8, 2020
Extremely well-crafted collection. It's hard to select favorite poems in a book whose title is a redaction and critique of Standard Operating Procedure during Desert Storm, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the War on Terror more broadly because they're illuminating such terrible subjects, but each of the poems have effective, beautiful, and devastating language and use unique forms really interestingly and effectively. Metres is a masterful poet and I'll be seeking out more of his work.
September 15, 2021
This was the first book I read for the Sealey Challenge 2021. Each poem is a different world, and while experimental in nature, Metres has mastered control of his craft. A favorite:
"you mute you without openings
emwombed you greedy to eat the fruit of light
to swallow elixirs of sound
marooned you in that watery egg that mother
voice a constant hum above
this is the air you could & ample be
everyone waking to siren"
From the long poem "Hung Lyres"
"you mute you without openings
emwombed you greedy to eat the fruit of light
to swallow elixirs of sound
marooned you in that watery egg that mother
voice a constant hum above
this is the air you could & ample be
everyone waking to siren"
From the long poem "Hung Lyres"
August 30, 2023
Favorite Quote =
The Blues of Ken Davis
“and I remember calling
home that night and saying
I can’t take this anymore.
if this is what we’re going
To do if this is what we we’ve become
then I am done.
they say talk to a chaplain
they say it’s all your perception
and every night it’s amazing
because you’re lying there
no matter how much music you play
no matter how loud you turn it up
you still can hear”
The Blues of Ken Davis
“and I remember calling
home that night and saying
I can’t take this anymore.
if this is what we’re going
To do if this is what we we’ve become
then I am done.
they say talk to a chaplain
they say it’s all your perception
and every night it’s amazing
because you’re lying there
no matter how much music you play
no matter how loud you turn it up
you still can hear”
September 14, 2024
I feel like this book was a pretty tough read in the sense of content. The poems are well written and formed in extremely creative ways but the topics are harsh. This book really sticks with you, especially if you have had some experience with war. I think it is a worthwhile read when considering the prisoner of war type of experience.
January 30, 2025
An incredibly powerful work that explores identity, torture, failure, censorship, and more. Metres tackles the impacts of the GWOT and horrors of Abu Ghraib in a unique way, using formatting, specifically mentioned people/references, and just enough censored text to lure the reader into conducting their own research. This is a necessarily uncomfortable heart-wrencher.
October 25, 2019
Amazing book that captures the cruelty that followed 9/11 toward Iran and people of Arab descent. Still extremely relevant to this day and it's a book that is necessary for a country that can forget that the United States isn't perfect - in fact, we can be the monsters.
November 3, 2019
Parts of this collection hit hard and I really liked the intention and the artistic idea behind Sand Opera, but at times the work was just too disjointed for me
April 24, 2020
3.5 stars. A really interesting look at a time period I only remember from the recollection and opinions of others.
September 10, 2020
A visceral, fascinating read. Erasure poetry at it’s finest.
October 8, 2020
[read for school]
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews