Look: Poems

by Solmaz Sharif

Solmaz Sharif’s astonishing first book, Look, asks us to see the ongoing costs of war as the unbearable losses of human lives and also the insidious abuses against our everyday speech. In this virtuosic array of poems, lists, shards, and sequences, Sharif assembles her family’s and her own fragmented narratives in the aftermath of warfare. Those repercussions echo into the present day, in the grief for those killed, in America’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the discriminations endured at the checkpoints of daily encounter.

At the same time, these poems point to the ways violence is conducted against our language. Throughout this collection are words and phrases lifted from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms; in their seamless inclusion, Sharif exposes the devastating euphemisms deployed to sterilize the language, control its effects, and sway our collective resolve. But Sharif refuses to accept this terminology as given, and instead turns it back on its perpetrators. “Let it matter what we call a thing,” she writes. “Let me look at you.”

Genres: Poetry, War, Nonfiction, Middle East, Iran, Contemporary, Politics

98 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2016

About the author

Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and New York University. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Witness, and others. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, her work has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, scholarships the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a winter fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an NEA fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship. She has most recently been selected to receive a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award as well as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. She is currently a lecturer at Stanford University. Her first poetry collection, LOOK, published by Graywolf Press in 2016, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding collection that is smartly assembled. Family, history, war, and how in a culture of war language can be used against humanity.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A challenging read in the best sense, where Sharif appropriates the odd language and definitions from a DOD military dictionary, taking these utterly empty bureaucratic terms and interleaving them with stark images of violence and war. The emotional impact of these poems is deadened by the DOD terms, and then brought to shocking, contrasting life by the original language and images in other parts of the poems. The effect on me as a reader was one of disintegration and loss. I was left with an awareness that language itself has become deranged and cheapened--you see the cheapening directly in the ridiculously formal, empty military terms, but also you reach an understanding of how continuous violence deadens the reaction to any one atrocity, and where words describing any one atrocity lose their emotive power. There is a lack of faith in words to mean anything, in these poems. The poems feel like shattered pieces of meanings strewn about for me to pick up.

The collection also reminded me a little bit of Kathy Acker's fiction. Not in subject matter or even tone but rather, for its cynical, almost nihilistic take on the power of language to mean anything, to say anything. It's quite a feat to pull of an emotionally wrenching work of language while simultaneously doubting the force of language.

The collection resonated with me all the more because I have been thinking a lot about the hollowing-out of language during this US election year, where sometimes the rhetoric I hear from speeches and rallies reminds me of the 1984 gem:

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

each photo is an absence,
a thing gone, namely
a moment, sometimes cities,
a tour boat balanced
on a two-story home
miles from shore

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2003, a man held a fistful
of blood and brains to a PBS camera
and yelled

is this the freedom
they want for us?

There's a lot that's powerful about Look, but I ultimately found it inaccessible, hard to grasp. Its main claim to fame, or (forgive me) gimmick, is that a number of the poems use words and phrases from the U.S. Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. These words and phrases are printed in small caps so the reader can tell which ones they are. An interesting idea, but I found it less affecting than I was expecting. Perhaps it's that this collection doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It all deals with the Iraq War the U.S. started in 2003, but beyond that it's a bit scattered. Some poems are about the impact the war had on civilians, both in Iraq and in the United States. Some are (real? fabricated?) letters to and from soldiers with text redacted. Some seem to be about an uncle of hers who died in combat. Some intertwine the language of war with (seemingly) Sharif's personal relationships, which didn't quite work for me. In some poems, Sharif writes from the point of view of a soldier in combat, which disturbed me a bit because, frankly, it's a situation she's never been in, and I guess a part of me feels it's a topic for those who've lived it. Sharif anticipates this criticism, though, actually including in a couple poems lines like "How can she write that? / She doesn't know." I have to admit this meta stuff doesn't impress me. If you want to address this criticism, then address it; if you don't think it's worth addressing, then don't mention it. Trying to address it halfway strikes me as a kind of empty cleverness.

I'm torn here, because some of these poems were extremely affecting and imaginative, but as an overall collection it just felt so disjointed. I think this is one of those rare occasions where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

april 2024 reread: i now feel i know this book like the back of my hand.

deeply troubling, deeply beautiful, unendingly relevant to the nonstop machinations of the war machine:

Whereas the lover made my heat rise, rise so that if heat sensors were trained on me, they could read my THERMAL SHADOW through the roof and through the wardrobe;

—

Whereas I cannot control my own heat and it can take as long as 16 seconds between the trigger, the Hellfire missile, and A dog. they will answer themselves; / Whereas A dog. they will say: Now, therefore, / Let it matter what we call a thing. / Let it be the exquisite face for at least 16 seconds. / Let me LOOK at you. / Let me LOOK at you in a light that takes years to get here.

—

this mangy plot where / by now / only mothers still come, / only mothers guard the nameless dead.

—

Daily I sit / with the language / they’ve made / of our language

[leynes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. This was rough. In 2019, I vowed to read more modern poetry from writers all over the globe. I was made aware of Solmaz Sharif's collection and quickly grew interested in reading it. Roxane Gay had given it 5 stars, the collection was a National Book Award finalist, Solmaz grew up in Turkey to Iranian parents, her poems speak of language and the evil forms in which human beings twist them to their own advantage. So, all my bookish boxes were ticked. Nonetheless, I still didn't end up enjoying it. There's not a single poem in this collection that was memorable or evoked a deeper feeling within me.

is this the freedom
they want for us?

The premise of this collection is absolutely fascinating. Solmaz Sharif took words and meanings from the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms by the United States Department of Defense and interwove them into her poems to show the hurtful nature with which human beings and the consequences of wars are dealt with. What is a "safe house"? Who are the "casualties"? Is there really such a thing as the "threshold of acceptability"? Who's hit by a "rapier thrust"?

Daily I sit
with the language
they've made
of our language
to NEUTRALIZE
the CAPABILITY of LOW DOLLAR VALUE ITEMS
like you.

Solmaz says that "According to most / definitions, I have never / been at war. / According to mine, / most of my life / spent there." So, there are definitely a few moments of brilliance in this collection but all in all, it is utterly confusing. Solmaz hasn't mastered a language that is accessible or comprehensible... and maybe that was her goal, but I found it incredibly hard to navigate through this collection. She seemed to jump from topic to topic, her intention, her message not getting clearer. It was confusing and frustrating to read.

Solmaz Sharif tries to expose the devastating euphemisms deployed to sterilize a language, control its effects, and sway our collective expectations. "Let it matter what we call a thing," she writes. "Let me look at you."

[Claudia Cortese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will stay lodged in my body for a long time. Throughout, words from the DOD's dictionary of military terms. Throughout, the dust and bones and stories and fragments of the War on Terror, of hiking in the Bay Area up trails of stolen land, of lovers and a father who travels across the country for work and an uncle who died in the Iran-Iraq war and of the many violences and wars (and beauties) one may or may not survive. Sharif braids many stories together, terms from the DOD dictionary often rupturing descriptions of personal moments, which enacts how living in perpetual war--physical war, psychic war--splits the psyche, so that even simple moments like peeling an apple or driving into a pothole never seem divorced from violence and trauma... Damn. This is a necessary and gorgeous and brilliant book.

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Look serves less to reveal but more to remind us how easy it is for everyday language to make its way into vocabularies of war and for the language of war to occupy everyday speech, as when a word like "drone" and its military definition, Solmaz Sharif explains, "is no longer a supplement to the English language, but the English language itself." Sharif pulls off a docupoetics that is objectively political without compromising intimacy and closeness. With its stolen glances, trinkets and music nestled between war's violences, this book remains deeply felt.

[Debee Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this beautiful poem book in a Goodreads giveaway. A must read for all. Great.

[H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Jonathan Schell’s The Military Half, he discusses how the U.S. army used language to dampen the awful violence they were inflicting on Vietnamese civilians. “Hootch” was slang for a Vietnamese house. The more proper military term for a Vietnamese person’s home was a “structure.” It’s fun to burn a hootch; a duty to bomb a structure; unbearable to destroy someone’s home. The language desensitized the soldiers, so that they could joke about killing children, pregnant women, and the disabled and elderly without facing reality.

My point is that our military’s issue with language goes way back. Words matter – these layers of euphemisms make way for real violence that harms real people. Solmaz Sharif offers a creative way to think about the effect that language has. She takes the words out of the perpetrators’ mouths and flings them back; she carves those words open and exposes the awful truths that lie inside.

In “Inspiration Point, Berkeley,” she starts with, “Consider Kissinger: / the honorary Globetrotter / of Harlem who spins on fingertip / the world as balloon, the buffoon / erected and be-plaqued here … ” We honor a man with the blood of millions on his hands, and she compares this ingeniously to how “the conquistadors dropped /armored mission after armored mission after saints - / Luis Obispo, Francisco, etc.”

Later in “Dependers/Immediate Family,” she discusses the violent hypermasculinity that parents instill in their (male) children, preparing them for war from the start, because they’ve been convinced that’s the honorable, patriotic way to raise a kid: “At the WWII Memorial, FDR thanks women / for sacrificing their sons / and their nylons.” And later: “Your crib, your teddy bears, / I want to say mother put a GUN / there, blocks and blocks of boys / with pistols in their lunch pails.”

I have become convinced of the urgent importance of war poetry – of poems that expose or explore meaningful, tangible topics – of poems that offer new lenses through which to view these topics. Solmaz Sharif gives us new tools for thinking about U.S. presence in the Middle East, and what it means when a military can't use words that have direct meaning. I wish this collection had been available to us years ago.

[Liz Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry is very subjective, and as such, I often find myself unable to like the poetry that is newly released (unless it is slam poetry, which is usually amazing), this is an exception.

This collection is first and foremost, a recanting of the effects of warfare on individuals. This has been done many, many times before, but for some reason I connected with this collection. I am not sure if it has something to do with my knowledge of certain conflicts increasing, or a new desire to communicate with people’s similar struggles to mine, but it made me think, it made me look at her words and remember events. That is all I could ask of a poetry collection with such a main theme.

There is also the whole “language is sterilized in order to control its effects on the population”, that appears in the collection. Sadly, I am not qualified to talk about it, no matter how interesting I found her use of this. The most I can give you is this:
“Let it matter what we call a thing,
Let me look at you.”

This collection deserves a re-read, and hopefully then I will be able to give a more in-detail review.

I received a copy of this book via Goodreads. Thank you! (Also Graywolf Press for sending it)

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

We laugh, but inept is our laughter,
We should weep, and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass and thereafter
Remolded no more.
- Al-Ma'arri, Arabic Poet born south of Aleppo, 973-1057 AD


According to most
Definitions, I have never
been at war.

According to mine,
most of my life
spent there.

This is a complicated collection. It is no detriment to a book or collection of poetry that it challenges the reader, and this one challenges me. Sharif's Look exudes frustration and melancholia. It also contains a hidden and seething anger that lies between and beneath the words. I’m still sifting through my feelings and reactions to the book as a whole. There are some truly powerful and effective pieces that successfully render the blending of civilian society and military through language; there are also pieces and phrases that have an antagonistic, almost dismissive, feel to them, and which creates within me conflicting emotion.

The angle that Sharif has taken in preparing this collection is based on her use of words from the United States Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms within her poetry, their definitions, and how their blurring with civilian language affects their impressions on people. The word ‘look’, for example, as defined by the military dictionary, is a term used to signify the period in which a land mine is receptive to influence; when it is armed. She then takes that and compares it with the way her lover looks at her, the charged nature of a glance, and contrasts that with the soldier’s glance when staring at someone who is defined as ‘enemy’. Within a military context, the word ‘casualty’ takes on an entirely different meaning than a civilian one. Each of the words in question is entirely capitalized in order to ensure that their presence is heightened.

In taking this angle she has created a collection that weaves through the emotions of a people that have consistently experienced conflict, expressing the tragedy, altered, and destroyed lives that accompany such events. In her titular poem, by far the most powerful and effective of the collection, she writes "Let it matter what we call a thing", setting the stage for the remainder of the book, and its message.

Let it matter what we call a thing.
Let it be the exquisite face for at least 16 seconds.
Let me look at you.
Let me look at you in a light that takes years to get here.

So much of this book is lament, presenting with it an evident homesickness. Sharif is expressing a voice that longs for something now gone. It's not a voice expressing desire for a specific place, but for a sense of belonging. Her voice isn't one of nationalism, her poetry is larger than that, it's the voice of a people suffering pain in the loss of family dynamic, safety, and loved ones, having experienced years of conflict, and resulting ostracizing.

What is fascism?
A student asked me

and can you believe
I couldn't remember
the definition?

The sonnet,
I said.
I could've said this:

our sanctioned twoness.

My reading of Look was augmented by my listening of the BBC podcast Our Man in the Middle East, which I had just finished prior. It's the chronicling of a BBC reporter, Jeremy Bowen, and his experiences while providing news coverage in the Middle East for more than twenty-five years, going back as far as the Gulf War. Bowen presents a very clear picture of the sophisticated sectarianism and religious wars that have shaped the region, along with the even more complicating factors of foreign intervention and invasion. It's a nightmare of violence and barbarism that has been exacerbated by years of war, leading to a breeding ground of dictators, despots, and religious extremists, all battling for power.

Being of Iranian descent Sharif provides a human voice to the fallout and consequences of war in the Middle East, resulting escalation of tensions, and to the federal rules and regulations that have since been implemented. She does this both with some really wonderful turns of phrase, such as the 'our sanctioned twoness', and with less prosaic and more expressive constructs. One example is her entry Reaching Guantánamo which isn't a poem, but a series of letters to a prisoner with sentences and words censored making them practically impossible to understand. It's a nice punctuating piece, establishing additional mood and tone for the collection as a whole. This is where one can see the frustration burning beneath the language. It provides context; where voices are silenced, the document provides speech.

I saw your wanted ad at the subway station.
I saw a young Taliban
But couldn’t see past his beauty,
brows of an ancient RELIEF, to the tank
he was riding on.

Some of the pieces, especially when taken in the context of the entire book, give me a moment of pause. The excerpt above is from the poem Free Mail. In my mind this poem, particularly this portion of it, is about looking past the veneer of war, of allegiance, of label, and seeing people for their humanity. It's a reference to her title, and to the book's message. It’s a beautiful message, and most importantly, an idealistic one. It's not, unfortunately, always a realistic one, since someone who is a professed Taliban soldier harbors their own ideological desires, ones not favorable of those who disagree with them. Perhaps Sharif is meaning to portray this portion of her poem in an ironic way, or in some other way than its presented, though the text does not suggest that in any way. That's what makes it such a troublesome piece for me; focusing on someone's humanity is integral to achieving any form of lasting peace, but begs the question, 'what if one side's peace is only manifested in the destruction of the other'?

This goes both ways, to all parties in conflict, of course, and speaks to the imperfections inherent in humanity. Perhaps Sharif is attempting to show us that people can see past the labels applied in war, though when it pertains to verifiable hate groups, the idealistic application of seeing their humanity before their actions is something that, justifiably, can be questioned, particularly when there are persecuted or oppressed populations involved. From the time I read this poem I've mulled it over, and over again attempting to extract what I can from it, and have yet to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Another notable example, and a frustrating one for me, is what I see as an antagonistically placed poem called Soldier, Home Early, Surprises His Wife in Chick-fil-A which isn’t a poem at all, but a collection of Youtube video titles with one-liner excerpts from the videos themselves. Placed as it is within the collection, it seems to present itself as a dismissive insult to the idea of these videos, or this part of American culture. There is the possibility that Sharif is attempting to connect the human experience seen in these videos with the ones being suffered by those in the Middle East, though as written, it doesn’t portray any of that. The poem opposite it is entitled Theater. Being a military term, theater, can represent both location of military action, and dramatic narrative, and while its text doesn’t directly mention the Chick-fil-A poem, its placement seems to carry a suggestion that ‘soldier homecoming’ videos and, perhaps, the war itself, is nothing more than another theatrical experience for the American public, since it takes place in a distant THEATER, so far from home.

I think what complicates the message and tone of the book, and allows for this prodding antagonism, is the opacity of Sharif's language. I have pulled several passages for use in this review that I felt were truly excellent and deserve to be recognized as such, though there are a number of Sharif's poems that are mired with difficulty. The inclusion and mixture of expressive document, prose poetry, and experimental formatting, mixed with oftentimes vague and impenetrable locution creates a hazy feeling of suggested meaning that is never quite concrete, and almost ambiguous in what it is suggesting. Poetry is subjective, of course, and the riddle of the language is often the joy, though here, less convolution would certainly heighten the work and its message on a larger level.

: I am singing the moon will come one night and take me away side street by side street
: Sitting on a pilled suburban carpet or picking blue felt off the hand-me-down couch
: the displaced whatnots
: I practice the work of worms
: how much I can wear with no one watching

Taken as a whole, Look is a poetic rendering of the effects of war; how the gradual creep of military definitions, terms, and conventions, usually communicated via news sources, social media, and even video games, can have a dehumanizing propaganda effect on the populace as a whole, intentional or not; how when military language immerses itself in the common tongue it ceases to be the language of soldiers, and is adopted by civilians as national group-think; how when a generation is consistently labeled as ‘enemy’, they become that very thing, even in their own mind.

It’s a good collection, but not a great one. There are some very powerful pieces here, such as the titular Look, Force Visibility, and Drone. Unfortunately, for much of the book, the language is oftentimes distant, and perhaps a bit too abstract, resulting in impenetrable poetry that reduces the emotional tone and only creates a misplaced confusion. That, combined with the seemingly inimical placement of poems like Soldier, Home Early, and Free Mail, it's a collection that I'm not always sure knows what it's trying to convey. That may be Sharif's angle, however, that war, and its effects, result in a mixed bag of frustrated anger, lasting hatred, lingering sorrow, and sustained grief that those left alive must wade through in order to find value and meaning.

Sharif is asking us to LOOK before we act, or judge, or identify, or intercede, or kill. It’s challenging, and beautiful, and painful. It’s also antagonistic, and mournful. It’s about broken people, shattered by mankind’s most terrible of actions. It’s often dour and dreary in its truthfulness, almost relentlessly so. Despite these things, it still clings to shades of hopefulness, and I find that to be its most redeeming value. I would recommend it, but in doing so I would also suggest reading it thoughtfully, not merely breezing through the poems, looking for a particularly strong or especially touching turn-of-phrase, but allowing the words to linger with you, their mood providing context and emotion for the whole. There is a voice here speaking with the raw, and complicated emotion of generations forever changed by the face of warfare.

: I say Hello NSA when I place a call
: somewhere a file details my sexual habits
: some tribunal may read it all back to me
: Golsorkhi, I know the cell they will put me in
: they put me onto a crooked pile of others to rot
: is this what happens to a brain born into war
: a city of broken teeth
: the thuds of falling
: we have learned to sing a child calm in a bomb shelter
: I am singing to her still

[snaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️

fav poems in order:
master film
drone
mess hall

it was very creative to use military terms from the u.s department of defense bc it really brings to light the brutal and desensitized nature of war. all of these words used have double meanings; the military definition and the story behind it. people need to wake up and realize that with every war there is SO much needless death and bloodshed and trauma and every soldier is a person, every civilian is a person. casualties are often seen as numbers and not people, and that's become far too large of an issue for anyone to be comfortable with.

the only reason why this isnt a four is because i didn't understand some of the underlying themes in the poems, but that's entirely my fault. even tho its not a four or five star, i recommend 100%.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is terrific, remarkable poetry heavily dependent on words and phrases defined in the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Reading Look is a little like reading news from the Middle East. These poems and their language is made from the major war of this century so far and how people--media and victims--talk about it. The use of military language is a powerful tool. The phrases and words used in Sharif's fragmented way makes the poems appear as if exploded on the page. Some poems appear damaged or holed, as in the long section "Reaching Guantanamo" where the reader, familiar with the larger violence of Sharif's subject, has to supply the missing words.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn’t initially sold on the poet’s choice to use the Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms - it reads a bit like a gimmick at first. Understanding the book as a whole though, I feel like these early poems in the book are a priming agent for what follows.

And truly, what an incredible book by the end. Once I she starts relying less on the dictionary to guide her and begins to guide her own experience with references back to these terms. It takes off. Section 3 serves as a collage of military operations spliced with human tragedy. “Reaching Guantanamo” serve as letters to a loved one under erasure. Both truly mind blowing.

Was unsure at first, but quickly changed my opinion on the work as a whole.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un poemari sobre la guerra, plena d'imatges devastadores. Sharif combina les atrocitats bèl·liques amb la quotidianitat d'una família afectada per la violència, directament i indirecta.

[b · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. phenomenal work. glad i had to read this again...

look
deception story
force visibility
break-up
ground visibility
dependers/immediate family
stateless person
master film
theater
vulnerability study
personal effects
drone

[Bella · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 out of 5

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOOK has made many Best Of 2016 lists for new poetry and with good reason. It is a powerful first collection, using language pulled from the United States Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms in ways that transform meaning, hide reality, and re-invent truth.

The title poem is section 1 and it begins “It matters what you call a thing: Exquisite a lover called me. / Exquisite.” Everything that follows until the final four lines begins with whereas. “Whereas Well, if I were from your culture, living in this country, / said the man outside the 2004 Republican National Convention, I would put up with that for this country; // Whereas I felt the need to clarify: You would put up with / TORTURE, you mean and he proclaimed: Yes.” Later: “Whereas I thought if he would LOOK at my exquisite face or my father’s, he would reconsider” but no. “Whereas I made nothing happen” Are these whereas(s) an indictment or a resolution?

The poem’s final four lines: “Let it matter what we call a thing. / Let it be the exquisite face for at least 16 seconds. / Let me LOOK at you. / Let me LOOK at you in a light that takes years to get here.” Sixteen seconds is the time between when a command given in Nevada to a Hellfire missile over its target and the time it strikes its target. A look is essentially the time of opportunity, to site and read a target.

The first section, the one poem, is brief, barely two pages long. The second section contains more than a score of poems, each using one or several or more terms whose meaning breaks from Webster’s into another more specific and very narrow technical meaning. Sharif shocks the given meaning, sometimes playfully (“PINPOINT TARGET one lit desklamp / and a nightgown walking past the window”), sometimes grimly (“BATTLEFIELD ILLUMINATION on fire / a body running”), but even the playful one only seems playful until you imagine the desklamp and nightgown at the end of a sniper’s scope.

Not all these investigations touch on war and politics. BREAK UP is giving two definitions related to imagery, radar and photographic, from DoD’s dictionary and beneath each is an exploration of a relationship under the scrutiny of this definition.

“[I loved you at lunch]

the result of magnification

[when the coffee kicked in and you
cut the carrots into coins]

a random series

[for our salad, the satisfying, slow knocking
of the dull knife
against the cutting board
while I pretended to read
while I worshipped you
from the sofa, an]

enlargement which causes
[a slow pleasure
it was at least slow
how you moved, PATIENT and efficient,
unemployable and something
older, a shopkeeper on a stool.
I like to think, years apart,]

split up”

The words in parens are the relationship; those outside the parens the definition.

These are poems of the modern world, with its rounds of warfare, where all damage is collateral, except when it is within the “DESTRUCTION RADIUS limited to blast site / and not the brother abroad / who answers his phone / then falls against the counter / or punches a cabinet door”. They are about the war in Iraq, the war on terror, and the long war between Iran and Iraq—Sharif is an Iranian-American. One poem, not the most successful in the collection, is a sequence of poems addressed to an internee at Guantanamo prison with words and lines excised by censors.

Another entitled PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT is simply a block form list of military operations. It is the first and only other poem besides PERSONAL EFFECTS in Section 3. PERSONAL EFFECTS is an elegy for the poet’s uncle who died in the Iran-Iraq War and the words are prompted by his photograph and other personal effects: “each photo is an absence, / a thing gone, namely / a moment, sometimes cities, / a tour boat balanced / on a two-story home / miles from shore.” At the poem’s end “I wrote / I burn my finger on the broiler / and smell trenches, my uncle // pissing himself. How can she write about that? / She doesn’t know.” She goes on to imagine an encounter with him, alive, at an airport named for Khomeini. Her uncle approaches. “You stoop, extend a hand // Hello. Do you know who I am? // Yes, I tell you, I half-lie, / Yes. An address, beloved / lit / a rooftop of doves // crouched to launch / Yes, Amoo. // How could I not.”

A first collection, LOOK is astonishing and strong, insightful and moving. It may well move you to tears. How could it not.

[scriptedknight · Rating 5 out of 5]

rating: 4.5/5 stars
~
to sing in a bomb shelter, to sing to the your younger-self who never left, oh to hope the notes can taper off into the breeze of the open air.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title poem, "Look", is almost worth the price of admission. It's an incredible concept, perfectly executed, that weaves together many points of view, soldier, prisoner, judge, bureaucrat, etc. It is written in a combination of legalistic, military, and confessional styles of writing.

The rest of the collection is a bit weak. It goes on too long also...the 2nd half features a lot of white space, and I do mean a lot! Some poems ("Dear Sharif") are based on familiar concepts like redaction, and do absolutely nothing with the concept.

I feel like she's overstepping some boundary here, in the way she frames the poems, because she didn't experience these things personally. They're just ideas for her, as they would be for any other American. As an example of this, her poems portray America as the oppressor of people living in these countries. This seems designed to appeal to a certain type of American liberal. What about other factors like religion, ignorance, strongman rulers, enslaved women, lack of economic opportunity? What about six thousand years of cynical alliances between monarchies and organized religion, grafted atop tribalism? What about the climate?

This problem is overcome in a poem like "Drones", which reminded me of William Burroughs' idea for cut ups. I actually liked this poem because the narrative frame is more clear about her role, which is to be a curator of second-hand experiences.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars

Reading these poems, I was reminded of the old saying "the personal is political." Just by bearing witness to the experience of living through war, Solmaz's poetry becomes a rebuke of the senselessness of war.

I really just think you should read this book. It brought me to actual tears, which rarely happens with poetry. The way Sharif uses sanitized military language to describe the tragic horrors of war is so startling. It had me reflecting on why I believe so strongly in pacifism. There should never be such a thing as "human collateral."

I don't want to share too many lines, so you can experience them yourself, but I think these are good example of the tone of the collection:
"According to most / definitions, I have never / been at war. // According to mine / most of my life / spent there."

In other news, I've really gotta stop my habit of taking really emotionally intense poetry collections with me on plane trips just because they tend to be more light weight than my fiction TBRs :P.

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Time and a breathtaking amount of energy was put into the title of this collection. Why not call it "Stick?" I would have called it, "Solmaz in the Sky Dangerously." Whatever, brah.

This is placard poetry, the author wearing her "Just Say No to War" sandwich board, walking up and down the sidewalk before an apathetic, surly procession of pedestrians.

Write me a ballad
heavy with war
armies black and white, never gray
sing me a refrain, insane
in the heat, muck, whirl
fall soldiers fall.

Poetry suicides itself constantly
form will never equal the poet
me, always, always, me
drop dead dangerously.

Chris Roberts, Ascendent

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful collection of poems in which Solmaz Sharif uses the DoD’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms as inspiration for poems. Words, such as drone, safe house, free mail, intelligence journal, mess hall, and theater, are now part of our everyday language, but originally came from military jargon. Some of the poems tie directly to the words and their definitions while others explain what they mean to the author.

I’ve read about 20-25 collections of poetry this year and this ranks in the top 5 of those collections.

My favorite poems were Look; Soldier, Home Early, Surprises His Wife in Chick-fil-A; Reaching Guantanamo; and Personal Effects.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these poems are absolutely stunning. I especially love the opening poem.

I do wonder, editorially, what might have shifted if the words Sharif chose to highlight, the ones specifically from the military dictionary, were not emphasized in the text (in this case, smaller font upper case letters)--when I read them they got that italics-kind of reading in my internal reading-voice, and I wonder what a smoother read would have done. I'm not saying either would be better--just a curiosity. And aloud--are they read the same?

I look forward to more from this poet, for certain.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing poetry collection. She's Iranian-American and writes mostly about the atrocities of war, and the discrimination resulting afterward. I really loved the use of language, she took words from a "war dictionary" that the military gave new definitions, and then incorporated them into her poetry. She does a really good job connecting everyday life with war juxtaposing the two situations while incorporating feelings of maybe PTSD as well. Excellent poetry and important subjects covered. I loved it!

[jess sanford · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars, 500 stars, the whole of the Milky Way. I've never read a collection so conceptually well executed while so emotionally devastating. These poems are moving, eviscerating; they are lamentations, catalogs of both brutality and intimacy. Like all art that's truly haunted me, these poems made me upset, uncomfortable for what they make me question in my own presumptions and views. Calling a book 'important' feels like such a cliche these days, but this book is.

[Erica Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful doesn't quite cover this debut collection. Sharif gives us necessary poems in innovative, unnerving forms. She shakes us from complacency, looks violence right in the eye.

Postcard review: http://ow.ly/WEpj302dDiD

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In honor of this being longlisted for the National Book Award, I will share the title poem, the bright sun in the book's galaxy:
https://pen.org/poetry/look

[dc · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes words cause shrapnel, and sometimes collateral damage isn't harmful. sharif is a warrior. & a 5-star poet.