Inquisition

by Kazim Ali

During the 1982 air strikes on Beirut, Faiz Ahmed Faiz asked his friend Mahmoud Darwish "Why aren't the poets writing this war on the walls of the city?" Darwish responded, "Can't you see the walls falling down?" Queer, Muslim, American, Kazim Ali has always navigated complex intersections and interstices on order to make a life. In this scintillating mixture of lyrics, narrative, fragments, prose poem, and spoken word, he answers longstanding questions about the role of the poet or artist in times of political or social upheaval, although he answers under duress. An inquisition is dangerous, after all, especially to Muslims whose poetry and art and spiritual life has always depended not on the Western ideal of a known God or definitive text but on the concepts of abstraction, geometry, vertigo. "Someone always asks 'where are you from, '" Ali writes, "and I want to say 'a body is a body of matter flung/from the far corners of the universe and I am a patriot/of breath of sin of the endless clamor/out the window.'" Ali engages history, politics, and the dangerous regions of the uncharted heart in this visceral new collection.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Gay

104 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2018

About the author

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, includingthe volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.

Author photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones from Kazim Ali's press kit.

Reviews

[Barton Smock · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Do strangers make you human' – {from} Drone

This odd exactitude. This thisness. These inhabited levitations. These spiritual hashtags for the redactions of Babel. This poetry….found, founded, in Kazim Ali’s Inquisition.

To know there is always another text.

'In a different book Jesus
never suffered, never was flogged or died
went whole into heaven without passion' – {from} The Earthquake Days

To command, with embodiment, form.

'…do swear oblivion
Has its own markers but where the buoy
Of being clangs its stellar ore' – {from} All One’s Blue

This is a searching work, a locating text, and its voice is one that makes of ground a hymn to some future itinerary. Ali is a believer in, a writer of, histories unmade by a record-breaking presence. If he wanders into the loneliness of the long distance runner, it is to appear as the clocker of isolated sprints.

'(I weep like a stone)

(Really close to) two' – {from} Forgotten Equations

'Sail or spin I endless ember' – {from} The Labors of Psyche

These are verses, redrawn, from a borderless awe. Unmothered anecdotes that fact-check the paternal past of the overtaken visionary. Were poem to erase all I pretend to love, I could live hearing such a speaking as is here, with how it addresses the now with a deepened next.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Inquisition" was written by Kazim Ali and published in 2018. This book is a book of poetry that digs into what the role of a writer is during times of national distress or even more local distress. This book would be appropriate for older audiences, high school or adults.

(assignment #8)

[John Burroughs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these were really difficult for me to understand or relate to.

[Sean]

Dog-eared:
"Origin Story"
"Amerika the Beautiful"
"Marie's Crisis"
"Yannis Ritsos"