"The Palace"

by Kaveh Akbar, María Medem (Illustrator), Kevin Young (Introduction)

A poet considers America, and what it means to call a country home.

Genres: Poetry

Online

First published April 18, 2019

About the author

Kaveh Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the founder and editor of Divedapper, a home for dialogues with vital voices in contemporary poetry.

His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017.

Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Iowa. He was a visiting professor at Purdue University in Indiana in Fall 2017.

Reviews

[Afifa Afreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poem just introduced me to his other works and now I am in too deep.

[Rianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

37/52 books read in 2019.

As always, it is really hard to review a poem, unless you are absolutely in love or in disgust with it.
So here are a couple of lines that I really liked:

"There are no good kings.
Only beautiful palaces."

"Hello, this is Kaveh speaking:
I wanted to be Keats
(but I’ve already lived four years too long)."

I listened to the audio provided whilst reading the text and really enjoyed that. Definitely recommend.
Both the text and audio version can be found here

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Represents something specific for me and always will. "The palace burns, the palace is fire, and my throne is comfy and square."

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alone in a dark room, I read this poem out loud. Similar to everything Kaveh writes, it is tender and eager to fall, maybe break, but doesn’t. “Art is where what we survive survives.” Tucked in the poem, a reminder. What we are creating is a permanence of the close calls. Sure, this is a poem about America. It’s a poem of home, or places, at least, that could be. Heaven or anywhere where your mother cooks. “I lose you so much today,” what a beautiful mistake. And really how is that much different from many of Kaveh’s other poems? Just one beautiful mistake, then another.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm this was interesting and it was doing a lot (Mick Jagger AND Keats?) and there were a lot of great turns of phrase, but I just personally would’ve liked to see a more cohesive whole or a more cohesive comment on “America” rise out of this palace.

Also, I was definitely most interested in Akbar’s parents as mentioned in this poem. American mother and Iranian father? How does coming from a multinational family affect Akbar’s conception of America? Or his identity as American? I feel like certain stanzas gave off strong Immigrant Poem vibes but surely that experience is not quite the same when your American mother is right there.

Idk in general it was the specific personal life details that struck me, and not really the metaphorical palace stuff. Any place in the real world is more interesting to me than a metaphorical palace.

But I did like the Keats call and response though. That was cool.

[Ana King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it yesterday and then again today, thanks to the new yorker for putting me onto this author, going to go read Calling a Wolf a Wolf now and get triggered as hell.

If I tried highlighting a part I liked I'd have to post the whole thing. But I guess this is the one that made by breath stop.

I have a kitchen device
that lets me spin lettuce.
There is no elegant way
to say this—people
with living hearts
that could fit in my chest
want to melt the city where I was born.
At his elementary school in an American suburb,
a boy’s shirt says: “We Did It To Hiroshima, We Can Do It To Tehran!”

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been trying to sprinkle in poetry throughout my 2024 reading journey.

And as I’m sure you have found, you either resonate with poetry, or you do not. Therefore, I t’s really difficult to review poetry.

For me, this poem was strictly average.

So I gave it three out of five stars.

I did enjoy hearing the author read his own poem. You can listen and read at the link here for free.

Having read this poem, though, I was turned on to the author’s novels, and now I’m curious to read them, so I have added them to my to my to be read list. I would say that is a positive that has come from this poem as well.

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

MUST READ AGAIN.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There are no good kings, only beautiful palaces."

https://www.newyorker.com/books/poems...

[Dina H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

« There are no good kings,
Only burning palaces »

[Kulsum · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There are no good kings, only beautiful palaces."
I love María Medem's illustrations oh my god

[margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect poem, i think

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugh this poem is the best thing I have ever read - please read it I beg of you!!

My favourite lines (spoiler alert)
"Their goodness dragged him into the street/and tore off/his arms, plucked/his goodness out, plucked his fingers out/like feathers."
"There are no good kings./Only beautiful palaces."
"My life/growing monstrous/with ease."
"America could be a metaphor, but it isn’t."
"There are no doors in America./Only king-sized holes."
"To be an American is to be a scholar/of opportunity./Opportunity costs./Every orange I eat disappears the million/peaches, plums, pears I could have eaten/but didn’t."
"Are you still listening?/Every person I touch/costs me ten million I’ll never meet."
"the pencil pushed slowly through my brother’s tricep."
"The babies do not see us/watching our babies/get thinner."
"Our babies born addicted to fear of babies."
"America? far enough away from itself."
"These parents want their boy/to want to melt my family,/and I live among them."
"Sizzling oil, great fists of smoke, writing this."
"Art is where what we survive survives."
"Any document of civilization is also a document of barbarism/says the palace, burning."