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Deep Are These Distances Between Us
Poems that imagine Persian and Iranian American lives.
In Deep Are These Distances Between Us , Susan Atefat-Peckham troubles preconceptions of nationhood and fixed systems of power by bringing the reader into the Iranian American home, offering glimpses of familial love and intimacy. Atefat-Peckham reaches for a network of care—the foundations of which are located in the ability of these poems to evoke the rich landscape of Iranian American lives. Articulating a spirituality that has no spatial or temporal boundaries, one which travels effortlessly between life and death, this collection is a treatise on the empathy we need now more than ever.
An up-and-coming poet who died just four years after winning the National Poetry Series Award in 2000, Susan Atefat-Peckham was deeply concerned by the Islamophobic “Axis of Evil” rhetoric deployed after 9/11 and was skeptical of attempts by the United States to “democratize” the Middle East. Representing the lives of immigrants in the United States and Persians in Iran, as well as the distance that separates their experiences and the love that binds them together, Atefat-Peckham brings an important voice to that conflict—one of the family and the home, where glimpses of intimacy and care rival imperial oppression.
In Deep Are These Distances Between Us , Susan Atefat-Peckham troubles preconceptions of nationhood and fixed systems of power by bringing the reader into the Iranian American home, offering glimpses of familial love and intimacy. Atefat-Peckham reaches for a network of care—the foundations of which are located in the ability of these poems to evoke the rich landscape of Iranian American lives. Articulating a spirituality that has no spatial or temporal boundaries, one which travels effortlessly between life and death, this collection is a treatise on the empathy we need now more than ever.
An up-and-coming poet who died just four years after winning the National Poetry Series Award in 2000, Susan Atefat-Peckham was deeply concerned by the Islamophobic “Axis of Evil” rhetoric deployed after 9/11 and was skeptical of attempts by the United States to “democratize” the Middle East. Representing the lives of immigrants in the United States and Persians in Iran, as well as the distance that separates their experiences and the love that binds them together, Atefat-Peckham brings an important voice to that conflict—one of the family and the home, where glimpses of intimacy and care rival imperial oppression.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
Published May 2, 2023
16 people want to read
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December 5, 2025
“Pushing through blue / burning water, to sky, through torn seams / of membranes, we burst from the deep, / dark black mouth of memory.”
-“The Memory of Cells,” Deep Are These Distances Between Us
Such a beautiful and heart pulling poetry collection. Atefat-Peckham has a way of writing in such a clear and resounding voice. At times so honest and at others deeply intricate.
The beating heart of her poems are about how we are shaped by our history, by our loss, and by our love. Such simple ideas that, through her words, resonate deep within and make the reader think about how much we are formed by everything and everyone around us.
The familial stories Atefat-Peckham tells in her poems have a way of inviting the reader into these intimate and vulnerable moments while also leaving them with the feeling of what it means to be haunted. The warmth and the coldness are intertwined together in a way that makes it impossible to separate one without losing the other.
A few of my favorite poems include:
•”The meaning of Names”
•”How to Cut”
•”The Anatomy of Hands”
•”Hunger”
•“Lower Manhattan”
-“The Memory of Cells,” Deep Are These Distances Between Us
Such a beautiful and heart pulling poetry collection. Atefat-Peckham has a way of writing in such a clear and resounding voice. At times so honest and at others deeply intricate.
The beating heart of her poems are about how we are shaped by our history, by our loss, and by our love. Such simple ideas that, through her words, resonate deep within and make the reader think about how much we are formed by everything and everyone around us.
The familial stories Atefat-Peckham tells in her poems have a way of inviting the reader into these intimate and vulnerable moments while also leaving them with the feeling of what it means to be haunted. The warmth and the coldness are intertwined together in a way that makes it impossible to separate one without losing the other.
A few of my favorite poems include:
•”The meaning of Names”
•”How to Cut”
•”The Anatomy of Hands”
•”Hunger”
•“Lower Manhattan”
Displaying 1 of 1 review