99 Names of Exile • Print + E-book
Details
- Winner of the 2018 Anzaldúa Poetry Prize
- Saddle-stitched, risograph cover, 48 pages, 5″ x 7″, FSC-certified paper
- Purchase allows three interactive PDF or EPUB downloads
- Order print only
- Order e-book only
Praise
“Incredible beauty, intellect, and originality.”
–Cynthia Cruz
“The poems of 99 Names of Exile translate distance and exercise range masterfully. Kaveh Bassiri deepens a literacy of memory by navigating the storied risks and labyrinthine recovery of return. “Why is it called a tongue,” opens one stunning poem, ‘this boneless palm doctors read / this ladle for memories / sail for thoughts[.]’ In the face of erasure, personal loss, and the limits of understanding, Bassiri’s work wields a lyrical faith and the grace of imagery to house this book’s psychic longing for safety and family survival, teaching us to ‘Listen for the dawn to whisper: I am.'”
–Geffrey Davis
“From the gorgeous opening directive, the poem’s devotion to its subject matter is a breath-taking confluence of nature and indeed, the galaxy. Here, stars bloom in a Petri dish and moths scatter in a garden-turned soundscape. The poem reveals the gargantuan task of the invention of the title clipped bit by clipped bit until the reader is pulled through each line, spent and bloodied. There is a brute physicality to this poem but what stands out especially for me is the tender love-lyric tucked in between.”
–Aimee Nezhukumatathi on the poem “Invention of God” winner of the 49th Parallel Award
Reviews
Author
Iranian-American writer and translator Kaveh Bassiri has won the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award, the Witter Bynner Poetry Translation Residency, and a 2019 translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod International Journal, Mississippi Review, and “Best New Poets.” His translations have appeared in the Chicago Review, Colorado Review, Guernica, Two Line, World Literature Today, Los Angeles Review, and The Massachusetts Review.
Artwork
Cover by LK James.
$9.99