Pilgrim Bell2021

"With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar's second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body's question, "what now shall I repair?" Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance-the infinite void of a loved one's absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation-teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell's linguistic rigor is tuned to the...