\ by Kaveh Akbar

\ Reviews

• 
  Afifa Afreen

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

  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

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

  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.
• 
  Ana King

  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!”
• 
  Kaitlin

  MUST READ AGAIN.
• 
  Grace

  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."