Paperback / softback
March 6, 2018
9780819577627
English
104
9.00 Inches (US)
7.00 Inches (US)
.5 Pounds (US)
$15.95 USD, £11.95 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
March 6, 2018
9780819577719
English
104
9.00 Inches (US)
7.00 Inches (US)
$12.99 USD, £9.50 GBP
v2.1 Reference

Inquisition

How we answer to love beneath the lash of history

During the 1982 air strikes on Beirut, Faiz Ahmed Faiz asked his friend Mahmoud Darwish "Why aren't the poets writing this war on the walls of the city?" Darwish responded, "Can't you see the walls falling down?" Queer, Muslim, American, Kazim Ali has always navigated complex intersections and interstices on order to make a life. In this scintillating mixture of lyrics, narrative, fragments, prose poem, and spoken word, he answers longstanding questions about the role of the poet or artist in times of political or social upheaval, although he answers under duress. An inquisition is dangerous, after all, especially to Muslims whose poetry and art and spiritual life has always depended not on the Western ideal of a known God or definitive text but on the concepts of abstraction, geometry, vertigo. "Someone always asks 'where are you from,'" Ali writes, "and I want to say 'a body is a body of matter flung/from the far corners of the universe and I am a patriot/of breath of sin of the endless clamor/out the window.'" Ali engages history, politics, and the dangerous regions of the uncharted heart in this visceral new collection.

About the Author

Poet, editor, and prose writer KAZIM ALI was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian descent. He received a BA and MA from the University of Albany-SUNY, and an MFA from New York University. Ali's poetry collections include The Far Mosque, which won Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, The Fortieth Day, and Sky Ward. Ali's poems, both lyric and musical, explore the intersection of faith and daily life. His prose includes The Disappearance of Seth and Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities.

Reviews

"Ali confronts philosophical quandaries capable of leading readers into their own reveries of the sublime."—Publishers Weekly

Endorsements

"What a gift Kazim Ali's Inquisition is, what a generosity, in its sustained and sustaining inhabitation of the mystery. That, without ignoring heartbreak or rage, it understands that we are always 'at the end of knowing,' and shows us how we might reside there. And from which residence, Inquisition reminds me: love."—Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

"What a gift Kazim Ali's Inquisition is, what a generosity, in its sustained and sustaining inhabitation of the mystery. That, without ignoring heartbreak or rage, it understands that we are always 'at the end of knowing,' and shows us how we might reside there. And from which residence, Inquisition reminds me: love."—Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

"Ali's use of the inherent musicality of language gives the poems an incantatory beautyThe poems feel vibrant and effortless, with one sound, one word, blending into the next. The resulting music, that lives in the mind, in the mouth, and the air, offers its own meaning, a sense of understanding on an elemental level that is satisfying and complex."—Vandana Khanna, author of The Goddess Monologues
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan Poetry Series

9780819577627 : inquisition-ali
Paperback / softback
104 Pages
$15.95 USD
9780819577719 : inquisition-ali
Electronic book text
104 Pages
$12.99 USD

Other Titles by Kazim Ali

Sukun

Kazim Ali
Sep 2023 - Wesleyan University Press
$40.00 USD - Hardback
$28.00 USD - Paperback / softback

North American Women Poets in the 21st Century

edited by Lisa Sewell, Kazim Ali
Feb 2020 - Wesleyan University Press
$85.00 USD - Hardback
$27.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$22.99 USD - Electronic book text

Sky Ward

Kazim Ali
Feb 2013 - Wesleyan University Press
$24.95 USD - Hardback
$19.99 USD - Electronic book text

Other Titles from Wesleyan Poetry Series

Be Brave to Things

Jack Spicer, edited by Daniel Katz
Oct 2023 - Wesleyan University Press
$35.00 USD - Hardback
$27.99 USD - Electronic book text
$26.95 USD - Paperback / softback

The Ruins of Nostalgia

Donna Stonecipher
Oct 2023 - Wesleyan University Press
$28.00 USD - Hardback
$16.95 USD - Paperback / softback

mahogany

erica lewis
Sep 2023 - Wesleyan University Press
$28.00 USD - Hardback
$16.95 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles in POETRY / General

Winter Fruit

Dale B.J. Randall
Dec 2025 - University Press of Kentucky
$40.00 USD - Hardback
$12.95 USD - Electronic book text

Feeding the Ghosts

Rahul Mehta
Mar 2024 - University Press of Kentucky
$44.95 USD - Hardback
$21.95 USD - Electronic book text
$21.95 USD - Paperback / softback

The Safety of Small Things

Jane Hicks
Jan 2024 - Fireside Industries, an imprint of University Press of Kentucky
$29.95 USD - Hardback
$19.95 USD - Electronic book text
$19.95 USD - Paperback / softback