Pilgrim Bell: Poems

By Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar’s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf


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 register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives—resonant, revelatory, and holy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644451526

Book preview

NOTE TO THE READER ON TEXT SIZE

these hands through your blood—jealous moths. How do they heaven, upset like that?

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Note to the Reader on In the Language of Mammon, Palace Mosque, Frozen, and Against Memory: Several poems in this collection are displayed as images for this eBook edition. For accessibility purposes, these images link to plain-text renderings of the poems at the end of this eBook.

PILGRIM BELL

ALSO BY KAVEH AKBAR

POETRY

Calling a Wolf a Wolf

ANTHOLOGY

The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine

PILGRIM BELL

POEMS

KAVEH AKBAR

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2021 by Kaveh Akbar

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64445-059-8

Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-152-6

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2021

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944177

Cover painting and design: Hannah Bagshaw

CONTENTS

Pilgrim Bell

Vines

The Miracle

Ghazal for the Men I Once Was

Reza’s Restaurant, Chicago, 1997

There Are 7,000 Living Languages

The Value of Fear

Mothers I