Customs: Poems
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About this ebook
Winner of the 2023 CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry
Winner of the 2023 Northern California Book Award for Poetry
Finalist for the 2023 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Finalist for the 2022 L.A. Times Book Prize for Poetry
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
In Customs, Solmaz Sharif examines what it means to exist in the nowhere of the arrivals terminal, a continual series of checkpoints, officers, searches, and questionings that become a relentless experience of America. With resignation and austerity, these poems trace a pointed indoctrination to the customs of the nation-state and the English language, and the realities they impose upon the imagination, the paces they put us through. While Sharif critiques the culture of performed social skills and poetry itself—its foreclosures, affects, successes—she begins to write her way out to the other side of acceptability and toward freedom.
Customs is a brilliant, excoriating new collection by a poet whose unfolding works are among the groundbreaking literature of our time.
Solmaz Sharif
Solmaz Sharif was raised by Iranian parents in the United States. Her first collection, Look, was a National Book Award finalist. She is currently the Shirley Shenker Assistant Professor of English at UC Berkeley.
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Customs - Solmaz Sharif
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The fridge is a thing with weak magnets, a little sweaty on the inside
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CUSTOMS
Also by Solmaz Sharif
Look
CUSTOMS
Solmaz Sharif
Poems
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2022 by Solmaz Sharif
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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.
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Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-64445-079-6
Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-169-4
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