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A review by mepresley
Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
4.5
I really enjoyed this collection; while it centers around alcoholism and recovery, it is also-- like all poetry, like all stories--about what it means to be human: our messy lives, full of love, and loss, and desire, and confusion, and the struggle to find ourselves, and misplaced certainty, and faith / loss of faith of various kinds. My favorite poems were "Calling a Wolf a Wolf," "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before," "Heritage," "Desunt Nonnulla," "What Seems like Joy," "Portrait of the Alcoholic with Moths and River," "The Straw is Too Long, the Axe is Too Dull," and "God."
"Calling a Wolf a Wolf"
...everyone's forgotten I'm here I've tried all the usual tricks pretending I've just been made terrifying like a suddenly carnivorous horse like a rabid hissing sapphire. ...
"Stop Me if You've Heard this One Before"
...Sometimes you just have to leave
whatever's real to you, you have to clomp
through fields and kick the caps off
all the toadstools. Sometimes
you have to march all the way to Galilee
or the literal foot of God himself before you realize
you've already passed the place where
you were supposed to die. ...
"Heritage"
in books, love can be war-ending a soldier drops his sword
to lie forking oysters into his enemy's mouth in life we hold love up to the light
to marvel at its impotence ...
"Desunt Nonnulla"
...it's so much easier to catalogue hunger to atomize
absence and carry each bit like ants taking home a meal
“What Seems like Joy”
"Calling a Wolf a Wolf"
...everyone's forgotten I'm here I've tried all the usual tricks pretending I've just been made terrifying like a suddenly carnivorous horse like a rabid hissing sapphire. ...
"Stop Me if You've Heard this One Before"
...Sometimes you just have to leave
whatever's real to you, you have to clomp
through fields and kick the caps off
all the toadstools. Sometimes
you have to march all the way to Galilee
or the literal foot of God himself before you realize
you've already passed the place where
you were supposed to die. ...
"Heritage"
in books, love can be war-ending a soldier drops his sword
to lie forking oysters into his enemy's mouth in life we hold love up to the light
to marvel at its impotence ...
"Desunt Nonnulla"
...it's so much easier to catalogue hunger to atomize
absence and carry each bit like ants taking home a meal
“What Seems like Joy”
…even a lobster climbs away from its shell a few
times a life but every time I open my eyes I find
I am still inside myself each epiphany dull and familiar
"Portrait of the Alcoholic with Moths and River"
to make a life first you need a dying star
this seems important with you so close to
collapsing yourself the mute swan's final
burst of song I know you've tried this before
when they asked you where it hurt you motioned in
a circle to the ground under your feet
"The Straw is Too Long, the Axe is Too Dull"
...I need to be poured dry instead of this slow seeping its hurts even to think about the leak in my brain
where brackish water trickles in and memory trickles out
with what do I mend a hole like that
answer me with what
"God"
...The work I've been doing
is a kind of erasing. I dump my ashtray
into a bucket of paint and coat myself
in the gray slick, rolling around on the carpets of rich strangers
while they applaud and sip their scotch. ...
....
...They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel
will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad
away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary
it can get out here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around
my neck that still burn in the wind. ...
"Portrait of the Alcoholic with Moths and River"
to make a life first you need a dying star
this seems important with you so close to
collapsing yourself the mute swan's final
burst of song I know you've tried this before
when they asked you where it hurt you motioned in
a circle to the ground under your feet
"The Straw is Too Long, the Axe is Too Dull"
...I need to be poured dry instead of this slow seeping its hurts even to think about the leak in my brain
where brackish water trickles in and memory trickles out
with what do I mend a hole like that
answer me with what
"God"
...The work I've been doing
is a kind of erasing. I dump my ashtray
into a bucket of paint and coat myself
in the gray slick, rolling around on the carpets of rich strangers
while they applaud and sip their scotch. ...
....
...They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel
will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad
away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary
it can get out here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around
my neck that still burn in the wind. ...