The Voice of Sheila Chandra

¿¿So how do you discern a shape for / what is often called god¿ asks the poet in a book that is as metaphysical as it is very much of this moment, of this, our crisis. How so? Because every crisis is first of all metaphysical. Kazim Ali speaks in the same breath of the injustice of our world and of ¿the actual syllables Orpheus sang/ to the dead to be allowed into hell.¿ This is a metaphysics of a scream. It speaks against world that wrongs us, yes¿but also of ¿what language cannot / hold onto,¿ of ¿ecstatic sound aiming to reach from the muck of the earth.¿ What is this speech like? It takes many forms: lyrical, cinematic, choral. The Voice of Sheila Chandra is a sequence of sequences, a book where three long poems come together to make a statement that is far larger than the sum of its parts. It is a brilliant book.¿ ¿Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa