Books by Kazim Ali

"Reading Ali is an act of redemption . . . both a challenge and a balm." -THE RUMPUS

How we answer to love beneath the lash of history

To go without food from dawn to dusk for the whole month of Ramadan - how does this feel? What do we become when we deny our major appetites during the hours of daylight, and in what ways does this transform the nights? In these absences, what new presences, what illuminations and revelations arise? After many years of not practicing, acclaimed writer Kazim Ali has re-embraced the Ramadan tradition, and he brings a poet''s precision and ardor to these brilliant meditations on an ancient and yet entirely contemporary ritual. Jane Hirshfield has said, "Kazim Ali - a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to - has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali''s meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned; planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment''s air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is."

Kazim Ali uses a range of subjects - the politics of checkpoints at international borders; difficulties in translation; collaborations between poets and choreographers; and connections between poetry and landscape, or between biotechnology and the human body - to situate the individual human body into a larger global context, with all of its political and social implications.

New poems from this poet of "precision and ardor"

To go without food from dawn to dusk for the month of Ramadan - how does this feel? When we deny our major appetites, what do we become? Kazim Ali brings a poet's precision and ardor to his brilliant meditations on ritual fasting.Jane Hirshfield, author of AFTER and NINE GATES, says: "Kazim Ali -- a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to -- has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali's meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned; planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment's air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is."

Over the course of more than four decades, contemporary American poet Jean Valentine has written eleven books of stunning, spirit-inflected poetry. This collection of essays, assembled over several years by Kazim Ali and John Hoppenthaler, brings together twenty-six pieces on all stages of Valentine's career by a range of poets, scholars, and admirers.

Eloquent intercultural coming-of-age story

An American poet takes on Eastern philosophy, Western culture, and his Muslim heritage