A Look Into Kazim Ali's Inquisition

Today at The Rumpus, Barbara Berman reviews two new poetry titles, the anthology Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press, 2017) and Kazim Ali's latest, Inquisition (Wesleyan, 2018). Bullets into Bells has made a few appearances here on Harriet already (here, here, and here), but we'll remind readers about the anthology, in Berman's words: "Editors Brian Clements, Dean Rader, and Alexandra Teague structured the book so as to create a dialogue. The anthology is arranged in a mode of call and response: first a poem, then a response to the poem from a reader whose vocation is not connected to the literary life. Most of the poems are by marquee names in the poetry world, and they all deserve credit for exposing themselves to the pain this project inflicted." Turning to Ali's latest, Berman praises the collection, noting that Inquisition "is a passionate companion to Bullets into Bells." More:

Ali is queer and Muslim and was born in the United Kingdom. He now lives in Ohio and his admiration for American poets with humane politics is on especially fine display in “Amerika the Beautiful,” which, Ali notes, is indebted to “Bush’s War” by Robert Hass. Allen Ginsberg, speaking at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the early 80s, declared that if you’re going to write political poetry, it had better be beautiful. Hass, a contributor to Bullets into Bells, has been meticulous in this regard, never letting fury lead him artistically astray. Ali is just as successful in “Amerika the Beautiful,” a multi-page prose poem:

It’s a trick that history outside has nothing to do with history inside. A trick that God’s words as believed by heathen others aren’t also graven in fire in my own body. As though I turn in, tune out, the stiletto of the world spikes through: a young gay man in California has a bottle broken over his head .#MuslimBitch… . In Hyderabad in the night I reached out across the wires to my friend while outside loomed the dark rocks which broke apart millions of years ago.

Reading Ali is an act of redemption even when the worst is spiked and wired with hatred and danger. His perspective on time is both a challenge and a balm[.]

Continue reading at The Rumpus. And, oh, as luck would have it, Kazim Ali is featured this week on our PoetryNow podcast, here.