Akbar, Kaveh: Pilgrim Bell

Graywolf Press, paperback Publication Date: August 3, 2021 Publisher Marketing: Kaveh Akbar's exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf  With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar's second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body's question, "what now shall I repair?" Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance--the infinite void of a loved one's absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation--teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell's linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. A