{"id":7663,"date":"2026-04-10T07:17:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josephrauch.com\/therauchreview\/?p=7663"},"modified":"2026-04-10T07:17:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:17:31","slug":"kaveh-akbar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josephrauch.com\/therauchreview\/author-profiles\/kaveh-akbar\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaveh Akbar Writes to Stay Alive: A Complete Author Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBecause I am here \/ each of these things has a name.\u201d
\n\u2014From \u201cExciting the Canvas\u201d a poem in “Calling a Wolf a Wolf”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that poems exist is the load-bearing gratitude upon which I have built my life.\u201d
\n\u2014Interview<\/a> with NPR<\/p>\n

Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and novelist known for his lyrical style, surreal imagination and an ability to ground metaphysics and spiritual inquiry in concrete detail and human frailty. Akbar committed to writing poetry while in recovery from addiction, something he has spoken and written about candidly. What he describes as his \u201csurvival\u201d of alcoholism, subsequent \u201cresponsibility to attention\u201d and distrust of certainty informs all of his published work: spanning two books of poetry, a novel and two anthologies over seven years. He is a professor at the University of Iowa<\/a> where he teaches and directs the undergraduate creative writing program.<\/p>\n

Kaveh Akbar: A Brief Biography<\/h2>\n

Born in Tehran in 1989, Kaveh Akbar grew up speaking Farsi with his Iranian father and English with his American mother. He also describes learning Arabic phrases reserved only for prayer. They later moved to America where Akbar describes losing much of his fluency and feeling a cultural rift, a recurring subject of his work. The family moved several times, living in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Indiana.<\/p>\n

As a child he was an overachieving math and science student whose idea of fun was to program games into a TI-83 calculator. But he was drawn to MadLibs, the fill-in-the-blanks word game book that revealed all sorts of nonsensical phrases once completed.<\/p>\n

Akbar has been vocal about his struggle with addiction, recovery and subsequent sobriety. By his early 20s, Akbar was drinking heavily, and sometimes using narcotics and other drugs.<\/p>\n

In a New York Times profile piece<\/a>, Elizabeth Harris wrote, \u201cWhen Kaveh Akbar was drinking, he would regularly wake up to find new bruises or gashes on his body, or to find that he\u2019d lost his glasses, his wallet or his car. When he opened his eyes, he might find himself in an alley instead of in his apartment. Once, he got out of bed and realized he couldn\u2019t walk. He had broken his pelvis.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described his eventual sobriety as survival, saying \u201cIt is wrong to think of God as a debt to luck. But I could have died, and didn\u2019t.\u201d He credits Butler University president Dan Barden with coaxing him to sobriety meetings while he was studying there, something he initially resisted but made a point to show up anyway.<\/p>\n

Akbar steadied in his sobriety while pursuing an MFA at Purdue University, describing poetry as something he would use to kill time without relapsing, that rebuilt the synapses in his brain and colored the world around him.<\/p>\n

In his own words, \u201cEleven years ago, I was pissing the bed. And now I\u2019m living this life\u2026the sense of whiplash is omnipresent, as is the sense of survivor\u2019s guilt.\u201d A theme emerged in his work and his practice: the burden, beauty and responsibility of witness: Close attention to the world around him is itself a worthy and ethical practice.<\/p>\n

In 2014 Akbar founded Dive Dapper<\/a>, a blog where he interviewed contemporary poets \u201cwhose words have shaped the way I experience the world.\u201d After over six dozen interviews with poets like Franz Wright<\/a>, Sharon Olds<\/a>, Claudia Rankine<\/a> and Ocean Vuong<\/a>, Akbar passed the torch to Natalie Tombasco<\/a> and Anthony Borruso<\/a>, who have kept the blog going.<\/p>\n

In 2017 he published his first chapbook, containing poems that would end up in his first full collection, \u201cCalling a Wolf a Wolf<\/a>,\u201d which garnered nationwide acclaim and ignited his career. Shortly after earning his doctorate in creative writing at Florida State University he published \u201cPilgrim Bell<\/a>\u201d and became the poetry editor for The Nation<\/a>, joining a lineage that includes Langston Hughes<\/a> and W.B. Yeats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, Kaveh took to long-form prose for the first time in earnest where he put himself on a \u201cnarrative diet\u201d of two novels a week and a movie every day. He described it as a \u201ccompletely kleptomaniacal education,\u201d lifting entire phrases and literary devices from authors like Annie Dillard<\/a>, James Baldwin<\/a> and Toni Morrison<\/a>. This frenetic period would culminate in his debut novel, \u201cMartyr!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Summer of 2022 he moved to Iowa City with his spouse, poet Paige Lewis<\/a>, to join the faculty at the University of Iowa where he teaches and directs the Undergraduate Creative Writing program. In 2025 he was named Roy J. Carver Professor of English and scholar of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life is this ongoing procession of minor miracles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From The New York Times<\/p>\n<\/div>

Books by Kaveh Akbar<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\"Portrait<\/a><\/span><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘Portrait of the Alcoholic<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Sibling Rivalry Press<\/em>, 2017<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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\u201cImagine being the oil boiling away an entire person
\nToday, I\u2019m finding problems in areas where I didn\u2019t have areas before.
\n\u2014From \u201c<\/em>Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Debuting with a small and daring independent press<\/a> out of New York City, Akbar lays the foundation for poems that would form his subsequent full-length collection released later the same year. Unlike the follow-up, the title is directly confessional, establishing Akbar as a poet who was willing to go there.<\/p>\n

Readers were pleasantly surprised when the poems never devolved into spectacle or navel-gazing. Instead they were struck by Akbar\u2019s juxtapositions, lyricism and economy of language \u2014 lines worth rereading.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.6 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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4.35 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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Goodreads<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Calling<\/a><\/span><\/div>
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BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘Calling a Wolf a Wolf<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Alice James Books<\/em>, 2017<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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\u201cMecca is a moth
\nchewing holes in a shirt I left
\nat a lovers house\u201d
\n\u2014From \u201cA Boy Steps Into the Water\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not a slow learner
\nI am a quick forgetter
\nsuch erasing makes one voracious
\nif you teach me something beautiful
\nI will name it quickly before it floats away\u201d
\n\u2015From \u201cDesunt Nonulla\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe struggle from late youth on, with and without God, agony, narcotics and love is a torment rarely recorded with such sustained eloquence and passion as you will find in this collection.\u201d \u2014 Fanny Howe<\/p>\n

Akbar\u2019s first full-length collection \u2014 raw, surreal, confessional, existential and even spiritual \u2014 unravels the thralls of a raging addiction, the struggle towards sobriety and tenuous life after. But readers expecting a series of diary entries would be taken aback. The poems are rarely about<\/i> addiction. Instead they channel its often surreal state of mind, its intoxicating beauty, its torment, its isolating bond with the soul.<\/p>\n

Reviewer Nick Flynn wrote, “Was it Jung who speculated that alcoholism might be an attempt at a material solution for a spiritual problem? Kaveh Akbar seems able to contain both\u2014he’s a demotic, as well as a spiritual, poet (the only type of either I trust). Each word in this little book might rise up from somewhere deep in the earth, but they turn into stars.”<\/p>\n

The poems seem to personify alcoholism as a higher power, a deal with the devil \u2014 a night of transcendence in exchange for a nasty hangover. As the night (and the addiction) progresses, it tends to steal our memories. The fear of forgetting is a nagging existential threat in these poems, and the ritual of naming becomes the only healing balm.<\/p>\n

A lot of addiction poetry either glorifies depravity in navel-gazing excess or focuses too concretely on the subjective experience of becoming sober, sometimes indulging the moral victory. Akbar writes addiction poems without sentimentality or recovery clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

In some ways, it\u2019s a shame the book is marketed with this slant, because it stands out as intimate and lyrical in its own right, featuring a poet grappling with God, his Persian ancestry, the nature of language, the meaning of home. Woven tightly in lyrics that waste not a word? Visceral imagery, a soaring imagination, juxtapositions that make old words new again.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.28 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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4.32 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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Goodreads<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Pilgrim<\/a><\/span><\/div>
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BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘Pilgrim Bell<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Graywolf Press<\/em>, 2021<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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Verily, they sent down
\nlanguage, filling us with words
\nlike seawater filling a lung. You
\ncan hear them listening now
\nfor our listening.
\n\u2014From \u201cThere is No Such Thing as an Accident of the Spirit\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[Kaveh] Akbar is exquisitely sensitive to how language can function as both presence and absence. . . . His practice of taking language apart, and harnessing the empty space around it, makes even the most familiar words seem eerie and unexpected.\u201d\u2014The New Yorker<\/p>\n

Published four years after “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,”<\/i> Akbar\u2019s second full-length collection finds the poet in conversation with the divine while grappling with the muck of lived reality. If his first book read like a dizzying surrealist confessional, “Pilgrim Bell” reads like a spiritual treatise that upends its genre. It\u2019s an atomic collider smashing disparate ideas with precise imagery; then scanning the results for answers.<\/p>\n

Written in the strange new skin of sobriety, Akbar investigates personal loss, faith in equal measure with doubt, and language itself \u2014 all with a piercing gaze and generous heart. And murmuring in the aisles, you can feel the state of a nation grappling with the Covid pandemic, political division under a Trump administration and Islamophobia.<\/p>\n

Weaving a tight lyrical web (that makes you double-back to reread the last explosive line), Akbar draws on Sufi mysticism, Islamic imagery and ancient Persian poetry forms to ask: What\u2019s still worthy of reverence? Throughout “Pilgrim Bell” the poem becomes a lamp in the dark, casting the familiar in a strange light, but also granting warmth in the strange night of the soul. Read in full, the poems reinvigorate an intoxicating sense of what\u2019s-the-word? Bewilderment.<\/p>\n

“Pilgrim Bell” is a book for seekers, who distrust easy answers \u2014 poems about sobriety, faith and political unrest that don\u2019t end in a-ha moments. Instead, they invite the reader to sit with dissonance. Akbar\u2019s poems are beautiful, songlike yet startling, with surprises lurking at the next line break. You read it to rediscover how to yearn, and how to yearn for more.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.6 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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4.25 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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4.21 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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Goodreads<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Martyr!,<\/a><\/span><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘Martyr!<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Knopf<\/em>, 2024<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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\u201cLove was a room that appeared when you stepped into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAkbar has written a page-turner\u2026spiraling between inner and outer realities, connecting continents and histories, orbiting a deepening mystery. Like a Borgesian library, Martyr! is a finite book in which infinity is shelved.\u201d \u2014Karen Russell, Electric Lit<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Martyr! is a fictional novel about an orphaned young man\u2019s search for meaning unfurling into a family saga. Heartfelt, tinged with humor and sorrow, and formally ambitious, it\u2019s a fitting debut for Kaveh Akbar\u2019s prose. Undoubtedly built from lived experience, Martyr! manages to avoid becoming an autobiographical novel, or even auto-fiction. Akbar composts this raw material \u2014 addiction, recovery, Iranian history, obsession \u2014 and breathes it into life through Cyrus Shams.<\/p>\n

A recently sober son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus is grappling with depression and a deep spiritual void. His mother died tragically when the U.S. Navy accidentally downed Iran Air Flight 655. And his father just died after a grueling life spent working at a chicken processing plant so Cyrus could have a better life. After a flicker of a lightbulb he takes to be a sign from God, Cyrus embarks on a quest for a family secret, eventually leading him to a terminally ill painter making death her last piece.<\/p>\n

Rather than following a memoir-like monologue or linear plot, Martyr! shuffles perspectives, with other voices and quoted material peppered in like a Greek chorus, as well as short essays written by Cyrus. Stylistically restless and taking a range of tones, Martyr! deals in humor and despair, metaphysics and pop culture, private grief and geopolitical trauma. Akbar brings to fiction his characteristic economy of language, sharp eye for detail, and his deep suspicion of being certain of anything.<\/p>\n

Martyr! resists the consolations of doctrine while remaining invested in spiritual seeking, asking if surviving \u2014 the tragic flight, the raging addiction \u2014 is a responsibility worthy of taking on. And if it is \u2014 how Cyrus, how we, might continue living, loving, and witnessing in a world where neither blind faith nor cynicism feel right.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.15 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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Goodreads<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Editing Work<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\"The<\/a><\/span><\/div>
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BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Penguin Classics<\/em>, 2022<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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\u201cArabic gets an asterisk because I never really spoke it, I just learned to pray in it\u2026Today I have no idea what I mean when I say God and I say it a lot.\u201d \u2014From the Introduction.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective\u2026 poetry that detaches us from the world of instant gratification.\u201d \u2014Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury<\/em><\/p>\n

Drawing on his own trajectory as a poet, Akbar debuts his curatorial powers in this sweeping anthology driven by his own preoccupation with devotion, doubt and the divine. Laid out chronologically and following a wide range of spiritual traditions \u2014 Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, mystics and secularists alike \u2014 Akbar puts ancient, medieval and contemporary voices on equal footing. Among canonical choices, Akbar also peppers in poets who resist doctrine.<\/p>\n

He writes in the introduction, \u201cA common formulation states that prayer is a way of speaking to the divine and meditation a way of listening for it. Poetry synthesizes these.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are poems that treat prayer, silence, surrender and longing \u2014 for meaning, motivation and comfort \u2014 as deeply human drives that have given rise to soaring verse throughout the ages: From the earliest ascribed author, the ancient Sumerian priestess named Enheduanna (writing two thousand decades before the common era) to the ever-searching Brazilian poet, Adelia Prado, writing poems that surfaced to wider acclaim in the 90s.<\/p>\n

Published with the longstanding Penguin Classics imprint, the anthology positions Akbar not only as a poet devoted to his personal practice but one invested in finding more audiences for poetry and expanding the modern reader\u2019s conception of spiritual verse.<\/p>\n

Akbar laments how today\u2019s fast-paced consumer society cheapens language with \u201cpassionate absolutes.\u201d \u201cPoetry,\u201d he continues, \u201casks us to slow down our metabolization of language.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.31 out of 5<\/div><\/span>
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\"Another<\/a><\/span><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Sarabande<\/em>, 2023<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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\u201cFor many poets here, poetry was a place to put themselves on that journey [to recovery]. Language is a place to go as the new self forms, a safe place to store body and mind.\u201d
\n\u2014From the Introduction<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Last Call\u201d seems to have two meanings. It could just be a cheeky way of announcing a sequel to Sarabande\u2019s first anthology, \u201cLast Call.\u201d But it could also be figurative: another kind of last call, a calling beyond addiction.<\/p>\n

More than 25 years later, Akbar and his spouse and poet Paige Lewis present their own curated \u201cmixtape\u201d of contemporary poets, all \u2014 directly or indirectly \u2014 addressing substance abuse. As the publisher<\/a> describes it, \u201c[The book] refuses the neat arc of collapse and redemption, offering instead a lived, plural understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Featuring poets like Joy Harjo<\/a>, Diane Seuss<\/a>, Layli Long Soldier<\/a>, Sharon Olds, Jericho Brown, Ada Lim\u00f3n and Ocean Vuong, each poem either addresses the throes of addiction, the never-ending road of recovery or the impact addictions have on others. Along the way, the poems seem to treat addiction as a rich and varied lived condition, dealing with themes of desire, grief, relapse and survivor\u2019s guilt. It becomes clear the editors are motivated in framing addiction not as a moral failing but a human sickness: an attempt to navigate or avoid pain and existential angst. Poetry becomes the force to rebuild webs of meaning and illuminate a shared struggle.<\/p>\n

This is a book that wags no fingers; nor does it hold your hand. Instead it\u2019s like a vigil for wherever you are on the journey.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Kaveh Akbar\u2019s Writing Style and Themes<\/h2>\n

Style: Modern Confessional, But Hard to Define Overall<\/h3>\n

\u201cIn the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout.\u201d – Richard Hugo<\/a>, “Triggering Town<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Across two books of poems, a novel and two anthologies, if his body of work could leave one impression, it would be bewilderment. Nagging, intoxicating, yearning, Kaveh Akbar seems ever willing to trust the whims of his imagination without worrying what it means \u2014 as if we can hotwire the rational mind, in writing as in reading, and hit upon the more important, oft neglected, meaning-making of the subconscious.<\/p>\n

He is certainly not the first poet with this ethos that can be traced back through James Tate<\/a>, John Berryman<\/a>, Sylvia Plath<\/a>, Elizabeth Bishop<\/a> and others. It\u2019s difficult and possibly futile to pinpoint exactly what makes Akbar special. Afterall, he\u2019s been open about his \u201ckleptomaniacal education\u201d. But it\u2019s clear that whatever imagery, pet words or devices he\u2019s stolen, he has stolen so greedily and internalized so heartily that his unique voice emerges: self-effacing, at times darkly funny, tender, honest.<\/p>\n

A word cloud reveals \u201cbody,\u201d \u201cGod,\u201d \u201cpray,\u201d \u201cfear,\u201d \u201ctrust,\u201d \u201cmemory,\u201d \u201chome,\u201d \u201ccat,\u201d \u201cstars,\u201d \u201cbone,\u201d various flowers and a strange obsession with throats. His lexicon is disarmingly plainspoken. The writing almost always feels intimate. But his juxtapositions spark fresh meanings, making the familiar unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

It could be said some poems follow the looser mode of the prayer. If Akbar is spiritual, it is always through a deeply personal mysticism: one that does not cling to comforting assurance.<\/p>\n

Time and again Akbar has resisted certainty with an almost religious conviction. In an interview with Poets & Writers<\/a> he said, \u201cThe English language is the most violent technology mankind has ever invented\u2026 So whatever it\u2019s certain of, I reflexively distrust.\u201d He goes on to note, \u201cThere\u2019s the Sufi prayer that goes, \u2018Lord, increase my bewilderment.\u2019 That is the entirety of the prayer. That\u2019s what I\u2019m after.\u201d In his poem, \u201cDo you Speak Persian\u201d he writes, \u201cI have been so careless with the words I already have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Always flowing somewhere, his poems seem to trust that the next line always belongs. Always shifting between deep heady ideas and often visceral imagery, his poems demand, apologize, beg, question: \u201cyou\u201d the reader, God, himself, beloveds, even empires. He does so using forms like the ancient Arabic Ghazal (pronounced \u201cguzzle\u201d) which are built on couplets and feature a refrain whose meaning deepens on every pass. It\u2019s no wonder Akbar is drawn to the form which traditionally included both erotic longing and religious sentiment, often in the same poem.<\/p>\n

Some poems are short and narrow, sometimes claustrophobic, without punctuation, leaving the reader to sweat for natural pauses. Others insert periods after fragments, stuttering the reader\u2019s flow. Akbar plays with white space, in \u201cPilgrim Bell\u201d especially, as if he wants us to squirm in bouts of silence. Many poems embrace elision \u2014 where one thought seems to end only to continue on the next line, leaving us to wonder which was the intended meaning. In \u201cPilgrim Bell\u201d he writes, \u201cMy savior has powers and he needs. \/ To be convinced to use them. \/ Up until now he has been. \/ A no-call no-show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akbar also has a way of disarming the reader using very natural, conversational modes in figurative, sometimes metaphysical, ways: using logical arguments, if\/then statements, common syntax or rhetorical refrains. For example: \u201cGod loves the hungry \/\/ more than the full.\u201d or \u201cIf home is the question, \/ the honest answers must all be elegant \/ forgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes he disarms us with familiar sounding aphorisms in the form of some token of wisdom. \u201cParadise lies at the feet of mothers.\u201d Or, \u201cThe body is a mosque borrowed from heaven.\u201d Or, \u201cTears fall on a stone and the stone suddenly \/ wants eyes.\u201d It\u2019s not a stretch to think that his learning Farsi with hindsight, its literal translations, must have fed his figurative powers.<\/p>\n

The fact that most of his poems are deeply lyrical but set in logical grammar; use plain language, familiar rhetorical flourishes, and MadLib aphorisms; are visually clean using mostly neat stanzas and tidy line breaks; all serve some cumulative effect: Poems that break through our defenses and deepen our sense of intoxicating bewilderment.<\/p>\n

On His Prose<\/h4>\n

Whether Akbar intends to write more prose remains to be seen. However, with \u201cMartyr!\u201d he has already shown how his ethos, imagination and wizardry with language can carry over into a novel. In a review for NPR<\/a>, Gabino Iglesias wrote, \u201cAs a poet, Akbar is a master of economy of language, and that mastery remains untouched in this 350-page novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akbar carries his distrust of certainty into narrative form, but with an important distinction: where the poems feel intimate, the novel keeps us just at arm\u2019s length. The book\u2019s protagonist Cyrus never narrates himself. Instead he is spoken of by friends, lovers, artists, even ghosts of the past \u2014 like a Greek chorus. The prose may contain Akbar\u2019s lyric density and fondness of metaphor, but it\u2019s more argumentative, willing to digress into art criticism, history and absurd humor. If the poems sound like prayer uttered under the breath, \u201cMartyr!\u201d feels more like a public art piece \u2014 thinking aloud, revising itself.<\/p>\n

Akbar\u2019s Political and Cultural Views Expressed Outside of Books<\/h2>\n

\u201cLanguage is the most murderous technology we\u2019ve ever invented.\u201d \u2014From an interview<\/a> with The Believer<\/p>\n

Kaveh Akbar resists party affiliation or producing work that is explicitly political. He instead champions moral complexity and spiritual inquiry as ways to resist the commodification of language, which he sees as a tool used by empires and bureaucracies to whitewash violence by turning bodies into numbers, deaths into incidents and using grammar to avoid responsibility.<\/p>\n

However, he has been vocal on a number of core issues, establishing him as a clear opponent of imperialism, Islamophobia, mass incarceration and mass media spectacle.<\/p>\n

As an editor of The Nation, Akbar has welcomed and published incarcerated authors without drawing attention to that fact, a strong stance against voyeurism and stereotypical framing that emphasizes fall and redemption.<\/p>\n

Akbar has repeatedly and clearly condemned American military power and empire, speaking out against mass deaths from drone warfare and, more specifically, the shooting of Iran Air Flight 655. In an interview with PBS<\/a>, he said, \u201cI have always been fascinated by this event, and nobody in America knows about it\u2026 You hear a number like 290 people were killed on board. If that number was 289 or 291, it wouldn\u2019t make a difference intellectually, right? But that\u2019s a life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is especially concerned with the way technology and diplomatic jargon distances nations from the violence they commit.<\/p>\n

Regarding immigration and Islamophobia, Akbar has spoken about living as a Muslim in the U.S. under constant suspicion and the toll of being asked to \u201cexplain\u201d or \u201crepresent\u201d Islam.<\/p>\n

He said<\/a>, \u201cYou get this way in which you tell people you were raised Muslim where they just assume you came out of the womb holding a Qur\u2019an with a full beard.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a conversation<\/a> about Muslim writers on the American literary scene, he said, \u201cWe are now suddenly this group that is very visibly proximal to an imminent political and bodily danger at the hands of a state and at the hands of the people\u2026 Suddenly there\u2019s a lot more editorial interest in what Muslim writers are up to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awards<\/h2>\n

Individual Honors<\/h3>\n

Pushcart Prizes<\/b> (2016) Honor the best poetry, fiction, and essays published by small presses.<\/p>\n

Ruth Lilly\/D.S. Rosenberg Fellowship<\/b><\/a> (2016)
\nAwarded by the Poetry Foundation.<\/p>\n

Lucille Medwick Award<\/b><\/a> (2016)<\/p>\n

Civitella Ranieri Fellowship<\/b><\/a> (2021)<\/p>\n

Guggenheim Fellowship<\/b><\/a> (2024)<\/p>\n

\u2018Calling a Wolf a Wolf\u2019<\/h3>\n

Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Levis Reading Prize<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

First Horizon Award<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Julie Suk Award<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Other Awards and Recognition<\/b><\/p>\n

2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Gold Winner<\/a><\/p>\n

Florida Book Award Gold Winner<\/a><\/p>\n

Montaigne Medal Finalist<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Pilgrim Bell\u2019<\/h3>\n

Time<\/a>, NPR, Guardian Best Book of the Year<\/p>\n

Forward Prize Best Collection (shortlist)<\/a><\/p>\n

Maya Angelou Book Award finalist<\/a><\/p>\n

PEN\/Voelcker longlist<\/a><\/p>\n

Top 10 Poetry Books of 2021<\/a><\/p>\n

Electric Lit Favorites<\/a><\/p>\n

Library Journal Best Poetry of 2021<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Martyr!\u2019<\/h3>\n

Dayton Literary Peace Prize<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Other Awards and Recognition<\/b><\/p>\n

NPR Best Books of the Year<\/a><\/p>\n

Library Journal Best Books of the Year<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times Bestseller<\/p>\n

NYT 10 Best Books of 2024<\/a><\/p>\n

National Book Award finalist (Fiction)<\/a><\/p>\n

Waterstones Debut Fiction finalist<\/a><\/p>\n

International Dublin Literary Award longlist<\/a><\/p>\n

Obama Summer Reading List<\/a><\/p>\n

Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize finalist<\/a><\/p>\n

Volume 1 Brooklyn Best Books<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine\u2019<\/h3>\n

2022 Spirituality & Practice Award<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance\u2019<\/h3>\n

The Rumpus \u201cMost Beautiful Books of 2023\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Official selection of The Rumpus Poetry Book Club
\nCaroline (Prologue Bookshop), \u201cTop Reads of 2023\u201d
\nCarmichael’s Bookstore, \u201cFavorite Books of 2023\u201d<\/p>\n

Quotes from Kaveh Akbar<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cIf you\u2019re reading that much poetry, and you\u2019re doing it seriously, it\u2019s going to come out of you. Not because you\u2019re inspired, but because it becomes part of how you think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Poetry Foundation\u2019s \u201cVS\u201d Podcast<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI think people get this idea that poetry is supposed to sound highfalutin or distant. But bringing pleasure, humor, even awkward delight into the conversation \u2014 that matters to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Poetry Foundation\u2019s \u201cVS\u201d Podcast<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cLanguage is the most murderous technology we\u2019ve ever invented\u2026Poetry doesn\u2019t purify that\u2026The best it can do is illuminate, like an X-ray.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Interview with The Believer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI\u2019ve given this coldness many names\/ thinking if it had a name it \/ would have a solution \/ thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cCalling a Wolf a Wolf\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cMecca is a moth \/ chewing holes in a shirt I left \/ at a lovers house\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cCalling a Wolf a Wolf\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI am not a slow learner \/ I am a quick forgetter \/ such erasing makes one voracious \/ if you teach me something beautiful \/ I will name it quickly before it floats away\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cCalling a Wolf a Wolf\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cTears fall on a stone and the stone suddenly \/ wants eyes\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cCalling a Wolf a Wolf\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cAll I know about science\u2014
\nneurons, neutrinos, communicable
\ndisease\u2014could fit inside
\na toothpick, with wood to spare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cPilgrim Bell\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cShow me one beast
\nthat loves itself as relentlessly
\nas even the most miserable man.
\nI\u2019ll wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cPilgrim Bell\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cThe only people who speak in certainties are zealots and tyrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cMartyr!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cActive addiction is an algorithm, a crushing sameness. The story is what comes after.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014From \u201cMartyr!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Author Links<\/h2>\n

Homepage: https:\/\/kavehakbar.com\/<\/a>
\nPoets.org: https:\/\/poets.org\/poet\/kaveh-akbar
\n<\/a>Poetry Foundation: https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poets\/kaveh-akbar
\n<\/a>Divedapper<\/b><\/a>, a blog Akbar launched to interview contemporary poets.<\/p>\n

Similar Authors<\/h2>\n

Franz Wright
\nH. Auden
\nSohrab Sepehri
\nJorge Luis Borges
\nJames Baldwin
\nToni Morrison
\nMax Ritvo<\/a>
\nOcean Vuong
\nDanez Smith<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":7832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-profiles"],"yoast_head":"\nKaveh Akbar Writes to Stay Alive: A Complete Author Profile - The Rauch Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kaveh Akbar is an award winning poet and novelist. 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